The Novel 100 author Daniel Burt described Emile Zola’s Germinal
Germinal, which is present on the Novel 100 (#66) and the Bloomsbury 100, is the story of a conflict between the poor laborers of a coal-mining town in 1860s France and the bourgeois management and owners. The workers live in grinding poverty, barely earning subsistence wages, dying in the mine or because of it, and ultimately living lives devoid of meaning. Ownership pits worker against worker to drive labor costs down, yet points to the subsidized housing it provides as evidence of its beneficence. Zola doesn’t exonerate his laborers, showing how their infighting and ignorance hold them back.
The plot centers around Etienne, an unemployed mechanic who finds work in the mine but, discovering the appalling conditions and dead-end wages, decides to put his knowledge of Marxism to use and organizes a general strike. The strike has severe consequences for everyone in the town, and to some degree for ownership, and precipitates a spree of violence punctuated by one of the most vicious scenes I can recall in a Western novel.
Buried within the greater story is a for the time progressive view of women’s rights and role, by way of a savage depiction of the women in the mine, including Catherine, who captures Etienne’s heart but instead chooses to be with the violent man who first “takes” her virginity by force. Zola attacks nearly everyone and everything by distilling them into sharp and unappealing characters, from abbes more interested in peace than helping the poor to shopkeepers who prey on customers near starvation to the idle rich who own the means of production.
The primary literary criticism of Germinal seems to be its inaccuracy. Zola introduces early-1800s working conditions into the latter half of the century, but adds Marxist ideas and organizations before they could have reached France. I have less of a problem with this, since the novel is functioning on some level as satire, and satire works via exaggeration.
Next up: Italo Calvino’s short work Marcovaldo, or seasons in the city.
I enjoy the book reviews and food comments…just one thing though…I know you dig Alton and his show, but please, please! tell me you hate those “character” actors as much as I do that pop up all the time. A “pirate” on a scallop boat with a sea shell eye patch my inspiration for this.
Keith,
Love the reviews. I was curious if you currently have or have considered a Shelfari page. Basically it’s a virtual bookshelf that allows you to find people who’ve read common books or see what your real-life friends have read. I think it’s a nice little tool.
To be fair to Zola, he went through pain staking detail to write as authentically as possible. He wrote about an entire family (his books act as a sort of family tree), and he even talked about genetics (the alcoholism of Etienne) before much was really known about this. The best description of naturalism (of which Zola is the father) is, “le réalisme à quatre pattes” (realism on four feet). Because of this, the story gets bogged down in the never-ending details (though the part about spitting black always seems to stick in my mind). Moreover, this book became a war cry for French workers who dared to stand up to big business (workers would chant “Germinal!” during protests). I really can’t say enough about this book, or Zola for that matter (his participation in the Dreyfus Affair is greater than his literary accomplishments).
And here’s a description of Zola’s role in that Dreyfus Affair. I wasn’t aware of the connection to Zola before your comments, Patrick, so thanks.
I recently started reading some of Calvino’s work look forward to the Marcovaldo review. I just finished reading Six Memos for the Next Millennium thought it was great. I will be starting Cosmicomics soon and I’ll probably put Marcovaldo next on the list. I was wondering if you have read any of his other books? Thanks for the reviews helps me out sometimes when deciding what to pick up next.
Sean: You must read If on a winter’s night a traveler
. It’s one of my favorite novels by any writer.