Finished Huysmans' Là-bas.
I have to say I am dissapointed. After the ominous, if a bit hazy, way it was brought up in Harvest in Poland, I was expecting a tour de force of the senses, but instead the whole thing feels like the first half of a novel, who'se latter half somehow got lost and so the publisher stuck a "Finis" at a seemingly random spot.
The first problem is, the novel fails to deliver what it promises. It promises us a study of Giles de Rais, even if delivered as a story-within a story, inside of a prose work. However the book, which at first delves into the matter in detail, quickly begins to lose focus, as this is halted continously by informing us of the author's amorous (mis)adventures, and the side plot involving "modern" (as in the early 1890's) diabolism.
The latter has potential to be interesting, introducing us to not only many curious anecdotes of religion and diabolism, but even goes so far to set up a rivalry between a fallen, diabolical priest who places fatal curses on others from afar, and his opponent, an ex priest who specializes in excorcisms. Heck, one of the novel's incidental characters gets cursed by the former and cured by the later, but this all happens offscreen ! We only meet Gévigny before he is cursed, and only return to him after he is cured. The diabolical Canon Docre makes a single appearance when he celebrates a Black Mass and the main character is attending, but not only does he never speak to the main character, or any the regular characters in the book for that matter, and never appears again after the few pages reserved for the Black Mass, but Dr. Johannès, the healer-priest and Docre's rival, never actually shows up in the flesh at all !
All the buildup of Docre and contemporary satanism leads to nothing, yet it distracts so much from the Giles de Rais stuff that there is a forced remark on the penultimate page so that the main character can summarise Giles' execution, having only gotten to the end of the trial.
There are other problems I typically have with period works dismissing other religions in favour of the "one true faith", (the main character literally says, towards the end of the book "....for Buddhism and the like are not big enough to be substituted for the religion of Christ."), the fact the book opens on a very dull and very long discussion of materialism and the like.
One of the few good points are the aforementioned anecdotes and the way in which certain details about Giles de Rais' actions are described in detail, however I assumed as much given the general tone of the Fin de siècle.
I would not mind so much, assuming that this buildup and conflict might be continued in the following novels in the loose "tetralogy" featuring the main character Durtal, however it appears that not only do these books have even less plot then this one, but that Durtal, who was an atheist, is already a converted catholic in the second book, apparently, and looking up the other two, these seem to just focus on liturgy.
I read that some readers took offence at the novel's language and demanded that L'Écho de Paris end the serialisation. Honestly I would not hesitate to believe at least some would have written to have it stopped due to it's boredom and slow pace.
