The Desperate Man

<p><em>The Desperate Man</em> (first published in 1887) is arguably <em>the</em> French decadent novel <em>par excellence</em> of the 19<sup>th</sup> century. It is also Léon Bloyʼs first novel and a seminal work which as such planted the seeds of just about every other important theme or topic that the author would later develop in subsequent works throughout his life and career. Life is rain water for talented writers; and habitual poverty for Bloy acted as the mulch.</p><p><br></p><p>There is in <em>The</em> <em>Desperate Man</em> the seed of satire which was actually a small tree by the time <em>The</em> <em>Desperate Man</em> came out the seed having been sprouted earlier in his career in the articles for newspapers predominantly the <em>Chat Noir</em> journal - such satire as to rival Jonathan Swiftʼs; there is also the seed of apocalyptic Catholicism in <em>The</em> <em>Desperate Man</em> and the nuts of the exegeses of commonplaces not to mention the germs of the blood of the poor; there is the kernel of the constant attack on contemporaneous clergy and Bloyʼs self-professed fondness for cenobitism. There is the spore of the eulogy for sainthood and the embryo of the denunciation of the proxenetism of the press Parisian high-society and the bourgeoisie. There are the negative grains of anti-Republicanism and anti-German sentiment. There are the positive grains of pro-conservativism pro-Medievalism pro-Monarchy and pro-Merovingian French Dynasty.</p>