Cake and Prostheses - Gerhard Ruhm

Cake and Prostheses: Mini Dramas and Short Prose by Gerhard Ruhm, translated by Alexander Booth / 196-page paperback, 5.5 x 8 inches, published in 2024 by Twisted Spoon Press / ISBN 9788088628026

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An inveterate experimenter with image and text and music whose work bears the clear influences of Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism, and absurdism, Gerhard Ruhm is truly one of the major figures of the postwar European avant-garde. Yet little of his work has appeared in English. This edition brings together a selection of his work spanning the past seven decades, displaying a wide thematic range (as he has remarked, "there is nothing that cannot become part of one's poetic universe") and ingenious combinations of motifs such as music, banality, humor, and mythology. The first section comprises "mini dramas," the text often combined with images and musical notation to create sensorial episodes, the expression of a singularly sensual aesthetic perception. The second section is a wry deconstruction of Grillparzer's play Hero and Leander that juxtaposes original passages with images from a swimming manual and a more contemporary erotic take on the mythological tale. The final section presents 24 short prose pieces: 12 from the early 1950s and 12 from the past few years.

Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1930, author, composer, visual artist Gerhard Ruhm is one of the key figures in the postwar European avant-garde. A founding member of the legendary Vienna Group, his work encompasses poetry, prose, radio plays, drama scenarios, music compositions, visual compositions, collages, and graphic art, displaying the influences of Surrealism, Dadaism, and concrete poetry. His later work cleverly incorporates pornographic motifs while skewering religion. He has won such major awards as the Austrian State Prize and the America Award in Literature.