The theme is stimulating but also rather dangerously vague, and predictably we are given a lot about Eros and Thanatos, Tristan and Isolde, as well as a whole gallery of philosophers - Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Feuerbach, Marx, Marcuse, as well as moderns such as Bataille and Lacan. D.H. Lawrence comes into it too, and Thomas Mann (Death in Venice makes him an obvious candidate) while there is an entire chapter given to Conrad's story Heart of Darkness. And inevitably, of course, there is a great deal (too much) about Freud. The book has its moments, but it lacks unity, is frequently discursive and also over-ambitious. In the end, I had the feeling of having read an extended thesis or academic essay.