SOURCE: “Dada Bones,” in The Art of Hunger: Essays, Prefaces, Interviews, Sun & Moon Press, 1992, pp. 54-61.

In the following essay, originally published in 1975, Auster considers Ball the principal force behind Dada.

Of all the movements of the early avant-garde, Dada is the one that continues to say the most to us. Although its life was short—beginning in 1916 with the nightly spectacles at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, and ending effectively, if not officially, in 1922 with the riotous demonstrations in Paris against Tristan Tzara's play, Le Coeur à gaz—its spirit has not quite passed into the remoteness of history. Even now, more than fifty years later, not a season goes by without some new book or exhibition about Dada, and it is with more than academic interest that we continue to investigate the questions it raised. For Dada's questions remain our questions, and when we speak of the...