Down There (La-Bas)- Joris-Karl Huysmans

[Amanda]

Book about the occult and Satanism in what was at the time contemporary France (aka the 1890s). It follows a novelist, Durtal, who has a fixation on the middle ages. He starts learning about alleged child-murderer, occultist, and contemporary of Joan of Arc- Gilles de Rais- through his medievalist contacts, and finds out that the occultism he practiced is still alive. Apparently, it is heavily linked to the Catholic Church, and black masses require a real priest (fortunately he seems to know one who knows...a lot about this). His mistress turns out to be extremely in the know as well, and an investigation into the dark underworld is on.

In the day, this book was seen as so raunchy and shocking for public mass –sale. Nowadays, it doesn’t pack nearly the same punch, which is the sad inevitable fate of shock based art I suppose (unless you go to the furthest possible extreme immediately ala Marquis de Sade I guess). This book doesn’t go quite that hard. I appreciate how this book likely help create or popularize a lot of the tropes and features of modern horror and occult media, but given that we commonly encounter these features now, the originality of this book is lost for me as a modern reader.

So, ultimately, I found it fine but not extremely exciting, although I respect that my appreciation has likely been tainted by this book being a establishing piece of now cliché and popular media. I gave it 3 stars.

[Diane]

Rating: 4 stars

Creepy story about a man from 19th France and his obsession with a real-life serial killer from the 15th century. There are some gruesome parts, which must have been extremely shocking for 19th century readers. The book is unusual in that it masterfully interweaves a lot of things together into a relatively short book. The writing is exceptional, so that helped offset the less than pleasant subject matter.

[Patrick]

Pre-2016 review:

***

Durtal, working on a book about the life of Gilles de Rais, who famously fought by Joan of Arc's side, but infamously murdered hundreds of children for the purpose of his satanic rituals, started receiving anonymous letters from a married woman deeply enamored with him and his writings. The eventual, but disastrous liaison with this woman coincidentally brought him much closer to one of the topics explored through his work, Satanism, than he would have hoped.

As with other novels from Huysmans, the writing is extremely erudite, with plenty of rare words and in-depth knowledge of the topics broached. This is almost Satanism 101, but probably not as graphic as other novels as, for example, Bataille's Story of the Eye or even Ellis' American Psycho. I would have expected though more development around the liaison between Durtal and Hyacinthe Chantelouve, or something more somber about Durtal's direct experience with Satanism. Nevertheless, this was much easier to read than Against the Grain by the same author and still representative of the Decadent period of French literature which followed and disassociated from the Naturalist movement.

Interesting parallel to make with The Ogre by Michel Tournier: both novels share elements of the life of Gilles de Rais a.k.a. Bluebeard. In The Ogre, the main character's name is Tiffauges, which is the name of the castle where de Rais committed most of his crimes; the horse he was riding while "recruiting" children for the napola of Kaltenborn was called Bluebeard; this "recruitment" of children to be trained for the Nazi armies to be sent to war (and death), never to be seen again, mirrors the systematic kidnapping of children by de Rais and his acolytes for the satanic rituals.