Thoughts on Paris Peasant

 


I actually absolutely despised this book when I first started it. It was really difficult to get into for me and also the weird comments like him wishing to touch women with *atleast* his hands in the beginning (page 8) really threw me off. Anyway, thankfully after like 20 pages of reading mindlessly and absorbing absolutely no information I actually came to enjoy Paris Peasant. I’ve never read a surrealist novel before and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but in the end I found it very fun to read. While the confusing and nonsensical structure of the book bothered me at first once I realized I should view the book more as an artwork than a conventional story with a beginning, middle and end, it became really intriguing. I noticed that Dada/Dadaism was mentioned quite a few times (actually it may have not been that many but it really stood out to me anyway). Dada or Dadaism is an art movement that is mentioned pretty frequently in art courses due to its effect on the art world. The movement developed after/in reaction to WW1 and spanned many types of art including literature. I believe that Paris Peasant itself could be described as “dadaist” (is that an adjective?) but honestly I don’t understand the movement well enough to say for sure. In my opinion it fits the “anti-art” ideal that Dada came from. Paris Peasant is definitely not what I would expect from a novel, it is avant-garde and breaks away from traditional narration due to it’s surrealism. For me, the few mentions of Dada made the focus on change and modernization, or perhaps the attempt to deny it was happening, more clear to me.



On a different note. 


This may just be me but I found that the detailed descriptions that showed up constantly throughout the novel caused me to feel that sort of hazey, never quite woke up that day type of feeling. The days where you feel removed from all the situations you're in while still noticing every little detail. Because there wasn’t really a classic plot to follow, I didn’t have anything to grasp onto, no character to watch change and evolve, only specific places, objects, people. I had no choice but to continue reading and immerse myself into the dreamlike state I imagine the narrator was also feeling. Overall I found this novel a lot more fun to read than I originally expected but I am very curious if anyone actually managed to read this without getting incredibly lost at some point, especially when reading the first little section. 


That's all for now, same as last week I probably missed some incredibly obvious theme but alteast I enjoyed it haha. 


Comments

  1. Jennifer NagtegaalJanuary 24, 2022 at 8:12 PM

    Hi Dee!
    I was struck by your comment "Because there wasn’t really a classic plot to follow, I didn’t have anything to grasp onto, no character to watch change and evolve, only specific places, objects, people."
    This has me thinking.... Can or should we consider a city (Paris, here) as a protagonist or at least a character in this novel? I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

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  2. Jennifer NagtegaalJanuary 24, 2022 at 8:13 PM

    And, a general reminder: Don't forget to include at least one question in your blog post as fodder for in-class discussion! You will see, for example, that I have started compiling all of the questions that your classmates have posed here: https://rmst202.arts.ubc.ca/aragon-questions/

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