]Lennon is an American critic. In the following excerpt, she defines pataphysics, particularly as presented in Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician.]

[What is Pataphysics?] First of all, let us begin by ruling out what Pataphysics is not. It is heartening to commence with such a simple and easy task, for when it comes to the precise and accurate dissection of matters pataphysical, many are called but few are chosen.

1. Pataphysics is not an expensive and demanding sociopsychological regime. One need not attend interminable pataphysical meetings where one is not allowed to use the sanitary facilities for hours on end. In fact, one cannot attend such meetings with a pataphysically good conscience; they cannot exist and still be considered truly pataphysical.

2. Pataphysics is not the pet theory of a small group of crackpots who distribute badly photocopied pamphlets trumpeting their obsession from a post office box in Glendale, California.

3. Pataphysics is not likely to become the next dance craze. It hasn't got a beat and you can't dance to it.

4. Pataphysics is not to be found as a subject heading in the Subject Headings List of the Library of Congress. Therefore, it must not exist.

Although the measured and archaic syllables of its designation make it sound Latin or Greek, Pataphysics is neither. Rather, Pataphysics was born when the immense and rapacious belly, or horngut (Cornegidouille) of Pa Ubu was transmuted by a single stroke (patte à physique) into a pure and noble science. This is why Pataphysics is often written 'Pataphysics—the apostrophe serves to prevent a distressing pun (patte à physique, meaning to pat the belly) and also to indicate the magnitude of the transformation from plus to minus, positive to negative, Ubu to ethernity.

Pataphysics represents Jarry's personal system of phenomenological explanation, a sort of rationale for the absurdity inherent in the universe. He claimed that it extends as far beyond metaphysics as metaphysics extends beyond ordinary physics—in either direction. (The term "quantum metaphysics" comes to mind, but we will let it pass.) Pataphysics is dedicated to examining the laws which govern exceptions, which is why there is no such thing as a true pataphysical organization. By their very nature, organizations are formulated on the shepherd-and-the-flock theory; there cannot be any such thing as a genuine individual in a milling flock of sheep, and even the shepherd is taking his orders from somebody else. Thus, if you should ever see a large group of people renting an auditorium somewhere and claiming to be the First World Congress of Pataphysicians, you would be correct in assuming that they were not pataphysicians at all, but rather sheep posing as pataphysicians.

Pataphysics is devoted to the study of the epiphenomenon, or that which is superimposed upon the phenomenon, usually by accident. Furthermore, Jarry explains: '"Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments. The actual science is based on the principle of induction: the majority of men have seen most often a particular phenomenon preceded or followed by another, and conclude that it will always be like that. But this is only the most frequent case because of one's viewpoint, and it is codified according to convenience."

Not surprisingly, the single best definition of pataphysical postulates remains Jarry's own life—a singularly epiphenomenal occurrence. From the standpoint of cursory observation, Jarry's life seems so absurd and alienated as to be virtually meaningless, but Pataphysics accepts no one point of view as final, preferring that the individual himself be the final judge of the matter. In that sense, Jarry's life can thus be seen as the pataphysical symphony it was. Pataphysics was many things to Jarry—an antidote to religious foolishness; a way of obliging the maddeningly divergent vagaries of life to fit neatly within the limitless confines of an all-purpose construct; a method of synthesis under which nothing was incompatible with anything else.

Pataphysics concentrates on the unification of opposites; as Jarry himself observed, "Between the left side and the right, there is one direction: above.". . . He attempted to live in the realm of ethernity as much as possible by transforming every facet of himself and his environment that he possibly could, and by knocking down the barriers between conscious and subconscious with alcohol and ether, interjecting the dream state into the waking state. When further expansion into ethernity became impossible, when alcohol and even ether failed to liberate him from the sheer mediocrity of ordinary consciousness, he turned to, or rather invented, Pataphysics. And thus he left us a testament to the inherent resourcefulness of the human intellect as well as a road map into the exhilarating realms of the previously unknown and ostensibly unknowable.

The book in which Jarry explains Pataphysics is Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician. Following the world premiere of Ubu Roi in 1896 and Lugné-Poe's alarmingly conservative reaction to it, Jarry was more or less obliged to put his dramatic interests on the back burner. Instead of continuing to write for the stage, he turned to novels, essays, and poetry. His most important and significant project during this period was the completion of Faustroll.

Subtitled A Neo-Scientific Novel, Faustroll is nothing if not pataphysical. It veers back and forth between the exalted world of scientific speculation of H. G. Wells or Jules Verne, and the good-natured vulgarity of Rabelais. The name of the novel's protagonist, Doctor Faustroll, is a compound of "Faust" and "troll," typifing Jarry's view of the duality inherent in mankind. (Jarry was fond of the works of Henrik Ibsen and had supervised the staging of Ibsen's Peer Gynt at the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre, in which he played the part of a troll.) Human beings, he seems to be saying in Faustroll, are base creatures (which accounts for the "troll" element), but like Faust, we are nevertheless driven to seek after higher truths even if such a search ultimately means our destruction.

The novel records the voyage of Faustroll and an unlikely entourage of two "from Paris to Paris" in a boat which is a sieve. His companions on this voyage are Rene-Isidore Panmuphle (or "All-Snout"), a bailiff who is dunning him for the sum of "Three Hundred and Seventy-two thousand francs 27 centimes, in respect of Eleven quarters rental" on a flat in Paris; and Bosse-de-Nage (in the pseudo-archaic French Jarry loved to affect, literally "Ass-Face," or more politely "Hump-O-Rump"), a "dog-faced baboon less cynothan hydrocephalous, and, as a result of this blemish, less intelligent than his fellows." Bosse-de-Nage's vocabulary is generally limited to two words—"Ha ha!"—with which he greets Faustroll's profound observations throughout the voyage. The brilliant red and blue patches on his posterior have been transposed by Faustroll to the baboon's cheeks, so that his face resembles a tricolor (hail France!), and this brilliant coloration serves to supply the travelers with a source of light as they sail along the streets of Paris by night in their odd vessel.

Jarry got the idea for Faustroll's skiff from reading about the experiments of the British scientist Charles Vernon Boys, whose area of research was the surface tension of soap bubbles. The skiff is constructed of mesh fabric which is coated with melted paraffin; placed in water, the "skin" of the water tightens against the holes of the mesh, so that the water below the skiff cannot penetrate the skiff s surface unless the water's "skin" is itself somehow punctured. Luckily, however, the skiff is not subjected to water, but is instead propelled through the streets of Paris by suction disks at the end of spring levers, while the boat's keel is supported by three steel rollers. Thus Jarry was able to avoid the very unpataphysical and distressingly prosaic dilemma of whether or not Faustroll's vessel would actually be seaworthy.

Sailing through the streets of Paris in the skiff, Faustroll and his companions stop to visit many of the members of the Parisian intellectual world. Each chapter of Faustroll carries a dedication to one of Jarry's friends or foes in the arts, and each gives Jarry's impression of that person and his work. One of the reasons Faustroll holds our interest today is because it represents a turn-of-the-century Parisian "Who's Who" of the arts, an inventive way for Jarry to pay homage to the friends he loved and castigate the foes he hated. It also shows the depth of his affection for his friends, as well as his extreme sensitivity and intelligence in perceiving the various natures of their artistic contributions. In viewing Jarry as a mechanized mutant midget it is all too easy to forget that he possessed some sterling virtues, the chief of which was loyalty to his friends.

After Faustroll and company complete their voyage from Paris to Paris by sieve, the novel becomes even more pataphysical. Although he has previously dismissed death as "only for the medicore," Faustroll nonetheless succumbs, and he then proceeds to send "telepathic letters" to the scientist Lord Kelvin (whose experiments with magnetism, electricity, and solar power intrigued Jarry) from the other regions. Using his "posthumous leisure," Faustroll conducts an in-depth study of "ethernity" and dutifully reports his findings to Kelvin: "The sun is a cold, solid, and homogeneous globe. Its surface is divided into squares of one meter, which are the bases of long inverted pyramids . . . "

Finally Faustroll undertakes the ultimate pataphysical experiment: ascertaining the surface of God. After some virtuoso calculations he arrives at the conclusion that

God is the shortest distance between zero and infinity.

"In what direction?" one may ask.

±We shall reply that His first name is not Jack, but Plus-and-Minus. And one should say:

"God is the shortest distance between 0 and ∞ in either direction."

Which conforms to the belief in the two principles; but it is more correct to attribute the sign + to that of the subject's faith.

At the end of Faustroll is the conclusion: "'Pataphysics is the science . . . "

On the bottom of the last page of the original manuscript of Faustroll, Jarry wrote in his large, flowing handwriting the following very curious apostrophe: "This book will not be published integrally until the author has acquired sufficient experience to savor all its beauties in full." Since in the novel Faustroll experiences death and goes on to measure and analyze ethernity, Jarry obviously did not think that the book would be published in his own lifetime. And he was correct; Faustroll did not appear in print until 1911, four years after Jarry died.

Thus Faustroll comes to an end. Part intellectual flea market, part loving tribute to artistic friends, part pseudo-scientific speculation, and all Pataphysics, it is as good a definition of pataphysical principles as any. Somewhere between "Plus and Minus" lies the actual enumeration of Pataphysics—a circular plane where neither plus nor minus are relevant and everything is equally possible. At one end of the spectrum we see Pa Ubu, indicative of the basest instincts in mankind; at the other end, perhaps, the Supermale, he who "goes beyond everything hitherto imaginable"; and at the center, Faustroll, dipping back and forth between good and evil, negative and positive, weighing and balancing in truly detached scientific fashion. Jarry's life was often troubled and dreary, and he strove mightily to obliterate any traces of the inauspicious origins which might have made him less than exceptional—but through Pataphysics he was able to transform himself from a negligible quantity of atoms into an entity which was important enough to become a law unto itself.