Artaud Anthology
A City Lights paperback anthology of Antonin Artaud's prose, poems, letters, and manifestos, translated and selected to give the uninitiated a controlled dose of his violence. The book moves through theatre, the occult, the body, and rebellion, often in the same paragraph, and the selections make clear that Artaud's reputation for madness rests on a deliberate rhetorical strategy. The City Lights format is compact, the paper is the thin off-white stock the press favors, and the cover design is usually stark enough to warn away casual browsers. Ideal reader: the reader who has read the theory about Artaud and now wants the actual sentences, or the playwright who needs to be reminded that theatre can be an assault rather than an entertainment.
