Huysmans Against Nature and Foppl's Party

[rich]

The passage comes from *À Rebours*, translated as *Against Nature*, the
fin-de-siècle novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907). It is a story of a
bored, rich Parisian who retreats to an isolated villa in the countryside to
create for himself an artificial paradise. Living alone, sleeping most of
the day, he spends his waking hours indulging in his tastes in rare books
and works of art, antique furniture, precious stones, rich scents, and other
beautiful things. He replaces his windows with aquariums to better filter
the light, gives a funeral banquet at which black food is served on black
dishes by naked black girls, has gems embedded into the shell of a tortoise,
and cultivates flowers that resemble artificial ones. Traveling, or even
leaving the house, he considers pointless, believing that the imagination
can easily compensate for the vulgar reality of the actual experience.
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this is from Charles Simic's review of French artist Odilon Rendon in recent
NY REview

this sorta reminds me of the folks at Foppl's party, eh?

rich
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