Idiocy

by Pierre Guyotat

52 Members 1 Review (3.00) 3 Awards

On This Page

Quick Facts

Description

"An audacious, unabashedly transgressive memoir about two acts of escape by the author: breaking from his family to seek a freer life in Paris and then, later, deserting the French military during the Algerian War. Pierre Guyotat was one of the most radical and uncompromising writers of the twentieth century, a literary successor to the Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille, and Jean Genet, and whose visceral fictions and extreme linguistic experimentation have earned him cult status in France show more and abroad. Idiocy is his searing memoir of coming of age between 1958 and 1962, when he discovered his burgeoning sexuality as well as his aptitude for rebellion - first against his father, whom he escaped to become a writer in Paris, then against the French military authorities as a conscript in the Algerian War. With unflinching honesty, Guyotat recounts the atrocities he witnessed firsthand during the war, as well as his own harrowing experience of being arrested for ostensibly inciting desertion and imprisoned in a hole in the ground for three months. Guyotat wields his prose like a scalpel, merciless in his excavation of the sensations and textures of human brutality - yet also generous and moving in his depictions of comradery and friendship. Winner of the 2018 Prix Medicis, this bracing, hallucinatory narrative is both an incisive condemnation of violence and colonialism, and an invaluable key to the oeuvre of a writer hailed by Edmund White as "one of the few geniuses of our day.""-- show less

Tags

More Tags

Recommendations

Complete Recommendations

Member Reviews

  • All Ratings
  • No Rating
All Reviews

Members

Recently Added By
All Members

Author Information

Picture of author.
Pierre Guyotat
29 Works 594 Members

Awards and Honors

Awards

Distinctions

Series

Belongs to Publisher Series

Common Knowledge

Canonical title*
Idiotie
Original title
Idiotie
Original publication date
2018
Original language*
Français
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.

Classifications

Genres
Biography & Memoir, Fiction and Literature, General Fiction
DDC/MDS
848.914 — Literature & rhetoric French Literature French miscellaneous writings 1900- 1900-1999 1945-1999
LCC
PQ2667 .U9 .Z46 — Language and Literature French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures French literature Modern literature 1961-2000
BISAC
More Classifications

Statistics

Members
52
Popularity
581,977
Reviews
1
Rating
(3.00)
Languages
English, French
Media
Paper, Ebook
ISBNs
4
ASINs
3