The Decadent Handbook: For the Modern Libertine
The Decadent Handbook: For the Modern Libertine edited by Rowan Pelling, James Doyle, Amelia Hodsdon
English | October 1, 2007 | ISBN: 1903517303, 1903517648 | EPUB | 372 pages | 0.8 MB
English | October 1, 2007 | ISBN: 1903517303, 1903517648 | EPUB | 372 pages | 0.8 MB
The ultimate lifestyle guide for the people who want to transform the spirit of the age, or failing that, ignore it altogether. Featuring contributions by the bad, dangerous and eccentric free spirits of contemporary society, The Decadent Handbook will become the bible for the modern libertine. Contributors include Hari Kunzru,Tom Holland,Salena Godden,Michael Bywater, Lisa Hilton, Helen Walsh, Michael Bywater, Vanora Bennett, Medlar Lucan, Andrew Crumey, Durian Gray,Nicholas Royle,Mark Mason, Alan Jenkins and Robert Irwin.
Guest contributors include the J.K.Huysmans, Pieyre de Mandiargues, Octave Mirbeau and Sebastian Horsley. The contributors (that is those who are still alive by the time of publication) have chosen to be remunerated with La Fee Absinthe.
The Decadent Handbook goes one step further and reprints all manner of essays, stories and memoirs on the bygone art of decadence. Handsomely packaged and edited by Rowan Pelling, former editor of the Erotic Review, as well as James Doyle and Amelia Hodsdon (a Guardian employee), it has passages of striking, dark beauty, notably the opening poem by Alan Jenkins, Steve Boyd's memoir of drug-addled New York Doll Johnny Thunders and an excerpt from Octave Mirbeau's Torture Garden. But there is a great deal of tosh from self-aggrandising "modern libertines" whose idea of decadence is little more than snobbish debauchery. There's outraged fun to be had in flipping through these and turning to the contributors' notes at the back, muttering to oneself: "Who is this tosser? … Ah, no one special." - The Guardian