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19th century novel by a French writer with a Dutch name, Joris-Karl Huysmans, ''A Rebours'' was first published in 1884. It has been translated into English as ''Against the Grain'' and, more recently, as ''Against Nature''. The novel tells the story of the young dandy and aesthete, Jean, Duc des Esseintes, who becomes disgusted with the society of his day and tries to escape from it by constructing a "refined Thebaid" - a house where he lives completely alone, surrounded by the artistic objects and books that obsess him and living out his aesthetic daydreams. "Story" is perhaps pushing it a bit; this is one of the more plotless novels of its age and duels, love affairs, court cases over wills and characters who turn out to be each other's long lost relatives are pretty much absent. The real conflict is psychological, between des Esseintes and his own society, and the real question is whether he will succeed in making the life he wants independent of it. He's more or less the sole character of the book. Everyone else is seen through his eyes.▼
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19th century novel by a French writer with a Dutch name, Joris-Karl Huysmans, ''[[À rebours]]'' was first published in 1884. It has been translated into English as ''Against the Grain'' and, more recently, as ''Against Nature''.
▲
''A Rebours'' was hugely influential on the so-called "Decadent" writers of the 1890s in France and Britain, with the critic Arthur Symons describing it as "the breviary of the Decadence". The Decadents reacted against Victorian sexual repression, rationalism and naturalistic fiction in the direction of excess, romanticism and writing exploring "forbidden" themes. Perhaps its most famous fan was Oscar Wilde, who was heavily influenced by ''A Rebours'' in writing ''[[The Picture of Dorian Gray]]'', including in his description of the "novel without a plot" that helps lead Dorian astray.▼
▲''
Fun fact: In real life, Huysmans was a civil servant and worked for the French Interior Ministry, on whose stationery he wrote his novels.
{{tropelist}}
* [[Aristocrats Are Evil]] - The novel begins with a description of portraits of some of des Esseintes' ancestors, one of whom inhabited a [[Deadly Decadent Court]] and sounds very much like this.
▲* [[Aristocrats Are Evil]] - The novel begins with a description of portraits of some of des Esseintes' ancestors, one of whom inhabited a [[Deadly Decadent Court]] and sounds very much like this. Des Esseintes himself is something of an aversion.
* [[Bi the Way]] - Although des Esseintes is generally heterosexual, there is an incident in the novel where he forms a brief relationship with a young man that is apparently homosexual in nature, to judge by the mention of des Esseintes' soul being pre-conditioned "by a hereditary tendency dating from the reign of Henri III," a French king notorious for his male lovers.
* [[Author Tract]] - Much of the novel is made up of des Esseintes' thoughts and opinions about art, culture, religion and life, many of which are also Huysmans'. It's no coincidence; he had a strong tendency to do this in all of his novels.
* [[The Dandy]] - Who do you think? To be fair to des Esseintes, he falls at the aesthetic, "surround myself with gorgeous objects" end of the spectrum. He's not just a clothes horse. However, he certainly likes them fancy duds, to judge by some of the descriptions - "suits of white velvet with gold-laced waistcoasts," for example.
* [[Death by Origin Story]] - By the time the main action of ''
* [[Europeans Are Kinky]] - Apart from some major-league womanizing in his younger days, which ultimately bored him and turned him towards an aesthetic lifestyle, des Esseintes at one point seduces a female circus acrobat and also a woman who turns him on by using her skills as a professional ventriloquist to pretend that her husband is about to break in on them. And that's before even considering the [[Ho Yay]] stuff mentioned above...
* [[Go Mad From the Isolation]] - Whilst he's not all worried about this happening, des Esseintes' doctor clearly is.
* [[The Hermit]] -
* [[Jerkass]] -
* [[Intelligence Equals Isolation]] -
* [[Lonely Rich Kid]] -
* [[Mundane Made Awesome]] -
* [[Orange-Blue Contrast]]: In the first chapter
{{quote|''After the whole was arranged and finished, all these several tints fell into accord at night and did not clash at all; the blue of the woodwork struck a stable note that was pleasing and satisfying to the eye, supported and warmed, so to say, by the surrounding shades of orange, which for their part shone out with a pure, unsullied gorgeousness, itself backed up and in a way heightened by the near presence of the blue.''}}
* [[Purple Prose]] - Huysmans really lays this on with a trowel. It's the feature of his style he tends to be most remembered for in French literature, and given that there's a lot of description of lavish furnishings, art works, antique objects and so on, he gets plenty of opportunity to use it.
* [[Raised Catholic]] -
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