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Against the Grain

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Des Esseintes, the protagonist of Against the Grain (A Rebours), is, without a doubt, literature's ultimate social dropout. Dissatisfied with the limitations of the natural world, he hides from human society, constructing his life so that even his own servants are invisible to him.

While looking at others with disdain (and this is putting it mildly!), Des Esseintes's opinion of himself grows ever higher until he has "no hope of linking up with a mind which, like his own, took pleasure in a life of studious decrepitude; no hope of associating an intelligence as sharp and wayward as his own with that of an author or scholar."

Just as Des Esseintes eschews the natural, he embraces the artificial. In an early chapter, he chooses the colors for his country house near Paris based on their appearance under artificial light. He comes to the conclusion that one can obtain a satisfactory sea bath at home because "without stirring out of Pris it is possible to obtain the health-giving impression of sea-bathing...for all this involves is a visit to the Bain Vigier, an establishment to be seen down on a pontoon moored in the middle of the Seine."

Eventually, Des Esseintes moves beyond mere artifice and seeks to remove from his life the natural in all its aspects. When he becomes unable to ingest food orally, he feeds himself through enemas and finds this method far superior.

Des Esseintes's realm of artifice soon becomes his only god. He is safe in his virtuality, enjoying travel without risks, lust without passion and social interaction only with imagined beings.

The heart and soul of Against the Grain is really the debate between nature and artifice and man's role as the creator of his own universe. Des Esseintes is the ultimate aesthete; a man whose desire to obliterate the natural is transformed into the limitless experience of artistic creation.

Against the Grain represents typical French decadent literature in which the whole is subordinate to the parts. It must be understood that decadence in literature is an aesthetic, rather than a moral conception; the opposite of classicism, in which each part must subordinate itself to the enhancement of the whole. Each has its virtures, and in order to appreciate one to the fullest, we must learn to understand and appreciate the other.

Against the Grain may well be the greatest novel to emerge from the French decadent experience, and it has exerted much influence over later writers. It is the fullest, most detailed account of the search for artifice, a search that is particularly akin to today's virtual world of cyberspace. As such, Against the Grain is more relevant than ever and should be highly recommended, even required, reading.

Des Esseintes, the protagonist (and basically the only character) of this book, is a man of noble descent who has tried everything in life: he has mingled with the frivolous and found them vulgar and empty-headed. He has lived among the intellectuals and found them petulant and arrogant. He is tired of life, especially in these (his) vulgar and superficial times. So he sells a number of properties and buys a house in the countryside. His idea is to reject everything that is "natural" and concentrate on art and artifice. He lives in complete solitude, barely interrupted by a couple of silent servants. He spends much time choosing the colors, the furniture and the pictures for his house. Along the book we are witnesses to his tastes in a number of realms, such as painting, literature, flowers, perfumes and music. Sometimes it seems to be just a long catalogue of sophisticated, rare and decadent pieces. This book is a big fantasy of reclusion, of elegancy, of sophistication. Give yourself some time and be an eccentric for a day. If you read it with a sense of humor, you'll find an enjoyable piece of French décadentisme, certainly on the periphery of the Western Canon, but representative of a way to view life.

Its atmosphere is very Gothic, gloomy, silent and full of beautiful things. The main character is a bit of a lunatic, but his bored and irritable personality has a touch of glamour. If you sometimes feel filled up with the world, if you sometimes fantasize about winning the lottery and then buying a big house full of the things you love, a place to retire and reject society and all its annoying and ugly characteristics, then you will find this book a very cool way of retiring from the world.

I read this book 20 years ago and still consider it one of my very favorites. It is so good to see that it is still in print. I'll just add a bit more to what the other reviewers at amazon have said. This book was a favorite of Picasso, and it's easy to understand why. Huysmans was the ultimate modern artist, and had he not become a writer he would have assuredly become a painter. Des Esseintes decorates the shell of a living tortoise with jewels and colored glass so that the light, reflected off the roving gems, accentuates the colors of the room, adding continuous and subtle variation. Now that is a sense of color! His heighten senses go further to invent new art forms: a perfume organ, for instance. Des Essentes, is also a bit of a sadist. He conducts social experiments, turning innocent ordinary working class youths into criminals by cultivating within them a taste of luxury. By the way, if you can, try obtaining a copy of the book with Arthur Zaidenberg's illustrations; they are an exquisite addition. Huysmans other books are also worth reading, especially Down There (la-Bas), a book about 19th century French Satanism that nicely weaves stories about the extreme Medieval sadist, Gilles de Rais, whom Huysmans portrays as an aesthete much like Des Esseintes. Both books are gems.

Beware this is an expurgated version. It doesn't say so until the last page. Evidently the translator thought the homosexually-tinged "racy" bits were not worth reading (though he had no trouble including the heterosexual racy bits). I prefer to read everything in a book, and decide for myself.

It really doesn't surprise me that this novel has been reviewed by only one person at this site. What a statement about the reading patterns of present-day culture! From my teens through my twenties, I snatched up every Penguin Classic I could find on the bookshelves in NYC and San Francisco. I guess I just came up in a different literary milieu. This novel was one of the true gems that I encountered at that time. This is probably the seminal avante-garde novel. It's hero, Des Esseintes, is basted on Absinthe (or hashish) half the time and his life is one prolongued hallucination. The author takes the reader so intricately into the main character's life, that we are living alongside him, absorbed in his decadence. We are invited to his parties (which rival Trimalchio's), are absorbed in his fantasies (which rival Fellini's)and basically are tripping with him in his unique and solipsistic universe. Oscar Wilde described this as the strangest work of fiction he had ever come across. Though not a great Wilde fan, I couldn't agree with him more on that point.

If you are looking for plot, look elsewhere. "Against the Grain" is essentially a collection of essays- comparable to David Foster Wallace's non-fiction pieces or Umberto Eco's similar treatises- disguised as a novel, held together by the character of Des Esseintes. Des Esseintes has an extreme case of OCD, and possibly is a hypochondriac, or is the most enlightened individual ever to be born; whichever it is, he simpy cannot stand society and the people in it and thus concocts a variety of ways to elevate himself and his life above that of everyone elses. Secluded in his apartment with the servants he does not ever want to see or hear, Des Esseintes obsesses over perfume, interior decorating, music, Latin, French literature, religion, the English, and a variety of other peculiarities. With each obsession, author Huysmans flexes his literary and intellectual muscles and spins over a dozen beguiling webs that subvert, invert, and entertain.
For example, when Des Esseintes decides to lock himself in his apartment and isolate himself from the rest of society, he obsesses over the color palette of each of his rooms and concocts a scheme to maximize each color used while also exploiting color combinations that have not yet been exploited. Des Esseintes particular obsession gives Huysmans a jumping off point from which to discuss any topic under the sun that has to do with colors, aesthetics, beauty, Parisian decorators, etc. Huysmans uses each of his characters individual idosyncracies as an opportunity to comment on contemporary society and all its woes.
While not a gripping novel in terms of plot or action, this is a fascinating read simply because of the number of topics and ideas that Huysman deals with in the course of its 200 pages. The writing is inspired, informative, and outright brilliant, and though ultimately unnecessary, Huysman has created in Des Esseintes a singularly unique literary figure.

This review is a copy of one I wrote for 'A Rebours' under its alternative title - 'Against Nature'. Perhaps it will be useful to readers of 'Against the Grain' - and act as a vector to the other reviews of this novel under the alternative title.

This is an extraordinarily self-indulgent work, a tirade by the author against all those sensual things that we enrich our lives with - food, wine, literature, religion, music, travel ..... And yet, in the end, the hero of the story, Des Esseintes, fails in his attempt to isolate himself and cocoon himself in all these things he treasures so much - he becomes ill and has to abandon the attempt. So why does this 'novel' work? It is a very strange one, but it is certainly a novel(ty), perhaps even a nova! Is it the fluidity of the writing (and the translation I read by Margaret Mauldon)? Is it the content that connects in so many ways, in so many directions? For me there was a special fascination although the basis for me as I had lived my life was totally different to Des Esseintes. His experience was a withdrawal from the world after extravagant and self-damaging, self-indulgence. For me, I had imagined doing exactly what Des Esseintes did (but my life turned in a different direction), but my basis had been one of rigorous but perhaps equally self-damaging, self-denial. Would the outcome have been different? I can only speculate but I suspect not. I think Huysmans is right on the money!

The book starts off beautifully, with a wonderful turn of phrase and a delightfully absurd main character. Too bad it dissolves into chapter after chapter of discourse on the main characters literary likes and dislikes (which often smacks of the author's taste bleeding through to the story) as an example of his internal character. Yes, the books reflect the man, but do I have to sit through a hundred pages of literary opinion? It's excessive past excessive when the point could have been made in one chapter, and dull to boot (considering these are mainly old Latin and French works with which most modern people would be unfamiliar).

It picks up a little at the end, when the main character's eccentric behavior finally does him in, and the doctor orders a return to normal life as the only cure. A return to more popular literature is the only cure for this book.