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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
Very much of its time. Truly evocative of an important, strange, and unrepeatable place and time in European history.
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
April 7th, 2016
I finished this book more than two months ago and it’s been lying unreviewed since, partly because I hadn’t time to review it and partly because I didn’t know how to review it. I could have just written a short account of how much I enjoyed reading the book, especially the art and literature sections, but I always like to find a unique angle on the books I review, I like to find something to say, or at least a way to say it, that may not have been thought of before, impossible as that may seem. So this book has lingered on the edges of my consciousness for the last two months, not terribly present but not forgotten either.
This week I read RL Stevenson’s [b:Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde|51496|Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde|Robert Louis Stevenson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1318116526l/51496._SY75_.jpg|3164921], an unusual book that made me think a lot while I was reading and reviewing it, and afterwards while discussing it in the comments thread. One of the things that occurred to me in the course of those discussions was a possible parallel between Stevenson’s work and this book, Against Nature, or Against the Grain, as the title is translated in English. I felt sure I had found my unique angle, oblique as it seemed at first viewing.
The hero of this book, Jean des Esseintes, is the last of a line of distinguished aristocrats. The opening scene describes the portraits that still hang at the family ancestral seat, the Chateau de Lourps; the ancestors were all solid, well-built specimens, portrayed at the peak of their health and vigour. All except one. That ancient portrait revealed a very decadent looking individual with a sly, vulpine look on his narrow face (the name Lourps is close to the word for wolves in French: loups).
We are then told that for several generations the des Esseintes family married their cousins so that Jean, the final member of the clan, is a particularly anaemic character, who, as a result of some curious atavistic phenomenon, resembles most closely his sly and vulpine ancestor.
Gradually, we learn more and more about des Esseintes and the depraved life he seems intent on pursuing. No experience is too perverse for him and he seeks out every extreme. It is as if Huysmans had set out to investigate every possible form of orgy our senses can be exposed to, and had created des Esseintes as an alter ego with the aim of living those experiences vicariously through him in a kind of Jekyll and Hyde parallel. Huysmans even gives des Esseintes an interest in chemical experiments just as Dr Jekyll had, and he is passionate about poisonous plants and all sorts of esoteric theories and practices.
But at a certain point in the book, Huysmans makes his character halt and take stock, as if the author feels he has gone too far with the experiment. He brings des Esseintes back little by little from the almost psychotic state he had allowed him to sink into, but not without making him suffer horrible symptoms quite like the ones which Dr Jekyll suffers when he is experiencing his transformations.
The parallels between the two books end there since Huysmans takes his character in quite a different direction to the one Stevenson chose for the finally repentant Doctor Jekyll. Des Esseintes is destined to climb as high as he had previously descended and to explore the mystical side of his nature, hand in hand with his author.
.........................................................
When I had written the previous paragraphs, I wondered if this particular angle on [b:À rebours|1312641|À rebours|Joris-Karl Huysmans|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1358735926l/1312641._SY75_.jpg|306152] wasn't a bit too quixotic, too chimeric. Could I really argue for a parallel between the two books? Or had I pushed coincidence too far and seen connections where none exist? I thought perhaps that I ought to have stuck with the original theme that had played on my mind on finishing the book, a kind of Jesuitical meditation on the senses. Or should I have taken the review in the direction of Houellebecq's [b:Soumission|23929479|Soumission|Michel Houellebecq|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1421431410l/23929479._SY75_.jpg|43535062], the book I'd been reading when I picked up Huysmans' work. Or even tried to relate it to Proust, given the parallels between the des Esseintes character and Proust's famous Baron de Charlus, both said to be modelled on the real life Robert de Montesquiou.
I opened my copy of the book once again and flicked through the forty page introduction by Marc Fumaroli. I'm not a great reader of introductions unless they are by the author or by the translator in the case of translated works. As I scanned the pale grey tiny italic font of this one, the names Jekyll and Hyde jumped out at me from the top of page thirty. Fumaroli had seen the same parallel I had—though I found only that single reference to Stevenson's work in the entire forty pages.
But I did find several references to Proust—and, surprise, surprise, many references to the chimeric [b:Don Quixote|3836|Don Quixote|Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546112331l/3836._SX50_.jpg|121842]!
My reading life is determined to trigger link after link after link..
Only connect
.....................................................................
February 4th, 2016
review to come (when I return from a trip) but in the meantime, the interiority of this image to meditate upon:
Odilon Redon Les Yeux Clos 1890 Musée d'Orsay
I finished this book more than two months ago and it’s been lying unreviewed since, partly because I hadn’t time to review it and partly because I didn’t know how to review it. I could have just written a short account of how much I enjoyed reading the book, especially the art and literature sections, but I always like to find a unique angle on the books I review, I like to find something to say, or at least a way to say it, that may not have been thought of before, impossible as that may seem. So this book has lingered on the edges of my consciousness for the last two months, not terribly present but not forgotten either.
This week I read RL Stevenson’s [b:Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde|51496|Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde|Robert Louis Stevenson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1318116526l/51496._SY75_.jpg|3164921], an unusual book that made me think a lot while I was reading and reviewing it, and afterwards while discussing it in the comments thread. One of the things that occurred to me in the course of those discussions was a possible parallel between Stevenson’s work and this book, Against Nature, or Against the Grain, as the title is translated in English. I felt sure I had found my unique angle, oblique as it seemed at first viewing.
The hero of this book, Jean des Esseintes, is the last of a line of distinguished aristocrats. The opening scene describes the portraits that still hang at the family ancestral seat, the Chateau de Lourps; the ancestors were all solid, well-built specimens, portrayed at the peak of their health and vigour. All except one. That ancient portrait revealed a very decadent looking individual with a sly, vulpine look on his narrow face (the name Lourps is close to the word for wolves in French: loups).
We are then told that for several generations the des Esseintes family married their cousins so that Jean, the final member of the clan, is a particularly anaemic character, who, as a result of some curious atavistic phenomenon, resembles most closely his sly and vulpine ancestor.
Gradually, we learn more and more about des Esseintes and the depraved life he seems intent on pursuing. No experience is too perverse for him and he seeks out every extreme. It is as if Huysmans had set out to investigate every possible form of orgy our senses can be exposed to, and had created des Esseintes as an alter ego with the aim of living those experiences vicariously through him in a kind of Jekyll and Hyde parallel. Huysmans even gives des Esseintes an interest in chemical experiments just as Dr Jekyll had, and he is passionate about poisonous plants and all sorts of esoteric theories and practices.
But at a certain point in the book, Huysmans makes his character halt and take stock, as if the author feels he has gone too far with the experiment. He brings des Esseintes back little by little from the almost psychotic state he had allowed him to sink into, but not without making him suffer horrible symptoms quite like the ones which Dr Jekyll suffers when he is experiencing his transformations.
The parallels between the two books end there since Huysmans takes his character in quite a different direction to the one Stevenson chose for the finally repentant Doctor Jekyll. Des Esseintes is destined to climb as high as he had previously descended and to explore the mystical side of his nature, hand in hand with his author.
.........................................................
When I had written the previous paragraphs, I wondered if this particular angle on [b:À rebours|1312641|À rebours|Joris-Karl Huysmans|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1358735926l/1312641._SY75_.jpg|306152] wasn't a bit too quixotic, too chimeric. Could I really argue for a parallel between the two books? Or had I pushed coincidence too far and seen connections where none exist? I thought perhaps that I ought to have stuck with the original theme that had played on my mind on finishing the book, a kind of Jesuitical meditation on the senses. Or should I have taken the review in the direction of Houellebecq's [b:Soumission|23929479|Soumission|Michel Houellebecq|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1421431410l/23929479._SY75_.jpg|43535062], the book I'd been reading when I picked up Huysmans' work. Or even tried to relate it to Proust, given the parallels between the des Esseintes character and Proust's famous Baron de Charlus, both said to be modelled on the real life Robert de Montesquiou.
I opened my copy of the book once again and flicked through the forty page introduction by Marc Fumaroli. I'm not a great reader of introductions unless they are by the author or by the translator in the case of translated works. As I scanned the pale grey tiny italic font of this one, the names Jekyll and Hyde jumped out at me from the top of page thirty. Fumaroli had seen the same parallel I had—though I found only that single reference to Stevenson's work in the entire forty pages.
But I did find several references to Proust—and, surprise, surprise, many references to the chimeric [b:Don Quixote|3836|Don Quixote|Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546112331l/3836._SX50_.jpg|121842]!
My reading life is determined to trigger link after link after link..
Only connect
.....................................................................
February 4th, 2016
review to come (when I return from a trip) but in the meantime, the interiority of this image to meditate upon:
Odilon Redon Les Yeux Clos 1890 Musée d'Orsay
“Already, he was dreaming of a refined solitude, a comfortable desert, a motionless ark in which to seek refuge from the unending deluge of human stupidity.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain
Against the Grain (alternately translated as Against Nature) is a slim novel (110 pages) where French author Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) employs a torrent of baroque descriptions and unending streams of rococo linguistic curlicues to write about a bored, jaded aristocrat by the name of Des Esseintes, who uses his inherited wealth to seal himself off in a custom-made, artificial world where he can live his entire life on his own aesthetic and highly refined terms. There really isn’t any dialogue or other characters, nor is there any plot or storyline in the ordinary sense of the term, rather, the novel describes the details of Des Esseintes’s life as a monk of the sensual.
We read how Des Esseintes forced his servants to wear heavy felt covers over their shoes so he wouldn’t hear the sound of their feet up on the 2nd floor; how, in dealing with the weakened state of his stomach, he planned his meals at the beginning of each season; how his senses were titillated and stimulated: his sense of smell by perfumes and scented powders, his taste by rare wines and all variety of liquors, his eyes by carefully chosen colors and exotic flowers, his hypersensitive touch by silks and cottons and many other fine fabrics. We are also provided exquisite detail of, among other luxurious, lavish, plush, extravagant belongings, his vast library of rare books, ancient and modern, and his marvelous collection of paintings and prints.
My words above are relatively plain, not even close to the style of Huysmans’s ornate, exaggerated language. As by way of example, here is Des Esseintes reflecting on two modern authors he enjoys: “Baudelaire and Poe, these two men who had often been compared because of their common poetic strain and predilection for the examination of mental maladies, differed radically in the affective conceptions which held such a large place in their works; Baudelaire with his iniquitous and debased loves – cruel loves which made one think of the reprisals of an inquisition; Poe with his chaste, aerial loves, in which the senses played no part, where only the mind functioned without corresponding to organs which, if they existed, remained forever frozen and virgin. This cerebral clinic where, vivisecting in a stifling atmosphere, that spiritual surgeon became, as soon as his attention flagged, a prey to an imagination which evoked, like delicious miasmas, somnambulistic and angelic apparitions, was to Des Esseintes a source of unwearying conjecture.”
And here is the reaction of Des Esseintes when forced to encounter others on the street, “The very sight of certain faces made him suffer. He considered the crabbed expressions of some, insulting. He felt a desire to slap the fellow who walked, eyes closed, with such a learned air; the one who minced along, smiling at his image in the window panes; and the one who seemed stimulated by a whole world of thought while devouring with contracted brow, the tedious contents of a newspaper.”
Here's a description of one of the many flowers he purchased, “A new plant, modeled like the Caladiums, the Alocasia Metallica, excited him even more. It was coated with a layer of bronze green on which glanced silver reflections. It was a masterpiece of articiality. It could be called a piece of stove pipe, cut by a chimney-maker into the form of a pike head.”
That’s enough quotes as I’m sure you get the idea. This is the arched, over-the-top language a reader will find on every page. Either this novel is to your taste or it is not. But there’s something about this cult-favorite of decadent prose that is so intriguing and fascinating. Perhaps it is reading about a lover of the senses and literature and all things aesthetic who has the money and resources to create his very own virtual reality. For me, I love it, finding the lavish, ornate language and many of the descriptions laugh-aloud hilarious.
Although my own life and level of wealth differs greatly from Des Esseintes, I can see part of myself in his immersion in the worlds of art and literature and his absolute revulsion for much of the general run of society and its coarse values (as I write this I have a mental picture of a smirking potbellied husband and his obese wife in their white pants and gold chains waddling into a Las Vegas casino). So, in a way, I am laughing at myself as much as I am laughing at Des Esseintes.
One further note: I chose this translation by John Howard since the audiobook is available through LibriVox (available on-line, free-of-charge). For me, listening to this reading of Against the Grain was a lush, rich, glorious experience, reminding me of listening to Frans Brüggen on alto recorder playing Variations on La Follia by Corelli. Fortunately you don’t have to be a wealthy decadent French aristocrat to indulge in this sumptuous feast of words.
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
slow-paced
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes