Mount Analogue by René Daumal.

A beloved cult classic of surrealism, pataphysics and Gurdjieffian mysticism, René Daumal’s Mount Analogue is the allegorical tale of an expedition to a mountain whose existence can only be deduced, not observed. As its numerous editions (most now rare) over the decades attest, the book has been highly influential: Alejandro Jodorowsky's visionary 1973 film The Holy Mountain is a loose adaptation of the book, and John Zorn based an eponymous album on it.This edition, a gorgeous addition to the Exact Change list, brings the original 1959 English translation by Roger Shattuck—widely considered the best—back into print.Left unfinished after Daumal’s death from tuberculosis in 1944—in mid-sentence, as he broke from writing to receive a visitor—Mount Analogue offers a compelling and philosophically resonant chronicle of a group of travelers seeking the titular mountain, based on the symbolic calculations of one Father Sogol (“Logos” spelled backward) and his students. As Daumal writes, “Mou