The Decadent Traveller (Dedalus Literary Concept Books) [Paperback]

Medlar Lucan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Prodigal sons Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray (coauthors of The Decadent Cookbook) resurface with The Decadent Traveller. In the late-19th-century regalia and spirit of aesthetes and decadents, the erstwhile restaurateurs underwent the rigors of exile (after being chased from Edinburgh by creditors and the authorities), "seeking out degradation and debauchery" in extravagant underworlds. With self-indulgence as their modus operandi, they didn't always satisfy their own expectations, and while pleasing themselves and others immensely at times, they ultimately experienced travel as "a kind of hell in the crucible of the Decadent imagination." Culinary, sexual and sensory misadventures in St. Petersburg, Cairo, Tokyo and elsewhere (in their introduction, editors Alex Martin and Jerome Fletcher allow that "[t]hese may be elaborate fictions") will delight fans of this pseudonymous duo.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This is the third book by the pseudonymous Lucan and Gray (after The Decadent Cookbook and The Decadent Gardener), who in the true spirit of decadence pursue ever more bizarre and perverse pleasures in their travels to St. Petersburg, Naples, Cairo, Tokyo, New Orleans, and Buenos Aires. They are disdainful of package tours and airports with "hordes of peasantry drifting like grazing bovines." The two aesthetes quote Baudelaire and Huysmans and also offer excerpts from Lafcadio Hearn, Aleister Crowley, Oscar Wilde, and Gustave Flaubert. In fact, these passages are the best parts of the book; for instance, the most readable section of the essay on Tokyo is the excerpt from Hearn's Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. Lucan and Durian are literate and occasionally witty, but it is the sheer tastelessness of what tries to pass for literary bawdry that compels this reviewer to give the book a thumbs down. Ravi Shenoy, Naperville P.L., IL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: Dedalus Ltd (November 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1873982097
• ISBN-13: 978-1873982099
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,388,308 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)