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DECADENCE

                                          style over substance		  
									  
									  
From DESPERATE: 


          Decadence has been          
          defined as "the             
          elevation of style          
          over substance." to         
          quote Barry                 
          Malzberg, who said          
          it once, though not
          first.             
                             

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When I saw _The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and
Her Lover_, I expected a movie that might be
bad, but would at least be interesting.
Instead it was good, but extraordinarily dull.
Very well made.  Lots of carefully repeated          This must be
motifs, very nice direction, fairly good             the disease 
acting, and in general a lot of very heavy           of the age. 
guns pointing in no direction.					 


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Quoting from Tolstoy's                                   
"War and Peace" (1865-1869):                             
                                                         WAR_AND_PEACE 

     Among the innumerable categories applicable to the
     phenomena of human life one may discriminate between
     those in which substance prevails and those in which
     form prevails.  To the latter -- as distinguished from
     village, country, provincial, or even Moscow life --
     we may allot Petersburg life, and especially the life
     of its salons.  That life of the salons is unchanging.

       Book X, Chapter VI, p. 395  (WC)






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