I've just finished Against Nature, the great decadent classic novel which Oscar Wilde lifted into the narrative of Dorian Gray as the pestilential book which opens up to Dorian a world of sin and decay. I actually found it rather fun. Le Comte Des Esseintes's efforts to alleviate his boredom through obscure Latin literature, perfume-making and liqueurs, obstructed all the while by migraines and a gippy tummy, are amusing, bordering on the hilarious, provided you don't mind the overwrought prose (which the introduction assures us is an attempt to imitate Huysmans's French). It all seems faintly ludicrous - although real-life eccentrics have been known to go to parallel lengths in the pursuit of their enthusiasms - and Huysmans packs his anti-hero off back to Paris for a more sensible way of life at the end, though how well he will take to it is doubtful. A charming little confection.Saturday, 19 November 2011
Against Nature (1884), by JK Huysmans
I've just finished Against Nature, the great decadent classic novel which Oscar Wilde lifted into the narrative of Dorian Gray as the pestilential book which opens up to Dorian a world of sin and decay. I actually found it rather fun. Le Comte Des Esseintes's efforts to alleviate his boredom through obscure Latin literature, perfume-making and liqueurs, obstructed all the while by migraines and a gippy tummy, are amusing, bordering on the hilarious, provided you don't mind the overwrought prose (which the introduction assures us is an attempt to imitate Huysmans's French). It all seems faintly ludicrous - although real-life eccentrics have been known to go to parallel lengths in the pursuit of their enthusiasms - and Huysmans packs his anti-hero off back to Paris for a more sensible way of life at the end, though how well he will take to it is doubtful. A charming little confection.
A great book. My favourite scene is the one with the jewel-encrusted tortoise. I suspect that the warnings might have something in them, though. In Huysmans' time, you had to have serious money to end up like Des Esseintes; these days it's quite possible for almost anyone to waste their life in Second Life or looking for obscure trash on Ebay.
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