830 Reviews criticism. In her impressively researched and analytically engaged study of surrealist theory and practice Malt offers a significant contribution to this welcome trend. Her basic starting point is the tension between surrealism's political pretensions as a revolutionary, collective movement and the highly subjective and erotic nature of much of its art. Malt, however, chooses to consider surrealist art (especially the objet) as textually political in and of itself (rather than tied to the politics of the surrealists themselves); she combines this textual focus with the concept of fetishism in order to argue that powerful connections do exist between politics and form in surrealist art, particularly on the level of 'the capitalist commodity society' (p. 8). In her firsttwo chapters Malt sets up this argument via a thorough exposition of ideas about art, revolutionary politics, commodities, and the uncanny in writings by Breton, Benjamin, and Aragon. There follow two chapters on the surrealist object ('in Theory' and 'as Fetish' respectively); the finaltwo chapters present textual analysis of Breton's lesser-known poemes-objets and more familiar paintings by Dali. Throughout, Malt sustains an admirably high level ofcontrol over her dense source material, consistently presenting complex issues with clarity, balance, and familiarity. She is also a sharp and convincing reader of surrealist texts: the interpretations of Dali's Buste (1933) and Bellmer's dolls in Chapter 3, for example, are quite excellent; her analysis of Breton's poemes-objets is equally alert and cogent (although in the untitled objet from 1937 Malt misses a trick by reading the second syllable from 'ermine' as 'apparently redundant' (p. 157), when 'mine' surely looks forward to the face of Breton's lover and her 'yeux penches'). If there is a more substantive criticism to be made here it is simply that Malt tends to decentralize her own critical voice relative to Breton and other commentators: we are well into the second half of the book before she begins to offer textual analysis in explicit pursuit of her founding supposition, and even then there is a tendency to slip back into descriptive epistemology. Although well handled in itself, structurally this exposition leads to an accumulation of signalling devices along the lines of 'as I shall later suggest', which occasionally gives Malt's own engaging argumentation an unnecessary and frustrating air of deferral. Ultimately, though, this text remains an original, dense, and impressive piece of scholarship, and represents an important contribution to the field. Malt skilfully demonstrates that surrealist production can be politically meaningful as well as politically motivated, offeringalong the way an articulate promotion of surrealist art at its heterogeneous best. Keble College, Oxford Stephen Forcer Love at the Full. By Lucien Becker. Trans. and intro. by Christopher Pilling. Hexham: Flambard Press. 2004. 96 pp. ?7.95. ISBN 1-873226-61-6. Lucien Becker (1911-84) was a significant poet of the generation which grew up with Surrealism and was then marked by the Second World War. Although he was part of the literarymilieu of post-war Paris, he remained separate from it. In his introduction Christopher Pilling identifies themes and imagery ofexclusion and distance in Becker. This near-outsider coined ldegrezero de l'ecriture', whose implications were famously developed by Camus in L'Etranger. Pilling makes clear his own regard for Becker's poetry, and for Plein amour (Love at the Full) more especially. This collection, first published in 1954 and, in company with Becker's work more generally, neglected in recent decades, is in effect one long sustained poem, divided into four sections. Becker's ambition, perhaps a painterly one (Bonnard endlessly painting his wife), is to fixthe mystery of Woman in all her physical truth. Becker's narrow focus trains on images which will define Woman, present yet elusive in her sensuality, and his erotic MLR, 100.3, 2005 831 involvement with her. Pilling sees this poetic endeavour, this homage, as Becker's resistance to the lure of despair. '[T]he miracle of a woman's flesh' is the source of renewal (p. 9). For indeed, Plein amour speaks exclusively of physical love. Such a restriction may seem to some readers a touch limited in a book of this length...