Le Libertinage (1924) was a collection of very short stories, fragmentary episodes pieced together in the manner of a Surrealist collage. In the preface Aragon wrote: "I have sought the illusion of having infinite power over the world, as others seek it in opium. Events yielded to my will. I retouched the good Lord and gave him whiskers." In 'The Big Torus' Aragon juxtaposed the preparations for a wedding with the images of emerging war. "Blood flows in the rebellious town. Now the man is looking at a patch of stars and the bride's white stockings are raised up over her thighs. Shadows dance in the wind."
Aragon's novel Le paysan de Paris (1926) mythologized the arcades and parks of Paris. Aragon tired to create a new kind of novel "that would break all the traditional rules governing the writing of fiction, one that would be neither a narrative (a story) nor a character study (a portrait)..." The work celebrated the city as a place of stimulating encounters in its cafés and parks. For a modern reader Paris appears rather idyllic and innocent with its chorus girls and artists, bar rooms and commercial travellers. "Turn round, and see, there right opposite is the little restaurant where, in our progress towards the depths of the imagination, I fond the last traces of the Dada movement. When Saulnier seemed too expensive for us, we used to come here, appeasing our inopportune appetites as best we could with food cooked in rancid coconut oil and with their sharp, unpleasant wine, consumed in a stuffy, vulgar atmosphere
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