CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/3/2025

Rizzoli Bookstore presents Mark Polizzotti in conversation with Lucy Sante for the launch of 'Jump Cuts'

Wednesday, September 3, from 6–8 PM, Rizzoli Bookstore presents a conversation with award-winning translator and cultural critic Mark Polizzotti to celebrate his new book, Jump Cuts: Essays on Surrealism, Film, Music, Culture, and Other Utopian Topics, a collection of essays that map the creative act as it strains to fulfill our eternal, unrequited yearning for transcendence. He will be in conversation with Lucy Sante, followed by a signing.

PLEASE NOTE: RSVPs are encouraged but not required. Seating is limited and will be first come, first served. Doors open at 5:30 PM.

Can't attend? Order your signed copy (please specify that you would like it signed in the comments box at checkout).

"Erudite, witty, light on his feet, Polizzotti is the perfect guide to these shadowlands where art and freedom embrace. A Modernist Book of Revelation." —Rosanna Warren

In this volume comprising 13 essays, Mark Polizzotti, award-winning translator, cultural critic and biographer of André Breton, brings fresh readings to topics both mainstream and esoteric. The essays include "Profound Occultation," an elegant and incisive reevaluation of Surrealism's legacy; "Love and Theft," a dry-eyed look at Bob Dylan's freewheeling use of uncredited sources; "Lives Behind Lives," on the moments when a biographer's life merges with the subject's; "Surrealism's Children," which explores the limits of offense in art and society; as well as sharply written commentaries on the life of Alfred Jarry, the myth of Robert Johnson, the anguish of Laure (Colette Peignot), the hubris of Francis Picabia, the dyspepsia of Flaubert, the mind-twisting wordplay of Raymond Roussel, and the enduring power of films such as Vertigo, Orpheus and Last Year at Marienbad.

Drawing on three decades of critical writings, Jump Cuts ranges across a broad swath of subjects—film, music, literature, translation, the pitfalls of biography, the current dilemma of the humanities—to map the creative act as it strains to fulfill our eternal, unrequited yearning for transcendence.

Mark Polizzotti is an American translator and critic. His books include Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton and Why Surrealism Matters. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the New Republic, the Nation and elsewhere. He is the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature. He directs the publications program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Lucy Sante is the author of Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Kill All Your Darlings, Folk Photography, The Other Paris, Maybe the People Would Be the Times, and Nineteen Reservoirs. Her awards include a Whiting Writers Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Grammy Award (for album notes), an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, and Guggenheim and Cullman Center fellowships. She recently retired after twenty-four years teaching at Bard College.

Rizzoli Bookstore
'Jump Cuts' by Mark Polizzotti with Lucy Sante
Wednesday, September 3, from 6–8 PM
1133 Broadway
New York, NY 10010
Register here