These are some comments I posted elsewhere but wanted to keep.. so here they are, enjoy.

Ah, Huysman's A Rebours a strange book indeed which in its grocery list aspect reminds me of Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho. However, I did enjoy this book- perhaps because I read it around the same time as reading Musil's The Man Without Qualities and the first volume of the 3-volume edition of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu

In Musil's creation, the protagonist is almost suffocated (or completely freed, depending on your viewpoint) with the tremendous 'Possibility' created by the modern world, the consequence of this being the inability to perceive any sense of reality (which can be viewed as proscription on possiblity). This results in seeing himself as a man without qualities. He generally accepts this situation, and carries on predictably.

I saw Des Esseintes attempt to reject the modern world and instead live in a created world as the logical-philosophical extention of Musil (regardless of its earlier date). Instead, however, of accepting the existential dilemma created by the modern condition, Des Esseintes rejects the modern world, and attempts to construct a reality of his own. With a sense of reality, possiblity is contrained -making perhaps, life livable. But as we see in the end, man cannot be estranged in this way, reality cannot this way be constructed and Des Esseintes is forced back into society. This reminds me of Samuel Beckett's famous quote about the book (to paraphrase) -that after writing a book like that, the only options were either the barrel of a gun, or the foot of a cross. Either reality is completely suppressed by possiblity whereby you choose the gun, or there is an overarching reality -namely theological- and you choose the cross. (indeed, in life, Huysman did choose the cross)

Huysman took the extreme reaction to the modern world by attempting to reject it,and if we view Huysman as the extention of Des Esseintes, - was sucessful in finding reality (i.e. the limit of possiblity) in God. While Musil, perhaps aware of the futility of the secular extreme, gives us a character who attempts to live in society but who would, if it was possible, rather reject it completely as Des Esseintes did. Instead, he is left to float shapelessly - even while the great catalystic events of World War I occur.

Anyhow, I guess this is why I really liked the book, in this context- whether I am right or wrong in my interpretation. But then I always tend to like books that are consumed with ideas.