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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 843.8
EAN num: 9780140447637
ISBN number: 0140447636
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 288
Printing Date: February 24, 2004
Publishing house: Penguin Classics
Release Date: February 24, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 25256
Studio: Penguin Classics
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A wildly original fin-de-siècle novel, Against Nature follows its sole character, Des Esseintes, a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where he indulges his taste for luxury and excess. Veering between nervous excitability and debilitating ennui, he gluts his aesthetic appetites with classical literature and art, exotic jewels (with which he fatally encrusts the shell of his tortoise), rich perfumes, and a kaleidoscope of sensual experiences. The original handbook of decadence, Against Nature exploded “like a grenade” (in the words of its author) and has enjoyed a cult readership from its publication to the present day.
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Rated by buyers 
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Started out at a 5-star level. Highly original ideas. The imagination of a Garcia Marquez novel.
Ended poorly. I could barely finish the end. As soon as Des Essentes's sickness appeared, the novel dropped off significantly. Too much focus on the inner thoughts of Des Essentes, which couldn't rival his actions. The voice of the novel changed suddenly at this time, as well. Instead of blending his encyclopedic knowledge with the imagination of Des Essentes, the tone became informative like an essay. I didn't care for this transition.
Rated by buyers -
"Against Nature" was Wilde's influence for "The Picture of Dorian Grey". It appears in that text as the mysterious "yellow book" that serves as young Dorian's map to the Dissolution and the Underworld. You should take Wilde's advice and let this novel soak into your subconscious like a fine liquor into your bloodstream; the passages describing Des Essientes' feelings on the poetry of Charles Baudelaire are alone worth the cost of a paperback edition.
Rated by buyers 
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Des Esseintes goes marchin' in, his chateau away from a society from which he has drunk too deeply. Retreating in a world of solitary sensuality, he finally suffers terminal ennui and at the end, finds the cross instead of a pistol. (Dorian had more guts). Now, one of the coolest things in this book, besides his introducing the street urchin to the pleasures of professional ladies, is Des Esseintes' realization that faux is good, faux works just as well as real, so long as it is a well conceived faux. Actually the simulated reality is often better, because we are never disillusioned by the diminished returns of the actual. When you are done reading this book, get thee to La Bas.
Rated by buyers -
First published in 1884, this story is a wonderful celebration of late 19th century French intellectual and esthetic dandyism. Huysmans' protagonist - the young aristocrat, Des Esseintes, scion of a decayed and ancient family right out of Edgar Alan Poe - is recognized as being a thinly disguised portrait of the author. Des Esseintes' disgust with the modern bourgeois world he sees burgeoning all around him propels his withdrawal into the various exquisite antechambers of his priviledged taste and precious, expensive education. The story procedes by set pieces, wonderfully descriptive passages describing in depth: art (painting), gastronomy (liqueurs), colour and architecture (interior decoration), jewelry (precious stones), sex (heterosexual and homosexual), botony (exotic flowers) and literature (the Latin masters). Huysmans' descriptions are delivered in wonderful rhythmic cadences, the adjectives used as much for the way they roll luxuriously off the mind's tongue as for their descriptive accuracy. This kind of intellectual dandyism, backed up by very real intellectual 'chops' is almost extinct in contemporary letters. Some of our writers could come close in describing the plastic arts and physical sensation, but as for the Latin authors celebrated or eviscerated by Esseintes - that scholarship is extinct. Especially wonderful are Des Esseints' description of Gustave Moreau's Salome and the depiction of English and American restaurant diners encountered during the protagonist's abortive trip to England. -In contemporary times I suppose Bret Ellis's AMERICAN PSYCHO, could be considered a pale, distopic pastiche of this book.
Rated by buyers -
Duc Jean Floressas des Esseintes is a scion of a long line of inbreeding French nobility, his ill-ridden and mentally challenged constitution the product of such. Misanthropic and eccentric to the point of psychotherapy, his disillusion with the society he was reared in compels him to retreat into a world of artifice and fancy, a retreat that he believes would be the therapy and answer to his alarmingly ailing self.
"Against Nature" ( A Rebours ) is the fascinating and unique account of one of the most oddest figures in literature. In opulent and colorful prose, J.-K. Huysmans vividly paints scene by scene the unusual actvities of this paradigm of decadence. Moving to the country with a few faithful servants and adhering to the decadent ideal of "artifice over reality", des Esseintes fulfills his fantasies. Beverages would be categorized under a musical instrument as each particular drink would remind this effete aesthete of a specific one. His elderly housemaid would be made to dress as a nun so when he sees her ascending by his window he would feel as if he were in church. A turtle would be decorated with sparkling gems on it's shell, to the ocular delight of the dandy. Numerous flowers of exotic nature would be fetched from flower shops and offbeat places for it's novelty's sake. Printing places would be commissioned to design the favorite books of our hero in such a way that he believes would best "compliment" and "represent" them. London is recreated in an English stopover in Paris.
There is also a nearly bibliographical enumeration of the main character's favorite authors, painters, and their works. Naturally, theire all outsiders. Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Barbey d'Aurevilly get the nod over sacred cows like Hugo. The paintings of Gustave Moreau are venerated to the exclusion of almost everyone else.
Inevitably, the novelty of his privileged social experiment loses it's vitality. As days pass and our hero runs out of ideas to sustain his bleakening status, Des Esseintes is forced to concede the painful fact that the only way a man of his background and stature could tolerate his existence is by making the most in the world of the much despised "society". With this ending Huysmans makes through the mind of his protagonist a stinging and pointed critique on the vulgarity of the masses.
Greeted with mixed reception at the time of it's publication, "Against Nature" was a surprising sucess that baffled and on the other hand inspired contemporary critics and readers with it's bizarre leading character and unorthodox style. Definitely, few novels can compare to the way author and work are similar and inseparable to each other. Though long-winded at times, this is the definitive decadent novel by one of the most representative individuals of the genre.
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