The Way Of All Flesh

Midas Dekkers

Editions

Review

This unusual book was apparently a bestseller in Holland, where the author is a well-known biologist and media figure.  On the face of it, the subject matter is not the kind of thing to have wide appeal: it is an extended essay about why our culture is misguided in its extreme antipathy towards natural decay, and in its obsession with artificial preservation.  But the book is written with tremendous verve and wit.  Examples abound of how we surreptitiously appreciate decay – in the romanticism of ruins, for example, or ripe cheese – and dispersed through the text are a great many pictures intended to amuse and gently shock us.  It is entertaining, and successfully conveys the serious points that art & creativity are in league with destruction, that eternal preservation is self-defeating in its sterility, and that decay is an ecological necessity. - review by Johnny de Falbe