Huysmans's work is considered remarkable for its idiosyncratic use of the French language, large vocabulary, descriptions, satirical wit and far-ranging erudition.

He used this experience in an early story, "Sac au dos" (Backpack) (later included in his collection, Les Soirées de Médan).

After his retirement from the Ministry in 1898, made possible by the commercial success of his novel, La cathédrale, Huysmans planned to leave Paris and move to Ligugé.

The climax of his early work is the novella À vau-l'eau (1882) (translated as With the Flow, Downstream, and Drifting), the story of a downtrodden clerk, Monsieur Folantin, and his quest for a decent meal.

The description of des Esseintes's "alluring liaison" with a "cherry-lipped youth" was believed to have influenced other writers of the decadent movement, including Oscar Wilde.

[12] Huysmans began to drift away from the Naturalists and found new friends among the Symbolist and Catholic writers whose work he had praised in À rebours.

Stéphane Mallarmé was so pleased with the publicity his verse had received from the novel that he dedicated one of his most famous poems, "Prose pour des Esseintes", to its hero.

[14] Huysmans's next book after Á rebours was the novella Un dilemme, which tells "the story of a poor working-class woman who gives birth out of wedlock.

When her bourgeois lover, the father of the baby, dies, his heartless family members refuse to help, leaving the mother and her child destitute.

[17][18] He introduced the character Durtal, a thinly disguised self-portrait, who is writing a biography of the notorious 15th-century child-murderer and torturer Gilles de Rais.

Huysmans's work was known for his idiosyncratic use of the French language, extensive vocabulary, detailed and sensuous descriptions, and biting, satirical wit.

It also displays an encyclopaedic erudition, ranging from the catalogue of decadent Latin authors in À rebours to the discussion of the iconography of Christian architecture in La cathédrale.

"[25] "Barbaric in its profusion, violent in its emphasis, wearying in its splendor, it is — especially in regard to things seen – extraordinarily expressive, with all the shades of a painter's palette.

(Arthur Symons, The Decadent Movement in Literature) "Continually dragging Mother Image by the hair or the feet down the worm-eaten staircase of terrified Syntax."

(Julien Gracq) "In short, he kicks the oedipal to the curb" (M. Quaine, Heirs and Graces, 1932, Jowett / Arcana) Huysmans's novel, Against the Grain, has more discussions of sound, smell, and taste than perhaps any other work of literature.

For example, one chapter consists entirely of smell hallucinations so vivid that they exhaust the book's central character, Des Esseintes, a bizarre, depraved aristocrat.

In Esseintes's mind, the taste of each liqueur corresponded to the sound of a particular instrument: "Dry curaçao, for example, was like the clarinet, with its penetrating and velvety note: kümmel matched the oboe with its sonorous nasal resonance; menthe and anisette were like the flute, at once honeyed and peppery, whimpering but muted; whereas kirsch, to complete the orchestra, is a wild trumpet blast; gin and whisky assault the palate with the strident blare of their cornets and trombones; marc-brandy raises the roof with its deafening hubbub of tubas.

"[27]By careful and persistent experimentation, Esseintes learned to "execute on his tongue a succession of voiceless melodies; noiseless funeral marches, solemn and stately; could hear in his mouth solos of crème de menthe, duets of vespertro and rum.