Editing Joris-Karl Huysmans (section)

==Style and influence==
{{Cleanup section|reason="Section is mainly a list of quotations with no unifying formatting, making the sources unclear for some of the material.|date=December 2018}}
[[Image:Plaque Joris-Karl Huysmans, 31 rue Saint-Placide, Paris 6.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Commemorative plaque in 31 rue Saint-Placide, [[6th arrondissement of Paris|Paris, 6e]]]]
[[Image:J.-K. Huysmans by Vallotton.jpg|thumb|right|200px|A caricature of Huysmans, by [[Félix Vallotton]], {{circa|1898}}]]

"It takes me two years to 'document' myself for a novel&nbsp;– two years of hard work. That is the trouble with the naturalistic novel&nbsp;– it requires so much documentary care. I never make, like Zola, a plan for a book. I know how it will begin and how it will end&nbsp;– that's all. When I finally get to writing it, it goes along rather fast&nbsp;– ''assez vite.''"<ref>Henry, Stuart (1897). [https://archive.org/stream/hourswithfamousp00henriala#page/n5/mode/2up ''Hours with Famous Parisians.''] Chicago: Way & Williams, p. 114.</ref>

"Barbaric in its profusion, violent in its emphasis, wearying in its splendor, it is&nbsp;— especially in regard to things seen&nbsp;– extraordinarily expressive, with all the shades of a painter's palette. Elaborately and deliberately perverse, it is in its very perversity that Huysmans's work — so fascinating, so repellent, so instinctively artificial — comes to represent, as the work of no other writer can be said to do, the main tendencies, the chief results, of the Decadent movement in literature." ([[Arthur Symons]], ''The Decadent Movement in Literature'')

"Continually dragging Mother Image by the hair or the feet down the worm-eaten staircase of terrified Syntax." ([[Léon Bloy]], quoted in Robert Baldick, ''The Life of J.-K. Huysmans''). Critical reviews by Léon Bloy of ''À rebours'', ''En rade'', and ''Là-bas'' published contemporaneously, in various journals or reviews, as Huysmans's novels came out over the years, in 1884, 1887, 1891, can be found, collected and published six years after Huysmans's death, in book form, in ''On Huysmans' Tomb.''<ref>Bloy, Léon (1913). ''Sur la tombe de Huysmans'', Paris: Collection des Curiosités Littéraires.</ref>

"It is difficult to find a writer whose vocabulary is so extensive, so constantly surprising, so sharp and yet so exquisitely gamey in flavour, so constantly lucky in its chance finds and in its very inventiveness." ([[Julien Gracq]])

"In short, he kicks the oedipal to the curb" (M. Quaine, ''Heirs and Graces'', 1932, Jowett / Arcana)

Huysmans's novel, ''Against the Grain'', has more discussions of sound, smell, and taste than perhaps any other work of literature. For example, one chapter consists entirely of smell hallucinations so vivid that they exhaust the book's central character, Des Esseintes, a bizarre, depraved aristocrat. A student of the perfumer's art, Esseintes has developed several devices for titillating his jaded senses. Besides special instruments for re-creating any conceivable odour, he has constructed a special "mouth organ" designed to stimulate his palate rather than his ears. The organ's regular pipes have been replaced by rows of little barrels, each containing a different liqueur. In Esseintes's mind, the taste of each liqueur corresponded to the sound of a particular instrument:

{{quote|"Dry [[Curaçao (liqueur)|curaçao]], for example, was like the [[clarinet]], with its penetrating and velvety note: [[Kümmel (liqueur)|kümmel]] matched the [[oboe]] with its sonorous nasal resonance; [[crème de menthe|menthe]] and [[anisette]] were like the [[flute]], at once honeyed and peppery, whimpering but muted; whereas [[kirsch]], to complete the orchestra, is a wild [[trumpet]] blast; [[gin]] and [[whisky]] assault the palate with the strident blare of their [[cornets]] and [[trombones]]; marc-[[brandy]] raises the roof with its deafening hubbub of [[tuba]]s."<ref>Huysmans, Joris-Karl. ''Against Nature'', trans. Theo Cuffe, foreword by [[Lucy Sante]]. U.K.: Riverrun (2019). New York: Picador (2022), p. 63. {{ISBN|9781250787668}}</ref>}}

By careful and persistent experimentation, Esseintes learned to "execute on his tongue a succession of voiceless melodies; noiseless funeral marches, solemn and stately; could hear in his mouth solos of crème de menthe, duets of [[Vespetrò|vespertro]] and [[rum]]."<ref>Sekuler, Robert, and Blake, Randolph (1985). ''Perception''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 404–405.</ref>

The protagonist of ''[[Submission (novel)|Submission]]'' (2015), a novel by [[Michel Houellebecq]], is a literary scholar specializing in Huysmans and his work; Huysmans's relation to Catholicism serves as a foil for the book's treatment of Islam in France.