| Against the Grain by Joris-Karl Huysmans, Fiction, Classics, Literary, Action & Adventure, Romance Contributor(s): Huysmans, Joris-Karl (Author), Howard, John (Translator) |
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ISBN: 1598181335 ISBN-13: 9781598181333 Publisher: Aegypan OUR PRICE: $34.15 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: July 2006 Annotation: "There was only one living scion of this family which had once been so numerous that it had occupied all the territories of the Ile-de-France and La Brie. The Duc Jean was a slender, nervous young man of thirty, with hollow cheeks, cold, steel-blue eyes, a straight, thin nose and delicate hands." Thus we are introduced to the character of Des Esseintes in a novel that has been banned and censored for years, but still lives on as being one of the finest examples of the "decadent" literature written by "fin-de-siecle" (late nineteenth century) writers. Oscar Wilde, himself, called the novel "the Breviary of Decadence." |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Romance - General - Fiction | Action & Adventure - Fiction | Classics |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Physical Information: 0.69" H x 6" W x 9" (1.06 lbs) 232 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Against the Grain's narrative concentrates almost entirely on its principal character and is mostly a catalogue of the tastes and inner life of Jean des Esseintes, an eccentric, reclusive aesthete and antihero who loathes 19th-century bourgeois society and tries to retreat into an ideal artistic world of his own creation. "There was only one living scion of this family which had once been so numerous that it had occupied all the territories of the Ile-de-France and La Brie. The Duc Jean was a slender, nervous young man of thirty, with hollow cheeks, cold, steel-blue eyes, a straight, thin nose and delicate hands." Thus we are introduced to the character of Des Esseintes in a novel that has been banned and censored for years, but still lives on as being one of the finest examples of the "decadent" literature written by fin-de-siecle (late nineteenth century) writers. Oscar Wilde, himself, called the novel "the Breviary of Decadence." |
Contributor Bio(s): Huysmans, Joris-Karl: - "Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans (1848 - 1907) was a French novelist who published his works as J.K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans. Huysmans' work is considered remarkable for its idiosyncratic use of the French language, large vocabulary, descriptions, satirical wit and far-ranging erudition. First considered part of Naturalism, he became associated with the decadent movement with his publication of A rebours. His work expressed his deep pessimism, which had led him to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. In later years, his novels reflected his study of Catholicism, religious conversion and becoming an oblate." |