POMERAND, Gabriel. Saint Ghetto Des Prêts [Saint Ghetto of the Loans]. Paris: O.L.B. 1950.
4vo. Rebound in half green morocco with marbled card over boards, raised bands with gilt detailing and title in gilt to spine.
A unique copy rarely inscribed by Pomerand with his typically provocative humour.
This copy is inscribed by the author in blue ink to [p. 5]. To see an inscription by Pomerand is rare, and his message carries his distinctive humour. The novel follows Isou’s theory, and his novel “Les Journaux des Dieux”. This book was an attempt to revolutionise the novel by using pictograms, Hebrew, or invented signs in a series of forty-seven plates which are translated on the opposing pages. Although the book is significant in its experimental form, it also describes – and comments upon – the contemporary process of gentrification which was taking place in the Existentialist (and Lettrist) area of Saint-Germain-Prés. This iconic graphic novel was described by Johanna Drucker as ‘one of the most systematic and sustained “metagraphic” works of the 20th Century avant-garde’. It was reprinted twice in the USA in Classics of the Avant-Gardes, and recently in Belgium.
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