ABSTRACT
It is more enlightening to consider Pierre Guyotat's oeuvre, not as exemplary of an avant-garde, but rather as proceeding implacably, from his earliest fiction—Sur un cheval and Ashby—to Progenitures. Set in a Scottish castle, Ashby may at first seem conventional (if Sade-like), yet it amply reveals the most telltale characteristic of Guyotat's mature style: the alignment of one action after another, with almost no intervening description. What especially distinguishes Guyotat's writing from literary realism (as it is habitually defined) is, of course, his excruciatingly precise labors with language. Fortunately, Wanted: Female, a rare bibliophilic album consisting of seven aquatints by Sam Francis and a long-poem by Guyotat, gives one a compelling impression of what the French novelist can sound like in English. This poem-album, which exists in only forty-five deluxe copies, brings together all of Guyotat's sexual and theological preoccupations.
