Huysmans tells the story of a jaded count who tries to revive his senses by means of increasingly more extravagant intoxications. When A REBOURS appeared in 1884, Huysmans wrote, it fell like an aerolite into the literary fairground, to be received with mingled amazement and indignation; the Press completely lost their heads; such an outburst of incoherent ravings had never been known before. After first calling me a misanthropic impressionist and describing Des Esseintes as a maniac and lunatic.... The book, however, has endured, and remains a classic work of fin-de-sihcle decadence.