Against Nature

Joris-Karl Huysmans is most famous for this novel AGAINST NATURE and he predicted it would be a failure with the public and critics: "but I don't give a damn! It will be something nobody has ever done before, and I shall have said what I want to say." The book created a storm of publicity; though many older critics were scandalised, it appealed to the young generation. The painter Whistler called it a "marvellous" book. Oscar Wilde regarded it as his "Bible and bedside book." It was to him "one of the best I have ever seen." It was reviewed everywhere as the guidebook of Decadence. AGAINST NATURE is the "poisonous French novel" that leads to the downfall of Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde's THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY. The book's plot dominated the action of Dorian, causing him to live a life of sin and hedonism.