{"product_id":"9780857423504","title":"50 Drawings to Murder Magic","description":"\u003cp\u003eA poet, philosopher, essayist, playwright, actor, and director, Antonin Artaud was a visionary writer and a major influence within and beyond the French avant-garde. A key text for understanding his thought and his appeal, \u003ci\u003e50 Drawings to Murder Magic\u003c\/i\u003e is rooted in the nine years Artaud spent in mental asylums, struggling with schizophrenia and the demonic, persecutory visions it unleashed. Set down in a dozen exercise books written between 1946 and 1948, these pieces trace Artaud’s struggle to escape a personal hell that extends far beyond the walls of asylums and the dark magicians he believed ran them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe first eleven notebooks are filled with fragments of writing and extraordinary sketches: totemic figures, pierced bodies, and enigmatic machines, some revealing the marks of a trembling hand, others carefully built up from firm, forceful pencil strokes. The twelfth notebook, completed two months before Artaud’s death in 1948, changes course: it’s an extraordinary text on the loss of magic to the demonic—the piece that gives the book its title.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Artaud matters,” wrote John Simon in the \u003ci\u003eSaturday Review\u003c\/i\u003e years ago. Nearly seventy years after his death, that remains true—perhaps more than ever.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Seagull Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47027264028912,"sku":"9780857423504","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780857423504","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}