Frail Riffs

“This is a brilliant translation of the final chapter in Leiris’s astonishing autobiography. Page after page of this work of unique self-documentation contains observations and revelations, especially about Leiris’s reactions to the violence and chaos of World War II. I couldn’t put it down.”—Marjorie Perloff, author of Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics

“‘Divination, alibi, purification rite’: In the fourth and final volume of his incantatory self-exploration, The Rules of the Game, Michel Leiris shuffles the tarot cards of his life in the light of his approaching death. Tracking the surges, feints, and elaborations of this Surrealist quest romance, Sieburth has created a monument of English prose.”—Rosanna Warren, author of Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters

“The indispensable legacy of a man who believed that a poet has to pay with his own unhappiness for the blessings of his gift.”—Alberto Manguel, director, Center for Research into the History of Reading

“Frail Riffs is a radical experiment in self-knowledge. Michel Leiris subverts virtually all the expectations built into the autobiographical genre in his performative making and unmaking of a self. The work’s lucid awareness of historical contingency, captured in Richard Sieburth’s nimble translation, speaks to our present uncertainty about where we are going, separately and together.”—James Clifford, author of The Predicament of Culture