In which I begin reading Zola's Aux Bonheurs des dames (Or The Ladies' Delight)

That's right.  I picked up this little treasure (en francais, bien sur) at a book store in NYC when I went with French Club a few months back.  I was super excited to find a Zola book in French.  And it only cost me $2.  Aux Bonheurs des dames is translated in English most often as either The Ladies' Delight or The Ladies' Paradise, which makes sense if you know what the book is about.

I can't wait to dig in.  The premise of the story is basically that there is this huge department store built in a busy location, and the proprietor has everything set out just so so that all the ladies want to come to his shop instead of all the other little boutiques.  I'll be looking at the conflict between the little stores and the big stores, but it looks like there's gonna be a lot more to this book :)  I might keep you updated as I go along.  It depends on either 1) How lazy I am or 2) How engrossed I am in the story.

Wish me luck!  If you want more info on the book and it's plot and the Rougon-Macquarts, you can easily find heeps of info on wikipedia simply by typing in the book's title (and searching with the French title still takes you to the English page).

Literary Blog Hop-Most Difficult Literary Work You've Read

The girls over at The Blue Bookcase came up with this fantastic new blog hop for blogs that primarily read and review literary books or discuss literary things.  If you would like to participate or visit other blogs on the hop, check them out at The Blue Bookcase!

The question this week comes from Readerbuzz (Salut, Debbie Nance, j'aime ta question!):
What is the most difficult literary work you've ever read?  What made it so difficult?

Great question, and what an easy one for me to answer!  When I first read the question, I was like, "hmmmm....I don't know....."  And then it hit me. 

Zola.  Emile Zola.

I took a Zola class last semester.  We read two of his books (en francais, of course): Le ventre de Paris (in English it's The Belly of Paris, or sometimes it's translated something like The Fat and the Skinny, lol), and L'Assommoir (which I think is usually just translated with the same title..).  Those were BY FAR the hardest books I've ever read.

It could be because they were in French, but I beg to differ.  I've been reading French literature for a long time now.  It could possibly have been his writing style + the French.  You see, Zola is what you might call a "naturalist".  Or at least an old fashioned naturalist who thought that personality traits were passed on from a woman's first lover to all her future kids, no matter if he was their father or not.  And other strange stuff which I don't feel like getting into. 

Zola also loved to describe things.  Vividly.  At first, this is really nice.  But there are only so many times you can read about all the different colors of the flowers and meats and people and vegetables in the market, only so many times you can tolerate the smells of the cheese shops and meat markets, only so many times you can stand to read about the different blood puddings and pig intestines in the meat shop.  And definitely there are only so many times that you can bare to hear about one woman's slow (and I mean S-L-O-W) descent into alcoholism.  Oh the bad choices she made.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked the books (for the most part) and will probably be reading more Zola soon (for my own pleasure, not for school).  Once I'm finally over the "Semester of Gervaise and les Quenu", I hope I can start over with Zola. 

"Hey Emile," I'd like to say.

"Oui?"

"Can we start over?  I feel we've gotten off on the wrong foot.  I want to give this a second chance."

"Ah oui, bien sur".

And then everything will be just spiffy.

And what's really funny is that I can totally see myself someday doing a huge long dissertation on the symbolism in Zola, because you could write a book about all of it.  The color of the water near the dyeshop, the differences in skinny and fat people and how their lives are so drastically different based on their belly sizes (Zola wasn't saying that being skinny or round was bad, mind you.  It was a sort of subtle way of showing the social differences between two classes of people after the Revolution and that other Revolution and that other Revolution and...yeah, you get the point.).

What I'm trying to say is that the books were insanely a lot to take in in just one semester.  I went a little crazy because of them and all the stuff inside of them.  There is so much to each of them and I'd like to spend more time disecting them both.  If you want to read Zola, you have to be prepared to take your time and possibly pull out your hair every once in a while.  Because for real, Gervaise sometimes just needs to grow up.

And that was my super long rant about Emile Zola.  Wow.  I feel like a heavy weight that I've been carrying on my shoulders since last semester has finally lifted. 

Review: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

I'm not going to lie to you and say "OMG this book was amazing and surprisingly easy to read and changed my life!", because, frankly, it isn't really any of those things.  I did really like the book, but it wasn't so good I couldn't put it down.  And honestly, it was so depressing that I could only read a few chapters at a time, which is probably why it took me a surprisingly long time to read it!  As far as "reading ability", I have to say, I was sort of scared to read this because I've heard that it's pretty intimidating.  I read Jane Austen all the time and really love classics, so I'm no stranger to "intimidating old-fashioned writing", but I was nervous.  The Jungle, though, while it wasn't super easy, it also wasn't so fluffed up with old-fashionedness that I couldn't understand it.  I actually thought the writing was really good.  And as for "changing my life", the book was really good and took away my chicken wing cravings for a few days because of some graphic pig and cow slaughtering scenes, but it's not like I'm going to sit here and say "everyone should read this book at least once!".  Read it if you are truly interested in reading things that made an impact in the world, or if you are really interested to see what life in big cities was like at the turn of the 1900s. 

On to the plot summary.

Here's the down and dirty (or really quick actually) synopsis:  Family moves from Europe to America and ends up in Chicago.  No jobs.  No money.  Family gets jobs and buys house and things start looking up.  Someone loses job.  Someone dies.  Things go downhill.  Then someone gets new job and starts making money again.  Things start looking up.  Then someone dies.  Then things go downhill again and there is no money.  Then they get new jobs.  Then someone else dies.  And so on.  Now do you see what I mean when I say "depressing"?!

While this book is well known for its intense descriptions of the meat packing industry, there is so much more to it.  We get to see all about the scandals within city government.  We see what life was like for the poor working class at the turn of the century.  We see how votes for elections were bought and sold. 

Basically we get to see a comprehensive look at what life was all about for poor immigrant families back in the day.  And it's pretty grim.  I'm sure not all families suffered like this one did, but I'm also sure that this book isn't a total exageration. 

Oh yeah, just a side note:  I don't know how many people still read Emile Zola nowadays, but I took a class last semester where we read two Zola novels.  One of them, L'Assommoir, has a REALLY long and boring wedding scene.  This book has pretty much the exact same long and boring wedding scene.  Though I was probably so unhappy to read it in The Jungle because I'm still a bit scared from reading SO much Zola in one semester (in French!).  I do wonder a bit if Sinclair read any of Zola's stuff. 

As I said above, if you're interested in life back in the day, or in the meat packing industry, or anything at all related to corruption, then read this book.  But maybe don't read it if you have a weak stomach!

Here are some memorable quotes:
Pg. 126: "The men who worked on the killing beds would come to reak with foulness, so that you could smell one of them from fifty feet away.."  Oh yeah, doesn't life look awesome for these people?!  (Not!)

Pg. 236: "She had to bury one of her children-but then she had done it three times before, and each time risen up and gone back to take up the battle for the rest.  Elzbieta was one of the primitive creatures: like the angleworm, which goes on living though cut in half: like a hen, which, deprived of her chickens one by one, will mother the last that is left her.  She did this because it was her nature-she asked no questions about the justice of it, nor the worthwhileness of life in which destruction and death ran riot." 

Pg. 375: "And Jurgis was a man who's soul had been murdered, who had ceased to hope and to struggle.."