Princeton University Press has just published Andrei Codrescu’s The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess, a guide to the Dada life. That’s a sine qua non for the 21st century. Otherwise said, The Posthuman Dada Guide is an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world. It all spins out from Codrescu’s inimitable way of imagining the much imagined 1916 chess game between Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the daddy of communism. The epic game at Zurich's Café de la Terrasse amounts to a battle between radical visions of art and ideological revolution, a struggle that lasted for a century and may still be going on, although communism appears dead and Dada stronger than ever. As the poet faces the future ideologue over the chessboard, neither realizes that they are playing for the world. Codrescu goes on to create his own Dadaesque guide to Dada-and to what it can teach us about surviving our ultraconnected present and future. Here dadaists Duchamp, Ball, and von Freytag-Loringhoven and communists Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev appear live in company with later incarnations, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gilles Deleuze, and Newt Gingrich.
The Posthuman Dada Guide is arranged alphabetically for quick reference and (some) nostalgia for order. Available at bookstores near you and cottonwoodbooks@bellsouth.net
