Roue libre

Folk culture has a series of expressions such as to reinvent the wheel, or start from the beginning. Take the wheel as a matter of fact. Without it there would be no transportation, and a material civilization would crumble down. A philosophical system would also suffer from that: how else could we express repetition, perfection, totality? Young Alechinsky, had been influenced many years ago –almost 50 years ago – by the wheel and had started this book. It is a form of drifting of the mind, in which appear his friends and elders: Breton, Jorn, Dotremont, Folon, Walasse Ting; literary and musical interests, souvenirs of travels. The great number of illustrations – works by Alechinsky himself, popular chromes, photos of the volcano of Lanzarote, of Breton’s parrot, or of Alfred Jarry on a bicycle – appear next to a nervous and bubbly text, something like a “showcase of curiosities” which Julio Cortázar, W.G. Sebald or Orhan Pamuk also made a try at. Alechinsky, who as we know has always been attracted by writing, shows he is a brilliant man of letters.

• Roue libre by Pierre Alechinsky, Gallimard, 2017, 192 p., €24.50