Pataphysical Essays (Imagining Science)
It may be tempting to cast Daumal as a romantic outsider, since he rejected Surrealism - now an orthodoxy of cod-transcendence - instead embracing what would have seemed at the time the conservative spiritualism of Sanskrit scholarship, and which, paradoxically, now seems rather progressive. But in spurning the surrealists' psychoanalytical preoccupations, to tackle head on the hegemony of empiricism, Daumal might also be considered as presaging contemporary comedy, which today is the vehicle of cultural and political critique for the bold. (Sally O'ReillyArt Review2012-06-04)