A novel by this author lends its name to the estate owned by the critic Farewell in Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile. After procuring a Baedeker Guide of London, the protagonist of one of this author’s novels stops into a tavern and imagines its patrons as Dickens characters. A novel by this author climaxes in a black mass attended by the protagonist, a writer who is researching an occultist child murderer. In a novel by this author, the protagonist’s home is adorned with a lengthy (*) aquarium, a painting of Salomé by Gustave Moreau, and a tortoise shell inlaid with gemstones. This author likely wrote the “yellow book” with which Henry Wotton is said to have “poisoned” Dorian Gray. That novel by this author of Là-bas is about the reclusive aesthete Jean des Esseintes (“dayz eh-SANT”). For 10 points, name this Decadent French author of À rebours, or Against the Grain. ■END■
ANSWER: Joris-Karl Huysmans (“weese-MONS”) [or J. K. Huysmans; or Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans]
<Delot-Vilain, Long Fiction>
= Average correct buzz position