Isidore. L’Agrégation d’un nom et d’un Messie.

by ISOU

£1,800 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

ISOU, Isidore. L’Agrégation d’un nom et d’un Messie. Paris: Gallimard. 8vo. Soft cream covers lettered in black and red to front covers and spine, newspaper clippings loosely inserted; pp. 447, [5]; front cover torn at hinge of spine, sunning to covers and text block; good. Inscribed by Isou. L’Agrégation d’un nom et d’un messie is the second book published by Isou. It was praised as early as 1948 by Georges Bataille in his journal Critique, as being a book “childish, brilliant, as laughable and as embarrassing as a bare backside.” This work, which alone would suffice to establish Isou’s literary reputation, is an outstanding autobiography recounting the different stages of his formation, from his childhood in Romania to his arrival in Paris with the aim of founding Lettrism; including, how he sees himself as the possible New Messiah as well as the most stunning descriptions of the act of reading. Gallimard, accused of antisemitism during WWII, may have tried to use Isouʼs self-promoting epic to avoid postwar problems. Never reissued and rarely seen without false mentions of later editions and different covers, this original edition includes a very rare dedication by Isidore Isou to gallerist and book collector Elie Szapiro. The message is written in blue ink to the half title page, and was inscribed on the occasion of a group of Lettrist events that took place in Toulouse some twenty years after the publication. Loosely inserted is a fierce and critical press cutting against

• Binding: Hardcover

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