Product Description
Unjustly deported to Devil's Island following Louis-Napoleon's coup-d'état in December 1851, Florent Quenu escapes and returns to Paris. He finds the city changed beyond recognition. The old Marché des Innocents has been knocked down as part of Haussmann's grand program of urban reconstruction, replaced by Les Halles, the spectacular new food markets. Disgusted by a bourgeois society whose devotion to food is inseparable from its devotion to the Government, Florent attempts an insurrection. Les Halles, apocalyptic and destructive, play an active role in Zola's picture of a world in which food and the injustice of society are inextricably linked.
This is the first English translation in fifty years of Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris). The third in Zola's great cycle, Les Rougon-Macquart, it is as enthralling as Germinal, Thérèse Raquin, and the other novels in the series. Its focus on the great Paris food hall, Les Halles--combined with Zola's famous impressionist descriptions of food--make this a particularly memorable novel. Brian Nelson's lively translation captures the spirit of Zola's world and his Introduction illuminates the use of food in the novel to represent social class, social attitudes, political conflicts, and other aspect of the culture of the time. The bibliography and notes ensure that this is the most critically up-to-date edition of the novel in print. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The Fat and the Skinny
You will always find someone who buys you a drink, but no one will ever buy you food!
It is dishonest to be hungry!
Zola's volume 3 in the Rougon Maquart series is at its core about the disgusting bourgeoisie, who will love government as long as business is profitable. The food market "Les Halles" has recently been built, in the course of Haussmann's redesign of Paris, and it is a wonder of modern society. A side character, the painter Claude (later the hero of the sequel The Masterpiece), says: what a shame that the bourgeois scoundrels get to eat all this food!

Our hero Florent is a man who was unjustly banned to Devil's Island during the Coup d'Etat of Napoleon III. He escapes and finds his way back to Paris, where he tries to live in the Halles world, under a fake identity. Problem: too many people know him from old times! And he can't stay away from political circles, though he is harmlessness personified.
Clandestine life might still work, but he is a danger to his brother's wellbeing. The brother is not the main problem, but his wife is. The couple runs a successful butchery in the area and can't risk being identified with a runaway convict, a political prisoner! On top of that, Florent might eventually want his rightful share in the successful business, or at least of the inheritance that bought it. He must go back to the devil!
One of the key scenes in the book is set in the butchery during an evening. Florent, who lives with this brother's family, is telling a `story' about how he was transported to Devil's Island, how he escaped with 2 companions, how they both died, how he walked alone through the jungles of Dutch Guyana, how he found a settlement, and slowly managed to earn and save some money for his return to France. During his tale we watch the butcher and his staff do a batch of boudin, the blood sausage from pig's blood.

Florent is a weak character. He obtains a job as inspector of the fish market in the Halles, but he can not be assertive to use his authority. He is a well-intentioned push-over.

Lisa, the charcutiere, is the negative central heroine. She is a proper daughter to patriarch Maquart, one of the two evil half-brothers who started the `dynasty' in volume 1. She is also a cousin of speculator Saccard from La Curee, the second volume. Claude, the painter, is a nephew of the evil Lisa. He dislikes her thoroughly. But she wins. She is not actually evil, just a proper person who likes her comfort and supports the emperor and disapproves of political activists.

Napoleon III took power in 1851. The novel is set in 1858, nearly through half time of the shameful 2nd Empire. Zola despised the epoch. He wrote the novel in 1872, after the downfall of the usurper. Florent can not settle down to accept the second empire and remains in opposition. Is he a danger? Well, tyrannies have never been very slow in declaring any opposition a danger, up to now.
Zola's political outspokenness brought him trouble even when the regime had already fallen. I like him for it, and for his encyclopedic forays into the real world. 'Naturalism' had its own poetic values.

I admit that I post the review after reading only half of the book; what prompted me to post it prematurely is this: after I read the tale of the escape from Devil's Island (see the Papillon movie with D.Hoffman and Steve McQueen if you want a visual idea), I watched the movie To Have and Have Not (already reviewed). That ends on the exodus of Bogart plus an assembly of odd people from Vichy Martinique (another shameful period of French history) by boat with the lunatic intention to liberate a prisoner from Devil's Island. (Which mainly shows how far away from the world's realities William Faulkner lived and wrote!)
Does this happen to you too, that things come in pairs? To me, all the time.

Hungry for French Lit
This one I bought for me before my trip to Paris.Classic Literature sets the mood for a trip abroad.The book still resonates eight months later.

This novel could have been written today
I live in Paris, so it was interesting for me to read this novel.
I can tell you that nothing has changed since Zola wrote this book, except the
market has moved to Rungis. ... Read more

Product Description
The Kill (La Curée) is the second volume in Zola's great cycle of twenty novels, Les Rougon-Macquart, and the first to establish Paris - the capital of modernity - as the centre of Zola's narrative world.Conceived as a representation of the uncontrollable 'appetites' unleashed by the Second Empire (1852-70) and the transformation of the city by Baron Haussmann, the novel combines into a single, powerful vision the twin themes of lust for money and lust for pleasure. The all-pervading promiscuity of the new Paris is reflected in the dissolute and frenetic lives of an unscrupulous property speculator, Saccard, his neurotic wife Renée, and her dandified lover, Saccard's son Maxime. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

The Gilded Sepulcher of Napoleon III
"La Curée" is a hunting term in French that can't be easily translated. It's the moment when all the hounds and hunters have trapped or treed their prey and are closing in for "The Kill". The bloodthirtsy hounds of Zola's "La Curée" are the unscrupulous capitalist speculators of the French Second Empire (1852-1870) of Louis Napoleon, whose greed and decadence are unleashed by the first great "urban renewal" of modern times, the expropriation of huge swathes of Paris for the constructing of the boulevards. "The Kill" is a novel of Passions, of the lust for money and of sexual lust, but the most fiery Passion of all is Zola's own passionate hatred of the Second Empire, which he portrays as morally and aesthetically rotten to the core.

Was there ever a novel before "The Kill" in which every character is completely odious? Even in Zola's previous novel - The Fortune of the Rougons - there were a couple of sympathetic innocents, but the three principal actors of "The Kill" are loathsome from start to finish. Aristide Saccard is the son of the Pierre Rougon who pounced on Napoleon III's coup d'etat to 'lift' the Rougons from poverty in that first novel. Maxime is Aristide's effete son by his first wife in the village of Plassans, whom we met in "The Fortune" but whose death in "The Kill" affords Aristide his first opportunity to swindle his way to wealth in Paris. Renée is Aristide's second, much younger wife, whose dowry provides that opportunity. The novel "The Kill" is a tightly choreographed ballet, a 'pas de trois' of deception and seduction danced by these three despicable people, each one aiming to extract as much 'blood' from the other two as possible. In the latter chapters, in fact, explicit mention is made of "Phedre", that classic of the French theater, a drama of incestuous desire and suicide. One could read Zola's "La Curée" as a bold trope on the story of Phedre.

What pleasure can there be in reading a novel about three equally hateful characters in a menage a trois? You won't be able, dear reader, to take sides. The pleasure is all in the art of Zola's writing, and perhaps in the fervor of his historical denunciation of the Second Empire, which does seem surprisingly to resemble the state of things in "The World's Only Superpower" of 2010. The promiscuity and extravagance of Zola's Paris are not unmatched in today's America.

"The Kill" is an architectural masterpiece, a novel as precisely constructed as the Eiffel Tower and as ornate as the façade of any church or chateau in France. The first chapter, indeed, is a kind of extravagant façade of description, page after page of opulence -- clothing, carriages, furniture, palatial dwellings, all the trappings of excess and insatiable lust that swirl around Renée and Maxime (stepmother & stepson) like objects of Bacchanalia tossed in a tornado. Later in the novel, when the 'inevitable' occurs between Maxime and Renée, Zola portrays their ecstasy with the same brilliant indirection, describing the sensuous, narcotic luxury of Renée's bedroom rather than the sordid physical actions that occur in it. One can be seduced -- over-stimulated -- by Zola's powers of description. I read "La Curée" in French, by the way, and I relished this first chapter so much as poetic language that I found myself reading it aloud, something I rarely do.

There are twenty novels in Zola's "Rougon-Macquart" series, his epic depiction of French society and history through the interconnected lives of the descendants of two families from the Provençal village of Plassans. I've read and reviewed a couple of the later novels out of order, specifically "The Debacle" and "The Masterpiece". Eventually I may have to challenge Master Zola on a certain kind of double standard of sexual morality. In "The Kill", he is implacable in his condemnation of dissolute, decadent sexual frenzy among the "upper" classes of wealth and power. In "The Masterpiece", portraying the Bohemian lifestyle of the Impressionist painters and writers, he is far less minatory, far more indulgent. But hey, don't I feel the same ambivalence myself? Oddly enough, the original serialization of "La Curée" was interrupted in 1871 - censored by the government - ostensibly for its "immorality", and Zola was widely perceived as a 'prurient' writer, especially by British and American readers. In fact, in "The Kill" at least, he's as censorious as Savonarola or Jonathan Edwards.

This Oxford edition translation by Brian Nelson is the first since the end of the 19th C. I looked it over in a bookstore. It seems quite readable and representative of Zola's craft. I don't think you need to have read "The Fortune of the Rougons" or any other of Zola's books to appreciate "The Kill". A little knowledge of French history, and a tourist's visual impression of Paris, would facilitate your appreciation, but even those things are not necessary. "The Kill" is an awfully good novel.

Go for it!
The title of Nr.2 in Zola's 20 volume series about the Rougon- Macquart clan is purely metaphorical. It is a hunting expression and refers to the moment at the end of the hunt when the dogs get to devour the left-overs of the prey.
Zola was a fervid hater of the regime and time of Napoleon III. We are looking at the so-called second empire in France, which lasted for 2 decades, from 1851 to 1870. Ironically, the demise was helped by Prussia's Bismarck, who started the 2nd Empire in Germany on the basis of the victory over Napoleon.
Zola wrote the book at the end of the 2 decades, and it was published during the early time of the next epoch, a republic. Zola was not generally greeted with enthusiasm. Some considered his book vulgar and obscene. By modern standards, that sounds a bit overstated.
The story starts around 1860, so it is not chronologically the next in the big epos, just the second one written and published.

The story of this novel focuses on Aristide, the youngest son of Pierre Rougon, chief villain of volume 1 and family `patriarch', if a word with such positive connotations is appropriate for this kind of selfish rogue. Another son has made it as a politician and has entered the cabinet as a minister. Aristide has struck it rich as a speculator. He has a young second wife and an adult son from his first marriage.

We start with a look at the life of the rich in Paris. We join a coach ride, and then a dinner party at Aristide's mansion. Zola spends a lot of effort on describing the park, the streets, the traffic, the architecture of the house, the interior decoration. High point may be the green house: Zola gives us a detailed listing and description of the plants in there. Of course this serves a purpose: with Zola, we do not admire the ostentation, the `bastard culture' of the time.
The young wife is bored to distraction with being a pillar of society, and she envies the lives of more adventurous and honest women, like courtesans or actresses. We smell early that an affair with her step son is brewing.

Aristide's métier is speculation in property, and his world are the businesses which benefit from public investments like Napoleon's rebuilding of Paris. Corruption is ubiquitous.
Aristide has started his career as a government employee thanks to a job arranged by his brother the minister. He has access to information about the Haussmann modernization plans. He needs a starting capital to use his insights. He obtains that thanks to a convenient demise of his first wife and an opportunistic second marriage, which allows him to get started big.

So the two legs of the story are a criminally acquired fortune and a frustrated rich woman failing to find purpose in life. The novel works well and I liked it better than volume 1.
I want to reserve my judgment about the historical merits of the Paris renovation. Zola may have been too radical with his condemnation. Based on the origin of the regime, his hatred is certainly understandable. The corrupt culture, if accurately described, is surely disgusting. On the other hand, wasn't the rebuilding of Paris with its broad boulevards and its rearranged arrondissements a good thing, after all? Need to read more about it.

Flesh and Pavement
The first chapter of THE KILL is a tour de force.It opens in the Bois de Boulogne, a forest remade into a drawing room, and travels the new boulevards of the Second Empire to end at the Aristide (Rougon) Saccard mansion.There, it burrows through its spacious rooms and ends in the hothouse, a man made structure refashioned into a wild place.As a set piece, it is simultaneously a masterpiece of naturalism and a perfectly-balanced metaphor.

The novel is most interesting when it is describing the broad strokes (of demolition and rebuilding) which made Paris the city it is today.Zola doesn't see the new boulevards as progressive, but as the arteries that would allow a totalitarian regime to mobilize troops to the outskirts of the city.He also doesn't see the benefits of deficit spending to achieve these goals.

Many modern readers may find his attitude toward the lasciviousness of the age overly-moralizing, and not entirely in keeping with his stated purpose of naturalism.Chapter VI, in particular, carries too great a burden of metaphor, causing much damage to the structure of the novel.Zola was 31 when he wrote THE KILL, and it contains mistakes that his more mature novels do not.

As for the title, LA CURÉE, readers will be well-advised to have read HIS EXCELLENCY before reading THE KILL (as Zola himself wished--see his intro to DOCTOR PASCAL, or my review at The Fortune of the Rougons (Rougon-Macquart)).The preferred second novel of the series contains a detailed description of this peculiar ritual of the hunt, in which the butcher's offal is given to the dogs.As Pierre Rougon's third son gobbles up real estate and cheats even his own family in the process of gaining wealth, the image of those dogs fighting each other for scraps becomes more and more vivid.

French Decadence, Infidelity, and Incest
This book is full of excess and scheming. Lovers are passed around like currency, and debauchery becomes commonplace. Zola's portrait of Paris during the Second Empire is defined by indulgence.

It's a novel about a city being reinvented. Everywhere houses are being torn down to make way for new thoroughfares and elaborate building projects while the government reimburses the owners for their losses--a system ripe with abuses as speculators purchase property they know will be claimed and make inflated demands for compensation.

Financial gain and sexual gratification are the only motives. But, in The Kill, rapid growth and radical change come at a cost--not only financial, but moral. And the outcome is devastating.

Excellent
This edition has thorough notes to supplement the text and is a very well done translation. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
The seventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, L'Assommoir (1877) is the story of a woman's struggle for happiness in working-class Paris.At the center of the story stands Gervaise, who starts her own laundry and for a time makes a success of it.But her husband soon squanders her earnings in the Assommoir, a local drinking spot, and gradually the pair sink into poverty and squalor..L'Assommoir was a contemporary bestseller, outraged conservative critics, and launched a passionate debate about the legitimate scope of modern literature.This new translation captures not only the brutality but the pathos of its characters' lives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Truth in L'Assommoir
Somehow, Émile Zola manages to create stories that bring the readers in close to the story. "L'Assommoir" is one such story, grabbing readers from the very start and holding them until the very end, uncompromising. As in his other books, the story of France is presented in the form of a complex cast of characters. This story, a surprisingly strong account of drinking and difficulties, accurately comes to describe the situations.

"L'Assommoir" may be described simply as a story about alcoholism but that would be a disservice to this book. Beyond the simple premise as described on the back cover, "L'Assommoir" deals with family troubles, social difficulties, and, indeed, the devastating affects of alcoholism. By keeping the immediate cast of characters relatively small (and hinting at future Rougon-Macquart novels in the characters of Nana and Étienne) but showing a wider world with numerous side-characters, Zola creates an entirely realistic and believable world, displaying the poorer side of Paris. Zola's steadfast descriptions of a difficult and seedy world are grim and startling. The characters' lives are so full of difficulties and pain (following, of course, a long period of good times) that it's impossible not to find yourself immersed in the story.

"L'Assommoir" aims to follow Zola's own "realism" style. There's a vulgarity factor to "L'Assommoir", just as there is one to Zola's other Rougon-Macquart novels (for those coming from others). The realism leads to accuracy in fights, in good times and in bad. Situations breathe; Zola builds scenes so utterly true that it's impossible not to scratch your head, wondering who let him record all of these things. The hypocrisy displayed, the problems presented - all come together to show the truth of the times and of life. It's a difficult, heavy novel, but brilliant, important and a necessary read.

The Oxford World's Classic edition (the one I read) is perfect - the writing (translation and Zola's own genius) is fresh and modern; the extras in the back of the book are interesting, useful and at times offer new bits of information. It's a convenient, helpful edition that's a pure pleasure to read. The vulgarities may lack the punch that they held when first published, but the truth behind their use should still suffice in shocking many readers. "L'Assommoir" is a brilliant and important novel, a wonderful starting point for Zola, and an equally great jumping off point for further Zola books.

Highly recommended! ... Read more

Product Description
From the Rougon-Macquart Series: Money (L'Argent): After a disastrous speculation, Aristide Saccard was forced to sell his mansion and to cast about for means of creating a fresh fortune. Chance made him acquainted with Hamelin, an engineer whose residence in the East had suggested to him financial schemes which at once attracted the attention of Saccard. With a view to financing these schemes the Universal Bank was formed, and by force of advertising became immediately successful. Emboldened by success, Saccard launched into wild speculation... --- "Judged by the standard of popularity, 'Money' may be said to rank among M. Zola's notable achievements... This is not surprising, as the book deals with a subject of great interest to every civilized community. And with regard to this English version, it may, I think, be safely said that its publication is well timed, for the rottenness of our financial world has become such a crying scandal, and the inefficiency of our company laws has been so fully demonstrated, that the absolute urgency of reform can no longer be denied." (Ernest Alfred Vizetelly) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Zola's notable achievement
'Money' may be said to rank among M. Zola's notable achievements... This is not surprising, as the book deals with a subject of great interest to every civilized community. And with regard to this English version, it may, I think, be safely said that its publication is well timed, for the rottenness of our financial world has become such a crying scandal, and the inefficiency of our company laws has been so fully demonstrated, that the absolute urgency of reform can no longer be denied

White-collar crime in 19th century France
This novel follows the exploits of Aristide Saccard, a financial wheeler-dealer in Second Empire Paris. His former wealth wiped away by investment schemes gone bad, Saccard looks for his next big windfall. Luckily, he meets a neighbor, Hamelin, an engineer with grand designs to develop railroads, mines, dams, and shipping companies in the Middle East. The engineer and the financial wizard join forces to make both their dreams come true. Saccard founds the Universal Bank to fund Hamelin's projects, and it becomes all the rage in the Paris Bourse (stock market). While Hamelin's intentions are noble, Saccard's primary interest in the venture is personal financial gain and self-aggrandizement. In order to push up his company's value, he manipulates figures illegally and lies to his investors.
Saccard is a personification of the greed and opportunism rampant in France at the time, and his unwise investors personify that period's growing mania for financial speculation. It's amazing how relevant the book is to this day. The Universal Bank could just as well be named Enron or Worldcom, and foreign investment in the Middle East is certainly a current concern. Another issue that Zola tackles in this book is anti-Semitism. Though Zola himself was not an anti-Semite, he makes Saccard a hater of Jews in order to depict the mind-set of many Parisians at that time. One of the functions of Saccard's Universal Bank is to create a repository of Catholic money to rival the Jewish-owned banks, an actual goal of some Parisian businessman of the time. Regardless of the historical social commentary, one can enjoy this novel purely for its intricately-drawn characters and its insights into human nature. I would caution that some of the financial strategy can be a little difficult for people (like me) who are not fully versed in the world of stocks and bonds.
This book is the 18th book in Zola's twenty-novel Rougon-Macquart series. Zola first introduced us to the character Aristide Saccard back in the second volume of the series, La Curée. L'Argent (aka Money) is a much better book than La Curée (aka The Kill), and it is not necessary to read that prior volume in order to understand or enjoy this book. By Zola standards I would not call this novel a masterpiece, but it's an excellent novel and deserves to be read.

At the Paris Stock Exchange
"L'Argent/the Money" finishes up the story of Arstide Saccard; it takes over where the novel "La Curee/The Kill" leaves off. It shows the life in all its forms. The last two sentences of the novel give a philosophical description of the role of money and why so many vices are tied with it.

The novel shows how easy it was in those days to take a roller-coaster ride from poverty to richness and back to poverty. It narrates about early days of capitalism, when no antitrust regulations existed. One should also bear in mind that all the utopian talk of Sigizmund Busch about classless society and money becoming obsolete was seen (from the way it is conveyed in the novel) as daydreaming.

The novel walks through such important events of the XIXth century as: the Mexican expedition, building of the Suez Canal, the Austro-Italian War, the Prussian conquest of small duchies and the Paris World Exhibition of 1867. Shortly after all these events France was struck by the infamous Dreyfus Affair and the novel does a good job describing the atmosphere that led to it, because there is hardly a chapter where the main character does not make inflammatory statements about the Jews.

All in all, it is a classic novel, not only about the money, but about the humanity, as well.

So, who looks after your money?
Set in the heroic golden age of nineteenth century capitalism, this belated sequel to the second book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, "LaCurée", tells you in Zola's inimitable style about how the stockmarket works and the psychology of market players. Nothing has reallychanged since it was written over a hundred years ago. Read it and you mayavoid losing your life savings in some scam or other, or you may find someideas for a scam of your own. You would not be the first, if some recentscandals are anything to go by. If you're Jewish you may not like some ofthe remarks made by the book's main character, Aristide, but rememberZola's honourable role in the Dreyfus affair only a few years later. Now goand check the stability of your bank while you've still got the chance. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Better than expected
Bought this item for myself, however my father got a hold of it and is reading it now. I will have to wait my turn. ... Read more

Product Description
The fourteenth novel in a twenty book series collectively entitled, "Les Rougon-Macquart, L'Œuvre" was first translated into English in 1886, the title having since been rendered "The Masterpiece". Set in France's Second Empire, the story of naturalist painter Claude Lantier is believed to be a highly fictionalized account of Zola's friendship with the painter Paul Cézanne. The fictional artist of Zola's Bohemian world, Lantier, strives to complete a great work that will reflect his own talent and genius as a revolutionary, but struggles greatly in living up to his artistic potential. The story was perhaps too personal for Cézanne, whose correspondence with Zola ended immediately after the novel's publication. Nevertheless, this story of the misunderstood artist, brilliant but scorned by the intolerant art-going public and their unwillingness to abandon traditional practices, epitomizes the attitudes of Bohemian Revolutionaries and the nineteenth century era of French Naturalism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Yes! It Is a Masterpiece!
This novel, I mean, despite all the 'faint praise' four-star reviews. I had the advantage, I confess, of reading it in French, but my wife read this translation and thought it was adequate.

The English title, however, isn't entirely adequate. The original - L'Oeuvre/ The Work - could refer to a single painting or just as well to the Works of a painter or to the Vocation/Work of being an artist. There are two characters in this novel who are consumed by their Work, the writer Pierre Sandoz and the painter Claude Lantier. The narrative focuses on the painter, Claude, whose genius is recognized only by his few closest friends, whose paintings are rejected and ridiculed by the public, and who in fact is pathologically unable to finish work, to express that genius to his own satisfaction. Claude's "Work" is a tragic failure in the end. But beyond the story of poor Claude, this novel is a profound depiction of the Artist -- any artist on any art -- and his/her agonistic consummation in The Work. Reading this novel with empathy will offer you two life-choices: 1) to be double-darn grateful NOT to be an artist, or 2) to be unable to imagine that Life is worth living if you are NOT an artist.

It's a wordy book, but artists are wordy people. There are chapter-long conversations that do not advance the plot, but rather serve as manifestos of Zola's literary aspirations, and of the aesthetics of the Impressionist painters who were his contemporaries. If those Impressionists are among your own artistic favorites, you will be thrilled by Zola's animation of them. If not, you may be bored. Me, I find that there are more boring readers in the world than boring books. One of those conversations, outdoors, between Claude and Pierre, amounts to Zola's 'prospectus' for his life work, the twenty novels of the "Rougon-Macquart" series. Pierre says:
"I know now exactly what I'm going to do in all this. Oh, nothing colossal, something quite modest, just enough for one lifetime even when you have some pretty exaggerated ambitions! I'm going to take a family and study each member of it, one by one, where they come from, what becomes of them, how they react to one another. Humanity in miniature, therefor, the way humanity evolves, the way it behaves... I shall place my characters in some definite period that will provide the milieu and the prevailing circumstances and make the thing a sort of slice of history... I shall make it a series of novels, say fifteen or twenty, each complete in itself and with its own particular setting, but all connected, a cycle of books...."
The character Pierre was just beginning his first novel, which would start him on a career of success, but foxy old Emile Zola was back-filling here. L'Oeuvre was the fourteenth of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, published in 1886. The twentieth -- Le Docteur Pascal -- would appear in 1893, four years before William Faulkner (America's great family-cycle novelist) was born.

Claude, Pierre, and their friends in the novel are "Bohemians" and The Masterpiece is a tangy, slangy, slightly lurid portrayal of the Bohemian lifestyle, that social and sexual freedom which lured artists and writers to the Paris of the mid-19th Century. Zola's books were shocking to his contemporaries, even in France but especially in Victorian England and America. Not only did he describe sexual relations explicitly but he removed them from questions of morality. Worse yet, he blatantly asserted the 'truth' of that horrid man Darwin! Zola was the first novelist of note to treat humanity as subject to evolutionary constraints, the first novelist of modern sociology. To my mind, Zolastill seems a radically 'modern' writer.

That 'Bohemian' Paris, don't you know, is the Paris we all want to visit! The Paris we hope to see as tourists! That's another glory of Zola's Work; it's the closest we can come to a time machine. The descriptions of Paris -- of its streets, parks, crowds, passions in the 1800s -- are superbly evocative, even in the English translation. The hapless Claude, in the novel, is obsessed with the image of Paris that he aspires to paint on a canvas "as big as the Louvre". Claude's brief 'happiness', with his adoring wife and without the need to paint, takes place in the countryside, but Claude can't escape his obsession with Paris and its life of The Work. Eventually, Paris and L'Oeuvre consume him. His wife, for whom both the fictional author Pierre and the actual author Emile feel enormous affection and comprehension, falls victim to L'Oeuvre as tragically as Claude. Zola's portrayal of women in this novel and others, by the way, has been denounced by some as disparaging to women. I absolutely disagree. His women are flesh-and-blood real, complete in themselves, plausible, and every bit as admirable and/or despicable as his men.

I'd love to do an experiment in 'perception' with this novel, using two groups of readers. One group would read it "cold", with no prefaces or critiques telling them what to expect. The other group would be aware of the common critical assumptions that The Masterpiece is autobiographical and that Claude was intended as a partial portrayal of the painter Paul Cezanne. It's true that Zola and Cezanne were boyhood and lifetime friends, coming from the same city of southern France. It's very likely that Zola drew details of his novel from real-life experiences, including experiences borrowed from the life of Cezanne. And it seems to be true that Cezanne was somewhat offended by L'Oeuvre when he read it. But Claude Lantier is NOT Cezanne! And if Zola intended him to be Cezanne, he flagrantly misunderstood and misrepresented his friend. The paintings that Claude in the novel hopes to exhibit -- paintings of monstrous scope -- are nothing like Cezanne's. In fact, the one painting that Claude exhibits in the Gallery of the Rejected (an actual historical exhibit) is far closer to Manet than Cezanne, by its description. Cezanne's recognition was slow coming, but it came in full measure; Cezanne was NOT a frustrated failure, not at any time even in his own mind. The portrayal of Claude's self-destructive obsessive-compulsive personality could be taken as prophetic; the next generation of painters did include Vincent van Gogh, after all. In general, Zola understood writers and the aesthetic aspirations of writers far more clearly than he understood visual artists and their aesthetic preoccupations. That, I think, is the only weakness of this novel; Zola presumes to speak for painters too freely. One might also carp at Zola's depiction ofthe writer Pierre Sandoz; he "goes easy" on himself, if indeed Pierre is a self-portrait. Pierre is modest, brave, and above all loyal throughout. I can hardly believe Zola himself was so lovable.

One more 'pleasure' plucked from this English translation. Here's the description of the feast Pierre and his charming wife prepare, for the last uncomfortable reunion of their Bohemian circle of artist-friends:
"They were both fond of exotic dishes, and on this occasion decided on oxtail soup, grilled red mullet, fillet of beef with mushrooms, ravioli a l'italienne, hazel-hens from Russia and a truffle salad, as well as caviar and kilkis for hors d'oeuvre, a praline ice cream, a little Hungarian cheese green as an emerald, some fruit and pastries. To drink, simply some decanters of vintage claret, Chambertin with the roast and sparkling Moselle as a change from the same old champagne with the dessert."

A thousand devils, my friends! I was born in the wrong century!

Interesting historically
Interesting historically.The artist in the story is a combination of Manet, Monet, and Cezanne.

Not Terribly Masterful
I would say that this is the novel, par excellence, of the tortured artist, except for the fact that it is not.This Oxford edition, as per usual, provides us in the Introduction with a "clef" for this "roman," so to speak, so that anybody who wants to review it will be fully aware that such-and-such a character is based on such-and-such a person in Zola's life.This is all very interesting for, say, a biographer or Zola enthusiast, but it adds very little to the experience of simply reading the work.

So, basically, this is a book about an artist with talent who, gradually, becomes possessed by his artistic vision to the point where the pursuit of art is no longer compatible with life.Zola is a very competent writer, and my favourite parts were his descriptions of vanished 19th Century Paris, described with an artist's precision.

But, I must say that I really don't very much care for Zola, at least as represented in this work.I'm not going to put it down to Naturalism or Realism, because all such "-isms" are question-begging.They assume that what is "real" or what is "natural" is known or agreed upon, while, on the contrary - as Proust is not slow in pointing out - these are the greatest mysteries in life!

Shortly before his suicide, Claude speculates that, "The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones."If this is the way in which I regarded my past, I would have ended things decades ago!To say nothing of Proust, for whom memory is the touchstone of a sort of eternity!

Zola's outlook here, it seems to me, owes much to Nietzsche and to Darwin, except that Nietzsche's artist-hero doesn't want adulation from the masses and Darwin's theory doesn't really apply to the "social Darwinism" which Zola - who employs the term "survival of the fittest" at least twice herein - presents us with here.

It is a prosaic story of a neglected artist going mad: nothing more, nothing less.

YThe Masterpiece
An easy and enjoyable read. Vividly evokes the atmosphere of late-19th century bohemia in Paris,

Superb
Given that Zola lived through the whole period of when the Impressionists turned the Salon's on their heads this is almost a biographical piece. For the various characters Zola merely drew from his friends that he would frequent the cafes and bars with. The lead character, Claude, is primarily based on Manet and Cezanne - both of which wouldn't forgive him doing so. Zola wasn't too enamoured with the impressionist and post-impressionist movements, this attitude he uses to great effect when depicting the derision with which the artists work was met. The opening piece which Claude has displayed in the Salon is in effect Manet's "Le Dejeuner Sur l'herbe" (1963).
The book opens with Claude finding a woman drenched on his doorstep, Christine. She has just arrived in Paris and through one thing and anotherbecomes lost and shelters from the rain in Claude's doorway. She is the impetus for the figure in his painting. The story unfolds with their romance, Claude trying to get his artwork accepted by the art intelligensia, succumbing to the desire to paint THE painting, etc.
A number of characters share the stage, again most likely based on artisans that Zola knew: architects, artists, writers, critics.
The book conveys quite well what it must have been for them all struggling to get a toehold and make an impression on the Paris art scene.
The tone of the book is somewhat bleak but Zola captures the Paris of the late 1800's well. I've never been to Paris but for those that have, the book is replete with names of various streets and districts across the city.
This was the first Zola novel I've read. Being an artist this book obviously struck a chord with me. It is well written and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who enjoys art, particularly from this period. ... Read more

Product Description
Pot Luck, Zola's most acerbic satire, describes daily life in a newly constructed block of flats in late nineteenth-century Paris. In examining the contradictions that pervade bourgeois life, Zola reveals a multitude of betrayals and depicts a veritable 'melting pot' of moral and sexual degeneracy. This new translation captures the robustness of Zola's language and restores the omissions of earlier abridged versions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Hypocrisy of the middle class
Occasionally you pick up a novel and after reading about ten pages you realize two things.First, that you're in for a great story, and second, you would NEVER be able to write a novel that is as detailed, complex, and readable as the one you are holding in your hand.That is how I feel reading a Zola novel for the first time, and this tale is no exception.If you are new to Zola and stumbled upon this book and these reviews by accident, Emile Zola was a French author of the second half of the nineteenth century and wrote what could be called social commentary.His novels are typically cynical and scathing attacks on virtually every aspect of French society.Nobody is spared from his pen, not the lowest drunk living on the street nor the Emperor.Zola's primary work is a 20 volume series (the Rougon-Macquart series) which are linked in the style of Balzac with recurring characters and themes.The novel Pot Luck is the tenth in this series.Although linked, there is no need to read them in order (with one or two exceptions), they are all independent.

In this novel, a young bumpkin from the country, Octave Mouret, moves into an apartment building in Paris searching for his fortune and a few sexual conquests along the way.The primary theme of this novel is the bald-faced hippocracy in which most of the residents of the building live.There is lots of talk among the residents about chastity, purity, up-right living, but behind the facade is a cesspool of lies and immorality.The men are trying to bed as many of the women as possible (each others' wives, the servants, and outside mistresses), and the women are greedy, gossipy, and vain.On top of this, the happy middle class residents of the building are constantly hounding the servants complaining about their immorality and filth.

There are three things I love about Zola, and this novel is no exception.First, nobody develops realistic, complex characters like Zola.His characters talk and act EXACTLY like people really talk and act.Second, his themes are timeless and even though he is writing about 19th century France, a few small changes and it would sound as if he was talking about 21st century life in the West.The central themes of this novel (hypocrisy and contradiction) are as relevant today as when the novel was written, and you may well re-exam your life after reading this story.Third, he has a tremendous insight into people and exposes all their petty, dishonest machinations.Zola's writing style is gritty and direct, very different from his contemporary English counterparts.Many Americans may be shocked at the directness of his prose.

If you haven't read any of the other Rougon-Macquart novels, I don't know that I'd start here.This is a great story, and far better than virtually anything written by any other author, but it doesn't stand up to Zola's best works.If you are a newbie, I'd start with Nana or L'Assommoir, they are overall better stories and typical of Zola's style (but not his 2 best, which are Germinal and La Debacle).If you've read Zola before, all I can say is that you're in for more of the same, and that this is a complex, enjoyable tale.The Oxford World Classic translation by Brian Nelson is only OK, not great (not as good as some of the other OWC translations).Nelson occasionally drops a bit of English slang into the text, and it sounds completely inappropriate.I've never read the French version, but I suspect that a great deal of the lingo was lost in translation.Additionally, there are so many characters in this novel that sometimes it is difficult to keep track of who is sleeping with who, which servants work for which tenants, etc.A dramatis personae up front would have been most useful to the reader to keep track of all the characters.These are minor quibbles though, this is a thoughtful, engaging tale by one of the world's greatest novelists.

Not a Melodrama
This novel is not melodramatic, because it does not fit the definition. In a melodrama there is a polarization of good and evil; both are shown with an exaggerated acuteness and feelings that go along are overdramatized. In "Pot-Bouille/Pot Lock" the characters are very real and down-to-earth. The novel features sex, adulteries, self-seeking, self-advancement, hypocrisy, religion, greed, fight over inheritance, jealousy, show-boating, children born out of wedlock, etc.All of that happens among the inhabitants of the same building. The last utterance in the novel (delivered by one of the servants) shows the typical nature of the late XIXth century Parisian building, which is splendidly beautiful on the outside (referring to the beginning of chapter I). A fine-looking housekeeper, who stands on guard of morals, is an embodiment of sanctimony.

The novel is somewhat loosely tied with the sequel story about Octave Mouret "Au Bonheur des Dames/the Ladies' Delight". Both are masterpieces in their own rights and can be enjoyed independently of one another.

*Smile, Laugh and Cry With Your Neighbors*
"Pot Bouille" is indeed a piece of treasure.Even now, I can still find myself holding on to each word since the very first page.Each page will keep you wanting for more.It tells a story of an apartment building and its occupants.One might imagine the type of brownstone mansions in New York City or Beacon Hill in Boston divided to apartment units to be rented out.Except that in Zola's pot, neighborly interactions take place regularly and make up the heart of the story.

Although many stories about bourgeoisie lives have been written, I've never come across characters as vivid, comical, harsh, evolving and disgusting as those portrayed in this book.Gossips, money, sex, adulteries, self advancement and selfishness are so well mashed in the pot, they'll warm up to readers' hearts.I can really feel for the characters cause they seem very much alive, it almost seem that I'm living next door to them.Although Monsieur Octave Mouret is described as the hero in this book, I feel that the true hero is Monsieur Josserand."Pot Bouille" is a story about temptations and human feelings.It has every power to make me cringe, laugh, smile and cry.

"Pot Bouille" is a truly wonderful piece that will spark readers' imaginations.I've enjoyed reading the copy by Oxford World's Classics.Professor Brian Nelson has done a terrific job in translating it from its original French.Read it and have fun!!!!

Interesting, very interesting
An entertaining read but you can't help learn something about Parisian bourgeois class homelife in the process.Plenty of intrigues and double dealings.I like how zola lets us eavesdrop on the gossip sessions of the servants in the back courtyard in order to move the plot along.The ending leaves the reader hanging somewhat.He was obiously already planning to write the next installment in the Rougon Macquart series (and this book's sequel) The ladies paradise.

What they don't teach you in business school
A good jolly soap opera of a book. Young man comes from the provinces to the capital. Gets a room in an apartment block. Learns about life in general and the opposite sex in particular. Nothing new so far. Otherauthors had already trod the same path. Here, the whole process ismeticulously described with Zola's usual skill (he is now on the tenthnovel in his cycle). One cannot help thinking, though, that the apartmentblock must have been a pox doctor's paradise. But the book's real interestis in how the hero uses his acquired knowledge - which is revealed when hebecomes the great retailing tycoon in the next book "Au Bonheur desDames". So, this book is really the first part of a two-part seriesand it does its job of whetting the appetite for part two. It shows thatthe university of life is better than a business studies course any day. ... Read more

Product Description
A superb new translation of one of the most intense and explicit works of the nineteenth-century French master Émile Zola considered The Beast Within-also known as La Bête Humaine-to be his "most finely worked" novel. This new translation finally captures his fast- paced yet deliberately dispassionate style. Set at the end of the Second Empire, when French society seemed to be hurtling into the future like the new railways and locomotives it was building, The Beast Within is at once a tale of murder, passion, and possession and a compassionate study of individuals derailed by the burden of inherited evil. In it, Zola expresses the hope that human nature evolves through education but warns that the beast within continues to lurk beneath the veneer of technological progress. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

"It must be easy to kill, then! Everybody did it!"
Although I haven't read the entire Rougon-Macquart series - not even close - I think there's a good chance that this is the most violent and shocking entry in Zola's 20-book cycle. This novel (no. 17 in the series) is populated with characters who are battling violent impulses - or "the beast within" of the title. When all is said and done, it would appear that not a single person's hands are clean. Everyone contributes in some way to the destructive and inhumane deeds scattered throughout this grim tale, which is said to have inspired later writers of "noir" crime fiction.

Cavernous train stations and a desolate house located right next to the railroad tracks are among the suitably atmospheric backdrops, and the locomotives that barrel across the countryside are an extension of human beings who mindlessly destroy those in their path. Zola provides some wonderful, cutting commentary on the technological progress that railways of the day are supposed to epitomize. This, after a horrific derailment: "What did it matter that a few nameless people had come to an end beneath their wheels? The dead had been carried away, and the blood had been cleaned up. People were on the move again - towards a bright, new future!"

As the story moves along, Zola explores violence through the perspectives of multiple characters. The number of incidents do indeed pile up, but I don't want to give away the story (unlike the Penguin book jacket; more on that later). Typical for Zola, the story builds up to a terrific conclusion - in this case, one of the most exciting in all of 19th-century literature. Zola's portrayal of the corrupt and unjust legal system is also illuminating. Those familiar with this series will not be surprised that there are several amazing set pieces in "The Beast Within," including the description of a train plowing through a blizzard to get to Paris. There are a few flaws. The Darwinian, atavistic motives that Zola ascribes to one character's violent acts aren't entirely convincing. The drama can also be a tad over-heated and heavy-handed at times.

A note on the Penguin edition:I appreciate some of the features of Penguin paperbacks such as the new, larger font size and the helpful explanatory notes. However, I certainly don't appreciate the completely artless story summary on the back cover, which in the span of a few short sentences gives away at least four spoilers. Please, Penguin - describe plots in more general terms so that readers can discover stories for themselves! Another note: Thanks to Amazon reviewer Thomas Plotkin for directing me to this book, along with several others in this great series... If you want to read some brilliant, short summaries of a number of the Zola's works, check out his comment in my review of "Nana."

Oh, and one more thing - while reading this book the thought will probably cross your mind that it would make a thrilling movie. In fact, several movie adaptations have been made, most notably by Jean Renoir and Fritz Lang. I haven't seen those films, but the movie posters look extremely stylish and cool!

"Who could fathom the shadowy mind of the beast within?"
While this new translation of "La Bete Humaine" starts off a bite more melodramatic than some of Zola's other works, in the end the author succeeds in drawing the reader into a nightmarish world of infidelity, greed, abuse, murder and madness.

This is a thought-provoking work - equal in many respects to "Crime and Punishment" - although at times Zola's depiction of blood lust and violence (especially violent acts committed against women) are hard to handle.Yet, however sensationalized or gratuitous the violence and depravity seems, I hope it is obvious that this is meant to be a social commentary rather than a celebration of certain kinds of reprehensible behavior.Another possible criticism is that there are too many ideas floating around in this novel - Zola in fact formed the plot by combining two separate story ideas into one book, which I think makes it less focused than some of his other works ("Germinal" or "L'Assommoir" for example) - and the author's ideas about heredity and crime seem less believable today than perhaps they would have to contemporary readers.

Yet, these points aside, "The Beast Within" is still a fascinating read and a deeply unsettling look at the human condition. ... Read more

Product Description
This title has fewer than 24 printed text pages.

Emile Zola is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by William Dean Howells is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of William Dean Howells then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

Product Description
Nana opens in 1867, the year of the World Fair, when Paris, thronged by a cosmopolitan elite, was a perfect target for Zola's scathing denunciation of hypocrisy and fin-de-siècle moral corruption. In this new translation, the fate of Nana--the Helen of Troy of the second Empire, and daughter of the laundress in L'Assommoir--is now rendered in racy, stylish English. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Not my favorite of the series so far...
Have been getting into Zola and very much enjoying his bird's eye approach to the society that surrounds him. I am almost done "Nana" now and have not found it near as good as "L'Assommoir" or "Germinal" or I suppose...should I? --As those are two of the high water marks of Zola's amazingly ambitious novel cycle.

Nana as a character simply doesn't have enough depth to carry the weight of her own full novel IMO...this is not to say this is bad, and this was probably Zola's intent, to present her as a plaything of the empire...I mean I still gave it four stars, its just that by comparison to those other two *masterworks* mentioned...there, I said it...ahem, masterworks...yep, read them both...but a general reader not interested in engaging with the whole 20 novel cycle might find her disconnectedness with everything a little too little to invest your energy in.

"Therese Raquin" on the other hand is stunning and worth investigating for those who have liked other Zola. As an introduction to the very young Emile Zola getting into his game of writing it is to me a more edifying prospect if you want to get a handle on where this writer is coming from mentally.

The Woman Nana was NO mary Magdalene
If you pick up this novel expecting to encounter a Holy Sinner, a prostitute with a Heart of Gold, you'll be sadly disabused. Anna Coupeau - dite Nana, an actress with no assets except her oozing sexuality - is in fact the granddaughter of Antoine Macquart and appeared as an abused child in Zola's earlier novel L'Assomoir; that's the linkage between this novel and the other nineteen novels of the Rougon/Macquart cycle. Nana is corrupted, odiously selfish, contemptuous of nearly everyone, especially the concupiscent old fools who squander their wealth and health on attempting to bind her to them. Her carnal magnetism is lush enough to dominate men of every rank and age, but (fortunately perhaps) her own willful whimsies and compulsions interfere repeatedly with her bedarkened self-interest. Her rise from gutter-wench to the cynosure of the Parisian demi-monde, and back to the gutter and yet again to palaces, is the narrative thread that holds this novel together, but Nana herself is its subject only as a metonymy for the Second Empire of Napoleon III, the depraved courtesan embodying the sluttish society that Emile Zola castigated in all the Rougon/Macquart series. Nana the woman does not "end" well; in fact her final curtain call is ghastly and disgusting. But the curtain call of the Second Empire was no more elevating; the novel Nana ends at the very moment of the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War - the debacle Zola portrayed in his novel Le Debacle - with Parisian mobs howling "to Berlin!, to Berlin!" outside the window of the room where Nana lies stricken with disfiguring small pox.

It's a grand literary irony that "Nana" was ever regarded as disreputable, tasteless,certainly amoral. The book seethes with moral censure; it's an indictment of a foul individual whose follies and 'sins' are congruent with the corrupt society through which she moves. Zola was the "Cato" of Paris, an indignant realist, more censorious than any clerical or political reformer. He was the "conscience" of his era. It makes more sense to regard "Nana" as a fiery sermon of damnation than as pornography.

This translation comes well recommended, but not by me, since I read "Nana" in French. Zola isn't easy to capture in English. If the translator chooses to render the text in the syntax and style of his British Victorian contemporaries, the brutal vigor of Zola's realism is compromised, but if another translator attempts to 'modernize' the text in the plainer, blunter American English of 20th C novelists, the incongruous anachronism is worse. Hey, it's worth learning to read French, even if you never master the spoken language, in order to access some of the greatest novels ever written.

Unique and surprising - 4.5
Well, if there's one thing to be said about "Nana", it's that the book will sure keep you on your toes. With a large and shifting cast of characters (all of whom seem to revolve around, of course, Nana), Zola wrote the first of his novels that I did not immediately love, but a remarkable, disturbing and bizarre book.

For those coming from "L'Assommoir", it's easy to remember Nana as the girl who starts out adorable and quickly disappears from her parents' lives. For those who haven't read "L'Assommoir" yet, do so now. It's a great book. As for "Nana", it continues with Zola's incredibly detailed style. This writing, which suited me fine in "L'Assommoir" and in "Germinal" (excellent) suddenly seems to drag a little. "Nana" is wickedly brilliant in all the dialogues and the relationships between people. In between, however, the story slows down, at times almost bogging down.

"Nana" presents the highly hypocritical and strange world of the wealthy Parisians at the time of the World Fair. Full of whoring and sex (all of which is, of course, never explicitly described, leaving this book technically "clean", if you don't mind hearing about cross-dressing orgies), "Nana" seems to mock the culture that at once harbors such behavior and simultaneously criticizes it. The reader almost feels sympathy for a struggling Nana, as she wreaks havoc around her. There lies the great genius of Zola's writing - even as the book stumbles, it manages to keep the reader hooked to Nana's story and wondering what strange scene will come next.

"Nana" is a clever, interesting book. Offering a view of Parisian theatrics and "wealthy" life, it also presents hypocrisy, debauchery and female strength - Nana repeatedly proves to the men around her that she does not need them, that she can rely and survive by herself. It's an important addition to the Rougon-Macquart cycle, telling one more French tale. It's a special, fascinating, enrapturing book. Still, it does not manage to cast the same spell as "Germinal" and "L'Assommoir". While I recommend this wholeheartedly, I suggest readers start with those two great books first. Regardless, "Nana" is a unique and surprising book about whoring in Paris - 4.5.

Recommended.

Interesting and funny.
You don't have to be a scholar of French literature (I'm not) to appreciate Nana.Set in the late 1860's and early 1870's, Zola's novel follows a talentless but beautiful stage actress whose physical charms (which she generously shares with upscale men) make her the talk of Paris.Nana is soon living well beyond the means of the various men who support her; their desire for her inevitably leads to their downfall, while the smiling Nana simply moves on to the next admirer.Zola was apparently saying something about the superficiality and decadence of society (Nana is ultimately doomed, as is the French empire), but from the modern reader's standpoint, the novel works as sort of an entertaining soap opera, a spoof of the upper class, an old school view of the sexual power women wield over men.Above all, it's often very funny.The novel is easy to read and well worth the time. ... Read more

Product Description
Zola's masterpiece of working life, Germinal (1885), exposes the inhuman conditions of miners in northern France in the 1860s. By Zola's death in 1902 it had come to symbolize the call for freedom from oppression so forcefully that the crowd which gathered at his State funeral chanted "Germinal! Germinal!"
While it is a dramatic novel of working life and everyday relationships, Germinal is also a complex novel of ideas, given fresh vigor and power in this new translation. It is also the thirteenth book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, which celebrates its centenary in October 1993 with a new film version of Germinal starring Gerard Depardieu. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Masterpiece
What I think will hold back many currently fashionable writers from having their books survive as masterpieces is their smallness, their inability to honor the greatness of the human condition. You can't get there with contempt, disdain and loathing, no matter how entertaining and enthralling the smirking can be. Zola was the original "New Journalism," but he did it withsincere, heartfelt, compassion, and, in Germinal, he created an extraordinarily propulsive social work that also ushered in the modern disaster novel. That's it's also a page turner only makes it better. It's one of a handful of books I read and re-read. It's not just a classic, it's a Masterpiece.

Outstanding!
For those who don't know, Germinal is the month of April on the Revolutionary calendar, instituted in France in the late eighteenth century. The idea of germination, the springing forth of new life, pervades the entire story, and it is rich with symbolism throughout. Étienne, a newcomer who quickly becomes the leader of the workers' rebellion, literally plants the seeds of socialism and the promise of a new world order in the minds of these otherwise simple miners. But throughout the book, the lives of the miners remain bleak, going from simply struggling to make each day's soup and constantly running out of coffee, to simply dying from starvation during the strike, which lasts for more than two months.

But in spite of their poverty and general misery, the miners still enjoy a level of freedom that the bourgeoisie, whole live a life of idleness and ignorance among their workers, do not. They are free to openly engage in sexual activities, which is something that is absolutely forbidden to the upper classes. Even the manager of the mine, M. Hennebeau, as he looks out his window at the swarm of strikers, envies them for their emotional freedom, his own marriage being nothing more than a loveless sham.

There are events in the book that will shock the uninformed reader. The miners regularly beat their wives and children, and the mothers look on their children as little more than wage-earners in some respects. A reader must place himself in the period and environment in which this story takes place. These mining families are holding on with both hands, and struggle everyday just to simply survive. So it's no wonder that when a child's legs are crushed in a tragic mining accident, his mother laments the loss of his income more than his injuries and pain. In the end, this book simply shows that the will to survive, and to achieve a just world, can conquer anything. ... Read more

Product Description
The Ladies Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) recounts the rise of the modern department store in late nineteenth-century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, and of the bourgeois family: it is emblematic of changes in consumer culture and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the end of the century.This new translation of the eleventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart cycle captures the spirit of one of Zola's greatest works. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

Rip Off
I received this book quickly but there are many missing pages, often at critical points of the story. So far pages 65,243,273,270 through 181 are missing. Many of the pages have distorted scans. I have never purchased a product from Amazon of such poor quality. I highly recommend readers find another source for this book.

Attention shopaholics!
A mesmerizing and thoroughly enjoyable account of the rise of the modern department store in nineteenth-century Paris. (See other reviews for synopses.) Zola's masterful description of the sales tactics employed by the audacious entrepreneur Octave Mouret rings true; his advertisements, store arrangements and display designs were obviously effective then, and still are today.

This book should be required reading for young girls (and boys)---it might make them more thoughtful consumers instead of mindless shopaholics, like poor Madame Marty, whose shopping habit drives her husband to nervous breakdown.

Oh, and the humanizing effect of the gentle and morally upright provincial Denise Baudu on the rapacious Mouret gives the story a bright side. One of Zola's best---and this translation is spot on.

Delicious detail
Zola's sweeping novel series, Les Rougon-Macquart, includes "The Ladies' Paradise" (Au Bonheur des dames), a fascinating look into "modern" Paris of mass consumption and new urban values. With the exacting physical eye of an entomologist and the social-moral vision of the great writer he was, Zola immerses us in a world of detail, and a complex world of people all vying for various pieces of the pie.There's the brash capitalist who owns the new megastore that dwarfs all else in the neighborhood (reflecting the actual, new reality of the department store), the hierarchy/community of the store's management, employees, and shoppers, and there's the small businesses in the neighborhood struggling to maintain their traditional values of business, personal business relationships, and quality that are being swamped by the new model of mass consumption and desire. This is all given form by the story of country girl Denise, who improbably ends up--no, let's not ruin a good book...

The Epitome of Consumer Culture
Zola's The Ladies Paradise is a fine translation from the French original.The author is right on target when it comes to consumer culture in nineteenth century France.He predicted well, how big businesses would swallow up the mom-and-pop shops, and create a need for material possessions.The character of Denise was one of strong ambition in a time when women had less than half a chance of leading an independent life outside of an andro-centric culture.Denise is a young heroine in her own right, rising up from poverty to become a strong voice in the world of the department stores.She has to fight vicious rumours and unwanted affections to make it to the top with out sacrificing her own beliefs.I highly recommend Zola's The Ladies Paradise.

Classic novel for this century
The Ladies Paradise written in the nineteenth century rings true of today's consumerism. Emile Zola examines in this socialistic novel the effects of consumerism on customers and employees. The customers who are women are drawn to the items that are displayed on the tables. Octave Mouret, the storeowner, knows what women desire and sets forth to use it to bring in profits. The lace, stockings, velvet are feminine fabrics that entice women to spend money, even if they don't have it.

As a retail employee, I have dealt with customers who don't have the money to buy the items but want to get it. I am a customer who buys what is displayed because I think it is going to be an investment. I can relate to small stores like Uncle Baudu's. Businesses like his struggle to stay afloat amongst corporate expansion. They entice clients with their sales and bargains--things that I look for when I shop. Small stores can provide what the big stores don't have. One way or the other, the consumer can get some sort of balance. Working at both a community store and a corporate store, one thing that matters most to customers is service. Customers want to be treated with respect and they expect sales associate to be enthused and answer their questions; even if it is trivial.

Denise Baudu, a simple country girl, arrives in Paris to get a job at her uncle's drapery shop. To her disappointment he doesn't have a job for her because his store is losing customers to the Ladies Paradise. The mall provides goods that are cheaper than the small shops and have a selection of fabrics not only from the mother country, but imported from Asia. He suggests to his niece that she get a job there.

The store fascinates her but she does feel some betrayal towards her uncle. Her uncle's business, along with the small stores, are struggling to stay afloat. With the expansion of the mall, these stores are forced to close because they can't compete with them. Uncle Baudu's hopes of his business staying for the long haul are shattered.

Denise is at first, shy and awkward. She is the target of cruel and malicious slander from the employees including assistant buyer Madame Aurelie. Zola unfolds the lives of the sales employees. The money they make in retail isn't sufficient to support them. The women take to prostitution. Claire has three men supporting her material needs. Pauline befriends Denise and suggests that she get herself a lover to support her financially. Denise doesn't take that advice because it is not in her interest to be a prostitute. She is determined to keep herself and her family together without falling apart which makes the women envious of her.

The novel is centered around an actual person Aristide Boucicaut who founded Le Bon Marche which remains today at the center of Parisian culture. Denise is believed to be the model of his wife Marguerite. Zola puts into a social perspective that exists til this day. ... Read more

Product Description
Publisher: New York : MarionPublication date: 1915Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not His Best
Having read 7 of the R-M books, i can say this is not my favorite (best so far is Germinal followed by L'Assoimor and the Beast Within) but it is always an experience reading his novels.This is without a doubt the saddest book I have ever read but Zola never disappoints.I always feel somehow changed after a Zola read. His books are so personal that I feel moved for days after completing one.There is something for everyone in his buffet of works; if you don't like one, just move on and you'll find one to your liking. ... Read more

Product Description
Germinal (1885) is the thirteenth in Émile Zola's cycle of twenty novels about the Rougon-Macquart dynasty. It tells the story of Étienne Lantier, from the illegitimate Macquart branch of the family, who arrives in the mining settlement of Montsou, and witnesses at first hand the appalling conditions in which miners live and work. Gradually becoming embroiled in a bitter dispute between the miners and their employers, he eventually leads the strike which is the centrepiece of the novel. But this is more than the struggle of labour against capital. It is also the struggle of the hungry against the well-fed, against the passivity and resignation passed down over generations of starving people, and ultimately against hunger itself, represented by the fantastical devouring monster of the mine, which swallows up men, just as the beast of the modern industrial economy relentlessly swallows up capital. This apparent pessimism about society is offset by the possibility of rebirth and regeneration. For all the inherited misery of the downtrodden, the old order may some day be overturned. ... Read more

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One of Zola's most violent works, this novel is on one level a tale of murder and possession, and on another a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. It evokes life at the end of the Second Empire in France, and a society hurtling towards the future. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Look-a-here, people, listen to me, you don't want to be a (French railway) bourgeoisie
This novel seems more pulp railway fiction than anything else--the sort of stuff you used to see on drugstore magazine racks back in the 1950s.In any event,Zola's novel centers around a French railway company with someseriously dysfunctional employees.

Zola's railwayemploys(1) an engine driver who is also an potential serial killer, (2) a deputy station-master who is arevenge killer, (3) a crossing-guard, who is a mass murderer/train wrecker and (4) a signals maintainer who is alsowife poisoner. And if that weren't enough, all itsemployees have marital problems. Add to this mess, isa railway company president who is a child molester who just happened to molest the wife of the engine driver when she was a child.The engine-driver wasn't too happy when he learned this part of his wife's past. Oh, and the wife of the deputy station master is having an affair with the engine-driver. There are the corrupt officials and discussion of the peculiar French system whereby the judiciary is literally part of the executive branch and subject to undue influence depending on currentpolitical pressures.

What the reader will find peculiar is that despite all the homicidal and sexual rage going on,each employeeis very attentive to his or her duty. Yet, there's murder and railway mayhembut in the end, all the guilty manage to get their comeuppance, either at the point of a knife, or under the wheels of a train.And there's plenty of sexgoing on.Just about all the time. Cars bang together at the marshalling-yard.Sex.Trains rush by, shaking the house.Sex.Just about every loud noise that goes on in a railway junction is accompanying by someone having sex.

There's an interesting discussion about the relationship between an engine driver and his locomotive. Zola maintains that this relationship is akin to the relationship between a man and his mistress.Each engine is a separate living entity and must be attended to, as a man might attend to a woman he loves.Because the engine-driver here is not only in love with the station master's wife, but also with his beloved Lison, the name given to his assigned locomotive.When Lison slowly dies in a train-wreck devised by the crossing-guard in a fit of jealousy, part of the engine driver dies with her.

The book is an interestingmix of19th Century railway technologyand Zola's somewhat batty theoriesabout what motivates people to kill. Along with some pretty serious social and politicalcommentary.

Darkness On The Edge Of Town
Let's get over the slight failings, if failings they be, in this lush, noirish novel.The plot, such as it is, is rickety and the coincidences absolutely Dickensian.The characters, moreover, do not comport with Zola's so-called "Realism," for which he is taken much to task.But thank the devil they don't!Jacques, especially, is driven by atavistic forces beyond his control, reminiscent of Conrad's characters in his better novels. -To my mind, there is nothing more unreal than what is termed "Realism."I could quote an entire page from Proust on why this is so, but I shall be an urbane reviewer and forbear.

This book, as many others have pointed out, owes its dark heart not so much to Darwin as to Poe.In point of fact, I have never read a novel that is so stamped with Poe's influence, from the money and pelf taken from the murdered President hidden under the Roubauds' floorboard until it eats into their hearts - "The Tell-Tale Heart" - to the dark atmospherics that permeate the work.But the work of Poe's to which Zola is most indebted is Poe's essay, "The Imp of The Perverse."In one part of the essay, Poe describes it as that urge (sometimes faint, sometimes profound) that comes on one at the top of a precipice or at the edge of a chasm to let oneself go and plunge into it.And who of us has not stood looking down with our hands glued to a guardrail and not felt this inner tug?This is how Jacques feels when sexually aroused.Is this all so alien and "unreal," or do we simply not like to admit these things to ourselves?The question is, ahem, rhetorical.

This novel, despite its dark content, is so swimmingly delightful to read that one almost forgets the plot and the murders.And, much of this delight, mirabile dictu, is due to the steam locomotive:

"The express engine stood motionless, letting off from its safety valve a great jet of steam up into all this blackness, and there it flaked off into little wisps, bedewing with white tears the limitless funereal hangings of the heavens."

I had to stop several times during the novel and re-read passages like the above, so as to savour every word.

Yes, the courts are corrupt, the characters are more than a touch Gothic and murders most foul abound.The odd thing is that not one of these things seems to matter at all in the great scheme of things. Unlike Zola's other novels that I have read, this novel is forward-looking, away from the Nineteenth Century strait jacket of "Realism" towards the deeper novels of Conrad and others, who delve into the inner dream that is life.

I can't recall such a horrific novel that I've both enjoyed and appreciated so much!

One of Zola's better novels - violent and challenging
Zola's "La Bete Humaine" appears to be two books crammed into one; the first - and dominant - story is that of people undergoing moral and cultural deterioration as a result of technology and industrialization. Railroads are absolutely central to the novel, being the fastest mode of transportation at the time and reshaping rural society into a series of isolated stopping-points. Similar things have been said/written about the highway culture of America, but nobody can go over the top like Zola.

There is the secondary story of a bumbling legal system, where a murder investigation is carried out by ego and wrongheaded "instinct," rather than, you know, facts.

"La Bete Humaine" is a great read and I think it's better than "Nana" and "The Earth" (which are both very good), but somewhere short of "Germinal." Woven into the story, in no subtle terms, is a description of severely perverse and just plain evil motives. Another example of classic literature that is completely approachable by dedicated fans of genre fiction, should they decide to try it.

Murder on the PARIS express meets Tell Tale Heart
This is the first Zola novel I have read and I could not put it down.Though in many instances the author gives very lengthy and detailed descriptions that slow the flow of the novel, the plight of the main characters finds a way to captivate the audience and keep them reading.This book, written in the late 19th century, has all the elements that current suspense fiction is famous for.Murder, cover up, suspicion, adultry, jealousy, revenge; the list goes on and on.

Zola meets Dostoevski at Kafka's house
This is one of the most violent novels ever written. As other novels in the Rougon-Macquart series focused on alcoholism or prostitution or politics or the artworld, this novel focuses on murder. It seems that every character here is some kind of murderer, that the entire human race consists either of murderers or potential murderers needing only the right spark to set off their explosions. The setting for Zola's story is the world of the Paris railroad, the neighborhood around the Gare St.Lazare, a fitting environment in which to place people who often seem more like mechanized murder-machines than well-rounded human beings. The power of this novel comes not from its realism but from its strangeness. It is, in its way, as bizarre as anything concocted by Hoffmann or Poe. This is where Zola's Naturalism comes full-circle and meets the Poe-esque terror of "Therese Raquin", Zola's early 'Naturalistic' ghost story. The conjunction gives this novel more of a Modernist feel than we usually find in Zola's work.
I should also mention the prose. The publisher's choice of a Monet 'Gare St.Lazare' painting for the cover of this edition is fitting because Zola's prose here seems to be influenced by his own experience of Impressionist paintings. It seems that Monet and his cohorts taught Zola how to see and describe the modern world in a new way. ... Read more

Product Description
Through charm, drive, and diligent effort Octave Mouret has become the director of one of the finest new department stores in Paris, Au Bonheur des Dames. Supremely aware of the power of his position, Mouret seeks to exploit the desire that his luxuriantly displayed merchandise arouses in the ladies who shop, and the aspirations of the young female assistants he employs. Charting the beginnings of the capitalist economy and bourgeois society, Zola captures in lavish detail the greedy customers and gossiping staff, and the obsession with image, fashion, and gratification that was a phenomenon of nineteenth-century French consumer society. Of all Zola's novels, this may be the one with the most relevance for our own time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

The Little Mademoiselle that Could
"The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit."Ralph Waldo Emerson

Au Bonheur des Dames is the eleventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. Zola's classic centers around the bright lights of the massive department store (of which the novel is named) run by the charming, yet licentious Octave Mouret.In many ways Octave is almost the male equivalent of Zola's "Nana".The latter used the beauty of her sex to beguile men; while the former uses all the `material girl' treasures on sale at his colossal department store.It is this department store, 'Au Bonheur des Dames', which quickly becomes the center of Parisian society, especially for the upper class female population.

The story begins with the petite, soft-hearted, eighteen-year old Denise Baudu and her two younger brothers, Jean and Pepe entering into the big city for the first time.The trio have suddenly found themselves orphaned and in dire need of money.In order to support her two younger brothers, who in many ways are more like her children than siblings, Denise takes a lowly position as an assistant at the store.Despite the fact that she's an unworldly, poor country girl and to the rest of the staff comes across as weak and simple-minded, the real fact of the matter is - she's as tough as nails, very strong and very intelligent. She also is one of the most genuine, compassionate, and heroic belles I have ever been introduced to in literature. She is the total antithesis of Nana, and is without a doubt my favorite female character in all of French literature.Definitely my favorite character EVER of Zola's!

Zola's classic paces itself in many ways similar to that of a soap opera.He uses the department store as a new phenomenon to show how it helped reshape the business and social life of his country under the Second Empire (1851-1870)."Au Bonheur des Dames" is obviously a microcosm of French society, and when you read this novel you will easily see why. The beauty of his Rougon-Macquart series is that each story centers upon an important aspect of French society during that dynamic, distinctive period.While this may not be my favorite of his (it was # six for me thus far), it does possess quite a bit of charm and again, also introduces his most endearing character in Denise Baudu.Her Cinderella story is the main reason why I enjoyed this one so much, and why I recommend it.

On the minus side for me, as a few other reviewers aptly pointed out, was the fact that Zola really over does it at times with his lavish, overly decorative descriptions of the department store, its many luxurious displays, the day to day operations, etc... etc... At times, I was saying to myself "okay Emile, enough already! Get to the point my friend!" Also, the majority of the characters in this classic are extremely repugnant people with very few agreeable qualities.But that is not atypical when it comes to a Zola classic.For some reason, many of his characters are much seedier than those of his contemporaries (i.e. Flaubert, Balzac, Maupassant, et al...).Which is saying a lot, because none of them sugar-coated anything!

If you are a fan of French literature, love stories, and/or Horatio Alger works (i.e. rags to riches stories) than you probably will enjoy this one.I certainly did!

Vive Zola!
What a great book!In Au Bonheur des Dames, Zola does his usual fabulous job of handing you a slice of 19th century French life between the covers of a book.The book's male protagonist is lackluster--it's hard to see what makes him so alluring to women.However, the fascinating heroine more than compensates for this flaw.Denise Baudu is a departure from any other 19th century female character imaginable, a combination of Mary Pickford and a 20th century career woman.As a student of consumer culture, I also really enjoyed reading the fruits of Zola's research into Parisian department stores, advertising, etc.

Parisian history through literature: over-the-top, kitschy, and still interesting
"Au Bonheur des Dames" is about life in and around of the great department stores (grands magasins) that emerged in Paris in the mid-19th century.As the city modernized (built the famous sewers, cleared out the slums and constructed massive boulevards, etc.), new and imposing department stores revolutionized commerce.Au Bonheur des Dames, owned by the rapacious capitalist Octave Mouret, is one such store.The story of the store's growth and social impact is told through the experience of Denise Baudu, a girl from the country who comes to Paris with dreams of succeeding and supporting her younger brothers.She gets a job at Au Bonheur des Dames, and the store becomes the central factor in her life.

The book is not always a great read.The story is wildly over-written.It is melodramatic, cheesy, and even silly.The ending is predictable, and 3/4 of the way through, you know what's coming.But have to to slog through 100 more pages to get there.The passages describing the store's physical appearance and operations can be extremely tedious.Do we really need to know so much about construction practices, commercial accounting mechanisms, how sales are put on, and exactly what items are in stock and why?

Still, "Au Bonheur des Dames" does a fantastic job explicating the birth of the modern department which revolutionized shopping, and it really gives the reader a sense of the transformation wrought to Paris by Napoleon III and Georges Hausmann.

Fabulous!
I love Zola and this was no exception.I don't know how he does it-he is never boring.His stories always enthrall me.This is a wonderful book about the beginnings of consumer culture, modern advertising, mass retailing, materialism, the forerunners of today's malls and the forcing out of small specialty shops and the family owned-store in the late ninteenth-century.It has so much relevance today.In addition, you will really like the heroine, Denise.She is lovable and sympathetic throughout the entire book.

And I couldn't help liking Mouret, though he is of course the crass modern villain of the tale.(He was earlier seen in Zola's "Pot Luck".)Although he is a symbol of everything cutthroat and reprehensible about capitalism, I kind of wanted to believe in his optimistic ingenuity and in the developing friendship between him and Denise.Denise seemed to be tempering him with her pragmatic socialism.

At any rate, the intro to the book-here is a SPOILER so don't read on if you don't want to know what happens-anyway in the INTRO,


...which you should NEVER read first, they always give away the ending- said that only the most naive person would believe in the happy ending, that when Mouret marries Denise all's well that ends well.His obsession with her does have obvious parallels to the way he tries to make women feel about certain commodities.Still, I can't resist a good Cinderella story, and it is fun to think of Mouret marrying Denise and bringing her back to Au Bonheur des Dames, on his arm, "all powerful" (no doubt "tout puissant" in the original French).

That will show those snooty shopgirls that even a poor provincial girl can strike it rich!Despite being somewhat sucked in by the "love" story-in my defense Mouret DID seem to respect Denise's noble qualities-I do agree with Zola's critique and criticisms and I really think they're relevant.

This story works on so many levels, as so many of Zola's books do-it's highly entertaining, I mean as entertaining as fun as any contemporary fiction-and it's also historically engaging, morally sound, educational and even has current relevance.Everyone should read him!

Not Zola's best, but still a good read
The eleventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart series, this book picks up where the last installment left off. Octave Mouret, featured in Pot-Bouille, also has a lead role in this novel. Through a fortunate marriage to a bride who dies not long afterward, young business man Mouret is left with a thriving department store named Au Bonheur des Dames. Through a natural business sense and a flair for promotion, he builds this store into the grandest mecca for shopping in all of Paris, in fact in the entire world. Soon the store swallows up the neighboring real estate, putting his old-school competitors out of business with his new brand of commerce. A few of the established firms, however, hang on for a grueling battle with this Goliath of retail.
At this point in history, department stores were a new invention, and a few stores in Paris totally revolutionized the way the world did business. Zola captures the excitement of that time. He obviously admires the revolutionary entrepreneurs for their efficiency, ingenuity, and showmanship, but he also laments the fall of the traditional Parisian shopkeeper. As Zola often does, he sets up a conflict between the two opposing philosophies, then brilliantly defends both sides of the argument. He also studies the consumers, and explores the growing obsession with shopping that blossomed among an enlarging middle class with disposable income. The depiction of the workings of the giant enterprise are interesting, and the store is staffed by a host of vividly-drawn characters. The main protagonist of the book is not Mouret, but Denise Baudu, a poor girl from the provinces who comes to Paris to work as a saleswoman. Zola is usually so good at creating realistic characters, warts-and-all, but Denise is so squeaky clean and noble that she comes across as too perfect to be true. She belongs in a melodrama, and the more the book concentrates on her, the more the story devolves into just that. Zola's literary style, Naturalism, calls for an exhaustive accumulation of sensory details. Unfortunately, these details form long, often tedious descriptions of store displays. On the whole, this is a good book, worth reading, though not one of Zola's masterworks. I would recommend reading Pot-Bouille (aka Pot Luck or Restless House). It is a much better novel. ... Read more

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