Bucknell University Press
Lewisburg/London
2000
310 pp.
Serie universitaria
0838754562

This translation makes available to the English-reading public another treatment of that most famous of Spanish literary creations: the Don Juan figure. This is a Don Juan in decline who will come to grips with his emptiness by learning to love. Picon's frank discussion of a description of the act of love was a daring undertaking in the Spain of the time, and perhaps led to his being dismissed - by some - as being "erotic," which was clearly meant to be pejorative. But he also introduced humor into Sweet and Delectable without taking away from the serious nature of his exploration of a love relationship, and with delightfully Cervantine chapter headings, a la Don Quixote de la Mancha, pokes fun where it needs to be poked while giving the reader a glimpse of things to come in a comic nutshell.

BOOK JACKET

Responsibility: by Jacinto Octavio Picón ; translated from the Spanish by Robert M. Fedorchek ; introduction by Noël M. Valis.