Joris Karl Huysmans was born in Paris in 1848 of Dutch parents. He died on May 13, 1907, the last of the little band of Naturalists which included Zola, Daudet, and the Goncourts. Huysmans was the preeminent Parisian writer. Huysmans worked, like the hero of "Downstream," as a low-level clerk in the Ministry of the Interior.