ZOLA SEASON LET'S GOOOOO
you know what time it is
Hello friends—
About three years ago, I wrote an essay for Sweater Weather about the resonances between The Millennial Novel and the work of Émile Zola. After that essay, an editor at the London Review of Books reached and asked if I might be interested in reading all of Les Rougon-Macquart, Zola’s twenty-novel cycle of life in Second Empire France, for a piece. I agreed because I liked Zola and thought it would be a brisk task.
Well, it was not brisk. It took several years and a lot in my life changed in that time. But late last year, I filed the essay. It came out yesterday online and will be in the forthcoming issue of the LRB. I am very proud of the essay. It’s my first major piece and the longest essay I’ve written for a publication. It was a lot of fun. Hard, but difficult. I read many books and did some transcribing and translating myself for the piece.
Essentially, I started a draft of the essay and soon realized that it was turning into a manuscript, so I had to stop and change direction for the LRB essay. As a result, there were many things that did not make it into the long essay, and I have very much more to say about Zola and these novels. I am thinking of writing a series of essays for the newsletter in the coming weeks and months about Les Rougon-Macquart and the project of Naturalism broadly. The other thing I am thinking is that I do kind of want to write a book about Les Rougon-Macquart and Naturalism, particularly as it pertains to the contemporary novel. I think such a book would be really interesting. I would read it. So, maybe I’m just writing it for myself. I don’t know.
I suppose I want to write a book similar to Angus Wilson’s lovely little treatment published many decades ago. But updated. And also from my own weird mind. I think for another thing, I am less down on Naturalism than many of the books written about Zola and his works. I think it’s probably more right than not right at this point, lol.
So I hope you don’t mind a forthcoming Zola interlude. I don’t know that it will be a week to week thing. Maybe there’ll be a monthly Zola essay between other essays about other things. I just know that I want to keep writing about him and these books. I have a rough scheme in mind for how I’ll approach it, especially now that the big, sweeping essay is done. I’ll get to drill down deeper and examine some of his odd tactics and his recurring structural strategies.
In the meantime, it would mean a lot if you read the LRB piece. I worked hard on it and I do think that Zola has much to offer us in this moment. I try to speak to that as well as to what these books meant to me over a very transformative and strange period of my own life.
It’s odd. I no longer can tell where my own sensibility ends and Zola’s begins. Looking at my own fiction from the last couple years, I can see and feel his influence growing stronger. Haha. Too funny.
B
I was lucky enough to have an incredible history teacher assign Germinal in 9th grade, and its violence and vividness blew away my young misperceptions about “classic”/“old” novels. I reread it last month on a lark and was amazed how much I still remembered, decades later… age/long COVID/weed dementia have done a number on my memory but Germinal was, apparently, seared into my brain. I decided to keep going and attempt more from the cycle, starting with Nana… I found it dazzling for a bit, but it became a slog and I put it down.
Anyhow I’ve been delighted by the coincidence of your Zola journey, and vindicated/let off the hook by your Nana assessment. The LRB piece was wonderful, and I’m excited to resume with one of your premium Zola choices… I’ll never finish the full cycle, but I can at least tackle your remaining faves.
After reading your essay, I went to see The Beast last night— a French movie based on HJ’s Beast in the Jungle. I disliked it, but in addition to the James connection parts of it resonated strongly with your brilliant observations about resurgent naturalism (and fatalism) in the present moment. Another nice coincidence, even if the movie was otherwise a slog.
Write the Zola book! I'll buy it -- especially since François Camoin and I butted heads so hard on naturalism & realism while I was in grad school.
Eagerly awaiting the LRB piece in the post. Frankly, I think they're the best periodical out there these days -- congrats for the piece! and congrats to them for being smart enough to wait for as long as it took you to do it right.