Reading Zola

At the end of 2019, I made a decision to read Les Rougon-Macquart series. Yes, all 20 of them!

Books were purchased from Book Depository. I bought the Oxford World Classics edition, because they have already published 19, and the last one "Doctor Pascal" is due for publication in September 2020. 

Here's an excerpt from the Introduction to "Money": It was in 1868, at the age of twenty-eight, that Emile Zola hit on the idea of a series of novels based on one family, Les Rougon-Macquart, Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire ('Natural and Social History of Family under the Second Empire), in which he would trace the influence of heredity on the various members of a family in their social and political setting. 

Wait... he embarked this writing journey at age 28?!! This is such a major stuff to be written by someone so young! As usual, I'm going in blindly - I have never read the synopsis of any of the books. This is it! It's either I like it, or I hate it. I was hoping hard that I would love this series, because .. come one, I bought all the 20 books!

Next is to decide which reading order to follow. Do I follow the publication order, or the reading order recommended by Zola himself? I'm playing it safe and decided to follow the author's direction. So here's the recommended reading order, taken from Wikipedia

A recommended reading order

1. La Fortune des Rougon (1871)
2. Son Excellence Eugène Rougon (1876)
3. La Curée (1871-2)
4. L'Argent (1891)
5. Le Rêve (1888)
6. La Conquête de Plassans (1874)
7. Pot-Bouille (1882)
8. Au Bonheur des Dames (1883)
9. La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret (1875)
10. Une page d'amour (1878)
11. Le Ventre de Paris (1873)
12. La joie de vivre (1884)
13. L'Assommoir (1877)
14. L'Œuvre (1886)
15. La Bête humaine (1890)
16. Germinal (1885)
17. Nana (1880)
18. La Terre (1887)
19. La Débâcle (1892)
20. Le Docteur Pascal (1893)

It is September 2020 now, and I have read the first four books in the series. I like his writing style, and appreciate the immense researches that he did for each book. His story delivery is very bold: there is no need to guess the nuance - everything is blatantly described with vivid emotions

***Spoiler alert***

22 Feb 2020 The Fortune of the Rougons

This novel lays the foundation of the family. Rooted from a crazy lady who had an affair with a destitute, Zola created a blooming family tree. The Rougon side of the family is ambitious and money-minded, while the Macquarts are poor and lacking of ambitions

13 Jun 2020 His Excellency Eugene Rougon (Politics)

Eugene Rougon is the most powerful of the Rougon. I started seeing a lot of bad sides of humanity here. Woman sleeping with men to gain power; men kissing ass to gain power and money; bribes are everywhere. Eugene Rougon himself did not have a smooth political life, but he emerged to be a strong player that his enemies need to think twice before attacking him

25 Jun 2020 The Kill (Property)

Saccard, Eugene's younger brother, let his first wife die with sickness and sold his name to marry a younger lady just to get into the circle of the riches. He played dirty in the property business. He just enjoyed the game, as at the end he had no money left for himself. The shocking part is the crazy relationship between his wife and his son from the first marriage. Zola really described the greed and lust for money and sex in full force, it's disgusting to a certain extent. 

15 Sep 2020 Money (Capital market)

Saccard again, but in banking scandal this time round. I am very impressed by Zola's knowledge about the capital market in that era. There was little or no regulatory control at that time, so everything that is wrong with financial industry was described there. You name it, Zola had it all covered. Front-running, insider-trading, accounting manipulation, lack of corporate governance.... Oh, and Zola even mentioned about buying an option, and that's super impressive! 

Every time I finished reading one of these (starting from Eugene Rougon onwards), I started questioning why we humans are so bad. We are greedy, and ready to sacrifice others for our own benefit. However, (again, taken from Introduction to "Money"), Zola wrote "I should like, in this novel, not to conclude in disgust with life (pessimism). Life, just as it is, but accepted, in spite of everything, for love itself, in strength." This was what he wanted to emerge from the whole Rougon-Macquart series

Wow! Zola is just like Vasily Grossman in Life and Fate! After all the brutality and the mess that he witnessed, he still had optimistic view about life... and for that, I have immense respect both men.