 |
RARE & SECONDHAND GAY RARE & SECONDHAND
Having problems viewing this page? It performs best in Mozilla Firefox. 
All Rights Reserved |
Miscellaneous Titles of Gay Interest
Check post & packing options Use the arrow next to price to choose correct p&p option BEFORE adding to cart
Plot / Content: Huysmans' most famous work after À rebours (Against the Grain), Là-Bas (aka Down There, aka The Damned) deals with the subject of Satanism in contemporary France, and the novel stirred a certain amount of controversy on its first appearance. It is the first of Huysmans' books to feature the character Durtal, a thinly disguised portrait of the author himself, who would be the protagonist of all Huysmans' subsequent novels: En route, La cathédrale and L'oblat. More details on Wikipedia. Background / Biography: Là-bas was first published in English by the Fortune Press in 1930, but was withdrawn (at least officially) after the publisher, R A Caton, was successfully prosecuted for obscene libel in 1934 (the prosecution referred to several Fortune Press books). This edition is an expurgated version of the original, with an uncredited preface by Alan Hull Walton and Montague Summers. Both men were known as writers / translators / editors of books that covered sexuality and other issues considered less than respectable in mid-twentieth century Britain.
Reviews: Arbery Books also sells secondhand and rare non-gay fiction and non-fiction. Click here for our full list. |
"'So thoroughly then do you believe in these notions, my dear fellow, that you have abandoned adultery, love-making, ambition, all the stock subjects of the modern novel, to write the history of Gilles de Rais,' . . . and after a pause: 'I have no fault to find with the realism,' he added, 'Whether for its jargon of the hulks or its vocabulary of the privy and the hospital ward. That would be both unjust and absurd. To begin with, there are certain subjects which call for expressions of the sort; furthermore, by dint of absolutely crude phrases and stink-pot words, prodigious and imposinng literary edifices can be erected, - for proof take Zola's L'Assommoir. No, that is not my point; the fault I find with realism is not the dull monotone of its ponderous style, it is the uncleanliness of its conceptions; the fault I find is its having embodied materialism in Literature, and having glorified the democracy of Art!'" opening paragraph, footnotes omitted Secondhand booksellers |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Clicking on advertiser links on this site may allow these companies to gather and use information about your visit to this and other websites to provide you with advertisements about goods and services presumed to be of interest to you. |