Downstream

Downstream is the perfect example of what the French naturalists wanted a novel to be. It is also the shortest and most autobiographical of Huysmans's works. This dark and mordantly comic masterpiece of everyday pessimism about a Parisian clerk seeking spiritual contentment serves as a wonderful introduction for the contemporary reader to the pleasures of Joris Karl Huysmans.



J. K. Huysmans (1848-1907) was the preeminent Parisian writer of his day.