{wishlist}

Begging to join the groaning shelves this week:

 

Joris-Karl Huysmans (1884):

À Rebours [Against Nature]

Sometimes (hence 'book-forgetting') I've wanted to read something for so long that I can't remember why I added it to the wishlist in the first place. I have a French copy of À Rebours which I bought as a souvenir at the Musée Gustave Moreau in Paris; but that's far too hard work and it just sits on the shelf mocking my good intentions.

I think my interest was probably sparked via something Oscar Wilde-related. À Rebours was a book of profound importance to Wilde: "This last book of Huysmans is one of the best I have ever seen" [quoted in Richard Ellmann Oscar Wilde, p.237 in my Penguin 1988 copy].

 

In Richard Davenport-Hines' A Night at the Majestic: Proust & the Great Modernist Dinner Party of 1922 (2006), Huysmans' name is mispelled Huysman throughout. I hope that's not the only reason for my interest. Unfortunately, once I've found one glaring typo I tend to lose some readerly confidence. Davenport-Hines takes a single incident - a dinner party (admittedly one involving Proust, Stravinsky, Picasso, Joyce and Diaghilev!) - and spirals out in all directions, digging up loads of fascinating details. It is a worthwhile read but a bit like a biographic form of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Hopefully when I finally read À Rebours I will remember why I wanted to do so. At least that's sort of Proustian...