Joris-Karl Huysmans's Books

La-Bas

By: Joris-Karl Huysmans,Keene Wallace

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Published in 1891, LA-BAS is Huysmans' best-selling novel; its success was due, in part, to its sensational contents (descriptions of Satanism in late 1880 France.) It is in this novel that Huysmans' character, Durtal, is introduced for the first time. This character is thought to be a semi-autobiographical depiction of the author and is used in his next three books which chart Durtal's (and Huysmans') search for religious truths and his ultimate conversion to Roman Catholicism. The journey begins with the viewing of an extremely realistic painting: "In Germany, before a Crucifixion by Matthaeus Grunewald, he had found what he was seeking.

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Page Count

240

Published Date

ISBN 10

1598181319

ISBN 13

9781598181319

The Cathedral

By: Joris-Karl Huysmans,Clara Bell

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The Cathedral

By: Joris-Karl Huysmans,Clara Bell

The Virgin had appeared to two children on a hill. By another coincidence, this Saturday was the eve of the Festival of Our Lady of Seven Dolours. And she appeared as Our Lady of Tears in that desert landscape of stubborn rocks and dismal hills. Weeping bitterly, She had uttered reproofs and threats. The fame of this event spread far and wide; frantic thousands scrambled up fearful paths to a spot so high that trees could not grow there. Suddenly the peaks parted, a wide opening brought the train out into broad daylight; the scene lay clear before them, terrible on all sides. "Le Drac!" exclaimed the Abbe Gevresin, pointing to a sort of liquid serpent at the bottom of the precipice, writhing and tossing between rocks in the very jaws of the pit.

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Page Count

288

Publisher

Alan Rodgers Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1598181327

ISBN 13

9781598181326

A Dilemma

By: Joris-Karl Huysmans

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A Dilemma

By: Joris-Karl Huysmans

Originally published in book form in French in 1887, Joris-Karl Huysmans' A Dilemma remains a particularly nasty little tale, a mordantly satiric and cruel account of bourgeois greed and manipulation that holds up as clear a mirror to today's neoliberalist times as it did to the French fin-de-siècle. Written smack in-between Huysmans' most famous works--his 1881 Against Nature, which came to define the Decadent movement, and his 1891 exploration of Satanism, Down There--A Dilemma presents some of Huysmans' most memorable characters, including Madame Champagne, the self-appointed Parisian protector of women in need, and the carnal would-be sophisticate notary Le Ponsart, who wages a war of words with the bereft pregnant mistress of his deceased grandson with devastating consequences. In its unflinching portrayal of how authoritarian language can be used and abused as a weapon, this novella stands as Huysmans' indictment of the underlying crime of the novel itself: a language apparatus employed to maintain the appetites of the ruling class. Earning a wage through a career in the French civil service, Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) quietly explored the extremes of human nature and artifice through a series of books that influenced a number of different literary movements: from the grey and grimy Naturalism of books like Marthe and Downstream to the cornerstones of the Decadent movement, Against Nature and the Satanist classic Down There, the dream-ridden Surrealist favorite, Becalmed, and his Catholic novels, The Cathedral and The Oblate.

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ISBN 10

1939663113

ISBN 13

9781939663115

Against Nature (a Rebours)

By: Joris Karl Huysmans

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Against Nature (a Rebours)

By: Joris Karl Huysmans

Against Nature (A Rebours) By Joris-Karl Huysmans, John Howard (Translated by)

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Page Count

176

Published Date

ISBN 10

1613824645

ISBN 13

9781613824641

Against Nature

A Novel

By: Joris-Karl Huysmans

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Against Nature

A Novel

By: Joris-Karl Huysmans

Joris-Karl Huysmans’s cult classic of deviance and decadence that inspired Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, now in a new translation by Theo Cuffe A celebration of deviance, vanity, sensual abandon, and the aesthetics of artifice, Against Nature brings us the nineteenth-century rebel Jean Des Esseintes—disaffected, degenerate, and art obsessed. The last of a proud and noble family, Des Esseintes retreats from the world in disgust at bourgeois society and leads a life based on cultivation of the senses through art. He distills perfumes from the rarest oils and essences, creates a garden of poisonous flowers, sets gemstones in a tortoise’s gold-painted shell, and plans to corrupt a street urchin until he is degraded enough to commit murder. Des Esseintes’s groundbreaking aesthetic pilgrimage in Against Nature has served as the guidebook to decadence for more than a century, inspiring writers from Oscar Wilde to Michel Houellebecq. A pioneer whose early work took inspiration from Baudelaire and Zola, Joris-Karl Huysmans was a founder of the nineteenth-century decadent movement. Against Nature has influenced countless writers and artists and enjoys a cult following to this day. This new translation by Theo Cuffe, with a foreword by Lucy Sante, captures the magnificence of Huysmans’s famous style—filled with wit and irony, expressiveness and precision, erudition and sensuality.

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Page Count

225

Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published Date

ISBN 10

0374721661

ISBN 13

9780374721664

Down There (La-Bas)

By: J. K. Huysmans,Keene Wallace

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Down There (La-Bas)

By: J. K. Huysmans,Keene Wallace

French novelist Charles Marie George Huysmans (1848-1907) adopted the pseudonym Joris-Karl, or J.-K. Huysmans, for his novels, short stories and art criticism. His thirty-year tenure at the French Ministry of the Interior allowed him the financial and personal freedom to write as he pleased. In the same vein as his mentor, Emile Zola, Huysmans' writings were largely naturalistic. Huysmans' novels were somewhat controversial at the time of publication, as they often dealt with themes of religion, social and political commentary, and in the case of his 1891 novel, "La-Bas," Satanism. "La-Bas, or Down There," is the first of a series of novels in which Huysmans' explores his only personal struggle with religious faith through his characters, in this case the main character, Durtal. The novel explores religious and philosophical extremes, and depicts Satanism in the late 1880s through the eyes of Durtal, who is seeking respite from what he sees as a disgusting and vulgar modern world.

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Page Count

150

Publisher

Digireads.com Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1420942913

ISBN 13

9781420942910

The Damned (là-Bas): Large Print

By: Joris-Karl Huysmans

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The Damned (là-Bas): Large Print

By: Joris-Karl Huysmans

The Damned (Là-bas)by Joris-Karl HuysmansAt the novel's center is Durtal, a writer obsessed with the life of one of the blackest figures in history, Gilles de Rais -- child murderer, sadist, necrophile, and practitioner of all the black arts. The book's authentic, extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the Black Mass have never been surpassed.

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Page Count

226

Publisher

Independently Published

Published Date

ISBN 10

1731518420

ISBN 13

9781731518422

Book's by Joris-Karl Huysmans

La-Bas

La-Bas

The Cathedral

The Cathedral

A Dilemma

A Dilemma

Against Nature (a Rebours)

Against Nature (a Rebours)

Against Nature

Against Nature

Down There (La-Bas)

Down There (La-Bas)

The Damned (là-Bas): Large Print

The Damned (là-Bas): Large Print

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