BOOK

ABOUT THE ADVENTURES OF MAO ON THE LONG MARCH

Published in 1971, The Adventures of Mao on the Long March is the first novel to use methods of appropriation. Frederic Tuten’s avant‐garde masterwork is a radical, original work made up of a linear narrative of Mao Tse-Tung’s Long March, interspersed with passages quoted from a variety of novels and essays used as dialogue and exposition. It freely mixes fact, fiction, citation, and parody to create a literary collage that is part fable, part newsreel, part pamphlet, part Emerson, part Lichtenstein, and part Godard. Over the past four decades, Mao has been a touchstone not only for the American literary avant‐garde, but also for the visual arts in its references to Pop, Minimalism, Conceptualism, and Process Art.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Frederic Tuten grew up in the Bronx. At fifteen, he dropped out of high school to become a painter with the dream of living in Paris. He took odd jobs and studied briefly at The Art Students League, and eventually went back to school, continuing on to earn a Ph.D. in early 19th century American Literature from New York University.

Tuten travelled through Latin America, studied pre-Columbian and Mexican mural painting at la Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, wrote about Braziliian Cinema Novo, and joined that circle of filmmakers, which included Glauber Rocha and Nelson Pereira dos Santos and finally lived in Paris, where he taught film and literature at the University of Paris 8. He acted in a short film by Alain Resnais, co-wrote the cult film Possession, and conducted summer writing workshops with Paul Bowles in Tangiers.

Tuten’s short stories, art and film criticism have appeared in such places as ArtForum, The New York Times, Vogue, Conjunctions, Granta and Harpers. In addition, he has written essays and fiction for artists’ catalogues including John Baldessari, Eric Fischl, Pierre Huyghe, Jeff Koons, David Salle and Roy Lichtenstein. He has published five novels including The Adventures of Mao on the Long March; Tallien: A Brief Romance; Tintin in the New World; Van Gogh’s Bad Café; The Green Hour; and most recently, Self Portraits: Fictions, an interrelated collection of stories.

“Frederic Tuten has written a violently hilarious book. The Adventures of Mao is soda pop, a cold towel, a shady spot under a tree for culture-clogged foot soldiers on the American long march.” —Susan Sontag

“Delightful and original- funny and bitter and serious.” —Iris Murdoch

“The Adventures of Mao on the Long March provides an intelligent, taut, and entertaining change from conventional novels. Its substance is satisfyingly solid and satisfyingly mysterious. Like any work of art, it could not be mindlessly replicated; a sequel might slip into being a mere anthology. Nor would it be easy to locate another symbolic person as fabulous and germane as Mao. As is, Mr. Tuten’s studied scrapbook … contains the live motion of a novel within a jagged form that cuts the reader into awareness.” —John Updike, The New Yorker

“[The Adventures of Mao on the Long March] balances on that fine edge between outright farce and quasi-serious dialogue and it’s almost too good to be true.” —The New York Times

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