Joris-Karl HUYSMANS (1848-1907). L.A.S., to a colleague; 3 pages small in-8 filled with tight writing (trace of rusty paper clip p. 4). He congratulates him for his "absolutely remarkable news, not at all dull, [...] but on the contrary very alert and very colourful". He is a bit critical of the end, where "there is a sort of haste to finish. [......] Nevertheless, there are tables of wretches, a surprising bellman of life, and admirable mocking of vice - It's a short story, unfortunately, because you could have made a novel out of it, with developments and you lose some of the good you could have had, with your astonishing accuracy of observation and your sharp vision of the outside, to draw a complete and beautiful book - The second news is also very firm - your Montmartre is a true modern landscape architect - your conversations feel like they were taken on the spot " ; but he blames the carriage scene: "Besides the fact that a scene of this kind always reminds us of Madame Bovary's, it has the additional disadvantage of not being true - Because you can't just take away virgins in a horse-drawn carriage like that! - It is there, here, a thing not done, in the modern world, that a virginity is removed. And the petticoats, and the whole sacred arsenal, go then, with bumps that move moreover, just fall right! - No, here, you haven't kept this magnificent lucidity of the whole new, coherent and acute ". But he liked the book "by the curious language, its rare epithet, its pictorial expression and by the intense life and truth that you were able to put into it - so it bothers me to find little flaws in it - and that's why I'm shouting! "...