Comrades:

André Masson

So, André and I used to do this thing where we wouldn't eat or sleep for a few days, and then we'd do this or that drug and let our imaginations run wild—our starving imaginations, that is. Things get weird when your body starts shutting down. No wonder André's automatic drawings were often tangled and a bit pornographic and looked like spaghetti.

We were hungry all the time, which meant that the art we produced would always be about the human body in need.

André drew the cover for my journal Acéphale—it's a guy without a head holding a burning heart and a bloody knife. What a good place to start a story, eh? This guy walks into a bar looking for his head, or maybe a good sexual partner, or maybe just a really good marinara...

Jacques Lacan

Jacques was André's stepbrother and a big fan of surrealism. We got along really well. So well, in fact, that he hooked up with and married my first wife, Sylvia, and then he and Sylvia raised my daughter Laurence. What a friend I was, eh?

Jacques and I were more pals and confidants than intellectual buddies. We did agree, though, that everyone is always just a hair's breadth away from losing their ever-lovin' minds in some full-on psychosis.

I think Jacques liked me because I was more heart on my sleeve, so it was easy for him to study me. Hey, I'm an open book. Actually, I'm more like an open book with some pages missing and a lot of dirty doodles scribbled in the margins.

Roger Caillois

Roger was the fun guy of my group. He devised a theory of play and games that even literary critics like to use, since good old Roger views play and non-seriousness behavior as the very things that generate culture.

Roger and I helped found the College of Sociology, and both of us were attracted to the idea of the sacred. Both of us were rebellious Surrealist boys; we described ourselves as the "enemies from within." We were both interested in psychology, but we wanted to get out of the individual's head and examine communal activities like ritual human sacrifice, decapitation, and ceremonial cannibalism.

After such discussions, we would often have a light lunch, normally tea and tuna fish finger sandwiches.

Pablo Picasso

Picasso—what a guy. I studied in Spain, I loved the Spanish, and I really dug bullfights. (I mean, they're horrible and cruel, there's blood and guts flying everywhere—what's not to love?)

I devoted an entire issue of Documents to Picasso. I guess I wish I could have been him: he was so good with the ladies, his shirt was always off, he painted masterpieces in a matter of minutes, and he sucked the marrow out of life. He opened things up, exploded forms, and gained pleasure from artistic dismemberment—that's the guy I wish I could have been.

Instead, I remained a librarian—not sexy at all, and a bit tragic as well. I always felt like I had to go to extremes to remind myself I was alive.

Rivals:

André Breton

Oh, boy. What can I say about André? This is the dude who called me an "excremental philosopher"—which he thought was an insult, but I took as a compliment. Yeah, I talked about bowel movements and semen and blood and a whole lot of stuff that was dark and disgusting, but if I didn't, who would have?

I mean, I liked what the Surrealists were doing, but I just thought that they could go further. I thought they should get out of their personal unconscious and get into the big, gnarly, ritualistic behaviors that drove groups of people crazy—like those Aztecs with their human sacrifice, or the religious self-mutilations practiced by Christian monks.

All that awesome, nasty, gory stuff was right there in front of us in cultural practice, but nobody wanted to talk about it. Yeah, Salvador Dalí's stilt elephants and melting clocks were weird and fantastical—the stuff of dreams—but what about all the really messy thoughts and dreams about murder and bizarre sex and things "unthinkable"? This stuff shows up all the time in our heads. Don't say you've never had such thoughts. I know you have.

André totally trashed me in the Second Surrealist Manifesto. Seriously, he dogged me in a manifesto. Who does that? Manifestos are forever. Anyway, André's beef was that I apparently focused too much on the "vilest, most disturbing, most corrupt" parts of human nature, such as excrement (source). I have a potty mouth—I get it—but shouldn't we examine every human behavior and not hide from anything?

I need to stop talking about André. My blood pressure is out of control. Maybe a good bloodletting will do me some good. Mmm, blood.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul thought I was some kind of wannabe witch doctor who idolized primitive cultures and all their wild ways. Conclusion: he thought that I was therefore superstitious and that I rejected rational thought. Look, Jean-Paul, I've got an advanced degree, and I'm a librarian. Eat your words.

I think the dude was just scared to death of letting loose once in a while.

Human language and literature is not just a collection of smart, organized thoughts and well-placed punctuation. We are animals that fart and poop and burp and ejaculate and kill things and skin things and worship dead bodies and have really weird thoughts and dreams. I'm sorry, but I think the basest behavior of the human animal is interesting and worth intellectual inquiry.

If I sound defensive, it's because I am. Weird male librarians are people, too, and just because I enjoy studying and incorporating weird, taboo rituals into my life does not mean I think I'm a mystic or a shaman or anything like that. Yeah, I know my buddies and I in Acéphale talked about sacrificing one of us in front of the group, but it's not like we actually did anything about it. We just got really excited talking about it.