On elegance while sleeping

"The first English translation of the self-proclaimed 'Viscount' Emilio Lascano Tegui--a friend of Picasso and Apollinaire, and a larger-than-life eccentric in his own right --On Elegance While Sleeping is the macabre novel, part Maldoror and part Dorian Gray, that established its author's reputation as a renegade hero of Argentine literature. It tells the story, in the form of a surreal diary, of a lonely, syphilitic French soldier, who--after too many brothels and disappointments--returns from Africa longing for a world with more elegance. He promptly falls in love with a goat, and recalls…