A Few Personal Messages

Translated from the French by Claire Foster

Introduction and Afterword by Balthazar Clémenti

"In movies by Buñuel, Visconti, Bertolucci, and Pasolini, Pierre Clémenti was ravishing, a louche angel and devil, unreachable, unknowable, beautiful. In A Few Personal Messages, Clémenti claims your head and heart when he writes: 'You think if you lock up your nightmares, you’ll feel better.' Imprisoned in Italy, his cri de coeur resonates with Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, both men inside for their “sins.” Inside, Clémenti is ravaged and assaulted by jail’s daily inhumanities and barbarisms. 'In a society built on repression,' he says, 'who is innocent?' Here, Pierre Clémenti must be a modern-day secular saint, whose manifesto is profound, unforgettable, and like him, beautiful." — Lynne Tillman

"Pierre Clementi is one of my greatest heroes and role models. These legendary prison journals, in which he details his dedication to visionary, adventuring art and the fraught life his commitment induced, are a call to arms for daringly inclined artists of every stripe. Their long-awaited English birth is key and huge." — Dennis Cooper

Paperback | 153 pages | 5.5" x 8"