Joris-Karl Huysmans, one of the most prominent French writers of the turn of the twentieth century, began his literary career as a naturalist, a promising disciple of Emile Zola. He departed from these ideals in his best-known novel A rebours (1884), considered the “bible of decadence”. Its protagonist, the eccentric misanthrope des Esseintes, withdraws from society to indulge in contemplation in solitude, studying rare prints and seeking beauty in the singular. He appreciates the scandalising works of writers such as Barbey d,Aurevilly and Baudelaire. These authors have been accused of promoting satanism. Durtal, the protagonist of the novel Lă-bas, goes even further, in which we find contemporary echoes of satanism, attempts to revive the ritual of the black mass or a fascination with cruelty. Ultimately, however – and this is best evidenced in subsequent works ( En route, La Cathédrale, L,Oblat) satanism brings disillusionment. A return to the Christian religion, which Huysmans nevertheless interprets in an original way, becomes inevitable.

The novels of Jean Echenoz are particularly known for their playfulness with which they deconstruct the codes of the paraliterary genres, as well as for a casualness with which they approach the topos of the modernist novel. The production of this author of the last two decades nevertheless testifies of a new direction that slips in the biographical. Like many writers of his generation, Jean Echenoz deals in Jérôme Lindon (2001), Ravel (2006), Courir (2008) and Des éclairs (2010) with the lives of illustrious personalities of our era. We can wonder what the objective of this approach of a writer, who shows his admiration with regard to his characters, is. Is it a simple tribute or need to fill out gaps in history that we will never complete for lack of evidence to support? This paper also tries to deal with the problem of the genre of these texts that lie at the edge between fiction and factual literature.