Alfred Chester

The Exquisite Corpse Alfred Chester

Lyric and tender one moment, cruel and dizzying the next, The Exquisite Corpse neither celebrates perversity nor laments it; rather it projects it as part of man's never-ending search for a true self and for transcendent communion with others.

In forty-nine brief, highly cinematic chapters, we meet a series of twisted but sincere searches Tomtom Jim and his naked, hungry family; Mary Poorpoor and her utterly "otherly" baby; angry John Doe and his sex slave, James Madison each in flight from despair. As one surreal episode morphs into the next, these searchers change shape and their journeys change direction; names and identities come and go, storylines collide, and desires intertwine, all with the lightning-quick illogic of a dream. The result is a tragicomic tour de force, an upside-down roadmap to everyone's inner Sodom, a perversely moral (and morally perverse) masterpiece by a modern-day Marquis de Sade.