"The cumulative effect of these [essays] and Rosemont's other historical pieces is the reader’s realization that so much of progressive history has disappeared from dominant narratives. … Rosemont is careful to champion art and joy as well as activism—and she emphasizes that creativity and humor are essential to a true mental revolution. … Perhaps most poignantly, these encounters add up to an indelible portrait of Ted Joans himself as another revolutionary artist and thinker who had a profound effect on those around him, but who is obscure in the dominant narrative of U.S. culture. Rosemont’s collection should go far in restoring Joans and many others to a more equitable 'canon,' while also reminding us of a time when artists, poets, and activists worked together toward a deeply lived vision of societal change."—Hyperallergic
"In part, this is a memoir of the now 77-year-old American writer and artist Penelope Rosemont’s encounters with the giants of surrealism and how those encounters shaped her. But it’s also a book of wonderful mini-essays describing and paying tribute to a whole host of largely forgotten, fascinating figures—underground artists, publishers and public dissenters who set the stage for waves of cultural production dedicated, to paraphrase Andre Breton, to hunting down the mad beast of conventionality. In these pages you will meet, for instance, Canadian trailblazing surrealist painter Mimi Parent, a flamboyant expatriate relocated to Paris where she spent her days scorning art world greed and making works like this one, described by Rosemont: 'Another painting, aglow with four different kinds of radiance, portrays a gray sky filled by a gray eagle whose talons reach through the very walls of the Bastille to clutch two frilly female dolls.' Vivid arts writing that makes you yearn to see the work, combined with an insistence that Surrealism and its many spinoffs may still yet lead to the 'transformation of everyday life.' In this book, Rosemont reaffirms the revolutionary potential and enduring practice of the non-hierarchical arts."—Broken Pencil
"The memoir captures a fantastic and revolutionary spirit of chance and serendipity. &hellilp; It is through the recount of these artistic relationships that we come to understand the Surrealist movement, and those driving it, much more intimately. … Rosemont shares a compassionate vision of the world, grounded in the surrealist impulse towards yet another utopia. This new collection vibrates and hums and sings."—Entropy
"Speaking of the Parisian surrealists that she and Franklin Rosemont met in Paris during their visit in 1965-66, Penelope describes them as 'overflowing with poetry, beauty, humor, excitement and life.' Every word applies to this book, a fascinating collection of essays, diary notes, and surrealist reflections. When writing about André Breton and his friends, or about the marvelous surrealist women artists Toyen, Mimi Parent, Leonora Carrington or Jayne Cortez, Penny Rosemont is not delivering dry abstractions, as so many academic 'specialists,' but telling us about warm and exciting human encounters, illuminated by the subversive spirit of Permanent Enchantment."—Michael Löwy, author of Ecosocialism
"This compelling and well-drawn book lets us see the adventures, inspirations, and relationships that have shaped Penelope Rosemont's art and rebellion."—David Roediger, author of Class, Race, and Marxism
"Anyone seeking to understand contemporary surrealism or the history of surrealism in America and beyond should make their way at once to this book. Penelope Rosemont's remarkable life and legendary body of work lies centrally at the crossroads of surrealism then and now. The broad sampling of essays included here offer a compelling entry point for curious readers and an essential compendium for surrealist practitioners."—Abigail Susik, professor of art history, Willamette University
"Reading Rosemont is like being led by an enchanted guide through the wild fields of Surrealism. Around her neck must be a double lens made out of telescope and magnifying glass through which she studies this glowing, breathless landscape. Artist, historian, and social activist, Rosemont writes from the inside out. Like a rare, hybrid flower growing out of the earth, she complicates, expands, and opens the strange and beautiful meadow where Surrealism continues to live and thrive."—Sabrina Orah Mark, author of Wild Milk
"In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Penelope Rosemont, long a keeper of surrealism's revolutionary flame, shows how a penetrating look into the past can liberate the future. With humor and passion, Rosemont tells the story both of her own engagement with surrealism and of surrealism's relevance to the struggle for social and psychic transformation. Whether addressed to feminism, anarchism, the black power movement, or visual art and poetry, Rosemont's writing, like surrealism itself, sets fire to everything it touches."—Andrew Joron, author of The Absolute Letter
"The looming centenary of Surrealism will be greeted by a boatload of publications, but few will be as heartfelt, spirited, and teeming with the atmosphere conjured by Penelope Rosemont. Her welcome memoir has a double virtue, as testament to the enduring radiance of Surrealism, and as a memento to the Sixties, revealing a sweetly beating wonderment at the heart of that absurdly maligned decade."—Jed Rasula, author of Destruction Was My Beatrice: Dada and the Unmaking of the Twentieth Century
"Written with the quickness, candor, and delight of encounter, Penelope Rosemont's Surrealism: Inside the Magnetic Fields brings surrealism's central figures, Leonora Carrington, Man Ray, Toyen, Andre Breton et al into our field of experience, and out of the stasis of photography and film, where most of us have glimpsed them. Most thrilling, perhaps, is the 60’s mimeo-magazine-making coterie of Rosemont and her friends, seeking revolution, disorientation, anything but the banality of the American Midwestern plains. Quite naturally possessing what she calls 'remnants of my healthy beatnik hedonism,' Rosemont recreates the feverish antics and immediate reception her close-knit, sleep-deprived, beat-attired squad find in the established, moray-breaking Parisian and international surrealists. Revolution is here, between the covers. Anyone who opens this book is invited to the journey, the party, the radicalism that 'must not be grim but a liberation, an increase of pleasure. Otherwise what is the point of it?'"—Gillian Conoley, author of A Little More Red Sun on the Human: New and Selected Poems and translator of Thousand Times Broken: Three Books by Henri Michaux
"Penelope Rosemont recounts her chance encounters with surrealists in Paris, leading her to a life-long adventure in surrealist praxes. These included (and still do!) sharing poetry, stories, art, and games of objective chance with kindred spirits around the globe, some of which she shares with us in these magical pages. As surrealists, we live our lives not as today's external world demands but as our own inner dreams, desires, and imaginations lead. We demand nothing less than the impossible not in some distant utopian future but right here, right now."—Gale Ahrens, author of Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality & Solidarity
