I hate every word I’ve ever written. My sentences disgust me. To me, every paragraph I type reads like muddled garbage, incapable of expressing anything worthwhile. I hate writing. Luckily for France, Émile Zola did not have my specific set of neuroses.

In 22 years, between 1871 and 1893, Zola published Les Rougon-Macquart, a series of 20 novels. Similar to Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine, Zola aimed to portray (but ultimately critiqued) the France of his time, specifically the rule of Napoleon III. But while Balzac obsessed over ambition, Zola obsessed over heredity and evolution. Tracking a family as they moved through French society, Zola examined how inherited traits allowed them to rise and fall. This first book, lays the groundwork for all this. It sets up the relationships of all the characters and establishes the broken family dynamics.

To save you some time, the first book in the series is good. It drags a bit at the beginning and near the end, but the overall experience is great. 4 out of 5 stars altogether. Go read it.

To waste some of your time, there are a variety of ways to critique a piece of art. I am a sap and a midwit. What I care about is how art makes me feel and how art invites me to see the world. Émile Zola accomplished that. He knows how to strike a nerve and guide my eyes.

From page 33 onwards, Zola had me in the palm of his hand. He wanted me to hate a character; I loathed them. He wanted me to like someone; I loved them. Unless I die, I will read the other 19 books in the series on the off chance he describes the death of a minor villain, Antoine Macquart. (He's the 1800s version of today’s antisocial socialists.) But perhaps more importantly, Zola succeeded in convincing me of his perspective.

Émile Zola’s view, at least as I can interpret it, was like Marx's. Napoleon III's ascent was a farce. It was an event that allowed a grotesque, mediocre ruling class of France to keep power, based on stupidity and ineptitude. But to Zola, the key is the tragedy in this farce. The coup d’etat oppressed the peasants. It killed the dream of a better tomorrow and crushed the vision of the republic. It allowed stupid, cowardly, repugnant creatures to ascend the social ladder based solely on their lack of morals and willingness to exploit others.

Zola (in a very classical way) personifies these ideas in his characters. He makes you love them and hate them. Then he destroys them or rewards them, to portray his view of Napoleon III's ascent. By the time I finished the novel, he had completely convinced me of the tragedy of the event. I was so emotionally immersed that I had to write down my initial feelings at 1 AM. They are as follows: They killed a beautiful boy. They corrupted our future. They prevented true love. Death to Napoleon III.

The fortune of the Rougons

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