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trve_zach 's review for:
Against Nature
by Joris-Karl Huysmans
And that’s a wrap for Against Nature. I very much enjoyed it. It was a cool window into some of what was going on in France in the last 1800s, and it remains relevant in its striving for art to break free from its current constraints and to enact social change…for it to be boundless and free. It’s easy to see how this then influenced the surrealists (and novels like Dorian Gray).
It’s also a window into what Huysmans was grappling with, his need for religion battling against the skepticism of the day, his interest in weird, dark, esoteric things driving him away from people but wanting to connect and dive deeply into those things especially as he connects them to the darkness of Catholicism (God is vengeful).
Mostly I feel grateful for being able to escape to the time and place and ridiculousness of the book because it shows how necessary yet insane these higher pursuits are in a world with so much strife…and maybe that’s why it has endured for so long: It’s a haven for the weird and ridiculous and ostentatious and philosophical and spiritual and earthly…a place for other outsiders to gather and warm their hands and feet.
It’s also a window into what Huysmans was grappling with, his need for religion battling against the skepticism of the day, his interest in weird, dark, esoteric things driving him away from people but wanting to connect and dive deeply into those things especially as he connects them to the darkness of Catholicism (God is vengeful).
Mostly I feel grateful for being able to escape to the time and place and ridiculousness of the book because it shows how necessary yet insane these higher pursuits are in a world with so much strife…and maybe that’s why it has endured for so long: It’s a haven for the weird and ridiculous and ostentatious and philosophical and spiritual and earthly…a place for other outsiders to gather and warm their hands and feet.