L'Assommoir: The Dram Shop (Penguin Classics)

Rating:
Summary: From bad to worse
Review: Whenever you think your life is bad, pick up a Zola novel.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone looking for a happy ending, but if you're the twisted sort who loves reading up on other people's misery (e.g. Dostoevsky, Kafka or Flannery O'Connor), then dig in.

And if you've ever read Frank Norris's "McTeague" and liked it, then you should know that Zola was his biggest influence.

You start off with a family hovering on the brink of ruin in the slums of Paris. Could it get worse? Oh yes, and how! Increase the levels of alcohol and poverty (the characters', that is, not yours), sit back and watch.

I can't vouch for the translation, but you'll be reaching for the sequel (and God knows there were plenty) once you finish this sordid tale.

Rating:
Summary: Hammering.
Review: Zola was an amazingly prolific writer - he wrote about thirty novels, and all of them were solidly on the "long" side. Moreover, each was a huge self-contained universe, and a gritty, harrowing epic to boot. In many ways, L'Assommoir is the central novel in his famed 20-novel Rougon/Macquart cycle, as many of the subsequent books have a direct connection to it (Gervaise's daughter is the "star" of Nana; her son is the star of Germinal, and her other son the star of The Masterpiece; etc. etc.). It's an extremely difficult book for the modern man to read - at the time, the novel's crude language and filth shocked readers; as the translator astutely notes, this is unlikely to happen now. Moreover, it's a damningly hard book to translate - not only is it filled with the most complex, specific 19th century French slang there was (even Zola's contemporaries had trouble deciphering it), it has a very peculiar narration style. Zola, usually a fan of a dispassionate sort of narration, adopts a very jerky, repetitive, slangy form here - it's almost as if it's told from Gervaise's perspective, although the story is clearly third-person-omniscient. This is fascinating, though the seemingly endless "Now then"s and "Lord!"s and "Let me tell you"s and so on do tend to grate after a while.

But this is all piffle seeing as the story is so amazingly powerful. Zola's one accomplishment here is this - he makes Gervaise such a believable human being that you will genuinely want her to rise above the poverty and find success and happiness. In fact, this does occur in the course of three chapters. Alas, this state does not last, and for another six chapters or so, Gervaise is more and more degraded until we come to the almost unspeakably horrible conclusion. The horrible circumstances of this end, the degradation and humiliation she suffers are undeniably harrowing, and is made worse by this - a lot of her troubles do not come from "the rich," but from her fellow poor, who delight at pounding her into the dirt.

The novel is filled with remarkable characters - Gervaise herself comes first and foremost, but there's also the striking character of Lalie, the execrable shallowness of the Lorilleux (whom I guarantee the reader will blindly hate with an almost silly passion), and above all the melancholy figure of the blacksmith Goujet. Best of all, Zola never preaches, allowing the characters to speak for themselves. It's not even necessarily a profound social statement (though it is) as much as a character study. The author presents you with the facts - now it's up to you to figure out your resulting opinions. This is truly an unforgettable piece here, certainly on par with other 19th century French titans as Hugo's Les Miserables and Balzac's Pere Goriot. Not light reading by any means, but really an incredible novel.

Rating:
Summary: Hammering.
Review: Zola was an amazingly prolific writer - he wrote about thirty novels, and all of them were solidly on the "long" side. Moreover, each was a huge self-contained universe, and a gritty, harrowing epic to boot. In many ways, L'Assommoir is the central novel in his famed 20-novel Rougon/Macquart cycle, as many of the subsequent books have a direct connection to it (Gervaise's daughter is the "star" of Nana; her son is the star of Germinal, and her other son the star of The Masterpiece; etc. etc.). It's an extremely difficult book for the modern man to read - at the time, the novel's crude language and filth shocked readers; as the translator astutely notes, this is unlikely to happen now. Moreover, it's a damningly hard book to translate - not only is it filled with the most complex, specific 19th century French slang there was (even Zola's contemporaries had trouble deciphering it), it has a very peculiar narration style. Zola, usually a fan of a dispassionate sort of narration, adopts a very jerky, repetitive, slangy form here - it's almost as if it's told from Gervaise's perspective, although the story is clearly third-person-omniscient. This is fascinating, though the seemingly endless "Now then"s and "Lord!"s and "Let me tell you"s and so on do tend to grate after a while.

But this is all piffle seeing as the story is so amazingly powerful. Zola's one accomplishment here is this - he makes Gervaise such a believable human being that you will genuinely want her to rise above the poverty and find success and happiness. In fact, this does occur in the course of three chapters. Alas, this state does not last, and for another six chapters or so, Gervaise is more and more degraded until we come to the almost unspeakably horrible conclusion. The horrible circumstances of this end, the degradation and humiliation she suffers are undeniably harrowing, and is made worse by this - a lot of her troubles do not come from "the rich," but from her fellow poor, who delight at pounding her into the dirt.

The novel is filled with remarkable characters - Gervaise herself comes first and foremost, but there's also the striking character of Lalie, the execrable shallowness of the Lorilleux (whom I guarantee the reader will blindly hate with an almost silly passion), and above all the melancholy figure of the blacksmith Goujet. Best of all, Zola never preaches, allowing the characters to speak for themselves. It's not even necessarily a profound social statement (though it is) as much as a character study. The author presents you with the facts - now it's up to you to figure out your resulting opinions. This is truly an unforgettable piece here, certainly on par with other 19th century French titans as Hugo's Les Miserables and Balzac's Pere Goriot. Not light reading by any means, but really an incredible novel.