Pierre Guyotat writes “The Book” from 1977 to 1979. During this time, he plunges into a deep psychological crisis, later described in the novel “Coma” (2006). If in Guyot's previous novel “Prostitution” (1975) glimpses of normative literary language are preserved, here it is finally supplanted by the phonetic fixation of human speech. The central theme of the “Book” - prostitution - is no longer tied to place and time, but permeates all continents and eras. Guyot introduces bodily reactions into the very structure of language, where everything undergoes transformation: vocabulary, syntax, grammar, punctuation, verb conjugations. Guyot's literary experience is close to the work of Antonin Artaud, who dreamed that poetic language would be “something between gesture and thought,” “speech captured before its verbal form.”

frameworks, maples, fragments , skins, branches, jaws, beaks, whips, eyes, scales, human hearts, ears, eggs of embryos, wheels, nomads, fabrics, brimstone, fires, spears, idols, will tablets, rags from orgies, eyes of a criminal, eyes of a fox, lamb's eyes, child's eyes, goat's eyes, teacher's eyes, deer's eyes, schoolboy's eyes, p'vlin's eyes, ped'rasta's eyes, p'nter's eyes, Copt's eyes, owl's eyes, pig's eyes pr'institution