{"product_id":"missing-pieces","title":"The Missing Pieces","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e• A boarder for two years following a national funeral, Mirabeau is removed from the Pantheon and transferred to the cemetery of Clamart when his pornographic novels are discovered • A photograph taken by Hessling on Christmas night, 1943, of a young woman nailed alive to the village gate of Novimgorod; Hessling asks his friend Wolfgang Borchert to develop the film, look at the photograph, and destroy it • \u003c\/em\u003eThe Beautiful Gardener\u003cem\u003e, a picture by Max Ernst, burned by the Nazis . . .\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Missing Pieces\u003c\/em\u003e is an incantatory text, a catalog of what has been lost over time and what in some cases never existed. Through a lengthy chain of brief, laconic citations, Henri Lefebvre (b. 1959) evokes the history of what is no more and what never was: the artworks, films, screenplays, negatives, poems, symphonies, buildings, letters, concepts, and lives that cannot be seen, heard, read, inhabited, or known about. It is a literary vanitas of sorts, but one that confers an almost mythical quality on the enigmatic creations it recounts—rather than reminding us of the death that inhabits everything humans create.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLefebvre’s list includes Marcel Duchamp’s (accdidentally destroyed) film of Man Ray shaving off the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven’s pubic hair; the page written by Balzac on his deathbed (lost); Spinoza’s \u003cem\u003eTreatise on the Rainbow\u003c\/em\u003e (thrown into a fire); the final seven meters of Kerouac’s original typescript for \u003cem\u003eOn the Road\u003c\/em\u003e (eaten by a dog); the chalk drawings of Francis Picabia (erased before an audience); and the one moment in André Malraux’s life in which he exclaimed “I believe, for a minute, I was thinking nothing.” \u003cem\u003eThe Missing Pieces\u003c\/em\u003e offers a treasure trove of cultural and artistic detail and will entertain even those readers not enamored of the void.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTranslated by David L. Sweet.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst published in French as \u003cem\u003eLes Unités perdues\u003c\/em\u003e in 2011.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Semiotext(e)","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57358169375060,"sku":"A8B-25619","price":15.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1072\/9609\/6596\/files\/missingP.jpg?v=1790814293","url":"https:\/\/after8books.com\/products\/missing-pieces","provider":"After 8 Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}