Jump Cuts - by Mark Polizzotti (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Erudite, witty, light on his feet, Polizzotti is the perfect guide to these shadowlands where art and freedom embrace. A Modernist Book of Revelation." --Rosanna Warren

In this volume comprising 13 essays, Mark Polizzotti, award-winning translator, cultural critic and biographer of André Breton, brings fresh readings to topics both mainstream and esoteric. The essays include "Profound Occultation," an elegant and incisive reevaluation of Surrealism's legacy; "Love and Theft," a dry-eyed look at Bob Dylan's freewheeling use of uncredited sources; "Lives Behind Lives," on the moments when a biographer's life merges with the subject's; "Surrealism's Children," which explores the limits of offense in art and society; as well as sharply written commentaries on the life of Alfred Jarry, the myth of Robert Johnson, the anguish of Laure (Colette Peignot), the hubris of Francis Picabia, the dyspepsia of Flaubert, the mind-twisting wordplay of Raymond Roussel, and the enduring power of films such as Vertigo, Orpheus and Last Year at Marienbad.
Drawing on three decades of critical writings, Jump Cuts ranges across a broad swath of subjects--film, music, literature, translation, the pitfalls of biography, the current dilemma of the humanities--to map the creative act as it strains to fulfill our eternal, unrequited yearning for transcendence.
Mark Polizzotti (born 1957) is an American translator and critic. His books include Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton and Why Surrealism Matters. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the New Republic, the Nation and elsewhere. He is the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature. He directs the publications program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Review Quotes

"... a delightful collection of essays. I especially appreciate what Polizzotti writes about artists wrestling with difficult or controversial subjects, such as a figure like Sade, and about how shutting out such voices is always a mistake."--Tosh Berman "The World of Tosh Berman"

As I read Mark Polizzotti's 'Jump Cuts' I kept wanting to talk back to the book--not because there was anything wrong; I just wanted to engage further. Polizzotti's understanding of Surrealism and its consequences--of an enormous amount of twentieth-century culture--is exceptionally broad and deep, and his prose is clear and sharp. His book is a gas, a vibe, an argument, and a conversation.--Lucy Sante

Mark Polizzotti is an omnivorously curious writer, bringing a translator's perspective to much of what he discusses in his essays; his ear picks up on the intended meaning in the work of artists long-ago, lost in historical decontextualization. Polizzotti, in effect, retranslates how to see these artists, correcting beloved Apocrypha if he must, in the act of repositioning them among their contemporaries and predecessors. He took me to school on Surrealism, a movement I thought I knew well. I'm now more alive than ever to its wonders. I'm staggered by how much Polizzotti knows and by the gorgeous leap of his prose, which gets airborne fast. Anecdotally rich, astonishing, galvanizing and utterly unacademic, 'Jump Cuts' goes down like chilled aperol in a hot summer chugging contest!--Guy Maddin

To read Mark Polizzotti's 'Jump Cuts' is to be a delighted flâneur strolling through obscure passageways in Surrealism, overhearing songs by Robert Johnson and Bob Dylan, slipping into movie houses to watch, as if for the first time, 'Last Year at Marienbad, ' 'Vertigo, ' and 'Cocteau's Orphée.' Erudite, witty, light on his feet, Polizzotti is the perfect guide to these shadowlands where art and freedom embrace. A Modernist Book of Revelation.--Rosanna Warren