COCTEAU, Jean. The Typewriter. - Lot 174

COCTEAU, Jean. The Typewriter. Un théâtre anticonformiste, first edition on Alfa. Paris, Gallimard - Collection Blanche, 1941. In-12, paperback, uncut. 212 pages. Cover slightly soiled. First edition of this play in 3 acts. One of 110 numbered copies on Alfa from Papeteries Navarre (no. 77). Who better to speak of his work than its author: "The purity of youth playing with fire, and it doesn't take long to realize that fire burns. A guilty man trying, in the shadows, to take the place of justice, and who must take justice into his own hands. That's my play La machine à écrire, so well understood by the public, so poorly understood by the press. In fact, I wonder whether the press is without excuse. I'm not talking about the articles that are the stuff of anonymous letters and reek of prejudice. I'm talking about articles that reflect the lack of oil in the wheels of a dress rehearsal. The press shouldn't attend dress rehearsals, they should come afterwards. This room of wholesale enthusiasm, inattentive to the details, the mechanism, the style, the purity of line and flow of a work, baffles the actors and prevents them from relaxing. Then comes the laughter and relaxation. In bookstores, the play doesn't offer the cuts required by today's show times. It will, I believe, be the best response to the somewhat visible excesses of a sickly conformism that is disturbed by purity and attacks it with all its weapons." Jean Cocteau. In good condition.