In Youth Is Pleasure By Denton Welch

In Youth Is Pleasure is Denton Welch’s cult coming of age novel, first published in 1945 and still as strange, tender and captivating today. Fifteen year old Orville Pym endures a miserable school year and a summer holiday thick with melancholy, but it is the small details such as the texture of rooms, the light on a country path, and the ache of awkward encounters that Welch renders unforgettable.

Praised for his Proustian eye and subversive prose, Welch was admired by William S. Burroughs and championed by John Waters, who once declared it “maybe the best novel in the world.” This edition also includes I Left My Grandfather’s House, Welch’s account of an English walking tour taken at eighteen, offering an intimate counterpoint to the novel’s fictionalised youth.

Paperback, 272 pages.
Measures 152 x 203 mm.
Published by Exact Change, February 2025.

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