you still can't find work---OMG

With "Against Nature" Huysmans made a concerted effort to break with Naturalism, which he criticized in the preface to the novel for "treading water", although many features of Naturalism are still there. Huysmans wrote to Zola before finishing the novel explaining his new project and forewarning him of his shift in style, but nonetheless Zola took almost personal offense to the book, describing it as a "blow to Naturalism". It has often been claimed that "Against Nature" is the book referred to as "that poisonous French novel" in Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray", although Wilde never confirmed this. Furthermore, according to Simon Callow in his foreword to Huysmans' "With The Flow", during the trial of Oscar Wilde for gross indecency, Wilde was "invited to denounce Huysmans' novel... the non-French speaking Victorian public must have speculated wildly about the book (not translated into English until the 1950s) and its author. They would have been surprised and perhaps somewhat disappointed to discover that he was a clerk who worked for the Ministry of the Interior in Paris." Huysmans followed "Against Nature" with "Stranded" (1887), a depressing and pessimistic novel full of dark imagery, but the public, perhaps expecting titillation, weren't very interested. He then wrote "The Damned" (1891) that dealt with Satanism, the occult, and the biographer of 15th century blood-thirsty Baron, Gilles de Rais, who was hanged for infanticide, sodomy and heresy. It was much more popular. Huysmans' further novels document the author's conversion to Catholicism. "Fear and Trembling" and "On the Will in Nature" are both philosophical works. "Spirit of the Forest" is drawing by Odilon Redon, an artist greatly admired by Huysmans and "Against Nature"'s main character, Jean Des Esseintes.