Overview

From their offices above a boxing gym in Old Havana, Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray have set aside their congenital lethargy to begin a glittering and fantastical new project: THE DECADENT SPORTSMAN. ""We are inspired in part by the magnificent wastefulness of the preparations for the London Olympic Games, exactly the kind of futile extravagance that Caligula or Nero would have adored, and in part by the pungent odours of sweat and bruised leather that waft up through the ventilation grillles in the floorboards from the boxing ring below."" This orchid-scented duo bring their wit and monstrous imaginations to play across the entire history of sport, with chapters ranging from the Greek athletic ideal and its perversions to the Nazi Olympics of 1936 and the use of drugs, alcohol and visionary states of being. The book also includes the full text of their proposal to the IOC for a new and more impressive Alternative Olympic Games, with events such as voyeurism, dentistry, Russian roulette, cocktail mixing, posing, couture, hairdressing, mendacity, bohemianism, architectural pâtisserie, and the roasting and carving of meat.

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9781907650550

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Reviews

Lucan and Gray write in character as two peripatetic Wildean flaneurs, driven by the stylistic flair and pleasure-seeking values of the late 19th century Decadent and Aesthetic movements. -- Oliver Bennett in The Independent on Sunday

'Lucan and Gray, whose fruity monikers may strike some as being suspiciously apt, have concocted a fabulous and shocking assemblage.' Christopher Hirst in The Independent '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.' Oliver Bennett in The Independent on Sunday 'At long last, however, I have discovered an antidote to my cynicism in the form of the Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray's Decadent series.' Natasha Hughes in The Traveller Magazine Lucan and Gray write in character as two peripatetic Wildean flaneurs, driven by the stylistic flair and pleasure-seeking values of the late 19th century Decadent and Aesthetic movements. -- Oliver Bennett in The Independent on Sunday

Author Information

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. Alex Martin has published four children's novels and is the editor (with Robert Hill) of the four-volume Prentice Hall Introductions to Modern English Literature. His novel The General Interruptor introduced the world to Viktor Ubriakov's lost imaginary masterpiece La Cuisine erotique (St Petersburgh 1888). It was awarded the Betty Trask Prize. Alex Martin and Jerome Fletcher have edited for Dedalus the decadence series.

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