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The Decadent Traveller First Edition
Author(s): Medlar Lucan (Author), Durian Gray (Author), Alex Martin (Editor), Jerome Fletcher (Editor)
- Publisher: Dedalus
- Publication Date: 18 Oct. 2000
- Edition: First Edition
- Language: English
- Print length: 256 pages
- ISBN-10: 1873982097
- ISBN-13: 9781873982099
Book Description
The Decadent Traveller is a timely antidote to the nightmare world of backpacks, duty-frees and gastro-enteritis. It contains enough excitement and excess to last most armchair travellers their reading lifetime. ‘For those unacquainted with Lucan and Gray’s act, the pseudonymous pair write in character as two peripatetic Wildean flaneurs, driven by the stylistic flair and pleasure seeking values of the late 19 th century Decadent and Aesthetic movements. Here they travel to Cairo, St Petersburg, Tokyo, New Orleans, Naples and Buenos Aires, sampling en route extremes of excess and perversion, and all the way quoting such fellow travellers as Baudelaire, Flaubert, Crowley, Verlaine and Huysmans.’ Oliver Bennett in The Independent on Sunday – Book of the Week Choice ‘Readers of their debauched anthologies on cookery and gardening will welcome this clever, tasteless and very funny account of their journey across the globe, following in the footsteps of Flaubert and Aleister Crowley amongst others.’ Andrew Crumey in Scotland on Sunday ‘A piece of travelling kitsch, a camp description of the authors’ lives on the road to cheer the heart of all those jaded readers who criticise the travel book for its lack of surprise. Following the success of their Decadent offerings on cookery and gardening, the lusty lunatics are exiled from their beloved Edinburgh and head east, armed with an unlikely set of quotes from the likes of Baudelaire and Flaubert. Absurd and erotic anti-travel writing at its best.’ Anthony Sattin in The Sunday Times Books of the Year
Editorial Reviews
Review
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
About the Author
Very little is known about Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray. Since the scandal-ridden closure of their Edinburgh dining club, The Decadent, they have gone into silent, mysterious exile and are currently in Havana, living above a boxing academy. Flamboyant yet secretive, they once described themselves to a local newspaper reporter as ‘collectors, aesthetes, gastronomes, scene-painters, lovers, exhibitionists and jewel worshippers at the Temple of the Extreme.’ They are the authors of a quartet of books on decadence; The Decadent Cookbook, The Decadent Gardener, The Decadent Traveller and The Decadent Sportsman.
