Purchase
A Novel of the Outlaw Life of Arthur Rimbaud
Doubleday
July 2011
On Sale: July 19, 2011
384 pages
ISBN: 0385534361
EAN: 9780385534369
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Fiction
The author of the critically acclaimed novel The World as I
Found It brilliantly reimagines the scandalous life of the
pioneering, proto-punk poet Arthur Rimbaud. Arthur Rimbaud, the enfant terrible of French letters, more
than holds his own with Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde in terms
of bold writing and salacious interest. In the space of one
year—1871—with a handful of startling poems he transformed
himself from a teenaged bumpkin into the literary sensation
of Paris. He was taken up, then taken in, by the older and
married poet Paul Verlaine in a passionate affair. When
Rimbaud sought to end it, Verlaine, in a jealous rage, shot
him. Shortly thereafter, Rimbaud—just shy of his twentieth
birthday—declared himself finished with literature. His
resignation notice was his immortal prose poem A Season in
Hell. In time, Rimbaud wound up a prosperous trader and
arms dealer in Ethiopia. But a cancerous leg forced him to
return to France, to the family farm, with his sister and
loving but overbearing mother. He died at thirty-seven. Bruce Duffy takes the bare facts of Rimbaud’s fascinating
existence and brings them vividly to life in a story rich
with people, places, and paradox. In this unprecedented work
of fictional biography, Duffy conveys, as few ever have, the
inner turmoil of this calculating genius of outrage, whose
work and untidy life essentially anticipated and created the
twentieth century’s culture of rebellion. It helps us see
why such protean rock figures as Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison,
and Patti Smith adopted Rimbaud as their idol.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
| 
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy