Read the Theo Cuffe translation

Some of the more intensely autistic parts where he gets really into the weeds about the books he likes are really dry (book rants chapters ranked: Latin authors-theologians-poets) but Huysmans is an incredible writer who engaged all the senses with his prose. The things he described are both stunningly beautiful and distressingly strange and while you know that it's probably best for Des Esseintes to get his pretentious ass back into Paris before his autism-created anorexia kills him you're still mad that the bastard doctor forced him to do it. The world does suck but retreating inside to create your own bizarre palace of wonders isn't the best way to do it. That being said I do wanna live in that house, it sounds badass. He really does sound like half of frogtwitter lol at least he has a genuine aristocratic pedigree and actually good taste and isn't just an IT guy with swamp ass