Against the Grain

The entire book consists in cataloguing des Esseintes’ very specific tastes, which all go “against the grain”: in vitriolic manner, des Esseintes rejects everything that can be linked to the prevalent interest in science and progress, everything that is fashionable, everything that is bourgeois, and therefore vulgar. With equal passion, he endorses not merely what is luxurious, but what is aristocratic, rare, and able to be appreciated only by a handful of fortunate initiates endowed with the same highly-refined aesthetic sense. His pronouncements constitute a veritable guide-book for the fin-de-siècle dandy in matters of interior decoration, literature, flowers, fine wines, and painting.