Zola - Les Rougon-Macquart

After posting in another thread about Germinal I decided to look into it and Zola, which I never did, turns out is part of a 20 novel series. Has anyone here read the entire series? or anything other than Germinal? What did you think? I enjoyed Germinal and I did feel a desire for more when it was over, so I am tempted to dive into the entire series but am hesitant since the vast majority seem to think Germinal is the masterpiece and have little to say on the rest of the series. Interested in hearing what Yea Forums has to say on the subject and Zola in general. If you read the entire series, what would you recommend for reading order?

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Bumping this thread.
I'm interested in Zola and Balzac, but afraid some (if not most) of their books aren't as good.
Have you tried other naturalists and realists, OP?

Most of the realist that I have read I really can not get into, they were just too heavily influenced by the romantics and their work just reads like a romantic era novel with some hardships thrown in, often revolving around characters that live a life a leisure, it ends up reading like fantasy for me, I am just too removed from that time and such lives. The majority of realist works I have liked are the late works which are really transitional, they have largely sloughed off the remnants of romanticism and started dabbling in modernism.

Germinal might be first proper realist novel, even if they called in naturalist in France, that I really loved. Hope to find more like it though, he does a great job of not preaching, shows the lives on both sides and does not really say who is right and who is wrong, perhaps even tries to make that as ambiguous as possible, both sides definitely commit wrongs, but do either actually do anything right? And then he goes and throws in that third side.

>The majority of realist works I have liked are the late works which are really transitional, they have largely sloughed off the remnants of romanticism and started dabbling in modernism.
Can you give some examples?

Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg Ohio, which was fantastic.
Knut Hamsun - Hunger, almost pure modern but the naturalist/realist qualities are strong

Fuck, that is all I can think of right now, it is late and I am a little drunk. Think there was a Henry James novel that really impressed me in this regard. If viewed as a comedy, The Trial would fit, but as I have grown older and dealt with more bureaucracy I find it harder to view as a comedy. Dostoevsky would fit, he definitely had a foot well planted in realism. Perhaps some user can help me out here and suggest some others.

Frank Norris worshipped Zola, he even wrote a whole essay about how naturalism was oppsed to realism

American naturalism is a different thing than the French naturalism of Zola.

Zola's naturalism was influenced by the scientific method, that naturalism in literature should be like a controlled experiment where the characters are something being tested/measured.

Norris's naturalism was not that it was opposed to realism, but that realism and romanticism are opposed and naturalism is a mix of the two.

according to what I have read in the past couple hours at least. I have yet to read any of Norris.

Before bed bump. Keep this thread alive friends, someone must have read this shit.

Turns out I have a copy of Earth, so I guess I will start reading that. Got to many books, do not even know what I have.

I've read most of Zola, even the weird late Catholic novels. Most of the Rougon-Macquart is worth reading, very consistent 8/10s with the occasional real masterpiece.
I think Germinal is considered the best because it fit in with a lot of 20th century critics' hobby horses, eg Marxism, industrialisation, but it's one of many good books in the series. My favourites would be L'Argent (seriously topical) or The Debacle (has a description of battlefield amputation that's one of the most gripping passages I've ever read)
Even little oddities like Pot Bouille have his journalistic attention to detail that really brings the era to life.
It's a really interesting project anyway, to focus each book on a particular aspect of society Zola thought was important (trains, food, prostitution, consumerism etc) while keeping each book very closely related.

Rougon-Macquart ou Comédie Humaine ?

>very consistent 8/10s
That is good to hear, planning on hitting the local used book stores this week to see what books I can dig up.

>it fit in with a lot of 20th century critics' hobby horses
That was more or less how I saw it on my first read, on the second read, not so much and I saw Souvarine are a much larger part.

Comédie Humaine was a large influence on Zola apparently, it seems like part of his writing was a reaction to it, addressing the problems he saw with the realism of the time being real to only a small minority. Not that I know shit here, I am just starting to explore this era of French lit.

>planning on hitting the local used book stores this week to see what books I can dig up.
Try to get modern translations. A lot of the old second hand Zola you find will be the Vitzelly translations which are very plodding and Edwardian and strip out a lot of the sexuality (pretty important in Zola)

Thanks, I will avoid Vitzelly and unnamed translations.

Anyone know if there is an English box set available of good translation? I searched a fair amount but google gives me French box sets.

>good thoughtful post
>from someone who read a bunch of books and formed a deep opinion on them
>on Yea Forums

Who are you and why have you come here

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I've read Balzac's Black Sheep because i was interested in the theme but it was so fucking long i ended up getting tired and started skimming pages to get to the end of the book. Would recommend only if you're gifted with endless patience.

Oxford classics have been doing a series of very good translations, not sure if they have the whole set out yet. Any old penguins are usually okay too. I don't think you'll find an English box set of all 20 unless it's some old dusty leather-bound thing which will look nice but will certainly be the old bowdlerised versions

Balzac is fantastic, Pere Goriot is a must. As for Zola, I have no idea, but planning on reading Nana soon.

>not sure if they have the whole set out yet
1 more to go.

>Most of the Rougon-Macquart is worth reading, very consistent 8/10s with the occasional real masterpiece.
Good to know. Have you read them in order?

no but i can if lit needs me to

>Have you read them in order?
No, I read them bit by bit as books popped up in second hand etc. Think I actually read the last three first. I have a plan to go back and reread them in the proper order someday.
They are largely self contained, though you start to see the bigger picture once you read a few

What do you consider proper order?

Here is wikipedias publication order/most accepted reading order for those that do not know.

Publication order

La Fortune des Rougon (1871)
La Curée (1871–2)
Le Ventre de Paris (1873)
La Conquête de Plassans (1874)
La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret (1875)
Son Excellence Eugène Rougon (1876)
L'Assommoir (1877)
Une page d'amour (1878)
Nana (1880)
Pot-Bouille (1882)
Au Bonheur des Dames (1883)
La joie de vivre (1884)
Germinal (1885)
L'Œuvre (1886)
La Terre (1887)
Le Rêve (1888)
La Bête humaine (1890)
L'Argent (1891)
La Débâcle (1892)
Le Docteur Pascal (1893)

A recommended reading order[11]

La Fortune des Rougon (1871)
Son Excellence Eugène Rougon (1876)
La Curée (1871-2)
L'Argent (1891)
Le Rêve (1888)
La Conquête de Plassans (1874)
Pot-Bouille (1882)
Au Bonheur des Dames (1883)
La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret (1875)
Une page d'amour (1878)
Le Ventre de Paris (1873)
La joie de vivre (1884)
L'Assommoir (1877)
L'Œuvre (1886)
La Bête humaine (1890)
Germinal (1885)
Nana (1880)
La Terre (1887)
La Débâcle (1892)
Le Docteur Pascal (1893)

bumping for the cause.

Norris was opposed to the American naturalism represented by authors like Stephen Crane. He wrote an essay called "Zola as a Romantic Writer". You may consider his interpretation of Zola idiosyncratic and false, but it is at least worth reading.

I know Proust criticized realism, so, what is his genre then?

I have no opinion yet, what I posted was just what I read last night. After I get some more Zola and some Norris under my belt I will have to look into some of his essays, seems interesting.

Modernist.

>it's another Zola goes into autistic and borderline fetishistic detail about food and eating chapter

Seriously, what was it with Zola and writing about food?

No idea, but please talk more of it.

It was certainly prominent in Germinal, but it is hard to avoid writing about something so important to the characters who mostly did not have enough of it. They did seem to be slightly more obsessed with coffee though, slowly starving to death is one thing, but not having some coffee to offer who ever happens by, be it best of friends or worst of enemies, is beyond all suffering!

What the hell was the unit of coffee in Germinal? She was always sending one of her brood to go borrow a _______ of coffee. This is driving me nuts, stuck at work with no way to check.

How does Zola compare to Maupassant? I started with Maupassant and plan on eventually reading Balzac and Flaubert.

>Modernist.
Really? Interesting.

I think it might have been a "paper of coffee?"

Zola leaves a much stronger impression on me, his work really stays with me, Maupassant, not so much. I enjoy his work but it has much the same effect on me as a tv drama or sitcom, I rarely remember much of anything afterwards beyond enjoying it, sometimes emensely. Could just be the translations I read.

>the cheese chapter in Le Ventre de Paris

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>talk more about it
I just think it’s funny that whenever Zola writes about eating it’s done in a way that makes it feel like fetish erotica. Maybe it’s just me being a cumbrain, but L’Assommoir in particular has these extremely raw descriptions of gluttony that makes it feel like well-written weight gain porn at points. It makes me wonder if Zola had a repressed fetish for that sort of thing, since even if food or lack thereof is important to the story, the level of detail he goes into isn’t entirely necessary.

I think with L'Assomoir and the other working class Macquart novels he very much want to emphasise that these are people with no control of, or desire to control, any of their appetites, that they are rough physical creatures in a way the more refined Rougons aren't.
In Yea Forums terms the virgin Rougon/Chad Macquart dichotomy where the Macquarts gleefully indulge their bodies, with sex, food, drink etc without guilt or remorse, and portraying the consequences of that indulgence

It's OK, kind of a "slice of life" novel like to Dickens or Tom Wolfe. It was too boring for me to finish.

Zola is someone you're supposed to name-drop if you want to get published because Zola defended Dreyfus in the Dreyfus Affair.

I see. Well, to put into perspective how well Zola achieved that goal, I can say as someone with a gluttony and hedonism fetish the Macquart novels have the best implementation of those elements of anything I’ve ever read. They’re leagues more arousing to me that genuine erotica despite that not being the primary goal. I’d love to read something else that portrays that kind of decadence in as much detail.

Would you say it's because Zola has better prose or plot compared to Maupassant? I've only read Bel-Ami so far and while I enjoyed it, it's very much a soap opera as you pointed out.

Zola has more complex plots with a great deal of depth, I would not say his prose is better, but it is far more suited to my sensibilities. Maupassant came across as just a story teller, he never really seemed to have much to say beyond, here is a story about some people and hey, this weird paranormal shit happens.

I am not terribly well versed in either, so perhaps some other user will chime in here.

Read L'Œuvre a couple of months ago, liked it. Would recommend if someone is interested in painting

For me Maupassant is a great short story writer rather than a great novelist like Zola, chamber music rather than symphonies. His novels don't quite hang together for me. Probably the GOAT French shirt story writer though, as good as Chekhov.

You're guys are selling Zola to me. I love comfy and slice of life books.

>an actual thread discussing literature rather than anons swinging their dicks and saying my dad could beat up your dad results in someone being inspired to check out an author they weren't previously familiar with
We're through the looking glass here people

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>L'Argent
Based and redpilled as one of the first jew-wise novels.

Germinal gets rather bleak at times and far from comfy, but he does it well and even though it is a difficult life for those miners there are good things that almost make their hardship seem worth it at times. Not many novels have gotten me as caught up in the lives of the characters as Germinal did. I am really looking forward to reading more.

It is not hard to make a worthwhile thread in this place. Avoid all topics that are in the daily rotation, be patient, keep it bumped but do not bump until it is at page 8 or 9, when possible wait to respond so you can bump with content instead of just 'bump. Read up on your subject and related ones so you can ask reasonable questions and ask questions of the people who bother to reply and perhaps to provide yourself new question to ask instead of just a bump. There are plenty here that actually want to discuss literature, appeal to them instead of the masses. Most importantly, ignore and report the trolls.

On a related topic, one of my little projects on 4channel for years now has been to try and derail the semi regular shit show metric vs imperial threads on /diy/ into a discussion on the history and qualities of different measurement systems, the current one is turning out fairly well! Somewhat proud of that.

One last bump before I let this thread die. Thanks for the info Yea Forums, you always come through for me.

Which one of his books are comfier?

Yeah I'd agree with that Zola's usually not comfy. Even the ones that start out that way tend not to end that way. But I've only read seven of his books, and he wrote a lot more than that.

What about Balzac?

In my opinion Zola is better, but neither are that comfy based on what I've read. Of the two I guess Balzac is the more comfy.

Any French naturalist or realist that is comfy?

I want to give positive reinforcement to this user, and also add that despite his pretensions to scientific (or science-like) realism his books are full of great impressionistic descriptions that sometimes border on symbolism. Some have commented that unlike mot of the great novelists of his century he lacked a real sense of irony. That might be the case, and perhaps Huysmans was right to call him, half-derisively, "an artist with large chest and powerful fist".
Still I've read four good characters, tight construction, detailed description of social events and practice (including money making and courting practice), a well as the impressionistic scenes I mentioned.
For the most part it's not Dostoievsky but it's enjoyable and very solid and there are god-tier parts here and there.

Balzac is one of the creator gods of the realistic novel. Impossible to avoid imo. You don't have to read all 90+ works in the Human Comedy, but you can't go wrong with Le Père Goriot, Beatrix, Eugenie Grandet, Modeste Mignon, the Search for Absolute or The Lys in the Valley. Try also the shorter stories (Peau de Chagrin, the Elixir of Long Life) and his analytical studies.

People sometimes try to pin down Balzac as an enjoyable but somewhat cliché serialized writer with good characters and stories but bad prose and insufficient lucidity. In reality he was an aesthetic thinker on his own, with big inspiration from Swedenborg, and the construction of the Comédie Humaine is very well thought-out.

*I've read four of his novels (l'Argent, la Bête Humaine, Nana, La Curée) and all has good characters

The whole point of the French naturalists was to get away from the comfy lives described in the world of realists where life's problems amount to unattainable loves and man children being forced to grow up, it was realism from the standpoint of the toiling masses instead of the ruling minority. so French naturalism might not be where you want to look.

Growth of the Soul would align fairly well with the French naturalists ideology, despite being Norwegian neo realist, it is quite comfy.

>Growth of the Soul
Growth of the Soil, ducking auto correct.

While the realism and naturalist stuff can be quite interesting, the symbolists and decadents that reacted to it (like Huysmans and painters like Kubin and Redon) absolutely blew Zola and his compatriots out of the water

>the comfy lives described in the world of realists where life's problems amount to unattainable loves and man children being forced to grow up
I'm looking for something like this, except the man children part.

Some of the realists will work for you, as well as some of the other naturalists traditions, head over to England, they should do you well, try Thomas Hardy - Far From The Maddening Crowd.

>Some of the realists will work for you
Sorry to bother you, but I really want some French realists like I said. Do you know any?

I am not well versed in the French realists, but Maupassant may work well for you, I do not recall much in the way of spoiled rich kids in his work, but I do not remember a great deal of it, it did not stick with me very well but I found it largely enjoyable. He has a good deal of short stories you can try him out with.

Someone more knowledgeable than i about the French tradition will likely happen along.

Thank you.

I'd go for Balzac. He keeps largely to realism but doesn't let that get in the way of a nice comfy yarn. There's a bit in one of his where the prostitute girlfriend of our incarcerated hero breaks into the prison to see him one last time, and Balzac has a little aside, 'dear reader, no doubt you think this turn of events is somewhat melodramatic, but I assure you in Paris this sort of thing happens all, the time'

Thank you very much.

The way he explores memory and subconsciousness through prose is taken to a level that would not fit in a French realist novel.

Makes sense.

>taken to a level that would not fit in a French realist novel.
That sort of implies that could be considered realist in another tradition, is there something I do not know?