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While looking at others with disdain (and this is putting it mildly!), Des Esseintes's opinion of himself grows ever higher until he has "no hope of linking up with a mind which, like his own, took pleasure in a life of studious decrepitude; no hope of associating an intelligence as sharp and wayward as his own with that of an author or scholar."
Just as Des Esseintes eschews the natural, he embraces the artificial. In an early chapter, he chooses the colors for his country house near Paris based on their appearance under artificial light. He comes to the conclusion that one can obtain a satisfactory sea bath at home because "without stirring out of Pris it is possible to obtain the health-giving impression of sea-bathing...for all this involves is a visit to the Bain Vigier, an establishment to be seen down on a pontoon moored in the middle of the Seine."
Eventually, Des Esseintes moves beyond mere artifice and seeks to remove from his life the natural in all its aspects. When he becomes unable to ingest food orally, he feeds himself through enemas and finds this method far superior.
Des Esseintes's realm of artifice soon becomes his only god. He is safe in his virtuality, enjoying travel without risks, lust without passion and social interaction only with imagined beings.
The heart and soul of Against the Grain is really the debate between nature and artifice and man's role as the creator of his own universe. Des Esseintes is the ultimate aesthete; a man whose desire to obliterate the natural is transformed into the limitless experience of artistic creation.
Against the Grain represents typical French decadent literature in which the whole is subordinate to the parts. It must be understood that decadence in literature is an aesthetic, rather than a moral conception; the opposite of classicism, in which each part must subordinate itself to the enhancement of the whole. Each has its virtures, and in order to appreciate one to the fullest, we must learn to understand and appreciate the other.
Against the Grain may well be the greatest novel to emerge from the French decadent experience, and it has exerted much influence over later writers. It is the fullest, most detailed account of the search for artifice, a search that is particularly akin to today's virtual world of cyberspace. As such, Against the Grain is more relevant than ever and should be highly recommended, even required, reading.
Its atmosphere is very Gothic, gloomy, silent and full of beautiful things. The main character is a bit of a lunatic, but his bored and irritable personality has a touch of glamour. If you sometimes feel filled up with the world, if you sometimes fantasize about winning the lottery and then buying a big house full of the things you love, a place to retire and reject society and all its annoying and ugly characteristics, then you will find this book a very cool way of retiring from the world.
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