Long ago, in childhood, when Summer reverberates and feels and throbs allover, it begins to circumscribe my body along with my self, and my body gives itshape in turn: the "joy" of living, of experiencing, of already foreseeingdismembers it, this entire body explodes, neurons rush toward what attracts them, zones of sensation break off almost in blocks that come to rest at the four cornersof the landscape, at the four corners of Creation. --from Coma The novelist andplaywright Pierre Guyotat has been called the last great avant-garde visionary ofthe twentieth century, and the near-cult status of his work--because of its extremelinguistic innovation and its provocative violence--has made him one of the mostinfluential of French writers today. He has been hailed as the true literary heir toLautr?amont and Arthur Rimbaud, and his "inhuman" works have beenmentioned in the same breath as those by Georges Bataille and Antonin Artaud.Winnerof the 2006 prix D?cembre, Coma is the deeply moving, vivid portrayal of theartistic and spiritual crisis that wracked Guyotat in the 1980s when he reached thephysical limits of his search for a new language, entered a mental clinic, and fellinto a coma brought on by self-imposed starvation. A poetic, cruelly lucid account, Coma links Guyotat's illness and loss of subjectivity to a broader concern for theslow, progressive regeneration of humanity. Written in what the author himself hascalled a "normalized writing," this book visits a lifetime of moments thathave in common the force of amazement, brilliance, and a flash of life. Grounded inexperiences from the author's childhood and his family's role in the FrenchResistance, Coma is a tale of initiation that provides an invaluable key tointerpreting Guyotat's work, past and future.