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Paris Peasant was an incredibly unique literary experience that left me in a haze of contradicting emotions and thoughts. As was stated previously in the lecture Louis Aragon does this through putting aside traditional narrative convention altogether in favour of … Continue reading → read full post >>

Hello! I just finished reading Aragon’s Paris Peasant and here are some of my thoughts. I initially read the first 50 pages or so and enjoyed the prose, but it was often confusing and it felt like there was little structure, so I had trouble understanding it. Individual sentences seemed to make sense but I often […] read full post >>

Aragon’s “Paris Peasant” was a strange experience to read. The text describes venturing through the Passage de L’Opéra, which includes cafes, theatres, and small shops. The journey is rather imaginative due to its ambiguity. A consistent theme in this book is its surrealism. There are illogical scenes combined that make the text so unordinary. For […] read full post >>

 

I actually absolutely despised this book when I first started it. It was really difficult to get into for me and also the weird comments like him wishing to touch women with *atleast* his hands in the beginning (page 8) really threw me off. Anyway, thankfully after like 20 pages of reading mindlessly and absorbing absolutely no information I actually came to enjoy Paris Peasant. I’ve never read a surrealist novel before and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but in the end I found it very fun to read. While the confusing and nonsensical structure of the book bothered me at first once I realized I should view the book more as an artwork than a conventional story with a beginning, middle and end, it became really intriguing. I noticed that Dada/Dadaism was mentioned quite a few times (actually it may have not been that many but it really stood out to me anyway). Dada or Dadaism is an art movement that is mentioned pretty frequently in art courses due to its effect on the art world. The movement developed after/in reaction to WW1 and spanned many types of art including literature. I believe that Paris Peasant itself could be described as “dadaist” (is that an adjective?) but honestly I don’t understand the movement well enough to say for sure. In my opinion it fits the “anti-art” ideal that Dada came from. Paris Peasant is definitely not what I would expect from a novel, it is avant-garde and breaks away from traditional narration due to it’s surrealism. For me, the few mentions of Dada made the focus on change and modernization, or perhaps the attempt to deny it was happening, more clear to me.

On a different note. 

This may just be me but I found that the detailed descriptions that showed up constantly throughout the novel caused me to feel that sort of hazey, never quite woke up that day type of feeling. The days where you feel removed from all the situations you're in while still noticing every little detail. Because there wasn’t really a classic plot to follow, I didn’t have anything to grasp onto, no character to watch change and evolve, only specific places, objects, people. I had no choice but to continue reading and immerse myself into the dreamlike state I imagine the narrator was also feeling. Overall I found this novel a lot more fun to read than I originally expected but I am very curious if anyone actually managed to read this without getting incredibly lost at some point, especially when reading the first little section. 

That's all for now, same as last week I probably missed some incredibly obvious theme but alteast I enjoyed it haha. 


read full post >>

 

I actually absolutely despised this book when I first started it. It was really difficult to get into for me and also the weird comments like him wishing to touch women with *atleast* his hands in the beginning (page 8) really threw me off. Anyway, thankfully after like 20 pages of reading mindlessly and absorbing absolutely no information I actually came to enjoy Paris Peasant. I’ve never read a surrealist novel before and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but in the end I found it very fun to read. While the confusing and nonsensical structure of the book bothered me at first once I realized I should view the book more as an artwork than a conventional story with a beginning, middle and end, it became really intriguing. I noticed that Dada/Dadaism was mentioned quite a few times (actually it may have not been that many but it really stood out to me anyway). Dada or Dadaism is an art movement that is mentioned pretty frequently in art courses due to its effect on the art world. The movement developed after/in reaction to WW1 and spanned many types of art including literature. I believe that Paris Peasant itself could be described as “dadaist” (is that an adjective?) but honestly I don’t understand the movement well enough to say for sure. In my opinion it fits the “anti-art” ideal that Dada came from. Paris Peasant is definitely not what I would expect from a novel, it is avant-garde and breaks away from traditional narration due to it’s surrealism. For me, the few mentions of Dada made the focus on change and modernization, or perhaps the attempt to deny it was happening, more clear to me.

On a different note. 

This may just be me but I found that the detailed descriptions that showed up constantly throughout the novel caused me to feel that sort of hazey, never quite woke up that day type of feeling. The days where you feel removed from all the situations you're in while still noticing every little detail. Because there wasn’t really a classic plot to follow, I didn’t have anything to grasp onto, no character to watch change and evolve, only specific places, objects, people. I had no choice but to continue reading and immerse myself into the dreamlike state I imagine the narrator was also feeling. Overall I found this novel a lot more fun to read than I originally expected but I am very curious if anyone actually managed to read this without getting incredibly lost at some point, especially when reading the first little section. 

That's all for now, same as last week I probably missed some incredibly obvious theme but alteast I enjoyed it haha. 


read full post >>

I enjoyed the book immensely when it comes to Louis Aragon’s Paris Peasant, even though the text started as somewhat confusing for me. Though, what I found most interesting about the text was the plot, or rather the lack of plot in the story. Much of the novel tends to describe different locations in the city […] read full post >>

Before I read this week, I decided to watch the lecture before reading rather than afterward like I did last week. It really helped me to grasp at themes to expect while reading. I really kept in mind Professor Jon’s question of “how does Aragon view or depict the passage of time? What sense of …

Continue reading "Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon"

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Hey everyone!  I was really excited to read the Paris Peasant because unlike the last book we were reading a... read full post >>

When I began reading this book I felt as if I was keeping up with understanding what Aragon was describing, but soon after, maybe 15 pages in, I realized I actually wasn’t. Many times throughout my reading, I found myself retracing over previous pages or trying to make sense of it for minutes at a […] read full post >>

Although I felt that this book started a bit slow and the syntax style wasn’t my personal favourite, I really enjoyed this read. I thought that the setting was especially great and made every scene feel like it was being surrounded by beauty within the city. I think though that having a better knowledge of […] read full post >>

I didn’t expect to find Paris Peasant so interesting, but I really did enjoy reading it. Between the French setting and the persistent attention to detail, it sort of made me feel like I was revisiting Les Misérables – if Les Misérables had been narrated by some kind of immortal being with intense nostalgia and an unstable grip […] read full post >>

Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon was certainly an interesting read. It was unlike anything I have read before as a teen or young adult. The strange use of vocabulary, grammar, fonts, textures and the insertion of random signs and posters gave the book a c... read full post >>

Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon was certainly an interesting read. It was unlike anything I have read before as a teen or young adult. The strange use of vocabulary, grammar, fonts, textures and the insertion of random signs and posters gave the book a c... read full post >>

Words like historic, romanic and chic are a part of my common vocabulary when I think about Paris. However, through reading Aragon’s “Paris Peasant” (1994) , I was offered an opportunity to imagine a distinctively different Paris. In his vivid descriptions … Continue reading → read full post >>

Louis Aragon’s Paris Peasant is the first surrealist novel that I’ve read. While it isn’t the first surrealist work of fiction that I’ve ever experienced, shows like FLCL and films like Midsommar, and DOPE exemplify the deeply psychological and blurry narratives archetypical of surrealist fiction. However, Paris Peasant acts as a landmark of surrealist literature […] read full post >>