Money by Emile Zola

Money is abstract, but that does not make it less powerful. Hold a dollar bill in your hand. Now imagine setting a match to it. It doesn’t feel like an easy thing to do. Now, continue to hold that dollar bill in one hand and hold a $20 bill in the other. Both are pieces of paper of identical size and construction. One would burn as easily as the other, but they don’t feel the same at all. You can try this with a $100 bill also, but by now you I am sure you have the idea.

Emila Zola’s novel about speculation in the Paris stock exchange in the 1860s is L’Argent, Money. As in his other novels in the Rougon-Macquart series, Zola provides  a host of characters and subplots, but the center is money and what it means. For some money is power.

 Oh! Let us understand each other; he doesn’t love money like a miser, for the sake of having a huge pile of it and hiding it in his cellar. No; if he wishes to make it gush forth on every side, if he draws it from no matter what sources, it is to see it flow around him in torrents; it is for the sake of all the enjoyments he derives from it – luxury, pleasure, power.

The man who makes the money gush forth, Saccard, wins over Lady Caroline, his severest critic. Power and luxury do not impress her, but she longs for what money can be the means to accomplish.

 She had cursed money, and now she fell in awe-stricken admiration before it; for was not money the sole force that can level a mountain, fill up an arm of the sea – briefly, render the earth inhabitable by men, who, once relieved of labour, would become but the conductors of machines. From this force, which was the root of all evil, there also sprang everything that was good.

Another voice is heard in the novel. It is heard faintly, but it is there. The idealistic brother of one of the petty speculators is a devout Marxist. He lives for the day when the concentration of capital will bring the demise of capitalism itself. He explains it to Saccard.

 I have followed your enterprise with passionate interest; yes, from this quiet out-of-the-way room I have studied its development day by day, and I know it as well as you do, and I say that you are giving us a famous lesson; for the collectivist State will only have to do what you are doing, expropriate you in bulk when you have expropriated the smaller capitalists in detail. And in this wise… to absorb all the capital in the world, to become the one bank, the one general warehouse of public wealth.

Saccard makes the money gush forth both for himself and, temporarily, for others. They love him for it. He loves them too when the money flows, but feels no pity when the crash comes. Madame Caroline is now undeceived and she does have pity.

 What frightful silent tragedies were here! – the whole throng of petty capitalists, petty shareholders, who have invested all their saving in the same securities, the retired door-porters, the pale old maids living with their cats, the provincial pensioners who had regulated their lives with maniacal rigidity, the country priests stripped by almsgiving – all those humble beings who budgets consist of a few sous…. And suddenly nothing was left, the threads of life were severed, swept away….

Bernard Madoff and the banksters are not new creations. Zola knew them well in the Paris of Napoleon III. The cautionary nature of the tale is not that there are always scoundrels who will manipulate if they can. It is rather that we ourselves join in the bubble they create because we too want money.

What I Read in November 2012

Matthew Josephson, Zola and His Time. Overwritten and outdated (1928) biography of the author of tens of novels and the defender of Alfred Dreyfus.

Michael Connelly, The Brass Verdict. Attorney Micky Haller was introduced to Connelly fans in The Lincoln Lawyer, which also became a movie. In this second book in the series, Haller defends an important murder suspect and also contends with detective Harry Bosch, from Connelly’s other detective series. It works — one of the best legal thrillers I have ever read.

Connie Willis, Passage. Is this science fiction or fantasy fiction with a big dollop of science? Two dedicated researchers try to understand the basis for near death experiences. Patients who begin to die but are revived report a dark passage and a journey toward a bright light. Is it a real place or a hallucination?

Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels. The manuscripts discovered at Nag Hammadi embody a different path early Christianity might have taken, one in which the true Christian is the person with self knowledge and direct experience of the divine, rather than the faithful adherent of the Church.

David Lodge, Thinks... We think, therefore we are. Or perhaps we are, depending on the nature of consciousness. This entertaining novel takes the question of the inner life of the mind seriously. It is studied by (mostly male) scientists and contemplated by one somewhat-displaced (female) novelist.

Michael Sheldon, Graham Greene: The Enemy Within. The enemy within Greene is Greene himself. Biographer Sheldon finds this enemy hiding in plain sight in Greene’s many successful fictions.

Ruth Suckow, The John Wood Case. In her last novel, Iowa writer Ruth Suckow explores what happens when a respectable, upright citizen is revealed to be a thief. The focus is on 17-year old Philip who is about to begin his future, and then everything changes.

Michael Connelly, The Reversal. Another legal thriller in the series with the Lincoln Lawyer and his detective brother, Harry Bosch. Why would an effective defense attorney switch to prosecution? Will he win his case? Compelling and convincing courtroom drama kept me up far too late. Connelly thrillers can be injurious to your health.

Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. Not just the funny little man with the kite, Franklin was a giant in his time: scientist, civic do-gooder, diplomat, and writer. This full-scale biography does him justice.

Zola and Dreyfus

Contemporary cartoon: Down with Zola!

The story of the trial and conviction of Alfred Dreyfus on flimsy and “secret” evidence is seen as a demonstration of anti-Semitism in late 19^th century France. Certainly Theodor Herzl, who covered the trial for his Viennese newspaper, saw it that way. And if attitudes were so bad in enlightened France, how much worse in the rest of Europe! So modern Zionism was born, with its call for a nation for the Jews.

The last part of Matthew Josephson’s biography of Emile Zola, Zola and His Time, is devoted to the Dreyfus Affair and the important part Zola played in it. Zola at first wrote articles about the affair and then, finding no satisfactory response, published J’Accuse, opening himself up to a libel suit, a conviction, fines and temporary exile to England. It is disappointing that Josephson speaks so little of Zola’s motivation. Zola was not Jewish and, while he undoubtedly objected to the active prejudices which singled Dreyfus out for prosecution in the first place, I believe that he was stirred by something more fundamental to his own nature, his own inner core.

As they said of Watergate 75 years later, it wasn’t the original crime that was so bad, it was the cover up. Again and again, The French Army had overwhelming evidence of Dreyfus’ innocence and most came to accept it. They had opportunities to correct the error. Again and again they turned away from those opportunities and connived in exonerating the real spy.  The whistle blower within the Army who uncovered the facts was himself persecuted.

 They brought him [Picquart] up quickly. He should have realized that the reopening of the Dreyfus Affair was “not desired;” that the sacrifice of this man, innocent or culpable, was “deemed necessary” for the honor of the Army, The Secret Service Department, and the General Staff, all glorified in the triumphant judgment of 1894.

Zola’s fate was collateral damage, so far as they were concerned. I think it was the thorough dishonesty of the Affair and its coverup that most outraged Zola. As he says in J’Accuse,

 Dreyfus, it is shown, knows several languages: crime; he works hard: crime; no compromising papers are found in his home: crime; he goes occasionally to the country of his origin: crime; he endeavors to learn everything: crime; he is not easily worried: crime; he is worried: crime.

During World War II when the west coast Japanese were rounded up and interned on “suspicion” of espionage and sabotage, it was pointed out that there was no evidence that anyone had done any act of the sort. Ah, we were told: That shows how clever they are, fooling us all by their good behavior.

When I read Zola’s novels, I meet a writer who tells the truth as he sees it. He may dramatize, he may simplify, but he does not deceive or mislead. Josephson reports that Zola said at his trial,

 “All seems to be against me, the two Chambers, the civil powers, the military powers, the great newspapers, the public opinion which they have poisoned. And I have nothing for me but the Idea, the Ideal of truth and justice…. Someday France will thank me for having helped to save her honor.”

Contemporary cartoon: My Prophecy is Borne Out. Right has Finally Triumphed.

What I read in October 2012

Connie Willis, All Clear. This is the second of the two-book series Blackout and All Clear, set in England in the 1940s..  I have commented on the two together as Connie Willis wins World War II.

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird. Sage advice about writing and about life. Take both in small doses, carefully — bird by bird — and keeping your heart open to the songs the birds are singing.

David Lodge, Author, Author. Lodge’s novel is based on the life of American writer Henry James. The dramatic center of the book is James’ failed attempt to establish himself as a theatrical writer. Perceptive, but not at the level of his novel about H. G. Wells, A Man of Parts.

Ann Beattie, Picturing Will. Beattie’s novels came highly recommended, so I thought I should try one. Then I found I just could not like this book. The opening sections about the single-mother photographer were cool but interesting. Then the action moved to Florida. I am weary of books about people who drink too much and look for anonymous sex in motel rooms.

Gladys Taber, Stillmeadow Sampler. Gladys Taber lived in and wrote about life in rural Connecticut during the 1950s. It was a world of old houses, good neighbors, vegetable gardens and dogs — lots of dogs.

Arnold Bennett, Anna of the Five Towns. A rather bitter story about life in a town centered on the English pottery industry, and one young woman’s life in that town.

Diana Athill, Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir. This somewhat disjointed report from the world of old age (Athill was in her late 80′s when she wrote these pieces) touches on love, sex, friendship and the joys of reading.

Connie Willis, Bellwether. Willis is the master of science fiction, but this is not traditional SF; rather, it is social comedy of a high order. Researchers deal with corporate bureaucracy, chaos theory, the origin of fads and a herd of sheep. The bellwether leads the other sheep, but who leads the scientists?

Wallace Stegner, A Shooting Star. This novel portrays the bad effects of being born too rich in California in the 1960s. Stegner begins with some annoying people and by the end of the book you almost like them, almost. This novel lacks the impact of his earlier books, in part because the voices of his female characters did not ring quite true.

Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs. Unsparing biography of the strange and wonderful personality who created Apple Computer and envisioned its innovative products. Envisioned and then willed into creation.

Anne Tyler, The Beginner’s Goodbye. A man’s wife dies, suddenly and unexpectedly in an accident. They loved each other but their marriage could have been better. How can he say goodbye later when there was no opportunity to say it at the time?

Zola and His Time

Eduard Manet, Portrait of Zola

His father would have had a distinguished career and wealth, but his father died young. He was a poor as a boy and often hungry. When successful, he was fat until he became thin. He was faithful to his wife, until he took a mistress. He had many friends, until he had few friends. He wrote but his books did not sell well, until they did sell well. He was Emile Zola, author of Nana and Germinal and tens of other books set in France in the post-Napoleonic era.

I have been reading Matthew Johnson’s 1928 biography Zola and His Time. A poor choice, it turns out, if you want to understand the man behind the books, but it appeared at the book sale just when I wanted to know more about Zola.  Johnson’s account feels too close to the subject, written before World War II and overly devoted to the literary quarrels of Zola’s day. Influenced by Balzac’s novels of the human comedy, Zola set out to create a world in which the members of an extended family exemplify the different aspects of society: labor, prostitution, markets, the church. For some the applied term “Naturalism” was praise; for others, the term itself damned the books as literary offal.

 Heredity, implacable, predetermined, would be for his modern epic the Nemesis of the Greek dramas. Far from becoming slave to a theory, which would turn his books into a mass of clinical observations, he saw with a flash of intuition that the long chain of episodes he visioned, the descent of a vast family, of “a world of agitation” would be completely unified by the force of heredity. Instead of being the victims of the gods’ vengeance, his characters, all members of one vast family, would be victims of heredity. It was simply more “modern,” more scientific”; it was no different.

To the extent that I understand what Johnson is saying here, it does little help me to appreciate Zola’s novels. I read my first Zolas, Nana and then The Belly of Paris, last year unburdened by interpretation. I found in the Paris’ Les Halles of Zola a humane vision of human suffering overlaid with a delicate sensual appreciation of all that life has to offer in a market replete with cheese, fish, vegetables and the vendors thereof.

There is a last chapter in Zola’s life. I’ll comment on J’Accuse and the Dreyfus Affair in a later post.

Emile Zola, Germinal

Who said this and when?

I was expecting that–the accusation of starving the people and living by their sweat. How can you talk such folly, you who ought to know the enormous risks which capital runs in industry–in the mines, for example? A well-equipped pit today costs from fifteen hundred thousand francs to two millions; and it is difficult enough to get a moderate interest on the vast sum that is thus swallowed. Nearly half the mining companies in France are bankrupt. Besides, it is stupid to accuse those who succeed of cruelty. When their workers suffer, they suffer themselves. Can you believe that the Company has not as much to lose as you have in the present crisis? It does not govern wages; it obeys competition under pain of ruin. Blame the facts, not the Company.

The speaker is a the owner of a small coal mine in northern France in the 1860′s, a character in Zola’s novel Germinal. He lives comfortably enough, but he is a captive of the system, as are the miners. They are ground down by their lives in a world devoted only to coal. The old minor spits black phlegm:

“It’s coal. I’ve got enough in my carcass to warm me till I die. And it’s five years since I put a foot down below. I stored it up, it seems, without knowing it; it keeps you alive!”

This book is painful to read. Zola’s thorough research provides us with detailed descriptions of mining and the conditions in which the men must work. Each day is a struggle to earn enough to keep bread on the table. During the strike there is no bread and no table either, since everything is sold in the effort to survive.

Tears fell over each object of the poor household which had to go, and the mother was still lamenting that one day she had carried away in her skirt the pink cardboard box, her man’s old present, as one would carry away a child to get rid of it on some doorstep. They were bare; they had only their skins left to sell, so worn-out and injured that no one would have given a farthing for them. They no longer even took the trouble to search, they knew that there was nothing left, that they had come to the end of everything, that they must not hope even for a candle, or a fragment of coal, or a potato, and they were waiting to die, only grieved about the children, and revolted by the useless cruelty that gave the little one a disease before starving it.

Zola shows us a world in which all are trapped. The miners have only a dim understanding of the big picture, but they know it is not right.

The workers could not hold out; the Revolution had only aggravated their wretchedness; only the bourgeois had grown fat since ’89, so greedily that they had not even left the bottom of the plates to lick. Who could say that the workers had had their reasonable share in the extraordinary increase of wealth and comfort during the last hundred years? They had made fun of them by declaring them free. Yes, free to starve, a freedom of which they fully availed themselves.

One of the results, besides the strike, is senseless violence which often destroys what little the workers have or can depend on. The miners’ riot recalls some of the urban riots we have had in this country. At such times, people ask why do they destroy? It only hurts them in the long run. They destroy because they are angry and there is no long run.

Germinal is a powerful book. Zola takes the reader into the lives of the miners and makes you experience their anger and their grief.

What I Read in January 2012

My View While Reading

Two weeks in Florida treated me to more time to read but left me short on computer access to keep up with my posts. This tree was my best view from my reading chair when I lifted my eyes from the page on a sunny afternoon.

H. G. Wells, Tono-Bungay. I begin the new year with this non-science-fiction novel by the author of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. Tono-Bungay is a tonic, a harmless patent medicine for the masses and the basis for a fortune which does do great harm in pre-World War I England.

Ngaio Marsh, Artists in Crime. An Inspector Alleyn mystery in which he meets attractive artist Agatha Troy. I knew, from reading later books in the series, that they marry — but not here, not yet. They meet. They are mutually attracted, he solves the crime. I am confident they will get together sooner or later. Wait for the next book.

Jane Smiley, At Paradise Gate. I am an admirer of Jane Smiley and her deft handling of the problems of (mostly) normal people. An old man, a partner in a long-term, often stressful marriage, lies dying. The daughters and a granddaughter gather. The wife copes.

Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture. This book derives from the “last lecture” delivered by Randy Pausch, while living in his last months with pancreatic cancer.

Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans. Fanny Trollope was the mother of the better-known Anthony Trollope and a successful writer in her own right. In 1827 she took several of her children to seek their fortune in the New World. She was both fascinated and disappointed by the new republic. Her observations, often relieved with a little humor, scandalized us all.

Emile Zola, Germinal. This disturbing novel depicts the lives of coal miners in 1860s France and their unsuccessful strike for better conditions and pay. Free-market capitalism justifies all, then and now.

John LeCarré, A Most Wanted Man. I have long admired John LeCarré and his intricately-plotted spy novels, but I am sorry that I read this one. It left me angry at the abuse of power by all sides in our current War on Terror.

Frances Trollope, The Widow Barnaby. Since Fanny Trollope, best known for her critical Domestic Manners of the Americans, was a best-selling novelist in her day, I thought I would try one. The widow is flirtatious, maritally ambitious, outrageous — and dresses in poor taste. What will she do next! Trollope knew a thing or two about keeping the reader involved.

W. E. B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk. Pioneering sociologist DuBois depicts the situation of Blacks in the South forty years after Emancipation. “Souls” are not just the spiritual souls, but the entire consciousness of a people who, after centuries of slavery, receive little support in the freedom they have gained.

Pamela Neville-Sington, Fanny Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman. Fanny Trollope is best known for her critique of the young United States, Domestic Manners of the Americans. It was her first published book, and she was 53. In the next 24 years she wrote six travel books and 35 novels. They were best sellers in their day. Oh, and she was the mother of Anthony Trollope. This well-written biography tells all.

Emile Zola, The Masterpiece

As I read Zola’s The Masterpiece about the struggles of an innovative artist in 1880s Paris, I felt that Zola had lived that life. Although the central figure is the struggling artist, Claude, the next more prominent character is the writer, Sandoz. Claude’s experiments in artistic technique are not understood and are ridiculed; Sandoz (Zola) is also a victim.

His poor book! It was getting a fine old trouncing! Talk about butchery and massacre, he’d got the whole pack of critics at his heels, yelping and cursing him as if he’d committed murder most foul! It made him laugh, it even stimulated him, for he had the quiet determination of pursue the course he had set himself.

Claude is not full of quiet determination. Whereas Sandoz makes a plan for his series of related novels and proceeds diligently to produce them, Claude paints and destroys, paints and destroys. He seeks a single work, a masterpiece, to express his entire artistic vision. His first attempt has the significant title “Open Air” and is a light-filled contrast between a nude woman and a fully clad gentleman. Zola’s description of the picture suggests something very much like Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’Herbe.

Claude’s model for the nude is the beautiful Christine. They live together, have a child and eventually marry, while Claude paints version after version of what is to be his final masterpiece. He wants to show the heart of Paris with a glorious standing nude as its centerpiece. Christine continues to model; the picture does not work and Claude cruelly blames her.

“The colouring’s still splendid,” he went on, “but not the line. Not now…. The legs, oh, the legs are still all right; they’re usually the last thing to go in women…. But the belly and the breasts are certainly going to pieces. There, just take a look at yourself in the glass. Near the armpits now, you can see the way the flesh is starting to sag? Not very lovely, it it?”

It is not Christine who is deteriorating; it is Claude. The more he paints, the wilder and more improbable his picture becomes. His aspiration to create a single stunning masterpiece destroys him in the end.

This is only the second of Zola’s novels I have read but already I am impressed by his versatility. There is a central story — the returned political prisoner in The Belly of Paris and the artist-writer duo of this book — but there is also a host of other characters to play out the various possibilities of the situation. The Belly of Paris is the great food market, Les Halles, and Zola’s text is full of the tastes and smells of its fruit, fish and cheeses. In this book, we have word pictures of the colors and forms in the world the artists see and the works they create.

What I Read in August 2011

Howard Jacobson, Kalooki Nights. I’m not sure why I stayed with this book – all 450 pages of it – since I didn’t like it very much. By the author of The Finkler Question, it is a lengthy exploration of the lives of English Jews as observed and experienced by a disenchanted caricaturist (literally, he draws cartoons) in his middle years.

Charles H. Manekin, On Maimonides. This serves as a companion piece to Sherwin Nuland’s Maimonides and is a much tougher read. I comment on the two books, along with one of Maimonides’ perplexities in Maimonides Maimonides.

Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimajaro. Since I enjoyed A Moveable Feast, I thought I would give Hemingway’s this collection of his short stories a try. Too male and too mannered for me, but I enjoyed The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber because of what happened to Macomber after he shot the buffalo.

Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie. Sarah, of A Rat in the Book Pile, and I have been reading this together and cross-posting in both of our blogs. So read and comment at either place:
Sister Carrie, ~ A Dialogue
Sister Carrie, ~ A Dialogue, Part II
Sister Carrie, ~ A Dialogue, Part III
Sister Carrie, ~ A Dialogue, Part IV

Georges Simenon, Maigret and the Headless Corpse. Despite the grisly title, this is not a grisly book. It is a typical Maigret story. The Inspector considers a crime, he tries to understand the criminals, he eats a bit, he drinks a lot, he solves the mystery.

Martha Saxton, Louisa May Alcott: A Modern Biography. Not too modern any more, this biography. Published in 1977, it is a feminist take on Alcott’s sometimes difficult life. More comments may follow as I proceed with my Alcott project.

Emile Zola, The Masterpiece. Considered the most autobiographical of his novels, in The Masterpiece Zola gives us the lives of writers and artists in 188s Paris. We learn of the price of success, as well as the costs of failure.

The Belly of Paris

The Belly of Paris is Les Halles, the great food market celebrated by Emile Zola in this 1873 novel. The only previous book I have read by Zola is the more famous Nana. I liked this one better because — I was about to say –of the more realistic people and situations. That’s not quite it. Zola is called a realist, but he uses his very sensual descriptions to make emotional points. For example, when the old gossips get together to tittle tattle with each other they meet in the cheese market.

All around them the cheeses were stinking…. A parmesan added its aromatic tang to the thick, dull smell of the others…. Then came the strong-smelling cheeses…. and, finally, stronger than all the others, the olivets, wrapped in walnut leaves, like the carcasses of animals which peasants cover with branches as they lie rotting in the hedgerow under the blazing sun.

Florent, an idealistic revolutionary, has escaped from his unjust imprisonment on Cayenne (Devils Island) and returned to Paris where he works in Les Halles and plans the downfall of the very Bourgeois government. He knows the sumptuous market is not the place for him. In his very difficult life he has become thin and he identifies with the thin people. Les Halles is the place of supply for the fat people, and the fat people include his half brother, his sister-in-law and all the people who mock his ideals. Florent is not eloquent but his artist friend is.

Claude shook his fist at them. He was exasperated by all this joyousness in the streets and on the rooftops. He cursed the Fat people, for they had won. All around he could see nothing but Fat people, increasing ins size, bursting with health, greeting another day of eating and digesting.

The sadness of the ending is not just that Florent’s impractical schemes have failed. The sadness is that the fat people prefer eating and drinking to the pursuit of justice.