Rating: 
Summary: by all measures - amazing!
Review: This is an extraordinarily self-indulgent work, a tirade by the author against all those sensual things that we enrich our lives with - food, wine, literature, religion, music, travel ..... And yet, in the end, the hero of the story, Des Esseintes, fails in his attempt to isolate himself and cocoon himself in all these things he treasures so much - he becomes ill and has to abandon the attempt. So why does this 'novel' work? It is a very strange one, but it is certainly a novel(ty), perhaps even a nova! Is it the fluidity of the writing (and the translation I read by Margaret Mauldon)? Is it the content that connects in so many ways, in so many directions? For me there was a special fascination although the basis for me was totally different to Des Esseintes. His experience was a withdrawal from the world after extravagant and self-damaging self-indulgence. For me, I had imagined doing exactly what Des Esseintes did (but my life turned in a different direction), but my basis was one of rigorous but perhaps equally self-damaging self-denial. Would the outcome have been different? I can only speculate but I suspect not. I think Huysmans is right on the money!
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites....
Review: This utterly decadent novel by the 19th century authour Joris-Karl Huysmann is in my opinion one of the best books written.Revolving around the dandy, and aesthete des Esseintes who eschews modern life of that period, and everything common this book is somewhat like a detailed descriptive account. In the beginning he reminisces about his mistresses, and past life as a social butterfly. There is also an episode of him ordering a large tortise to be covered in gold, and set with gems on the shell. His artistic interests include Gustave Moreau, and the famous prints of Goya which depicted the evils of people. And there is a long chapter of the bibliophilic interests of the des Essientes. I highly reccommend this book for anybody looking to expand their knowledge about 19h century France, decadence, dandies, and other arcania.
Rating: 
Summary: Decadence and gravitas
Review: Who is Des Esseintes? A misanthrope, a learned man, a skeptical Catholic, a Schopenhauerian pessimist, an aesthete of the highest order. What is Des Esseintes like? Serious, thoughtful, anxious, emotional, reclusive, self-centered. Why do I know so much about this man? Because this 'novel' is really a description of Des Esseintes, a thorough investigation of his mind, his desires, his doubts, his dreams, his tastes and his illusions. It is a study so personal and penetrating as to be necessarily autobiographical, yet most of the book is not really about the man himself, but rather his tastes in literature, art and other fine things. The work reminds one variously of an essay on aesthetics and a treatise on the modern condition, as we learn about Des Esseintes' thoughts and (more importantly) the emotions awakened by reading Petronius, Baudelaire, Dickens or Schopenhauer, or studying the paintings of Goya, Rembrandt, or Moreau. He lives in an isolated house far from company, and spends his time arranging his surroundings in predetermined ways: shelfing his priceless books, hanging his morbid paintings on the wall, color co-ordinating his furniture with extreme care, sorting his liqueurs. He does not want the world created by nature and history, he wants to create his own life and environment from scratch with only aestethic, philosophical and emotional considerations. This is what makes him decadent: the longing of a civilized man to create a new world all to himself, focusing single-mindedly on details, letting sensuality, form, and beauty reign over rules and rationality. At the same time, Huysmans/Des Esseintes clearly struggles with the main problem of modern moral philosophy: how to live in a world without the order imposed and the meaning endowed by faith in absolute truth, transcendence and immortality. Having been taught in a Jesuit college, Des Esseintes longs for the sacraments and security of the Church, but is at the same time repulsed by its absurdities and full of doubts about its message. He seeks consolation in the pessimism of Schopenhauer, in denying life and the worth of human beings, in imagining evil and repugnant acts against all that is sacred. Yet this fierce movement back and forth between extremes never leads him to a higher unity and synthesis, it serves only to make him more neuralgic, dyspeptic and malevolent. He is too much of a perfectionist to be satisfied, too disturbed to be happy.
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