More on Mechanical Bride

[Mark Kohut]

The Art of Penguin Science Fiction, Chapter 4: The bride stripped bare -  
... the mechanical bride in the upper pane of The Large Glass by the 
iconoclastic French artist, Marcel Duchamp, points to the best story in the 
collection, ...

 
Alfred Jarry, comic Surrealist writer. he wrote plays and at least three novels, 
one full of glass shattering 

ala a cystal palace shattering. He is described in more than one place online as 
"Duchamp's mentor".
This is about his novel "The Supermale" :
 
Jarry speaks of the gears of the cycle, Duchamp of the "desire gears" and 
"lubricious gearing." 

Early in the novel, we read of Marcueil's physical attack on an imposing 
"female" machine, literally shattering it to pieces as he utters, "Come, 
Madame." Duchamp's 1912 machine-like painting Bride is called to mind, as well 
as a Green Box note from that period describing "this nude bride before the 
orgasm which may (might) bring about her fall." Also, this orgasm/fall idea can 
be tied to Marcueil's firm belief, later in the story, that he has killed Ellen 
with his frenzied lovemaking, as well as to Messalina's execution for 
indiscriminate bed-hopping. The Love Machine, title of the final chapter of The 
Supermale, again calls to mind Duchamp's concept of a mechanical bride and 
bachelors and their "love gasoline." Messalina and Ellen could be called, in 
common parlance, sex-machines; Duchamp's Bride is literally that. Yet 
notwithstanding unremitting desire and sexual athleticism, his Bride, like 
Jarry's heroines, is described a virgin.