Jacques Vache

Surprisingly little is available on this incredibly influential figure of the early avant garde. As ambiguous in life as in his writings, this book is more of a theoritcal discourse on Umour than it is an actual biography (for the simple reason that not much biographical information exists for the short 23 years of his life). Very well written and researched, it is valuable no only for its direct content on the life and theory of Vache, but for the cultural perspective that unfolds throughout the telling of his tale. A minor caveat would be that there does exist a bit of a sectarian bias to some of the opinions put forth by the writer, being a member of the Chicago surrealist group himself. Nonetheless I greatly enjoyed it and have already ordered another of his books "Juice is stranger than fiction," on T Bone Slim, who I learned of in this book which as such also works as a great reference work for finding obscure figures and writers in the history of arts and letters.… (más)

I really enjoyed this collection. The biographies at the start of each section are fantastic, drawing from personal accounts of subsequent writers of that time. Although some of the "anti-art" pieces begin to lose their effect when drawn out for too long, the euphorisms of torma and fragments from Rigaut are brilliant. Even though I love Tzara these men are important to read to really feel Dada before it became the secularized (and thus self defeating) image that it gets portrayed as retrospectively.… (más)