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 in that it seamlessly blends the it’s disparate structure and ideas into something cohesive and profound, which speaks to you in as many different literary languages as it possibly can.

The most immediate and striking aspect of the book is it’s unconventional structure. Aragon’s prose morphs from philosophical thesis to narrative, then to poetry and myth, looping back again in a manner that is almost dizzying. Keeping up with Aragon as he weaves his literary tapestry is at times effortful and it can often feel as though one must constantly reorient oneself so that they don’t get lost in the confusion, however when the novel is read in terms of the flow of consciousness of our narrator, many of the pieces begin falling in place.

The novel’s structure often presents vignettes of what was at the time modern life in Paris, and our narrator’s observations, perspectives, thoughts, stories, and musings are all presented as if they were flowing naturally from his consciousness. Instead of following a logical structure based on the events of a narrative, Aragon structures his work as if he was following a road with no clear destination. This isn’t to say that Paris Peasant is aimless, rather that it’s structure is one of evocation, where the events of daily life beget ideas that then influence one’s observations in a cyclical manner. The novel is composed primarily of vignettes, not necessarily narrative vignettes but rather sections that flow from one to another based entirely on our narrator’s whims and momentary interests. It is in one hand a character study, while also being an exploration of modern life and of the nature of grander ideas like God, truth and error, and time.

These ideas are explored through the direct opinions of the narrator, but are also commonly expressed through extended metaphors and similes, comparing the eccentricities of man to a garden, seeing the “blondness” in everything, and composing a script in which one’s senses are wary of imagination, who reveals to the reader that it is through his power that the greater part of human life is contingent on. All of these elements are stitched together by the curious wanderings of our narrator’s mind, a verbal manifestation of their unconscious that is not unlike the Freudian theorists, who theories the heart of one’s mind lies in their subconscious.

I find writing fiction in this style can fall prey to issues of alienating one’s audience if they are not hooked by the ideas being presented. In my opinion, Paris Peasant is a towering achievement of surrealism that captures what I find so engaging about the style perfectly. Namely, the bittersweet feeling they evoke. Often reading Paris Peasant felt laborious like I had to constantly pick it apart or that things did not often make sense, however it is this very tension, in which one must construct meaning from the text, or discard meaning and embrace abstraction for its own sake, that makes good surrealism so engaging. FLCL, which I mentioned earlier is one of my favorite pieces of fiction of all time, and I can see much of it’s structure and ideas, principally the physical manifestation of subconscious ideas and understandings, being spearheaded in this groundbreaking work. While I know I likely did not fully take in everything the novel had to offer, in my opinion that is part of the fun and what a joy Paris Peasant was for that reason.

My question to readers is whether or not they resonated with the unconventional structure of Aragon’s prose? did the lack of clear narrative logic alienate or entice you?