Octavio Paz, an important public and literary figure in Mexico today, has published several volumes of condensed and highly metaphoric poetry in Spanish that display his close ties to Surrealism…. [In "Marcel Duchamp: Appearance Stripped Bare"] Mr. Paz has revised and extended two essays on Duchamp written over the last 10 years. This short vigorous book shuns the psychoanalytic speculation that weakens many of the 20-odd existing studies and probes deeply into Duchamp's relations to Eastern and Western culture. Even Duchamp cannot escape history.

"The Castle of Purity," the first essay, opens with a consideration of Duchamp's origins and his radical yet calm responses to the modern Midas myth…. The following 60-page description and interpretation of the "Great Glass," or "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" (1915–23) treats the two partially painted clear panes … as belonging to the ancient Western tradition of theological art conveying idea and myth...