A while back, we read Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray as a family. It’s a good book and I highly recommend it to any goth with a literary bent, but I’m not actually here to discuss that book. In Dorian Gray, Dorian reads a “poisonous French novel” that inspires him to indulge both his romantic nature and his dark side. With a bit of googling, I found out that book was a real book. At least, scholars widely believe Dorian was reading a novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans named A Rebours, often translated to English as Against Nature or Against the Grain.

I just had to know what this “poisonous novel” was about, so I downloaded an English translation from Project Gutenberg and began to read. I expected something shocking or sensual, at least by Victorian standards. Perhaps something like the Marquis de Sade or shades of the Grand Guignol. Turns out, the book that led Dorian Gray to a life of debauchery and eventually murder is nothing of the sort. Instead, it’s an account of a 19th century hipster trying to live the most perfectly aesthetic life he can. The main character has slightly gothic taste in art and decor, and he uses a lot of Catholic symbols in his decorating that might seem a tad blasphemous, but he’s not evil and nothing horrific happens.

Against the Grain doesn’t actually have much of a plot. The main character, Jean des Esseintes, is tired of Paris and moves to a country estate, where he spends all his time perfecting the decor and the book collections and such. He almost takes a trip to England, but gets tired and decides dinner at a British themed inn is good enough. He drives himself a little crazy being alone and obsessing so much over all these little aesthetic details, and eventually loses his appetite so completely he becomes quite sick. Eventually, he brings in a famous doctor who essentially tells him the cure is to go back to Paris and stop being so weird. This actualy sort of works, but Des Esseintes feels a bit empty without all that hipster stuff to obsess over. All the humor and humanity is in the details.

It’s kind of a parody of the aesthetic life, and parts of it are quite funny. Des Esseintes has all sorts of theories about how to have the perfectly aesthetic experience. He thinks artificial things are better than nature, so instead of going sailing he’ll decorate a room in his house to feel like a ships cabin, with fishing gear on the walls and “seaside scents” pumped in to give it a really authentic touch. He hates being up in the daytime so he decorates his entire house to only look perfect in evening candle light. He spends page after page choosing the most perfectly chilling art to decorate with, and the most perfectly creepy plants. He buys a tortoise and covers its shell with jewels so it can wander around looking artful, then frets because it doesn’t quite go with his rug. It’s all so hilariously over the top. I was quite sad for the tortoise, though.

There are a ton of references to real books and paintings and composers in this book, and I found myself googling a lot so I could get a clear picture of what Des Esseintes was doing. There are some very long discussions of Latin literature and religious philosophy that kind of dragged. I recognized some of the famous Latin names but I’m not familiar enough with either subject to have much reaction to Des Esseintes very strong opinions. Many references, though, were fun to look up. The artists mentioned were easy to google and fun to look at, for example. Even though Des Esseintes is clearly a silly man with silly theories, some of the stuff he likes is pretty cool. He spends time praising the “profound and strange Edgar Allen Poe,” and near the book’s beginning he describes an amazing party he once threw where every single food and decoration was black or dark red. He even dyed the gravel paths in his garden black. If I were as rich as Des Esseintes, I might throw a party like that. I can see why Dorian Gray was so fascinated by this novel.

In truth, if you could only read one of these novels, you should choose Dorian Gray. It’s an easier, more exciting story, and is trying to say something serious about human nature. Against the Grain is probably more for the hardcore literature geek, but if you’re ever bored and in a literary mood, it’s worth downloading and skimming through the funny bits.