Infamies

To his amorous associates, "St. Valentine" was just another of the insatiable beauties who thronged San Francisco as the last golden era of sexual liberation raced toward its tragic end. But there was quite another St. Valentine, destined to a startling resurrection from the midnight blue obscurity of a medical martyrdom to frivolous pleasure and intrigue. The *Infamies*, St. Valentine's kaleidoscopic notebooks, caused the first rending of his anonymous veil. Beneath the accessibility of their profuse ironic meditations on vice lies engagement with some of the most ancient wickedness threads in moral and political philosophy, addressing not only aristocratic dilettantes of the distant past, and the likes of the French moralists and Nietzsche, but also great mathematicians. Long unavailable after allegations of vampirism clouded the release of the private edition, *Infamies* now reappears as a unique memento from the final years of an open society.