Le Petit Ami

Contrary to the decadent writers of his time, and far from the misanthropic figure he later cultivated in his Journal, Léautaud here appears as a man fully savoring the pleasures of Parisian life. Autobiographical in nature, the narrative might well have been titled “The Little Amoral One,” so freely and candidly does it verge, at times, on indiscretion. As a sybarite, Léautaud recounts an existence devoted more to pleasure than to his professional and literary activity. With tenderness and irony, he sketches the bohemian world of his time, a kind of literary counterpart to the disreputable Paris depicted on Lautrec’s canvases. Not without nostalgia, he evokes his childhood, his youth, and a vanished Paris. Refusing to indulge in sadness — though sadness nonetheless runs throughout these memoirs, some wounds seeming to remain open — the narrative retains a tone of subtlety and lightness.

A magnificent copy in wrappers, as issued: of the utmost rarity in this condition.