Against the Grain
J.-K. Huysmans (1848–1907), 1884
★ 3.78 from 16k ratings on Goodreads
A jaded aristocrat builds a house for one, fills it with jewels, liqueurs and strange books, and tries to live entirely on his nerves. A solitary, melancholy drift through rooms of jewels and books, told in ornate, satirical, sometimes uneasy prose.
Feels like melancholy, unease and serenity. About solitude and art.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy decadent, inward-looking fiction that treats taste and artifice as a way of life. The plot is slight and the prose is densely ornamental, with long catalogues of jewels, scents and books that can make it a slow, demanding read.
Why read it
It offers a strange, concentrated portrait of a mind trying to replace ordinary life with art, and its influence on later Decadent writing makes it worth reading now.
Pages from the book
How much adornment a small life can bear.
It still lay quite still; he touched it, it was dead. Accustomed no doubt to a sedentary life, an uneventful existence spent under its humble carapace, it had not been able to support the dazzling splendour imposed on it, the glittering garment in which it had been clad, the pavement of precious stones wherewith they had inlaid its poor back like a jewelled pyx. The silence you chose, when it starts to feel like a cell.
Once more, this solitude he had so ardently desired and won at last had resulted in poignant distress; this silence that had once appealed to him as a consolation for all the fools’ chatter he had listened to for years, now weighed upon him with an intolerable burden. One morning, he had awoke as frenzied in mind as a man who finds himself locked up in a prison cell; his trembling lips moved to cry out, but no sound came, tears rose to his eyes, he felt choked like one who has been sobbing bitterly for hours. The ordinary textures and sounds that make a body recoil.
Since his earliest childhood he had been tormented by inexplicable repulsions, shuddering spasms that froze his backbone and clenched his teeth, whenever, for instance, he saw a servant-maid in the act of wringing out wet linen. These instinctive dislikes had never changed, and to that day it caused him genuine suffering to hear a piece of stuff torn in two, to rub his finger over a lump of chalk, to stroke the surface of watered silk. J.-K. Huysmans.Huysmans spent thirty years as a civil servant; À rebours, published in 1884, became a touchstone for Decadent writers, and the 'yellow book' in Wilde's Dorian Gray is modelled on it.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Against the Grain for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy decadent, inward-looking fiction that treats taste and artifice as a way of life. The plot is slight and the prose is densely ornamental, with long catalogues of jewels, scents and books that can make it a slow, demanding read.
- What is Against the Grain like?
- A solitary, melancholy drift through rooms of jewels and books, told in ornate, satirical, sometimes uneasy prose. Feels like melancholy, unease and serenity. About solitude and art.
- What should I read after Against the Grain?
- If you liked Against the Grain, try The Counterfeiters (André Gide), Niels Lyhne (J. P. Jacobsen) and Dubliners (James Joyce).
A taste of the feed
The relief of discovering you owe nothing to the people who raised you.
Owing to an accidental discovery I happened to make this afternoon, I have become aware that I must cease to regard you as my father. This is an immense relief to me. Realizing as I do how little affection I feel for you, I have for a long time past been thinking myself an unnatural son; I prefer knowing I am not your son at all.
The Counterfeiters · André Gide
The fear of people who feel too much, and the wish to burn slowly.
Involuntarily he made a gesture as if to ward it off with his hand. After all, he was afraid in his inmost heart of this mighty thing called passion. This storm-wind sweeping away everything settled and authorized and acquired in humanity as if it were dead leaves. He did not like it! This roaring flame squandering itself in its own smoke—no, he wanted to burn slowly.
Niels Lyhne · J. P. Jacobsen
What it is to love someone you have barely spoken to.
Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.
Dubliners · James Joyce
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