Hobo Journal

TIME REGAINED. A CHRONICLE OF HOBO MAGAZINE'S DAYS...


  1. ( October 30th, 2011 )

    Burn, bébé, burn! The most aptly named Blaise Cendrars has had no equal in modern literature when it comes to setting a page on fire. He chose his nouns the way pyromaniacs select their tinder, then ignited them with adjectives and verbs that spark like phosphor.

    A teenage runaway, global nomad, soldier, and adventurer, Cendrars (1887-1961) lived an exuberant, incandescent existence, but it is the writing in his more than twenty books that threatens to singe the eyebrows of the timid observer.

    It astounds me that Cendrars is not more widely read. Even in France he is these days ignored - and only Henry Miller, yours truly, and possibly Thomas Pynchon seem to have been directly influenced by him. I can but suppose that his oeuvre (ribald, funny, tough as iron, and bright as neon) is smoldering somewhere beneath the gray crust of general awareness, and will one day erupt into a flame around which every true lover of language and life cannot help but dance. Text by Tom Robbins for Hobo #13

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