Neo-Decadence: 12 Manifestos

by Justin Isis (Editor), Brendan Connell (Contributor), Gaurav Monga (Contributor)

The early 21st Century: a gilded age of pious guilt, poison nostalgia, environmental collapse, unchecked pandemics, corporate franchises, workshopped creativity and personal brands. Standing against the Neo-Passéist tide, Neo-Decadence presents a total reformulation of everyday life. What is the vertical table? Why is a sex helmet indispensable for all assignations? What is the proper spirit of electronic gaming? Covering fashion, cooking, architecture, occultism, poetry, gardening, and other areas of concern to all young people, the present volume is the ONLY resource for those wishing to shrug off the cerements of late capitalist literature and art. If you’ve ever wanted to proudly commit commercial suicide while serving your own head on a plate as an offering to your inner daemon, consult this collection of manifestos—as much a personal style guide as it is a declaration of uncompromising aesthetic war.

edited by Justin Isis

1. Neo-Decadence (I) - Brendan Connell
2. Neo-Decadence (II) - Justin Isis
3. Women’s Fashion - Justin Isis
4. Men’s Fashion - Gaurav Monga and Justin Isis
5. Cooking - Brendan Connell and Justin Isis
6. Music - Ramon Alanis
7. Architecture - Damian Murphy, Gaurav Monga and LC von Hessen
8. Immaterialism - Quentin S. Crisp
9. Occultism - Damian Murphy
10. Electronic Gaming Arturo Calderon, Colby Smith and Hadrian Flyte
11. Interpersonal Relationships - Justin Isis
12. English Poetry - Jeremy Reed
13. American Poetry- Paul Cunningham
14. Nature - Sailor Stephens
15. Against Neo-Passéism - Justin Isis, Damian Murphy, Gaurav Monga, Quentin S. Crisp, and LC von Hessen

Genres: Nonfiction

164 pages, Paperback

First published February 3, 2021

About the author

Justin Isis //primary succession psychic automatism citizens of teh universe publishing industry intransitive cauliflower !! Shizuka Muto's brand "Rady# is recommended International law must properly be regarded as another branch of fantastic literature

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE NEO-DECADENT MANIFESTO OF REVIEWING BOOKS ONLINE

1. There are no rules for writing Neo-Decadent book reviews. Here are some rules for writing Neo-Decadent book reviews.

2. When reviewing a book, the Neo-Decadent does not merely regurgitate plot details, analyze themes, or cherry-pick favorite sentences: in fact, mentioning the book at all is the height of Neo-Passéist mediocrity and should best be avoided as a sign of bad taste. The role of the Neo-Decadent book reviewer is NOT to review the book as a physical artifact but instead to represent its very soul and Inmost Light. Likewise, we seek not to colonize the conscious mind of our reader but to instead infect their very dreams with the piss of angels and the dandruff of demons.

3. Ideally, a book should be reviewed long after it has been published, when it has passed into the collective unconscious and thus forgotten by humanity in general. The aesthetic meta-ruins of a book are always more enticingly beautiful than a book newly released. The same goes for obscurity. Books that have been read by more than five people should NEVER be reviewed as they have been irretrievably corrupted by the eyes of the Profane. To the Neo-Decadent book reviewer the ideal book is one that has never been read, or published, or written, or for that matter even conceptualized.

4. You should never seek to sway the minds of others with your book reviews: the last thing you would want to do is convince them to read the book in question. Better to demolish all opposing viewpoints utterly and banish them to the dustbins of history with a mocking sneer, as anything that existed before the nativity of Neo-Decadence is hopelessly obsolete. Slaughter your childhoods and murder the past!

5. When reviewing books, be sure to avoid the usage of conventional words, phrases, ideas, even modes of common shopworn expression. As Novelty is the Godhead, it’s far more important that one makes up one’s own personal/private language to express their deepest and darkest thoughts and desires. With that in mind, the conventional sentence “I really enjoyed reading this book” could just as easily be translated as {K ylirt jumbdulla yuriobastic fgqbzfdas sixl pxop\\+>. While it may SEEM like clarity of expression can be a useful tool (for example, in the mass dissemination of nascent literary socio/political/cultural movements), it’s actually for suckas and is a repressive meme-prison designed by the Archons of our Aeon of the Anthropocene, representative of various monolithic monogamous monotheistic materialistic imperialistic fascist American thanatopic Westernized binary patriarchal Anglospheric pseudo-Victorian capitalistic corporate control industries. Smash the control machine! Well, except maybe when it comes to controlling your bladder or your bowels. There you might want SOME control.

6. The review as vaporware: an appraisal of a book that vanishes from the world 5 minutes after it’s posted. Rule Impermanence!

7. It is well-known that denim is the root of all evil, to the extent that it can even be said that it has hopelessly infected the 5 letters that constitute its name. Ergo, the Neo-Decadent reviewer of books should strive to avoid using any words with those 5 letters entirely in their reviews. Admittedly, this may prove a difficult task but perseverance is key.

8. It is the bane of the strongly opinionated to have their reviews attacked by the Neo-Passéist hoi polli. While it is best to avoid engaging with such trolls entirely, should you feel the need to do so, playground taunts make an effective weapon. Some suggestions in this regard would include “kiss my grits,” “up your nose with a rubber hose,” or the blunt but effective Skank comeback: “Shut your stinking trap!”

9. The Neo-Decadent book reviewer should always strive to avoid comfort, safety, privacy and leisure when penning their book reviews. They should typically compose their reviews blindfolded, while lying on a bed of nails and wearing a hairshirt, on a malfunctioning and virus-infected computer, surrounded by famished wolves, while squatting in a derelict building that could collapse at any moment, on a Friday the 13th of a Chinese zodiac bad luck year. If one’s budget allows it, hire some local kids to throw wasp nests at you during the process, along with a sex dwarf to whip your arse, to make the whole exercise as annoying and painful as possible. Remember, the resulting review should be as awkward and difficult to read as it was to write. Bonus points if you cut your fingers off first and type out your review with bloody stumps.

10. skyscraper.c:373: sparkly error before 'mouth' - soggy tablecloth in toy phone. I'd rather mop up kitchen spills with Hansel and Gretel than vomit over Fred Flintstone. Play football with Bugs Bunny, RavenBlack! Play football with Bugs Bunny like a rubber muppet! Don't you just love it when you sing “Mint Car” to Canadian Mounties and your teapot gets black and white? I'm a level 5 Flying carpet, in shirt-world! I've got a magic strange object and everything! Don’t come in crying to mummy when you find yourself transformed into some A.I. mushroom gestalt-being.

* * * *

All joking aside, this is a very interesting collection of diverse (and sometimes contradictory) ideas. Very well and good, and in any case the Bible has shown us that our holy books need not be consistent. At first I thought it would be rough-going for me, as I’m a genre-loving pro-nostalgic manifesto-hating traditionalist (well, a traditionalist of queer angles), but I breezed through it in 3 days while sipping non-alcoholic Mai Tais and listening to obscure Coil albums. Naturally, I probably disagreed with 50% of the ideas expressed herein (okay, more like 75% . . . well, probably closer to 90% if I'm being totally honest), but what matters is that, because none of the contributors phoned it in and gave it their all, it made even the ideas and modes of thought I disagreed with to be a delight. The book made me smile, made me angry, made me laugh, made me cry, made me paint my toenails different colors and sing praises to my blue Madison Park Kelsey Ottoman Pouf, etc. And if you can get past the paradox that a book seemingly tailor-made for the younger generation yet where the majority of its contributors are well-past the age of 30, you will find that some of its theories aren’t entirely wrong-headed. After all, Minimalism IS like “...a hideous tax accountant with a protruding jaw who has not even the good sense to wear clashing colors.” Musicians SHOULD compose their own requiems. Alan Turing IS the “poster boy of superficiality.” Chaos Magick WAS a “...spectacular flop” (on the other hand, it DID give us Grant Morrison’s THE INVISIBLES, so, uh, maybe not). Khublai Khan WAS a modern. Bizarro DOES suck. In any event, a book that likens eating at horizontal tables with the assumption of Austin Osman Spare’s Death Posture, or that presents us with sentences such as "...sunflowers with bright brown faces and crowns of insolent gold, their spirits those of drunken jesters mocking the ugly solemn sky," is all but guaranteed to light a Promethean conflagration in the cockles of my Gothic aortal chambers. Now get off my lawn!

[Fergus Nm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although each head of the hydra will occasionally nip at the other, the beast as a whole strides forth heroic and united...

(Disclaimer, I guess - I’m in correspondence and/or friends with some of the authors here, and I guess you could consider me a fellow traveler when it comes to Neo-Decadence. With that being said, for the most part I got to know these writers after discovering their work. Not sure how relevant this is as I try to be impartial when it comes to reviews/recommendations anyway but whatever.)

The 21st century is turning out to be simultaneously a backwards-looking stinker and the most radical era of all time. There’s a huge swathe of culture and consumption that’s fine with endlessly recycling the 20th century, but while the nostalgia gap shrinks ever smaller for those sad clowns, there are those striding forth with New and Unheralded strategies for this New and Unheralded era.

A joyous romp through the ruins and on towards a potential future, these twelve (actually more) manifestos attempt valiantly to clear our path of all traces of cultural banality. Literary concerns such as writing and poetry are of course tackled, but we also have manifestos on Nature, the Occult, architecture, cooking, etc.

Particular highlights include:
-a richly poetic exploration of intentional fall and collapse in architecture: “To know that at any moment you may disappear into the debris as a result of an intentional flaw in the building’s essential blueprint is indispensable.”
-novel approaches to interpersonal relationships such as Laughing Units, The Aged Herald, and my personal favourite, the Platonic Enemy.
-the culinary possibilities of the vertical table: “the juice from a ripe mandarin may drip onto a bit of lightly-seared steak, while chillies, artfully sliced, scatter seeds of fire on the sliced apples below, and cubes of skewered pork slide into votive bowls of ray yolk...”
-shards of observation both caustic and comforting: “Kublai Khan was a modern. Things fell apart a long time ago. We are already living in the ruins of celebration. There’s nothing to celebrate. When you toast, make sure you smash your glasses together … harmony is overrated.”

As you can see much of the writing here is lush and sensuous, although the barbs of wit are seldom far. Obvious care was taken in the editing, as the flow from manifesto to manifesto is never too jarring - quite a feat given the wide spectrum covered here. One thing I did feel was missing though were manifestos by the Youth, for the Youth - I’m sure there are some truly volcanic observations of culture and collapse to be had from teenagers and other Zoomers - and as far as I could tell most of the writers here are 30+. I am however intrigued by the talk of a truly global Neo-Decadence and have my proverbial fingers crossed for its coming. There’s also discussion on this site and elsewhere about how some of the ideas and opinions expressed contradict one another, but I feel that this is only natural when there are a dozen or so different contributors approaching all manner of topics. Not every manifesto quite hit me personally but again, that’s to be expected, and I’d much prefer a broad church Neo-Decadence over something Orthodox and dictatorial (cf. the Surrealists under Andre Breton).

It’s my hope that movements like this, both potential and active, revitalise wider aesthetics and culture and I applaud this attempt by the Neo-Decadents to do so. For everything that didn’t quite land (the manifesto on Immaterialism was a bit above my brain, and I found the section on English poetry to be strangely backwards-looking for such a futuristic document) there were plenty of winners that made me hopeful for a New Future. I’m curious to see more ideas observed through this lens - what would a Neo-Decadent manifesto of travel, of crime, of sexual politics etc look like? Maybe, hopefully, time will tell.

Any collection of texts that recognises forebears in such luminaries as Raymond Roussel, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Sarah Winchester is going to pique the interest of a certain reader, and if you’ve found your way here, well, you’re probably it. Go on, take the plunge. You might like it here, gallivanting amongst the radiant dust leaking out of a wounded present.

[Becca Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wide range of styles, at times it feels like a book arguing with itself. Nonetheless, you come out with a visceral sense of what the Neo Decadent movement is trying to show you.

[Chizuru Nakagawa 中川 千鶴 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read 💕🕊

[Ryan Pitchford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stop whatever you're doing and eat your idols, k?

[Jon Hersh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Themes in this book never leave the reader wanting more. This is seriously recommended! A solid addition to it’s genre for sure.

[Nirvana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this and I've decided that my life is in need of a thorough and radical overhaul in the face of omnipresent late-capitalist corrosion of every conceivable security. Thank you Mr. Isis et al.

[… · Rating 4 out of 5]

They might be onto something here.

[Hagar · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is some cool shit here. I LOVED Isis' Welcome to the Arms Race, the style, the post-industrial pomp was wild and eerie. It inspired me to pick this up to see what's going on in the underground neo-decadent movement. Some manifestos are better than others. I thought Quentin Crisp was on point when he wrote in Immaterialism:

“We have become used to the convergence of the human and the automaton. Many Internet bots are more articulate than many humans simply because of the decay of thought and expression in the latter. Therefore, there now exist many humans who would not pass the Turing Test. This is ironic in itself, but there is a further irony. As the numbers of such people increase they must surely approach a tipping point after which their increase becomes their decrease. That is, they will increase and decrease at one and the same time. This paradox is possible because, since the judgement as to who passes the Turing Test will rely more and more on others like themselves, they will begin to pass the test again in greater numbers.” 

[Jesse Hilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of this was quite silly while other parts of it were profound, edgy, and exciting. Some passages were clearly satirical while others were laser-accurate and clear (never say sincere or authentic). I’ll write more on this later elsewhere, where you may never see it.