Manhood A Journey from Childhood into the Fierce Order of Virility

"Plunked down in translation in the year 1963, Michel Leiris's brilliant and repulsive autobiographical narrative 'L'Age d'Homme', is at first rather puzzling. 'Manhood', as it is called in English, appears without any covering note. There is no way for the reader to find out that Leiris, now in his sixties and the author of some twenty books none of which are yet in English, is an important poet and senior survivor of the Surrealist generation in Paris in the 1920s, and a fairly eminent anthropologist. Nor does the English edition explain that 'Manhood' is not recent--that it was in fact written in the early 1930s, first published in 1939, and republished with an important prefatory essay...In 1946, when it had a great succes de scandale...The book would not be worth attention if it did not have value as literature. This, I think, is considerable."Leiris, Michel is the author of 'Manhood A Journey from Childhood into the Fierce Order of Virility', published 1992 under ISBN 9780226471419 and ISBN 0226471411.