Toyen turns 120

Hard to believe, but Toyen, the subject of my book Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020) turns 120 today. Toyen was born at 6pm Central European time, so this post will go up just a little bit before that.

Toyen was born in Prague (or technically Smíchov, which wasn't yet incorporated into Greater Prague then) and joined the avant-garde Devětsil group in 1923 with her friends the fellow artists Jindřich Štyrský and Remo. She and Štyrský later became founding members of the Prague surrealist group; they were among the most significant Czech artists of the first half of the twentieth century, a period when Czechoslovakia was a hotbed of artistic, literary, theatrical, and musical creativity. While Štyrský did not survive the Second World War (his health was poor), Toyen helped hide a surrealist of Jewish descent, Jindřich Heisler, from the Nazis and the two later moved to Paris to join the surrealist group there.

You can listen to a New Books Network podcast episode in which John Raimo interviews me about Toyen. I'll also be presenting a paper on Toyen at the 2022 SECAC conference in October.

Magnetic Woman Expands its International Reach

Through the magic of Worldcat, and the Polish NUKAT (Union Catalog of Polish Research Libraries), I see that a copy of Magnetic Woman can now be found in Łódź at the Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego!

This is in addition to library copies in the British Isles (Maynooth, Fife, London), elsewhere in continental Europe (Paris, Leioa in Spain's Basque country, Barcelona, Lausanne, Berlin, Stockholm, Munich, Heidelberg, Würzburg, Zürich), and Wellington, New Zealand. This is in addition to copies at many US university and public libraries and one in Montreal.

While I've sent copies to a good many Czech institutions, apparently none of them report to Worldcat.

If your library doesn't yet have Magnetic Woman, do ask them to order it! You can point out that it is a prize-winning study of a fascinating gender-ambiguous surrealist. And if you've read it, please consider reviewing it, whether for a scholarly journal or on Amazon or Goodreads!

Spread the word about Toyen and Czech surrealism!

Rabble

While I've given a shout-out to Geoff Fox's new historical novel over on Instagram, I realized that I hadn't noted it here! Rabble is a wonderfully rich and lively tale of the Paris Commune.

In 1870, 17-year-old apprentice bookbinder Étienne Bonin travels from Lyon to Paris seeking excitement and professional opportunity. By spring 1871 he is deeply committed to the movement for workers’ power, to his 16-year-old coworker and budding feminist Rose Durand, and to his new comrades. Together they experience celebrations, military disasters, and the final “week of blood.” These workers created the first self-governing, proto-communist society in the modern world, in the most advanced capitalist city of its time. They then had to defend it against bombardment and attacks, which would finally annihilate the Commune but not its ideals.

I highly recommend Rabble for its deep and detailed dive into one of modern history's most interesting periods. You can get a copy from the publisher or from many retailers.