Joris Karl Huysmans Books In Order

Novels

  1. The Vatard Sisters (1879)
  2. En Menage (1881)
  3. Against the Grain (1884)
  4. Becalmed (1884)
  5. Stranded (1887)
  6. Certains (1889)
  7. Down There (1891)
  8. En Route (1895)
  9. The Cathedral (1898)
  10. The Oblate of St. Benedict (1903)
  11. St Lydwine of Schiedam (1923)
  12. Against Nature (1959)
  13. The Damned (La-bas) (2001)

Collections

Novellas

  1. With the Flow (1882)

Non fiction

  1. The Road from Decadence: From Brothel to Cloister (1989)

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Joris Karl Huysmans Books Overview

Against the Grain

ReadHowYouWant publishes a wide variety of best selling books in Large and Super Large fonts in partnership with leading publishers. EasyRead books are available in 11pt and 13pt. type. EasyRead Large books are available in 16pt, 16pt Bold, and 18pt Bold type. EasyRead Super Large books are available in 20pt. Bold and 24pt. Bold Type. You choose the format that is right for you. Delving deep into human psychology, Huysmans explains the formation of a personality and how some childhood deprivations force Des Esseintes to abandon the world and create one of his own. Cited differently as a ghost story, horror story and mystery, the novel is also an expedition in psychology as well as emblem of 19th century decadence of literature. To find more titles in your format, Search in Books using EasyRead and the size of the font that makes reading easier and more enjoyable for you.

Becalmed

The protagonist of ‘Becalmed‘ seeks spiritual shelter in the countryside. He finds not rest but a nightmare a gruesome crumbling house, peasants both stupid and cunning, and the landscape indeed the whole natural world in a ghastly state of decay. ‘A hemorrhage of ordure,’ Huysmans calls it. His descriptions of Gothic intensity provide a total inversion of naturalism which is emphasized by the remarkable dream passages which intercut the novel. In many ways this is Huysmans most extraordinary book, and despite its immediately following ‘Against Nature,’ Zola called it ‘his most intense work’ later Andr Breton celebrated it in his ‘Anthology of Black Humour.’

Down There

At 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, sad*ist, necrophile and practitioner of all the black arts. The book s authentic, extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the Black Mass have never been surpassed.

En Route

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www. million books. com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Before his conversion he had said like all unbelievers : ‘ If I believed that Jesus Christ is God, and that eternal life is not a decoy, I would not hesitate to change all my habits, to follow as far as possible the rules of religion, and, in any case, to live chaste.’ And he was surprised that people he knew, who were in these conditions, did not maintain an attitude higher than his own. He who had so long indulgently forgiven himself became singularly intolerant, so soon as he had to do with a Catholic. He now understood the injustice of his judgments, and confessed that between faith and practice was a gulf difficult to overpass. He did not like to discuss this question with himself, but it returned and took possession of him all the same, and he was obliged to admit the meanness of his arguments, the despicable reasons for his resistance. He was still honest enough to say : ‘ I am no longer a child ; if I have Faith, if I admit Catholicism, I cannot conceive it as lukewarm and unfixed, warmed up again and again in the saucepan of a false zeal. I will have no compromise or truce, no alternations of debauch and communions, no stages of licentiousness and piety, no, all or nothing ; to change from top to bottom, or not change at all.’ Then he drew back in alarm, endeavoured to escape the part he was about to take, endeavoured to exculpate himself, cavilling for hours, invoking the most wretched motives for remaining as he was, and not budging a jot. ‘ What am I to do ? If I do not obey orders, which I feel with increasing force, I am preparing for myself a life of uneasiness and remorse, for I know well I ought not to remain for ever on the threshold, but to penetrate into the sanctuary and stay there. And if I make up my mind no indeed for then…

The Cathedral

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.

The Oblate of St. Benedict

novel, tr Edward Perceval, intro by Terry Hale

St Lydwine of Schiedam

St. Lydwine was bedridden from age 15, when she broke a rib, endured a lifelong illness which was recognized to be of supernatural origin. Her body became covered with sores and abscesses and virtually came apart into three pieces symbolically representing the condition of the Church. She ate no food except Holy Communion and experienced many mystical phenomena. An incredible story of one of the most heroic victim souls in the history of the Church. Publisher: TAN Books Author: J. K. HuysmansFormat: 252 pages, paperback ISBN: 978 0895550873

Against Nature

Against Nature by Joris Karl Huysmans is a novel in which very little happens; its 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. Against Nature containes many themes which became associated with the Symbolist aesthetic. In doing so, it broke from naturalism and became the ultimate example of decadent literature. Jean Des Esseintes is the last member of a powerful and once proud noble family. He has lived an extremely decadent life in Paris which has left him disgusted with human society. Without telling anyone, he absconds to a house in the countryside. He fills the house with his eclectic art collection and decides to spend the rest of his life in intellectual and aesthetic contemplation. Throughout his intellectual experiments, he recalls various debauched events and love affairs of his past in Paris.

The Damned (La-bas)

J. K. Huysmans’s gaudy, shocking, and largely autobiographical novel, The Damned L&agrave Bas was quickly condemned and just as quickly achieved cult status. It follows Durtal, a shy, censorious man, who is writing a biography of Gilles de Rais, the fifteenth century nobleman, child murderer, and supposed model for ‘Bluebeard.’ Bored and disgusted by the vulgarity of everyday life, Durtal seeks spiritual solace by immersing himself in another age. But when he meets the exquisitely evil Madame Chantelouve, he is drawn inextricably into the twilight world of black magic and erotic devilry in fin de si&egravecle Paris.

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