I'm pleased to see this wonderful book back in print, by NYRB Classics. I bought it in 1978. It will always be a valuable book about keeping in balancI'm pleased to see this wonderful book back in print, by NYRB Classics. I bought it in 1978. It will always be a valuable book about keeping in balance with nature....more
Star rating - 8 February 2014. Review - 7 November 2019. I have two Penguin editions of Against Nature, a 1971 and 2001. I have three copies of Joyce's Star rating - 8 February 2014. Review - 7 November 2019. I have two Penguin editions of Against Nature, a 1971 and 2001. I have three copies of Joyce's Ulysses in Penguin. I can't resist buying another copy of a classic favourite when I find it. I can't pass an Op-Shop or second-hand bookshop or any bookstore without having a look. It's my only vice. I don't smoke, don't drink, don't watch TV, don't do religion. Should I feel selfish buying another copy of a book I already have, instead of leaving it for somebody else? To borrow the immortal line from George Costanza, "Was that wrong?" I used to watch TV. I had certain shows - MASH and then later, Seinfeld, now all gone. I got into Seinfeld when the kids were growing up. That was their show. I'm certain Des Esseintes would have watched Seinfeld. Face it, Seinfeld is Existential comedy. The time of connection is important. I discovered Against Nature in my early twenties. A magic period of discovering writers. Books that rang bells I was instinctively seeking but didn't know existed. Hesse, Alan Watts, Huysmans. In the 1960s in my teens, I focused on art books and artists, which led naturally to the fin-de-siècle, particularly Paris and the Symbolist movement. And Jarry, and Satie, Apollinaire and Huysmans, though I didn't read Huysmans until early 1970s. What a time was the early 1970s. Repugnant bourgeois conservatism that reeked of hypocrisy. The Vietnam War, or the American War as the Vietnamese call it. A new wind of politics and values was afoot. Arthouse films, music, and painting. I read a Sartre novel at the time, around age twenty, Iron in the Soul, but I didn't get Existentialism back then - still too conditioned I guess. "Twenty years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift", metaphorically speaking. Not that I did twenty years. I didn't finish high school. I left early. The only exam I ever passed was my drivers licence, not counting my marriage vows. I got those answers right. Life is a strange trip. I hadn't intended ever to get married or have a family. I knew from the time I could walk that I was going to be an artist. By puberty I intended to be a solitary, somewhat like Des Esseintes, though without the funds, focused on an aesthetic life. I have lived on the fringe or peripheral edge of the enthusiasm for Western mainstream orthodoxy, not uncommon with artists. That's why reading A Rebours at that particular time was such an incredible validation of the aesthetic life. It may have been a different response for a European young man discovering A Rebours, but for me, an Australian male who wasn't a team player, not into footy or drinking, only interested in art, it was finding my tribe....more
I read Travels With Charley: in search of America, so many years ago and loved it. I'm reading it again, inspired after my daughter sent me a SteinbecI read Travels With Charley: in search of America, so many years ago and loved it. I'm reading it again, inspired after my daughter sent me a Steinbeck quote from a novel. On reflection, made me think that some of Steinbeck's best quotes are from his non-fiction, like Travels With Charley, and from The Log from the Sea of Cortez....more
