{"product_id":"9781584351597","title":"The Missing Pieces","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn incantatory catalog of cultural artifacts either lost to time or never realized.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e• A boarder for two years following a national funeral, Mirabeau is removed from the Pantheon and transferred to the cemetery of Clamart when his pornographic novels are discovered • A photograph taken by Hessling on Christmas night, 1943, of a young woman nailed alive to the village gate of Novimgorod; Hessling asks his friend Wolfgang Borchert to develop the film, look at the photograph, and destroy it • The Beautiful Gardener, a picture by Max Ernst, burned by the Nazis — from \u003ci\u003eThe Missing Pieces\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Missing Pieces\u003c\/i\u003e is an incantatory text, a catalog of what has been lost over time and what in some cases never existed. Through a lengthy chain of brief, laconic citations, Henri Lefebvre evokes the history of what is no more and what never was: the artworks, films, screenplays, negatives, poems, symphonies, buildings, letters, concepts, and lives that cannot be seen, heard, read, inhabited, or known about. It is a literary vanitas of sorts, but one that confers an almost mythical quality on the enigmatic creations it recounts — rather than reminding us of the death that inhabits everything humans create. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLefebvre's list includes Marcel Duchamp's (accdidentally destroyed) film of Man Ray shaving off the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven's pubic hair; the page written by Balzac on his deathbed (lost); \u003ci\u003eSpinoza's Treatise on the Rainbow\u003c\/i\u003e (thrown into a fire); the final seven meters of Kerouac's original typescript for \u003ci\u003eOn the Road\u003c\/i\u003e (eaten by a dog); the chalk drawings of Francis Picabia (erased before an audience); and the one moment in André Malraux's life in which he exclaimed \"I believe, for a minute, I was thinking nothing.\" \u003ci\u003eThe Missing Pieces\u003c\/i\u003e offers a treasure trove of cultural and artistic detail and will entertain even those readers not enamored of the void.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Semiotexte\/Smart Art","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47055917809904,"sku":"9781584351597","price":13.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781584351597_p0.jpg?v=1763805020","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781584351597","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}