Notes from dissertopia

And, when I think about things, I read about them, which led me to this report about Alfred Jerry, which begins…

Bound by rods to their machines, the crew of a five man bicycle hurtle across Europe and Asia in a grotesquely dehumanised race against an express train. The riders, who are paced by jet cars and flying machines, reach speeds of 300 kilometres an hour thanks to their diet of Perpetual Motion Food, a volatile mixture of alcohol and strychnine. One of the riders dies in the saddle, an event hardly noticed in the farcical pandemonium of technology in which the race ends after ten thousand miles. The race is a key episode in ‘The Supermale’, a French novel written in Paris in 1902, which speculates on how our minds and bodies may be overwhelmed by technology. The author, Alfred Jarry, was fascinated by bicycles, and they often appeared in his barbed and often shocking writings. He was also notorious for his wild eccentricity and his outrageously unconventional cycling. First, the scene needs to be set, since neither Jarry the writer nor Jarry the cycling subversive make much sense away from their context.

But the best paragraph goes like this:

Jarry soon became notorious. He took, for example, to riding around Paris with two revolvers tucked in his belt and a carbine across his shoulder. Some say that Jarry fired off a revolver to warn people of his approach. But it is known for certain that at one point he fixed a large bell from atramcar onto his bicycle. All the same, Jarry was an athletic, no-nonsense cyclist and enjoyed tearing around the countryside. He criticised those who “thinking themselves poets, slow down en route to contemplate the view”.

And, while you’re at it, be sure to read “The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race” by Alfred Jarry.  For the record, I stumbled upon Jarry through Hilo Hero’s new series of 12 “Bicycle Kick.”  Their post on Jarry is the first.