"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Old Goriot (Honore de Balzac, 1835)

I like Balzac's writing. Though this one, not quite so well as Cousin Bette or Lost Illusions.

Old Goriot is another part of "La Comédie humaine"(as were the novels mentioned above). One of the first where the "recurring characters" conceit is developed.

In this one, a successful merchant gives all to his two daughters - each accomplishes an upscale marriage greased by lots of his cash; each promptly forgets his kindnesses and is mostly embarrassed by having him around. And Old Goriot didn't have enough cash to live comfortably at all, though he never stopped adoring his daughters.

So Goriot lives in a boarding house with the protagonist, Eugène de Rastignac. Rastignac is from the provinces; many nice qualities; but overcome with the urge to climb socially. (So he reminds of Lucien Chardon from Lost Illusions.) The boarding house also features a criminal-in-hiding.

This book is set during the Bourbon restoration.

Wikipedia says it is considered the "essential" Balzac novel, that it was highly influential, etc.
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