{"product_id":"idiocy-isbn-9781681379197","title":"Idiocy","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn audacious, unabashedly transgressive memoir about two acts of escape by the author: rebelling aginst his family to seek a freer life in Paris and then, later, from the French military during the Algerian War.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePierre Guyotat was one of the most radical and uncompromising writers of the twentieth century, a literary successor to Sade, Bataille, and Genet whose visceral fictions and bold experiments with language have earned him cult status in France and abroad. \u003ci\u003eIdiocy\u003c\/i\u003e is his searing memoir of coming of age between 1958 and 1962, when he discovered his burgeoning sexuality and 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGuyotat recounts the atrocities he witnessed first-hand in Algeria, as well as his own harrowing experience of being arrested for inciting desertion and imprisoned in a hole in the ground for three months. Guyotat wields his language like a scalpel, merciless in his exploration of human brutality in all its horrible, granular detail. Yet his generous depictions of camaraderie and friendship are just as unflinching.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe winner of the 2018 Prix Médicis, \u003ci\u003eIdiocy \u003c\/i\u003eis an incisive condemnation of violence and colonialism, and a bracing, hallucinatory late masterpiece from a writer hailed by Edmund White as \"one of the few geniuses of our day.\"\"Pierre Guyotat is the prince of prose.\" —Alain Badiou\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Guyotat renders the obscene violence of colonialism with unflinching honesty. His writing is gorgeous, brutally poetic without pretense or over-aestheticization. 'Insects scuttle between my fingers like words that escape me.' I didn't just read \u003ci\u003eIdiocy\u003c\/i\u003e, I was captured by it. It is a book that throws off your blinders, that changes you.\" —Dodie Bellamy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eIdiocy\u003c\/i\u003e, as a work of memoir, maintains an uncanny sobriety throughout its reportage, indulgent in its poetical description . . . As a medium intended to survey war and warmongering, \u003ci\u003eIdiocy \u003c\/i\u003ebecomes more than a simple pulling back of the curtain of atrocity; it would, instead, pull down the whole damned rigging, lights, cameras, and all.\" —Blake Butler\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[Guyotat is] anti-authoritarian, pushing the French language to its limits of meaning, and fascinated by the filth of fighting, illness, and recovery. . . An ugly, terrifying memoir of childhood, war, and violation, rendered into nightmarish English.\" —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ePierre Guyotat\u003c\/b\u003e (1940–2020) was a French writer. In 1960, he was conscripted into the Algerian War, the inhumanity of which would become a recurring theme throughout his oeuvre. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eTomb for 500,000 Soldiers\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eEden, Eden, Eden\u003c\/i\u003e, which was banned in France upon its publication in 1970, and \u003ci\u003eComa\u003c\/i\u003e, which won the 2006 Prix Décembre. In 2018, he was awarded the Prix Femina spécial for lifetime achievement.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003ePeter Behrman de Sinéty\u003c\/b\u003e grew up in Maine and lives in Paris. He was \u003ci\u003electeur d'anglais\u003c\/i\u003e at the École Normale Supérieure, where he has taught since 2011. His translations include Éric Chevillard's \u003ci\u003eQWERTY Invectives\u003c\/i\u003e and Maël Renouard’s \u003ci\u003eFragments of an Infinite Memory\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303051251941,"sku":"NP9781681379197","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681379197.jpg?v=1767729763","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/idiocy-isbn-9781681379197","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}