Against Nature: Joris-Karl Huysmans (Penguin Classics)

Product Information

I got much, much more out of this novel than I was expecting, but I also understand why someone would not like this book. The book also shares close ties with several of Huysmans other works in that it appears to have been inspired by the first of his getaways to the ruined chateau de Lourps. Huysmans predicted his novel would be a failure with the public and critics: "It will be the biggest fiasco of the year—but I don't care a damn!

When describing Des Esseintes suffering from a hot day, his ‘sodden perineum’ illustrates his sweatiness. In his preface for the 1903 publication of the novel, Huysmans wrote that he had the idea to portray a man "soaring upwards into dream, seeking refuge in illusions of extravagant fantasy, living alone, far from his century, among memories of more congenial times, of less base surroundings . Hmm…bring to mind zero down, adjustable rate mortgages, the culture of debt and overnight lines to be the first to own a new release videogame or Apple product to mind? he left them and drew closer to men of letters, with whom his mind should have had more affinity and felt better at ease.While McGuinness's intro makes a good case for "Against the Grain" as a better title, beware of the Dover edtion under that name: it's old and expurgated, as is the illustrated one from the '30s). Twenty-three-year-old Schopenhauer, who had a great influence on Huysmans, told Wieland: "Life is an unpleasant business. It is widely believed that À rebours is the "poisonous French novel" that leads to the downfall of Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. If you're interested in learning more about the disintegration of France, and really Europe as a whole, during this time period, then I would suggest picking this up and giving it a chance.

These included the notion of intense refinement; the valuing of artificiality over nature; a position of ennui or boredom rather than of moral earnestness or the valuing of hard work; an interest in perversity and paradox, and in transgressive modes of sexuality. Des Esseintes likes exotic, fantastical paintings and books as they help him flee the vulgar drudgery of everyday life. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. The one area I do strongly disagree with des Esseintes on is the apparent centrality to the novel of his distaste for nature (an assertion incidentally disproven by his delight in flora, however unusual or bizarre the specimens he selects) and his polemicizing over artificiality.I don’t really know French, but what I know of it in reading shampoo bottles and international signs is that it requires more words to say a thing than English does. He considers himself to be alienated from a materialistic modern society by his preference for intellectual and aesthetic activities. The narrative centers on a single character: Jean des Esseintes, an eccentric, reclusive, ailing aesthete. He claimed no cures, offered the sick no compensation, no hope; but when all was said and done, his theory of Pessimism was the great comforter of superior minds and lofty souls; it revealed society as it was, insisted on the innate stupidity of women, pointed out the pitfalls of life, saved you from disillusionment by teaching you to expect as little as possible, to expect nothing at all if you were sufficiently strong-willed, indeed, to consider yourself lucky if you were not constantly visited by some unforeseen calamity" (Huysmans 2003, p. His novel The Last Hundred Days was longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2011 Costa First Novel Award, and his second novel, Throw me to the Wolves , won the 2020 Encore Award.