SOURCE: "Aztec Alphabet," in The Listener, March 5, 1970.

In the following excerpt, Plante provides a favorable summary of The Astonished Man.

The whole world seems to have belonged to Blaise Cendrars: the steppes of Russia, the jungles of South America, New York, artistic and intellectual Paris between the wars. He knew the best whore-houses in Peking, the opium dens in Marseilles, the richest Mexicans, the poorest fishermen; he directed movies, was a capitalist businessman, a jewel-peddler, a poet, a novelist. Even his losses were gains: though he lost an arm serving in the Foreign Legion during the First World War, he could add to his possessions the war itself and a host of legionaries, among them gypsies who later adopted him as one of their own. He must have thought he could, if not order, at least account for, the entire world in terms of places visited and people...