I'm writing about Joris Karl Huysmans for HiLobrow. He's a French writer most famous for A Rebours (Against the Grain) which is generally considered to be the ultimate decadent/aesthete novel. It was Oscar Wilde's favorite and the book which is the "wicked French book" which leads Dorian Gray into his life of debauchery.

Anyway, it's a really interesting read, but it's making me laugh too because it has sentences which would work equally well as Smiths lyrics, or Edward Gorey captions:

His childhood had been beset with perils. Threatened with scrofulous affections, worn out with persistent attacks of fever, he had nevertheless successfully weathered the breakers of puberty, after which critical period his nerves had recovered the mastery, vanquished the languors and depressions of chlorosis and permitted the constitution to reach its full and complete development. The mother, a tall, silent, white-faced woman, died of general debility; then the father succumbed to a vague and mysterious malady.

She died of general debility! He succumbed to a vague and mysterious malady! He vanquished the languors!

Ah, I have that book, though it was sufficiently meandering that I never made it all the way through.

though it was sufficiently meandering that I never made it all the way through.

It does warn you up front: "a novel without a plot."

Ok. Watching Joe read "The Hunger Games" series is HIGHLARIOUS. Like Mark Reads but in 3D.

With on-the-spot snarking.

For those interested, the most recent episode of The Readers podcast (which is awesome in general) is on Victorian Lit. The beginning of the interview with Essie Fox, author of The Somnambulist, has some echoing issues but they get resolved eventually.

So ... last night Joe and are in bed reading (he's on Catching Fire ), and Joe is chewing his nicotine gum. Now, Joe's TMJ makes his chewing very loud. Suddenly, a hush fell over the room - he had stopped chewing. And then there was a loud, "What? WHAT? That is BULLshit!"

And it was then that I knew it had gotten real.

AHAHAHAHAHA! Man, you should be recording it.

I would SO buy tickets to Joe Reads The Hunger Games.

I would SO buy tickets to Joe Reads The Hunger Games.

Me, too! Joe would be way snarkier and more entertaining than Mark.

And think how much fun it would be to have Joe and Aims Read - stereophonic snarking!