Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Drifting

Drifting

Huysmans, J. -K
King, Brendan

Paperback

Series: Dedalus European Classics

Gifts & Stationery General

Publisher Price: $13.99

ISBN10: 1915568749
ISBN13: 9781915568748
Publisher: Dedalus
Published: Oct 10 2025
Pages: 112
Weight: 0.23
Height: 0.36 Width: 5.11 Depth: 7.81
Language: English
This is a Ulysses of the eatery, whose Odyssey, limited to voyages from one dish in which rancid butter surrounds uneatable meat to another, is heartbreaking, touching and despairing. -- Guy de Maupassant in Le Gaulois
The misfortunes of Jean Folantin, a downtrodden clerk working for the Ministry of the Interior in Paris, form the subject of J.-K. Huysmans' blackly comic novella, Drifting (a vau-l'eau). At first glance, Folantin's problems seem to be a world away from those of Jean Floressas des Esseintes, the aristocratic anti-hero of Huysmans' Decadent classic Against Nature, written just two years later in 1884. But the two men share more than just a first name: like des Esseintes, Folantin is in the throes of an existential crisis: alienated from a Paris undergoing rapid modernisation, the pace of social change leaves him feeling out of place, impotent, a small cog in an impersonal commercial world. Through the distorting lens of Huysmans' dark sense of humour, the dyspeptic Folantin is transformed into a modern-day Ulysses, and his tortuous quest through the streets of Haussmann's Paris to find a capable housekeeper and a decent meal reaches its conclusion in one of the most daring anti-climaxes -- literally speaking -- in the whole of nineteenth century fiction.

This new translation by Brendan King includes, for the first time in English, a contemporary profile of Huysmans' life and work in which the author plays both interviewer and interviewee, and which was published pseudonymously for the journal, Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui (Men of Today) in 1885.

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