Fantomas
holm...@my-deja.com
French "pulp" character. Here's some info from Amazon.com on this
book. Many of Walz's observations on Fantomas would hold equally true
for such US pulp creations as The Spider and the Shadow. The book is
written in the current jargon of literary criticism and only one
chapter actually deals with Fantomas, so you may want to either try
getting the book through Interlibrary Loan or check it out at a book
store (I found it at Borders), before considering purchasing it.
Pulp Surrealism : Insolent Popular Culture in Early Twentieth-Century
France. Robin Walz. Hardcover - 215 pages (March 6, 2000)
Univ of California Press; ISBN: 0520216199. $35.
Book Description
In addition to its more well known literary and artistic origins, the
French surrealist movement drew inspiration from currents of
psychological anxiety and rebellion running through a shadowy side of
mass culture, specifically in fantastic popular fiction and
sensationalistic journalism. The provocative nature of this insolent
mass culture resonated with the intellectual and political pre-
occupations of the surrealists, as Robin Walz demonstrates in this
fascinating study. Pulp Surrealism weaves an interpretative history of
the intersection between mass print culture and surrealism, re-
evaluating both our understanding of mass culture in early twentieth-
century Paris and the revolutionary aims of the surrealist movement.
Pulp Surrealism presents four case studies, each exploring the out-of
the-way and impertinent elements which inspired the surrealists. Walz
discusses Aragon's Le paysan de Paris, one of the great surrealist
novels of Paris. He considers the popular series of Fantomas crime
novels; the Parisian press coverage of the arrest, trial, and execution
of mass-murderer Landru; and the surrealist inquiry "Is Suicide a
Solution?", which Walz juxtaposes with reprints of actual suicide faits
divers (sensationalist newspaper blurbs).
Although surrealist interest in sensationalist popular culture
eventually waned, this exploration of mass print culture as one of the
cultural milieux from which surrealism emerged ultimately calls into
question assumptions about the avant-garde origins of modernism itself.
About the Author
Robin Walz is Assistant Professor of History at the University of
Alaska Southeast.
BTW, Walz also has a Fantomas website.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
holm...@my-deja.com
holm...@my-deja.com wrote:
> BTW, Walz also has a Fantomas website.
The address for this site is:
http://www.fantomas-lives.com
holm...@my-deja.com
holm...@my-deja.com wrote:
Some info from the Walz book I found of interest, in re: the pulps.
The Fantomas novels were published on a monthly basis with 32 full-
length (380 pages) novels being written in as many months. Originally
the series was going to be called "Fantomus", but the publisher misread
the title and printed up a poster with "Fantomas" instead. Over 5
million copies of the original Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
novels were published.
Various (pulpish) appellations for Fantomas were "Lord of Terror" "The
Unseizable" "Genius of Evil" and "Master of Crime". The violence in
the Fantomas novels sometimes reached Spider proportions. In the book
La Fille de Fantmas, the "Lord of Terror" exterminates the entire crew
and passengers of an ocean liner by releasing plague-infested rats on
board which only he has been innoculated against. In other novel
Fantomas sinks another ocean liner for the purpose of making it appear
one of his false identities is dead. In another instance Fantomas
attacks a Paris department store by poisoning the perfume aspirators,
lining shoes on display with broken glass and filling gloves with toxic
chemicals. In La Livree du Crime, Fantomas sets off bombs in an
employment office full of young women. There is then horrific
descriptions of the mutilations of the girls. It turns out, however,
that rather than killing the women, Fantomas had filled the bombs with
blood, bone fragments and hunks of flesh in order to spread terror.
James Lowder
> Unseizable" "Genius of Evil" and "Master of Crime". The violence in
> the Fantomas novels sometimes reached Spider proportions.
>
They are certainly "pulpish." Fantomas locks a girl in a circus wagon
with a starved bear. The hero defeats a night-striking strangler by
wearing spiked armor to bed (it turns out to be a large constrictor
doing the dirty work).
Hoo ha,
Jim Lowder