Product Description
Records the author's response to human violence and carnality in this fable of the ancient world and pre-Columbian America.
This is a most unusual book, of interest chiefly as that rarest of literary objects, a manifesto of pessimism. Dahlberg's intent seems to have been as much to display his bulging erudition and arch, archaic way with words as to decry man's slavery to the sexual urge. His ostensible subject is often buried beneath an avalanche of classical, historical, and anthropological allusions, but at least the book is riddled with eccentric epithets along the lines of "Man is double, and who may know his heart: he is a moral hermaphrodite." The author's tone is judgmental and defiant throughout, but that doesn't energize the book. The tedium of reading finally overwhelms any interest his oblique approach might provide, and there are no illuminating observations about the eternal itch, merely a catalogue of references to Greek gods, Mayan myths, and "primeval potherbs."
A bit up it's own arse, really, but the pictures are nice.
Hardcover , UK 1st edition, Published by Calder & Boyars, 1970.