Including a number of short essays by Bataille and Leiris on aspects of the other's work as well as excerpts on Bataille from Leiris' diaries, this collection of correspondence throws new light on two of Surrealism's most radical dissidents.
In the autumn of 1924, just before André Breton published the Manifeste du surréalisme, two young men met in Paris for the first time. Georges Bataille, 27, starting work at the Bibliothèque Nationale; Michel Leiris, 23, beginning his studies in ethnology. Within a few months, they were both members of the Surrealist group, although their adherence to Surrealism (unlike their affinities with it) would not last long: in 1930 they were among the signatories of "Un cadavre," the famous tract against Breton, the "Machiavelli of Montmartre," as Leiris put it. But their friendship would endure for more than 30 years, and their correspondence, assembled here for the first time in English, would continue until the death of Bataille in 1962. 
Table of Contents
Editor’s Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Michel Leiris
On Georges Bataille
Georges Bataille as Don Giovanni
From Bataille the Impossible to the Impossible Documents
From the Time of Lord Auch
Georges Bataille
On Michel Leiris
Surrealism from Day to Day
The Publication of ’A Corpse’
Racism
Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris
Correspondence 1924-61
Michel Leiris
Georges Bataille, As Time Goes By
Robert Desnos, Georges Bataille and Marcel Griaule
Eye
Bernard Noël
Afterword: A Way of Looking that is Understood
Appendix: A Bio-Bibliographic Chronology
Periodicals to which Bataille and Leiris both contributed (1925-62)
Bibliography
Index