SOURCE: "J. K. Huysmans," in J. K. Huysmans and the Fin-de-siécle Novel, Edinburgh University Press, 1990, pp. 1-18.

In the following essay, Lloyd discusses Huysmans's works in the context of French literary trends of the late nineteenth century, particularly Naturalism and Decadence.

Finding a reliable, unadulterated source of nourishment is a constant preoccupation of the heroes of Huysmans' novels. Nowadays we know that lightly boiled eggs have certainly not escaped contamination by the century. Solipsistically retiring into one's shell brings no escape from the pressures of the world. Huysmans' name is most frequently linked with that of his great contemporary Zola—as disciple, or as renegade disciple—even though Huysmans turns inward, and Zola outward, the first producing the private fantasy world of A rebours, the second the massive social documentary of Germinal, within a year of each orner in 1884-85. But there is no paradox in the...