The final book by the founder of Surrealism, translated into English for the first time. " Cavalier Perspective shows us the lion in winter, André Breton near the end of his life, trying to reconcile all the contradictions of his extraordinary career. It is unexpectedly moving to watch him wrestling with his ghosts, aiming for magic, fitting himself uneasily into the new alien landscape of the 1960s." —Lucy Sante, author of I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition As leader and chief theoretician of Surrealism, director of myriad publications from the 1920s through the 1960s, poet André Breton was a prolific writer of prose. Author of numerous books, essays, and manifestoes, Breton periodically collected his most significant short essays into carefully arranged volumes. His last such collection, Cavalier Perspective , appeared posthumously in 1970; in it, editor Marguerite Bonnet assembled "articles, prefaces, responses to surveys, interviews," written between 1952 and 1966. Modeled on its predecessors, Cavalier Perspective is considered Breton's final book. Over 50 years after its initial publication, its appearance in English today is a crucial cultural event; here we encounter Breton writing on topics nearest to our present day and most relevant to current social and political issues. Cavalier Perspective finds Breton steadfastly pursuing his anti-fascist, anti-colonialist revolutionary aims in the age of weapons of mass destruction, climate change, and space exploration, concerns largely unknown during Surrealism's more notorious interwar period. Far from conceding the movement's claim to contemporary relevance, and pointedly refusing the imposition of "strict temporal limits," Breton insists on Surrealism's dynamic and dialectical position in the book's titular manifesto, asserting its continuity through its perpetual capacity to respond to the needs of the hour. More than simply a poet and theoretician, Breton is best considered an "inaugurator of discourse" on the level of a Marx or Freud, and Cavalier Perspective is an essential capstone to his lifetime as the guiding hand behind the worldwide surrealist movement. "Finally available in English, Cavalier Perspective: Last Essays 1952-1966 delivers something precious from the founder of Surrealism."— Allan Graubard, Rain Taxi Review of Books " Cavalier Perspective is a highly welcome addition to the body of Breton's work in English translation. The Breton of these late writings may be diminished, but he is far from depleted. . . . City Lights' edition of this collection is beautifully presented. Austin Carder's translation of Breton's notoriously labyrinthine prose reads well, and Caples' scholarly introduction helpfully situates Cavalier Perspective within the context of Breton's history as well as in relation to some of today's social and political concerns. In addition, the endnotes following individual pieces provide useful information on the people and events referred to in the texts."— Daniel Barbiero, The Compulsive Reader "Breton identified the ailments as Enlightenment positivism and the modes of industrial civilization that followed in its wake, which reduce people to small, interchangeable parts in a logical, orderly world. Perhaps what we now instinctively define as 'surreal' are the instances when the mask of that world falls away, revealing something far stranger, less predictable, and more protean beneath it — the same forces of the unconscious that Breton wanted us to harness."— Nolan Kelly, Hyperallergic " Cavalier Perspective ranges over the final phase of André Breton's career; more than just essays, the book collects assorted reportage, interviews, survey responses, and letters—including a number of forewords and prefaces written for other writers' books, offering a balanced portrait of the man who founded and sustained one of the twentieth century's most influential arts movements."— Eric Bies, Asymptote "Forty essays are shared here, wildly ranging in subject and theme, from prefaces to books by friends, lectures presented at symposiums, ruminations on magic, communism, astrology, the language of stones, the feverish visions of Robert Desnos and Antonin Artaud and everything else in between. Anyone interested in understanding how Dada morphed into Surrealism and how Surrealism morphed into Fluxus, then into pop art, then into conceptual art, and beyond, would be well served by picking up Monsieur Breton's fabulous guided tour to the avant-garde cultural map of the last century."— Donald Brackett, Embodied Meanings: The Brackett Newsletter "Breton died two years short of May '68 but his principles were under every paving stone. Whether he is citing Aime Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism as a 'pure source' in the struggle against empire, or reasserting his faith that dreams are 'guiding instructions,' Breton is clearer than ever here. Cavalier Perspective also contains my favorite Breton quote abo