The way of all flesh
The way of all flesh: the romance of ruins Midas Dekkers; translated from the Dutch by Sherry Marx-Macdonald
Publisher: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
ISBN: 0374286825
DDC: 612.6701
LCC: QH529
Edition: (alk. paper)
Summary:
"Aged buildings are usually pulled down or restored. Aging people
desperately try to act and look young because novelty, youth, and
beauty are equated in our minds with what is desirable. Mankind alone
refuses nature's model and is bothered by the realization that "life
is a way of dying slowly." But, by ignoring or evading the lure of
decay, are we simply trying to escape from the truth?" "Midas Dekkers
argues that things are at their most beautiful when they deteriorate,
provided they are given the chance. With the idiosyncratic erudition
of the European intellectual - Roberto Calasso and Umberto Eco come
to mind - Dekkers stresses that our aversion to decay and mortality
makes our lives shallow. This is the meditative essay as Fellini
might have written it; Dekkers asserts that ancient Rome's days of
decline were its finest. The Way of All Flesh is at once a
wonderfully witty book about the inevitable ruin of everything from
bodies to works of art to ideals and a profound meditation on what it
means to outlive one's usefulness, when the wheel of fortune has gone
full circle."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes:
"Published in 2000 by the Harvill Press, Great Britain"--T.p. verso.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [267]-274) and index.
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