Summer reading suggestions. Karl Marx's favorite novelist: Honoré de Balzac
After writing several novels, in 1832 Balzac conceived the idea for an enormous series of books that would paint a panoramic portrait of "all aspects of society." . . . Although he originally called it Etudes des Mœurs (Study of Mores), it eventually became known as La Comédie Humaine, and he included in it all the fiction that he had published in his lifetime. (Wikipedia)
Pere Goriot
Balzac transposes the story of King Lear to 1820s Paris in order to rage at a society bereft of all love save the love of money. This example of the French realist novel contrasts the social progress of an impoverished but ambitious aristocrat with the tale of a father, whose obsessive love for his daughters leads to his personal and financial ruin. (Amazon)
Eugenie Grandet
In a gloomy house in provincial Saumur, the miser Grandet lives with his wife and daughter, Eugénie, whose lives are stifled and overshadowed by his obsession with gold. Guarding his piles of glittering treasures and his only child equally closely, he will let no one near themHere Grandet embodies both the passionate pursuit of money, and the human cost of avarice. (Amazon)
The Human Comedy: Selected Stories
Characters from every corner of society and all walks of life—lords and ladies, businessmen and military men, poor clerks, unforgiving moneylenders, aspiring politicians, artists, actresses, swindlers, misers, parasites, sexual adventurers, crackpots, and more—move through the pages of The Human Comedy. (Amazon)
Karen Sauro
Have you read 'Balzac's Omelette'?
Monte Bute
No. Tell me more. The only derivative novel I've read is "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress."
Tom Moody
Who was Balzac's favorite economist?
Karen Sauro
Monte, it is written by Anka Muhlstein. I saw it in an offbeat bookstore window in Chelsea last fall and had to get it. Unlike 'Chinese Seamstress,' where Balzac is the cameo backdrop to the story, Muhlstein took a look at Balzac's obsession with (and without) food and blasted it. The man's writings and his appetites were ferociously, although not always commensurately, entwined and she documents his fervor in a biographical manner. It is an unusual back-window look at this famous Frenchman, whose beginnings in life were quite sad.
