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Press review for The Decadent Handbook
"Orgies, absinthe, velvet jackets, drugs and debauchery. Decadence, as Stuart Kelly puts it in this volume, is 'easy to recognise and hard to define'. The Decadent Handbook gets round this problem by dividing the books into sections - including decadent drinking, death and sex - and then by slipping an appropriately excessive amount of examples between its glistening black covers. Its selection range through the old and new, obvious and surprising, and from the divine to the ridiculous. We have the Earl of Rochester's debauched poetry and Oscar Wilde’s barbed aphorisms. Then there are fascinating pieces of social history, notably Joe Boyd's account of opening the UFO club in 1960s psychedelic London. There's also a brilliant incisive analysis by Stuart Kelly of why Scotland isn't the least bit decadent. On the other hand, the conbtributions by contemporary Sloanes and self-styled art school bad boys are tiresome.What emerges is that decadence can take many forms; a gleeful transgression of convention; self-indulgence to the point of cruelty;or simply an unwavering commitment to the pleasure principle."