Nana

In the guise of a bedroom farce, this book is a critique of the hedonistic world of late 1860s Paris. At the start of the story, the voluptuous and audacious Nana creates a stir in her theatrical debut as Blond Venus, but it is in her real-life role as Paris' most sought after "high-class tart" that she achieves her greatest fame. A cross-section of male society (everyone from a love-sick teenager to an aged marquis), falls for Nana, and her admirers even bump into each other at the doorway of her boudoir as her busy schedule sometimes creates awkward conflicts. "The bedroom was being made into a public right of way," Zola tells us. Nana's antics often had me chuckling in disbelief at her chutzpah and ruthlessness as she discarded one beau after another (after spending all of their money): "A ruined man dropped through her fingers like a ripe fruit, to rot quietly on the ground, by himself." But there is a lot more going on than Nana's prurient misadventures. Zola's goal was to create an accurate and comprehensive picture of people and society in "Nana" and in the 19 other novels that comprised his Rougon-Macquart cycle. In doing so, he picked up the torch from his literary forefather Honore de Balzac, who penned a similarly ambitious series he dubbed The Human Comedy more than 30 years earlier. Benefiting from Balzac's model and the advantage of writing at a later period, Zola was able to portray French society with unprecedented frankness and gritty attention to detail. Zola tells the story of Nana through a series of set pieces, each one representing a new phase of her "career." Zola introduces us to the theatre scene of Paris (Nana's actor cohorts are a riot); gatherings of high society in Paris' most upscale salons; a rowdy dinner party hosted by Nana; a high-stakes horse race (in which a horse named in Nana's honor is part of the lineup); we are even shown what may literature's first lesbian pick up bar/restaurant, where Nana meets a prostitute who becomes her only true love. "Nana," published in 1880, is the ninth book in the Rougon-Macquart series. I enjoyed it so much that I purchased the novels that immediately preceded and followed it, "L'Assommoir" (about Nana's parents) and "Pot-Bouille" (about adultery and other goings on in an apartment building). Zola never bogs down the narrative with excessive background. In fact, all we need to know about Nana's family history is explained to us when she discovers a newspaper article written by a journalist acquaintance. Tellingly enough, Nana doesn't bother to read the snarky article (which informs us that her mother was a laundress and her father a drunk) but assumes it's favorable because of its impressive length. In his preface to "L'Assommoir" Zola described that story as "morality in action," which pretty much sums up this novel as well. The conclusion is epic in scope, and it absolutely floored me. The great Gustave Flaubert was positively giddy with admiration for "Nana," particul

Bought this item for myself, however my father got a hold of it and is reading it now. I will have to wait my turn.

Zola is perhaps the best pure writer I've ever read. By this I mean the beauty and flow of his writing independent of all other considerations is unmatched. And this is in translation; he can only be better in the original French. Stunning. Through the rise and fall of Nana's life Zola offers a beautifully drawn look at the upper and lower classes of Parisian society in the 1870s(?). I've read 6 or so Zola novels, and this is my favorite so far.

This novel employs a courtesan, Nana, to condamn the decadence of late 2nd Empire France (1852-1870). Arising from a family ravaged by alcoholism and abuse, the great beauty Nana becomes a celebrity in theatre and then as the mistress of the high aristocracy and bourgeous. At her core, she is a devourer, empty of anything but the will to suck whatever she can out of anyone who comes near. She ruins the fortunes of numerous men with frivolous demands for things she barely wants, and Zola in the process illuminates how they made their careers and were ruined by their appeites for this woman, who becomes an archetypal destuctive force. It is indeed a bleak and severe indictment of an entire society: you learn how celebrity worked in it, from the bottom up and back down again. Her sexuality is omnivorous, the men her willing victims for a mention in the Figaro gossip columns. (As Zola put, "les hommes suivent une chienne qui n'est pas en chaleur.")Zola makes for fascinating reading, as does Balzac, for the wider tableau he paints. The writers are similar, except that Zola was a far more careful writer. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to find any characters you can like or admire, which makes the cynicism and condamnations overbearing and hard to get through at times. There are numerous inventions in it that became classic, like "blond venus" and "golden fly". This adds to it as a glorious classic novel.In a wider sense, this is one of the central novels in Zola's cycle on the "natural history" of an extended family, the Rougon-Macquart. It is based on a crude kind of Darwinist sociology, a kind of reasoning that was in its infancy when he wrote and which later culminated in Freud and Durkheim. THat is another level that is quite fascinating, a philosophical cycle of novels mixing biological science and Schopenauer, all deeply pessimistic and determinist. Recommended, but it takes perserverence and a strong stomach to finish it.