Russell Edson. What a Man Can See. 1969.

"Then again when his mother climbed on his shoulders her skirts all up around his head, and sat there moaning, he could not tell whether his mother was being borne by him or he being born by her." - —Signs

"There was a woman who sits in a chair"—Through the Woods

This wonderfully overdone Jargon Society book with amorphous illustrations by Ray Johnson is a pleasure to read, a good introduction to Edson for the novice, while exploring new depths of weirdness for the initiated. For example, the use of dialect ("One Two Three, One Two Three"), flashes of violence and profanity, a glazed naivete—singsong storytime psychoses—like childrens stories for the deranged, the short perfect "The Fall," the epic "To Be Of Some Use." Edson comes off as a perverse heterosexual Gertrude Stein on more drugs. Time has proven Jonathan William's translucent gel orange plastic dust jacket to be a bad design idea, as it has shrunk over the decades, warping the oversized paperback within. Keith Waldrop refuses to remove his, though, making the copy of the book I read seem withered, tortured, insectile and organic.

Even the year of publication seems to seep with subconscious urges.

&the book ends with:

You did it on purpose his mother screamed, you burnt your little brother to death on purpose.