4 Dada Suicides: Selected Texts of Arthur Cravan, Jacques Rigaut, Julien Torma & Jacques Vach- (74e

"4 Dada Suicides" is a novelty of a book if ever there was one. Sad to say, since none of these guys would have wanted just to be novelties. We have Jacques Rigaut, the morbid dandy who, according to the man who employed him for awhile, was not quite the dadaist rebel he played at being; Arthur Cravan, perhaps the highlight of the book, with his intoxicated adventures and bitingly witty dismissal of just about everything! With Cravan, more so than Torma or Vache, one gets the sense of a man who could have been so much more than merely a scandalous figure who scribbled some opiated aphorisms. Torma is a trip too, however, his creepily composed and pale phantom haunting the black and white pages with telling lines:"Perfection is mediocrity. Only excess is beautiful". And we have the infamous Jacques Vache, goofing off to Breton about the state of his own health and his possible impending death (or not). This is sort of an epitaph for four men who represented, in one way or another, the final "No" to values finally proved false. One wonders, though, while being awed by their enigmatic rebellion against society and art, whether they would have had anything to say had they not offed themselves so very quickly. THIS however is the most bizarre book I have yet to encounter from Atlas Press, and that's saying something. Beyond a must read, the ever sharpening sense of the edge and the immediacy of our lives in the face of death makes this a must have, right now. Read it.