J K Huysmans

J K Huysmans (1848 - 1907), a French novelist suffering from a civil servant position produced a number of outlandish novels during his off-work hours. Among them are the infamous ones like A Rebours (Against Nature) (1884) and La Bas (Down There) (1891) which show extraoridnary hard work of research on the subjects dealt with.
A Rebours has earned its name 'the dangerous book' or 'the yellow book' in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray in which the anti-hero, Dorian Gray, indulges in aesthetic perversities suggested by this yellow book.
Des Esseintes in A Rebours throws afternoon dinner parties in which the dining room is darkened as night by heavy dark curtains and illuminated with candle light. Table cloths and drapes are all in black; all courses on the menu comprise food in black like black pudding, contrasted by a guilded live tortoise crawling around the living room. Masked waitresses with elaborous headgear adorned with black feathers serve food stark naked. Des Esseintes's tastes in literature are most exquisite: his favourite classics he especially ordered from publishers: all printed with purple ink on silk paper, with silk hardcover in different colours, which atone our hero's mood: in sulky mood he picks up a purple one to drown himself in his purple mood. Once he wants to get some fresh air and plans to embark on a long ship journey to London. Hours of packing tires him out and he decides he have the effect of an exquisite journey without the trouble: decorators are called upon and a house with panelled walls are to be built. On the walls small round cabin windows with steel rims are built. Between the panelled walls the space is filled with salt water in which clockwork, wind-up, mechanical fish swim - it is virtually a room surrounded by walls of aquarium. Giant worn out ropes soaked with salty water and rusted anchors and fishnets are ordered to adorn the room. Oakwood deck chairs and tables are custom-made decorated with compasses and maps and monoculars. In this room our hero gazes through the cabin windows, admiring the mechinical fish swimming joyfully, breathing in the salty air, caressing moist oakwood tables... nothing of a genuine sea journey is lacking.