Against the Grain, or Against Nature

Description

Against Nature is a novel that finds delight in seducing the reader just as its main protagonist, Jean des Esseintes finds delight in everything ethereal. Author Joris-Karl Huysmans shoved his hands in the hard clay of 19th century society and molded a man that stands firmly against the ever-powerful current of the bourgeois lifestyle.

Meet Jean des Esseintes, an aristocrat and man of arts that has had his fill of the decadent and otherwise boring affairs of the pretentious and the rich. As a result, the man leaves Paris in favor of his house in the countryside. The novel reflects on the machinations of a man who embraces solitude as opposed to loneliness, a decision which leaves him with the best company. Art and literature.

Des Esseintes is Huysmans’ answer to a society that takes itself too seriously and, at the same time stands, as a timeless reflection of the present. Against the Nature is a novel that will delve into the aristocrat’s decadent past and love for excess. Treating a subject as sensible as the past, Joris-Karl Huysmans admits that this idea of admiration for beauty coming from a man like Des Esseintes “exploded like a grenade in his hand”.

While Huysmans’ other works employed a Naturalist style with grittiness and dirty Parisian landscapes, Against Nature seceded from the often used style with the emergence of the Symbolist aesthetic. The result? Nothing short of a man that speaks his mind and may become your type of friend. A man who fancies Baudelaire and Tristant Corbiere and dabbles in painting and gardening. A novel that stands the test of time because it speaks to everyone with the same language – the language of desire to escape into one’s own pleasures. A world of our own.
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