Michel Thévoz's book Ecrits Bruts (1979) is still available at the Collection de l'Art Brut bookshop

This remarkable anthology of "brut" writings is now out of print and only obtainable from our  bookshop
Link on the Collection de l'Art Brut book shop.

"Ge voux Entvoye feaires fouttre" ("Yu goe an gett fukx"), Jules Doudin wrote in his cell. Psychiatrists generally blame this vehemence and peculiarities of spelling on imbecility or schizophrenia. They have devoted hundreds of "psychopathological" treatises to them, but without ever reproducing them, except in stingy "symptomatic" fragments. Meanwhile, literary critics ready to take a positive view of deviations in writing have always relied on the same authors: Joyce, Brisset, Roussel, Wolfson, etc. But looking more closely we see that, in comparison with the "literature of the cultivated", the solitary, clandestine texts of internees and spiritualists sometimes bring writing to a creative high point. Conceived without regard for the reader, knowingly sabotaging the linguistic communication system, they represent the inventive response of our society's most radical outcasts to the mental constraints of what is so aptly called the "mother" tongue.

Écrits bruts, Textes présentés par Michel Thévoz, 1979, PUF Perspectives Critiques, 247 pages. CHF 20.-

Publish Date: 20.11.2020