American Surrealist Lit.

[chmpman]

I was curious if anyone may know of any American writers who could be said to have participated in, or been influenced by, the Surrealist movement of the arts. I see James Joyce and DH Lawrence as possibly writing in the surrealist tradition (as British writers), or at least having taken part in the exporation of the methods of art production necessary to make the connection to surrealism. I would appreciate any suggestions, or posts concerning this topic considerably. It is for an American Lit. class. Thanks.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

I would not consider Lawrence to be surrealist at all. He was steadfastly realist in both his prose and poetry. Why would you say he was surrealist?

[lavendar1]

There's a website called Surrealist Review (sorry -- I don't know how to directly link you) that might help.

[Virgil]

I was curious if anyone may know of any American writers who could be said to have participated in, or been influenced by, the Surrealist movement of the arts. I see James Joyce and DH Lawrence as possibly writing in the surrealist tradition (as British writers), or at least having taken part in the exporation of the methods of art production necessary to make the connection to surrealism. I would appreciate any suggestions, or posts concerning this topic considerably. It is for an American Lit. class. Thanks.
I think you need to define surrealism as it applies to literature.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

I think I would define Lewis Carroll & Edward Lear as surrealist (in a way). But they're British.
Probably the most surreal American writers I can think of (assuming we're talking novelists and not poets here) would be among the Sci-fi fraternity, especially Philip K Dick, Robert Sheckley (R.I.P.), John Sladek, early Vonnegut, Harlan Ellison & Ray Bradbury (although he was maybe more hyper-realist). Of course, surrealism was only a part of what any of these produced.
But none of these come close to "Barefoot in the Head" by Brian W Aldiss, the "Jerry Cornelius" books of Michael Moorcock or the "Viriconium" stories of M John Harrison (and I'm afraid that they're all British!)

Perhaps surrealism was just a European phenomenon.

[rachel]

I think I can explain why the Brits write surrealism so very beautifully.
You get sort of a hint in Charles Dickenson's A Christmas Carol.
When the spectre of Jacob Marley comes thru the door and begins to grill him he steadfastly refuses to believe what he is seeing.
And why......"a bit of undigested beef.'
I think when one consumes overcooked limp veggies loads of heavy crusty fat laden pies one naturally has vivid surreal dreams awake and asleep.
As Frasier said when Daphne told him the police do not carry guns in England, he replied "they don't have to, they have steak and kidney pie!" :D

(sigh, I can never be a literary genius and critique like Xamonas so I have to resort to what I know-international cuisine. I do what I can.) :lol:

[chmpman]

First I will admit nearly complete ignorance of Lawrence's writings, excluding only one biographical/slight intrepation essay. The idea of surrealism that I had in mind, as pertaining to literature can best be summed up from a quote of Andre Breton's, a leading surrealist thinker (you can also find a lecture given by him entitled "What is Surrealism" on the web): "pure psychic automatism, by which an attempt is made to express, either verbally, in writing or in any other manner, the true functioning of thought. The dictation of thought, in the absence of all control by reason, excluding any aesthetic or moral preoccupation." What I meant by classing Lawrence and Joyce in this category is that I feel they write with a specific purpose (at least Joyce) towards understanding the unconscious mind. With Joyce in mind, I was thinking the stream of conscious technique would fall under the description quoted above. If anyone else could possibly point me in the right direction I would appreciate it. Thanks, again.

[rachel]

Scher or Admin or Logos or Virgil could, I am sure give you a very adequate answer as well as a dozen others. perhaps you could pm one of them. I as my answer above shows am a complete dud in this subject and cannot help you. sorry. I am glad to see you posting again if only briefly.

[chmpman]

I would just like to add that I do not wish to exclude poets. I'm not sure where that point came into the thread, but feel free to suggest poets if you think they can be considered surrealist. I would also like to hear how others may define surrealism from their own point of view.

[chmpman]

After rereading the essay I found considering Lawrence it meant his poetry as having certain qualities that I find reminiscent of surrealist expression. Take the poem Tortoise Shout for example, and post your disagreements or thoughts if you like.

[Unspar]

Almost all surrealist writing is French--I studied it briefly for a French lit class--and it didn't really catch on anywhere else, at least not in the way Breton talked about it. Joyce's stream of consciousness, for instance, is extremely different from Breton's automatic writing. Breton sought to access his unconscious and put it on the page without conscious intent, while Joyce imitated and dramatized the unconscious in a purely artistic way. Joyce didn't actually write in a stream of consciousness, he chose words deliberately and revised laboriously. Breton's process and the surrealist movement were more psychologically oriented.

The closest thing I could find to American surrealism (after a not-very-exhaustive google search) is magical realism, which is a more contemporary movement in literature. And that's much more in Latin America than the US, though it shows up in Toni Morrison (apparently; I've never read her stuff) and more recently in Jonathan Safran Foer.

Sorry, that's all I got. Hopefully some of the other characters around here can help out more.

[chmpman]

Thanks for the info Unspar. I suppose my conjectures are unfounded, but surrealism is such an interesting topic to me. I can't quite grasp the concept of "complete psychic automatism" in the arts without any sort of conscious interference in the process. Do you think Breton's theory is only that, a theory which cannot be put into practice, or do you think artists have, and will continue to fulfill his requirements?

[Unspar]

It's tough to say; I think his strict outline of surrealist writing is part of why it didn't catch on and part of why the only writers who followed it were at least half-crazy. I don't think it's entirely impossible to achieve, though it may be very difficult to achieve in a meaningful or artistic way.

You're right that it's hard to understand Breton's "complete psychic automatism" when art requires some kind of mediation between the conscious and unconscious. I think Breton acknowledged this when he wrote "Nadja," which deals with that boundary. And he wrote three surrealist manifestoes, so it's likely he couldn't even decide what surrealism is/was.

Ultimately it's more concerned with the boundary than channeling unconscious alone. "Psychic automism" in practice becomes more a question of psychic mediation and how our unconscious affects our perceptions and constructions of reality.

Hope that's clear.

[Logos]

When reading about the surrealist movement, it inevitably refers to André Breton, Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon who were all twenty-something poets in Paris when Breton wrote his Manifeste du surréalisme (1924).

The movement was basically contained to Continental Europe, though Philip Lamantia is cited as an American surrealist poet. The surrealism period started to wane after World War II and definitely by Breton's death in 1966.

As far as American authors, according to the Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 (1969) "uses the vein of surrealism".

Edited to add: American author, poet, and physician William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) translated Soupault's Last Nights of Paris and produced some of his own surealist inspired works including A Novelette and Other Prose.

[blp]

The American surrealist photographer Man Ray was in Paris throughout most of hte twenties and I believe he occasionally wrote poetry. I'll get to other Americans who may be relevant eventually, I promise, but a precee first. I think Virgil asked for a definition of surrealism as it applied to literature above. The surrealists themselves liked to refer to the nineteenth century poet the Comte de Lautreamont's definition of poetry as the accidental placement of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table. This is a matter of juxtaposing apparently incompatible elements and chance is fundamental to it. The surrealists didn't just engage in automatic writing, they also played various kinds of writing games, using chance to generate surprising effects and, perhaps, access the unconscious. One of these was the exquisite corpse, in which a poem would be passed around among several participants, each of whom would write part of it, probably without seeing what the others had written. These kinds of generative processes were continued in the nineteen fifties by the Oulipo (http://www.smullyan.org/smulloni/queneau/), Raymond Queneau's (http://www.lacan.com/matthews.htm) group of writers who committed themselves to writing within various restraints, which would inevitably result in odder pieces of writing than they could simply have imagined. At least two American poets had links to this group: Harry Matthews directly and John Ashbery as a friend and occasional participant. I can't find any Matthews poetry on the web, but here's one of Ashbery's best known efforts, Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16189), a work that, in having a title that has nothing to do with the content of the poem, displays sharply surrealist tendencies from the start. Ashbery was also linked to the New York school poets, including Frank O'Hara who sometimes exhibited a surrealist strain, notably in the poem Call Me (http://www.rooknet.com/beatpage/writers/ohara.html#call). Ashbery is also a friend of the poet Ron Padgett, who describes using surrealist type writing games as teaching tools here (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16099). It's worth noting that Ashbery and O'Hara were closely associated with the painters of the abstract expressionist movement in NY in the fifties, many of whom had been influenced by European surrealism, particularly Miro. The Da-daist and surrealist Duchamp, a good friend of Man Ray's, had also moved to NY by this time. At the same time, William Burroughs was also in NY and had begun to experiment with English artist Bryon Gysin's 'cut up technique', in which bits of a text would be cut up and rearranged, sometimes by chance, to take surprising and disquieting new forms.
And that's your lot - or all I know anyway. I'll leave you with a quote from Picasso's friend, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire: 'If man had been able to roll, he would not have needed to invent the wheel. And in the same way, he has invented surrealism.'

[chmpman]

Wow, that is all incredible information. And I really dig the Ashberry poem blp. Thank you all.

[blp]

Actually, I remembered a little more:

Also in NY in the fifties were younger artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns who were sometimes described as neo-dada-ists. They both had close links to Black Mountain College, which played host to poets such as Robert Creeley, Charles Olsen and Robert Duncan.

The real point is not that most of the poets I've talked about would describe themselves as surrealists, but that surrealism was a large factor in creating the climate they operated in, particularly because of its experiments with writing games, collage (as a writerly process) and restraints. This was something very new in dada and surrealism and its influence on art and literature has been immense. You could argue that an artist like Jeff Koons wouldn't exist without the influence of dada. From the seventies to the nineties, the American novelist Kathy Acker was working with similar systems to those of the surrealists and Oulipo, sometimes plagiarising bits from other people's books and and using them as jumping off points for absolutely wild explorations of sex, violence and the contemporary landscape. Blood and Guts in Highschool by her is excellent, as is her Great Expectations. One of her later novels, My Mother: Demonology, is explicitly indebted to the French surrealist novelist George Bataille, author of the great Story of the Eye. She also had a rule that she would never edit or rewrite any of her work.

Collage poetry has survived as a discipline into the present. There's even a group for it in Yahoo groups.

You might also want to look up John Dos Passos. I know almost nothing about him, but I seem to remember hearing that he was influenced by surrealism and he's been described as an American Joyce for his stream of consciousness tendencies.

Thomas Pynchon also seems an obvious point of reference. V in particular describes an NY art scene in which the influence of surrealism is implicit, as well displaying a distinctly surrealist interest in an automaton woman.

[genoveva]

The only other thing I could add to the above would be to say that you are bound to find more American poetry influenced by surrealism than any other type of writing. Being that there is much more surrealist poetry in general than, say, novels. Paul Auster has a Collected Poems (2004) book out. The first half contain his original poetry (surrealist influenced) and the second half contain true, original surrealist poetry translated into English by him. These translations would be of your classic (mostly French) surrealist writers. I do, however, prefer Mary Ann Caws' translations and commentary on anything surreal.

As far as the Toni Morrison comparison to magical realism (which is really very different from surrealism) - yes, this does come up. I just read Song of Solomon, and being the only novel I've read of hers, thus the only thing to compare, I would not categorize her as a core magical realist author. Yes, she does use some magical moments in her writing, but it doesn't seem as heavily ladden in magical realism as say Marquez or Allende. But, again, I've only read one of her novels. Beloved will be the next I read. An excellent writer, and a master of figurative language. Perhaps I am just use to the spanish flair of magical realism.

Have fun with surrealism! There's so much to discover!

[genoveva]

Oh yeah, there was also a large Belgium surrealist group. Many French surrealist moved to America with the coming of the war, like Breton and Dali, and afterwards, some moved back- like Breton. Generally, the surrealist movement would be considered between 1913ish and 1940ish.

[Ron Price]

Surrealism: Some Personal Comments

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

‘Abdu’l-Baha’s completion of the Tablets of the Divine Plan and the first use of the term “surrealism” by Apollinaire both occurred in 1917; a similar juxtaposition can be found in surrealism’s high water mark in June 1936 with the London International Surrealist Exhibition and the first intimations of the Baha’i teaching Plan, the FiveYear Plan of 1937-1944, discussed for the first time in June 1936.

Surrealism’s aim was to bring about personal, cultural, political and social revolution, a complete transformation of life. The term is often used colloquially to describe unexpected juxtapositions. The following prose-poem sets out one such unexpected juxtaposition—that between the Baha’I Faith and surrealism. Both movements spread around the world from the 1920s to the 1960s and both their histories are rich with names, events, ideas and concepts. The half century, 1917-1967, provide a series of surreal events, unexpected juxtapositions.-Ron Price, Pioneering Over Four Epochs, 4 September 2006.

The revolution advanced quietly,
unnoticed in the hearts of millions
who had dropped out of a world
they found meaningless. Routine
tasks got done or not done, laws
were obeyed or flouted and the roots
of faith--without which no society
can survive--were severed. And…

.…humanity searched for unity
in the context of its attachment
to national, racial, political, class,
cultural and social loyalties. Truth,
authority, came to lie in individual
experience, with aesthetics no longer
subject to moral norms, metaphysical
destiny in science and art not morality,
with passion not identified with religious
suffering but with carnal sensuality and
religion’s authority in the public realm
delimited while political power, now total,
and sexuality’s sensations separated from
love, existential questions left to hang as
we groped for a new vocabulary, new threads
woven with new meaning extending over
generations to come and embodied in new
institutions---that were beyond surrealism’s
possibilities, its more limited role, and we--
we will not finish the task, we have helped
to make a start, the beginning of the beginning,
perhaps the end of the beginning in these years,
perhaps, the beginning of history’s last stages
in these four epochs that have been my life.

Ron Price
4 September 2006

[PeterL]

You might want to look at the Wikipedia article on Surrealism for some ideas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism

William S. Burroughs probably would be considered an American Surrealist, but most of the Beats were not Surrealistic, in my opinion. Some Science Fiction would also be considered Surrealist, consider Keith Laumer. "Slaughterhose Five" would be considered Surrealist by most people. Perhaps some other of Vonnegut's novels also.

[Nightwalk]

It's good you started this thread, chmpman, it's a refreshing and healthy alternative to have discussions of avant-garde, non-academic literature in this site.

To add to blp's informative posts, the Beat writers were very much influenced by the French Surrealists even though it may not be so prominent in their work. William S. Burroughs may have been the most obvious example of an American writer owing a huge debt to Surrealist writing, but one that is overlooked is Jack Kerouac's experiments with what he called "Spontaneous Prose", where the author writes with whatever comes to his mind concerning a particular plot without editing the work afterwards. He wanted such a style to reflect the free-form improvisatory style of Jazz music, especially Bop, which heavily influenced the Beats. Although he violated his theory by editing and reworking his efforts, the influence is there.

[Scrypt]

I realize this thread is old, but I feel compelled to respond due to certain key omissions.

When attempting to define and trace the influence and practice of surrealism in English and American literature, keep in mind that Andre Breton was an iconoclast whose momentary preoccupations sometimes produced definitions that described his own sources and points of interest but which do not always prove useful for defining surrealist work or practice generally. (An example: At one point, Breton claimed surrealism was synonymous with communism.)

Another point to keep in mind: Practices and techniques used in surrealistic writing, however characteristically, are not necessarily defined as exclusive to surrealism. Although many surrealist writers have made extensive use of automatic writing, it does not follow that (i) all automatic writing is surrealist or (ii) all surrealist writing is automatic. Paul Eluard was capable of perfecting his surrealist bijoux with the deliberate hand of a jeweler, and he is one of the earliest and most characteristic members of the first surrealist group (he is the veritable Max Ernst of verse libre). Besides, if spontaneous unedited expression were a surrealist prerequisite, then many classic surrealist paintings would have to be classified as something else.

(There are, of course, techniques specific to surrealism, as well as forms that are famously connected to surrealist art and writing whatever their origins, such as the "exquisite corpse." But these have more connection to surrealism as a movement than simply being hues in a given surrealist’s palette.)

Both in the States and the UK, surrealist and neo-surrealist writing have been practiced often enough to yield several anthologies containing specimens in poetry, prose poetry and fiction. English critic Herbert Reade wrote extensively about the tradition in his country and elsewhere; do keep in mind that key international surrealist exhibitions debuted in New York and London, and that these cannot have failed to influence artists of various descriptions in those places (see for example the London International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936). There were in fact active surrealist groups in London and the States in the 30s and 40s (such as the "40s Surrealist Group" and "35" in London specifically). Most included writers; even Roger Roughton, editor of Contemporary Poetry and Prose, professed to be a member of the "loosely constituted English surrealist group."

A list of relevant writers might include Americans Philip Lamantia (a San Franciscan poet who was discovered at age fifteen by Breton himself and whose first collection, Touch of the Marvelous, uses classic surrealist techniques, as do later volumes, such as Blood of the Air), Charles Henri Ford (http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/ford/ford.htm) (a self-professed surrealist poet whose books include The Overturned Lake and who edited the largely surrealist magazine, View (http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/ford/view.htm)), James Tate (see his collection, The Oblivion Ha-Ha), Rikki Ducornet, William Hjortsberg (who wrote Symbiography, a novella about a man who dreams for a living), Joseph Cornell (who was not merely a visual artist); Brits such as David Gascoyne (a surrealist poet who also wrote the first study of surrealism by an English person, A Short Survey of Surrealism, in 1935), George Barker, Philip O'Connor, Kenneth Allot, Humphrey Jennings, Theo Strasser (who was also a photographer; see his collection, The Use of Ashes) and Hugh Sykes Davies (http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0275%2FDavies;recurse=1) (a surrealist poet who was also a critic, and who also wrote the first English surrealist novel, Petron, in 1935)).

A survey of relevant volumes might include The Course of English Surrealist Poetry Since The 1930s (http://www.mellenpress.com/mellenpress.cfm?bookid=2822&pc=9), by Rob Jackamon, Surrealists on Art, by Lucy Lippard, the 60s Chicago surrealist anthology, Arsenal, and a dozen other anthologies of British and American surrealist writing (such as English and American Surrealist Poetry (http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/FrameBase?content=%2Fservlet%2FListingDetails%3Fsh owpic=1%26%26showpicurl=http://pictures.abebooks.com/JOHNMCCORMICK/205245213.jpg), edited by Edward B.Germain).

Often, members of the New York School used specific surrealist techniques whatever their connection to non-surrealist artists such as De Kooning and Larry Rivers: Ashbery has been mentioned (but not his telling essay, "Growing up Surreal"), as has Frank O'Hara; Barbara Guest and Kenneth Koch have not. Later language poet Charles Bernstein has called surrealism "insufficiently synthetic," even though he and other language poets have absorbed certain key surrealist techniques. Clearly, Ashbery and his “New York School” peers felt otherwise, since their work forms a bridge between surrealist and language poetry.

[Scrypt]

Almost all surrealist writing is French--I studied it briefly for a French lit class. . . .

Not so. I've studied surrealist writing throughout my entire life and can tell you the tradition caught root nearly everywhere (see above). However, a great deal of seminal surrealist literature was originally written in French, which is not always the same thing as being French. See, for example, German-born surrealist Hans Bellmer's indispensible classic, The Doll, which is available in English translation -- at last -- through the equally indispensible Atlas Press (http://www.atlaspress.co.uk/index.cgi?action=view_anti_classic&number=14) (arguably the most important English publisher of surrealist literature). See, also, The Man of Jasmine (http://www.atlaspress.co.uk/index.cgi?action=view_backlist&number=16) and House of Illnesses (http://www.atlaspress.co.uk/index.cgi?action=view_backlist&number=15) (also available in translation from Atlas Press), by the tragically talented Unica Zurn -- a prolific German writer and artist whose schizophrenia eventually led to her suicide. (She was also Bellmer's mistress.)

[blp]

Good stuff, Scrypt. Pity Chmpman's no longer around to appreciate it, having been banned. But he posted some poems on another site recently and they might well have had some surrealist influence.

[Scrypt]

Good stuff, Scrypt. Pity Chmpman's no longer around to appreciate it, having been banned.

Ah, but others who might appreciate it are still on these boards, just as we appreciate the founding surrealists who are no longer with us.

The exception to that last statement is, of course, the great surrealist painter, Dorothea Tanning (she is also the American-born former wife of Max Ernst), who is still very much with us: she still lives here in New York and has even taken to writing prizewinning poetry in her nineties (her mentor: the late James Merrill). Though I dream of interviewing her myself (she lives twenty blocks away), I've settled for reading her whipsmart interview on Salon (http://dir.salon.com/story/people/feature/2002/02/11/tanning/index.html) instead.

[Cheese King]

If you want stream of consciousness, try William Faulkner.

If you want magical realism, try Aimee Bender.

If you want surrealism, try Richard Brautigan (Trout Fishing in America, In Watermelon Sugar, etc.).

I don't think there has been much written in the way of Breton's automatic writing/painting idea, besides The Magnetic Fields. The surrealism you'll find in literature is a sort of diluted but still present form.

For more surreal literature, try searching using the keyword "surreal" or "surrealism" in amazon.com's listmania section. I have found a lot of great books with that.

[GusPeret]

Todd Bash is an interesting Surrealist writer. I stumbled upon a book of surrealist plays he wrote called SANCTUS FUMIGACI. It's very much in the spirit of the Paris Surrealists, capturing a dream-like world that is equally hilarious and horrific. I highly recommend it, especially if you like the writing of Artaud or the films of Bunuel. (If I recall, Bunuel & Dali actually appear as characters in one of his plays.)

It's hard to think of too many other American surrealist writiers of note.

[stlukesguild]

Surrealism seems to have made the greatest impact upon the visual arts... or maybe its just that the visual artists who worked within a Surrealist mode (Dali, Ernst, Magritte, Miro, Klee, even Picasso and Francis Bacon) were so much stronger than their literary counterparts. Of hand I can think of John Ashberry and Charles Simic among the Americans who built upon a distinctly Surrealist style... but Ashberry is a true Francophile and Simic comes from the latter East European tradition of Surrealism. One can actually see more of the impact of Surrealism upon the Latin-American writers and their development of Magic-Realism.

[GusPeret]

In response to the statement:

Surrealism seems to have made the greatest impact upon the visual arts.

Actually, Surrealism began as a predominantly literary movement. The visual arts gained momentum by the late 1920s.

Perhaps the visual arts are more universal, unhampered by language and the need for effective translations. Also, it's possible modern art has become more accepted in the mainstream than avant-garde literature.

Certainly, though, there were many surrealist masterpieces in literature: The Magnetic Fields by Breton & Soupault; Liberty or Love by Robert Desnos. Paris Peasant by Aragon; prose poems by Artaud; stories by Benjamin Peret; as well as works by Leiris, Eluard and Rigaut. These were all surrealist writers during the early years of the movement.

I don't think Surrealism was as strong in the United States, although many of the exiled members of the Paris group spent time in the US during WWII. Also, certain members of the group, like Man Ray, were from America.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Todd Bash is a contemporary writer who is clearly influenced by the Paris Surrealists. But the spirit of Surrealism appears in many other American artists, from the mid 60s lyrics of Bob Dylan to a few of the films of David Lynch and the Cohen Brothers (Barton Fink, for example).

[stlukesguild]

The birth of Surrealism is certainly debatable. One might argue for such predecessors as Nerval, Comte de Lautréamont, and surely Apollinaire, who coined the very term, "Surreal". While the body of literary Surrealism is respectable and includes Breton, Eluard, Supervielle, Apollinaire, Soupault, Desnos, Aragon, and Artaud, among others, few of these are truly major literary figures. One might argue that in literature Surrealism was far stronger among Spanish and Latin-American poets as Federico Garcia-Lorca, Antonio Machado, Rafael Alberti, Jorge Guillen, Pablo Neruda, as well as writers such as J.L. Borges, Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Octavio Paz, etc... Of course the Spanish and latin-American tradition of Surrealism and Magic Realism involves not only elements borrowed from Surrealism and Symbolism... but also aspects of Spanish mysticism and the love of metaphor going back to San Juan de la Cruz, St. Teresa of Avila, Luis de Góngora, and Arab/Andalusian poetry.

Few of the true French Surrealists, however... those recognized as part of the group by the "Pope of Surrealism", Andre Breton, can match the achievements and influence of those working within the Surrealist mode in the visual arts who would include Joan Miro, Paul Klee, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Luis Buñuel, Rene Magritte, and even certain periods of Picasso's oeuvre. The Surrealistic strain of the visual arts also had a far greater impact upon the arts in America inspiring the Magic Realists such as Paul Cadmus, Ivan Albright, Phillip Evergood, George Tooker... and even Andrew Wyeth, while the aspect of automatism and the Freudian and Jungian concepts of the subconscious were essential to the developments of the work of Abstract Expressionism. And then there's Joseph Cornell... one of the most unique and influential artists who was profoundly rooted in Symbolism and Surrealism. The Surrealistic mode in contemporary art continues today in aspects of the fantastic... including the so-called Pop-Surrealism which merges aspects of Surrealism, Expressionism, and "low art" or popular art forms such as the comic books and cartoons:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2792/4409676719_187a98d858_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4035/4409676747_b444ba7f70_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4066/4410442916_e7b432d034_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4019/4410443042_2c9a32eb8b_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4045/4410443094_a6046d018b_o.jpg

[kelby_lake]

A lot of American theatre was surreal.

[stlukesguild]

Yes... Surrealism proper was a rather small movement in terms of literature and art... but its impact upon surrounding artists and writers was profound... and continues into the present in film, painting, literature, theater, etc...

[Heteronym]

I'd recommend Dorothea Tanning's novel Chasm. This lady will celebrate her 100th anniversary this year and she's a bona fide American surrealist painter. She met most of the original surrealists in the '40s, when they were living in America as exiles from WWII. She married Max Ernst. She's been a painter most of her life, but in the past ten years she's began to write: she's written poetry, an autobiography and Chasm - at the age of 94.

[kelby_lake]

What about Southern Gothic?