Book Watch

I don't know where to begin with Joris-Karl Huysmans' novel A Rebours (Against Nature, or Against the Grain). One place is with Huysmans himself, who was a bizarre and fascinating figure. Oscar Wilde called the book "poisonous" and Arthur Symons called it "diseased." It is at once beautiful, repellent, bizarre, attractive, and disgusting. The novel has only one character, Des Esseintes, and nothing much of a plot. The narrator, disgusted by humanity in general, retreats in to what can only be described as monastic hedonism. While Des Esseintes professes nihilism and extols the philosophy of Schopenhauer, the specter of Catholicism and God haunt the novel's every page. Large portions of the book are discussions of minor artists, philosophers, and some of the worst medieval Latin authors. 

Often the novel feels like a sort of perverse experiment, other times a little Kafkaesque. I am reading it for a course on Aestheticism and Decadence, and it indeed seems to utterly embody both. The novel is fascinating, sometimes tedious, and always utterly strange. It address theoretical concerns of content and form and ultimately challenges our conceptions of pleasure and the intellect. I certainly recommend this book to all, but it is a must read for anyone interested in Modernism and the fin-de-siecle avant garde.