THE TENANT by Roland Topor with Introduction by Ligotti

[Gray House]

I recently watched Fantastic Planet for the second time, and found it even more visually compelling than I remembered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn1Flob9NoQ

[teguififthzeal]

The film adaptation with Roman Polanski is nothing to sneeze at. I love it; it incorporates, with a few of Polanski's anti american "Oh look at the foreigners aren't they awful" asides, the smothering atmosphere of misanthropy present in the book. The ending looks both comical and tragic, if you watch it more than once.

[xylokopos]

I am late to the party, I know, but I finally read this extraordinary book. Ligotti's introductory essay is, unsurprisingly, brilliant. We can all think of artists and writers that fall outside the spectrum of commonplace sentiments and ideas, but the notion of a single man's creative life progressing from an affirmative/idealist phase toward the negative and the twisted is something not much examined. Though I admit, Ligotti's examples are not the most obvious. Why, for instance, Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata and not The Death of Ivan Ilyich? I would also have thought that rather than castigating Camus - which was, admittedly, a delight to read - a small discussion of someone like Dostoyevsky would have been more poignant. Notes from the Underground is, after all, the Ur-text, when it comes to the literature from the perspective of the estranged and the maladjusted. Still, Ligotti's intro, just like all his forays into literary criticism and recommendation, is pure gold.

Topor is a genius when it comes to seamlessly combining the nightmarish and the hilarious. And I love how one can read the Tenant either as a purely psychological tale of a man going insane or as straight forward supernatural horror that starts out as the unfurling of a conspiracy. Just because you are paranoid, it doesn't mean they are not after you. As has been noted before, this edition also includes four short stories which are wonderfully perverse, strange little fables of devastating social criticism. They reminded me of Bukowski and Boris Vian, but the absurdist elements were more pronounced. There are also samples of Topor's artwork at the end of the book. The cover artwork is also his.

Topor has written much more than I thought. I would love to find his pornographic puzzle-book for prisoners, or his erotic novella where there is a single printed word on each page. I saw documentaries where he presents some of his most curious creations. Not easy to track down, but I am telling you, I was never happier to have learned French. I have also watched some of his film work this past week [I thank Zeus for youtube], films he co-scripted or animated and I am blown by his imagination. I have something to recommend to all you TLO intellectual deviants: his 1989 film titled Marquis. Topor wrote it and did the art direction. The film is a fictional take of the Marquis de Sade's last few days at the Bastille, before it was seized by the revolutionaries. It's animatronics, all the actors have animal heads and it is unforgetable. I would embed it but it is technically R-rated, so I hesitate. Watch it now, buy me a drink later.

PS. I will soon have to return my copy of the Tenant to the library. This is one book I would really really really love to steal.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[bendk]

Quote Originally Posted by xylokopos

. Topor is a genius when it comes to seamlessly combining the nightmarish and the hilarious. And I love how one can read the Tenant either as a purely psychological tale of a man going insane or as straight forward supernatural horror that starts out as the unfurling of a conspiracy. Just because you are paranoid, it doesn't mean they are not after you.

The Tenant is a brilliant short novel. Highest recommendation from me without hesitation.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Roland Topor in English--Fright.com commentary

An overview of his work which has been translated into English

[R.P.Dwyer]

French people don't know who Roland Topor is:

Roland Topor: The Unrecognizable Genius Behind FANTASTIC PLANET - YouTube

[bendk]

Quote Originally Posted by R.P.Dwyer

French people don't know who Roland Topor is: Roland Topor: The Unrecognizable Genius Behind FANTASTIC PLANET - YouTube

In this age of information overload, and even before, I don't hold this against people. They are just living their lives. Can such a thing as 'well-read' mean anything today? Having said that, I am certainly glad that I have read Topor.