The City of Lost Intentions
A Guide for the Artistically Waylaid
A Compendium of Fallibility, a Bestiary of Artistic Fears & Foibles, and an unhelpful travel guide to the City of Lost Intentions, with particular notice paid to its denizens—the transmogrified souls of self-damned artists—for the benefit of the prospective resident as they negotiate the underworld metropolis in the dubious company of Montcorbier, a disaffected psychopomp.
Being a baroque phantasmagoria of an imaginary hell, passing through its theatres, gilded grottoes, and stagnant, underground seas, from the Temple of Fo-Elpmet-Eht to the Hoarse Latitudes, with each chapter devoted to a different crime against the artist's Heart.
Presenting as a collection of 151 vignettes of the infernal citizens, linked by the erratic actions of the guide, Montcorbier, and the increasingly despairing and cryptic interjections of an unknown narrator who derails the careful catalogue of the city’s populace with complaints about the mysterious and despised Architect.
Drawn from hundreds of interviews and inebriated discussions with actors, painters, writers, directors, musicians, cabaret performers, glassblowers, fashion designers, photographers, philosophers, stand-up comics, and indeed anyone of a creative bent, over nine countries and ten years, concerning ways in which the artist might betray their art, The City of Lost Intentions is a tragicomical fairy tale of the tyranny of “the Vision”.
A book for all waylaid artists and self-saboteurs!
By A. VALLIARD
BUY NOW
for $15AUD/£8
with
$10/£5 shipping to Australia & UK*
Books bought by Antipodeans will be packed in Sydney by an idle publisher and sent by Australia Post (with free bookmark!). UK orders will be shipped directly from our UK printer.
Or
Buy from BLACKWELLS (UK)
or TERTULIA (US)
Or, in store at:
Berkelouw Books (Paddington) ~ SYDNEY
Better Read Than Dead Bookstore ~ SYDNEY
Modern Times Bookshop ~ SYDNEY
Gleebooks ~ SYDNEY
Readings (Carlton) ~ MELBOURNE
Avid Reader ~ BRISBANE
For other international options, please see below.
An EBOOK is also available from all the usual suspects for $4.99. It is considerably less ornamented and arguably easier to read, if one prefers such things.
*Books + Postage has been conveniently combined in the Checkout, and are sold at cost price from this website (and in dubious person) to facilitate the purchase of an extra copy to antagonise any malingering, creative friends.
Photo by Haus Nostromo
Photo by Haus Nostromo
WHERE TO ACQUIRE:
AUSTRALIA
SYDNEY:
In store at:
Berkelouw Books (Paddington) ~ SYDNEY
Better Read Than Dead Bookstore ~ SYDNEY
Modern Times Bookshop ~ SYDNEY
Gleebooks ~ SYDNEY
Readings (Carlton) ~ MELBOURNE
Avid Reader ~ BRISBANE
IRELAND
THE SECRET BOOK AND RECORD STORE
15A Wicklow St, Dublin
UK
BLACKWELL'S (Fastest & ships internationally)
EUROPE
The eclectic delight of HAUS NOSTROMO! (Germany)
ADLIBRIS (Sweden)
AMERICA & CANADA
Please buy from the splendid Tertulia (which offers 50% discount if you join, incidentally)
Or via the usual options, including:
Ideally, ask at your local bookshop if they might order it in for you, and thus support the dwindling, Amazon-ravaged, independent bookseller ecosystem.
REST OF WORLD
Contact us! We’ll see what we can wrangle.
BOOKSELLERS:
We offer a trade discount shipped directly from our printer’s UK/US/AUS facilities, or through Ingram.
Read EXAMPLES of the Eternal Carnations, the denizens of the City.
