Customer Reviews

L'Assommoir (The Dram Shop) (Penguin Classics)

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After Balzac's comedy, Stendhal's romanticism, and Flaubert's cynicism, Zola's gritty, candid realism sort of hits you like a ton of bricks. In "L'Assommoir" you get to see Paris's unwashed masses as they probably looked and lived in the sweatiest, smelliest, grimiest parts of the city, from the bars to the slums to the workplaces, in the 1850's and 1860's. Alcoholism is undeniably a theme, as indicated by the novel's title, but it is presented as a symptom of personal irresponsibility rather than of economic, political, or religious issues.

The principal character is a provincial girl named Gervaise who has been living in a small, filthy apartment in a working class Paris neighborhood with her boyfriend Lantier and their two sons, the first of whom she had when she was fourteen. Lantier runs away with another woman, leaving Gervaise to fend for herself; but soon she accepts a marriage proposal from a roofer named Coupeau. He promises to be a good husband, swearing he never touches liquor because the stuff had killed his father.

Their marriage is fine at first, producing a daughter named Nana and allowing Gervaise to start her own laundry business. But eventually things take a turn for the worse. Coupeau injures himself at work one day and during his convalescence begins drinking with his buddies and becomes too lazy to return to work full time. Lantier returns after several years, reconciling with Gervaise and Coupeau to the extent that he moves in with them and "shares" Gervaise. The family descends into inescapable poverty as Gervaise starts her own drinking habit and neglects her business. These acts of dissipation rub off on Nana, who grows up to be a saucy tart (to put it nicely), sleeping around for food and lodging because her parents are no longer providing. All the while, Coupeau's petty, jealous sister and brother-in-law, the Lorilleux, rejoice at each of Gervaise's misfortunes.

This being a novel about the working class, we expect to see a copious display of vulgarities; but the real point of interest is Zola's apparent delight in portraying these vulgarities. Whether describing a bloody melee in a laundry between Gervaise and a washerwoman who is taunting her about Lantier's infidelity, Gervaise and Coupeau's wedding party who gawk at exhibits in the Louvre and argue over the check at dinner, the gluttonous, sloppy feast on Gervaise's saint's day, or the "emptying" of Coupeau's mother's corpse, Zola is ostentatiously graphic. He harnesses the power of pure portrayal, astutely recognizing that, in subject matter like this, reality is much more convincing than caricature.

Zola was an amazingly prolific writer - he wrote about thirty novels, and all of them were solidly on the "long" side. Moreover, each was a huge self-contained universe, and a gritty, harrowing epic to boot. In many ways, L'Assommoir is the central novel in his famed 20-novel Rougon/Macquart cycle, as many of the subsequent books have a direct connection to it (Gervaise's daughter is the "star" of Nana; her son is the star of Germinal, and her other son the star of The Masterpiece; etc. etc.). It's an extremely difficult book for the modern man to read - at the time, the novel's crude language and filth shocked readers; as the translator astutely notes, this is unlikely to happen now. Moreover, it's a damningly hard book to translate - not only is it filled with the most complex, specific 19th century French slang there was (even Zola's contemporaries had trouble deciphering it), it has a very peculiar narration style. Zola, usually a fan of a dispassionate sort of narration, adopts a very jerky, repetitive, slangy form here - it's almost as if it's told from Gervaise's perspective, although the story is clearly third-person-omniscient. This is fascinating, though the seemingly endless "Now then"s and "Lord!"s and "Let me tell you"s and so on do tend to grate after a while.

But this is all piffle seeing as the story is so amazingly powerful. Zola's one accomplishment here is this - he makes Gervaise such a believable human being that you will genuinely want her to rise above the poverty and find success and happiness. In fact, this does occur in the course of three chapters. Alas, this state does not last, and for another six chapters or so, Gervaise is more and more degraded until we come to the almost unspeakably horrible conclusion. The horrible circumstances of this end, the degradation and humiliation she suffers are undeniably harrowing, and is made worse by this - a lot of her troubles do not come from "the rich," but from her fellow poor, who delight at pounding her into the dirt.

The novel is filled with remarkable characters - Gervaise herself comes first and foremost, but there's also the striking character of Lalie, the execrable shallowness of the Lorilleux (whom I guarantee the reader will blindly hate with an almost silly passion), and above all the melancholy figure of the blacksmith Goujet. Best of all, Zola never preaches, allowing the characters to speak for themselves. It's not even necessarily a profound social statement (though it is) as much as a character study. The author presents you with the facts - now it's up to you to figure out your resulting opinions. This is truly an unforgettable piece here, certainly on par with other 19th century French titans as Hugo's Les Miserables and Balzac's Pere Goriot. Not light reading by any means, but really an incredible novel.

One need go no further than the title of the book, dervied from the French verb "assommer"- to beat down, to understand that this will be a brutally and painfully realistic work. Zola is true to this expectation. Emile Zola had a thunderous impact on both nineteenth century French literature and political culture. Not only did he decry blatant injustice through his works, but to a large extent, he sacrificed his livelihood in espousing the cause of Captain Dreyfus through his tract "J'accuse!". Zola's sincere moral beliefs will surprise no one who has read his works. The passion with which the novels that comprise the Rougon series are written is a rarity. Having read five or six of these novels, I find that the charcter of Gervaise in L'Assomoir is both the most real and the most endearing. As opposed to Nana who is often perceived by readers as cold and merciless, Gervaise is a simple, hard-working woman who suffers a tourmented life. Zola's classic naturalist descriptions of the bars and the consumption of absinthe are priceless. In fact, Gervaise's suffering almost (but not quite)enables us to justify the actions of her daughter Nana in the subsequent book of the series. For anyone who is interested in sampling Zola's mastery and sincere passion, this book is a must read.

I absolutely loved this book. It was successful both as a thrilling story and as a devastating commentary on the plight of the Parisian working class in the nineteenth century (although I am sure that it still has a lot of validity). You can't help getting drawn into the story-and you won't be able to put the book down-I don't think it aged at all.

Gervaise is a heroine you can't help rooting for. She's poor and hardworking, and like the other proletariat in the story, often referred to by her profession-laundress. She wants a better life for herself after her lover abandons her with their two sons. Pretty and industrious, she soon gets a suitor, who works on roofs. She doesn't want to give in to his advances because she doesn't want any more illegitimate children to deal with on her own.

However, her suitor has noble intentions and marries her. They so want the dignity and security of middle-class life that you ache for them. At at first they seem able to achieve it. They work hard, save, and begin to have a nice home and a happy marriage. However, when Gervaise's husband has a tragic accident, we soon realize how precarious working class life is-then, as it still inexcusably is NOW. Without his income, Gervaise will be living very precariously.

The real tragic pull of the story is that they almost made it-but then this accident plunges them into all kinds of problems-financial ruin, and ultimately alcoholism, adultery, broken health, and misery. It was so sad to see this family once desperately clinging to decency when all odds were against them, and then surrendering to poverty and humiliation, filth and addiction. I loved this book so much, and found its ending so sad and haunting.

I had to get the sequel, about Gervaise's ill-fated daughter "Nana", who becomes a courtesan, which is kind of predictable since she was so neglected and happened to be beautiful so she had a way out of her poverty-at least temporarily. (Gervaise's son is the hero of Germinal). It was good, but not as good as this. I think this is a magnificent book, and Zola at his best.

"L'Assommoir" is widely held to be Zola's masterpiece, and it is certainly true that in his brilliant depiction of the rise and fall of the laundress Gervaise Macquart he manages to leave behind for once the sometimes annoying baggage of his ideological and "scientific" preoccupations. The novel was designed to be a condemnation of the conditions facing the working poor in the Paris of the Second Empire, and Zola's usual methods of intensive linguistic and sociological research are very much on display. But above all, "L'Assommoir" is a book of unfogettable portaits that transcends the specific moment in time when it was written and has captivated readers for nearly 130 years. Gervaise is a truly memorable creation, drawn with loving care; the city in which she lives, the Paris of Haussmanization, is just as vividly rendered; the supporting cast of Lantier the scoundrel, the doomed Coupeau, the admirable but odious Lorrilleux and all their fellows combine to form a whole that really does deserve the sadly degraded encomium of "masterpiece." Read this one, and be captivated in turn!

"L'assommoir" is undoubtedly a powerful and moving book, yet, as a non French speaker who has just finished reading the Penquin translation by Leonard Tancock, I'm left feeling slightly frustrated. Anyone who has read the extraordinary "Germinal" cannot blame Zola for this; afterall, "L'assommoir is considererd to be one of the finest of the Rougon-Macquart cycle. No, it is to this English translator that we must turn to for answers. How is it that a book famous for it's uncompromising and brutal dialogue, is here, almost bereft of the very language that Zola thought so essential? This emasculated and dishonest translation made in 1970 may well suit those who are squeamish, or, of a nervous disposition, but, if you are hoping to catch the real voice of Gervaise and the voices of those with whom she shares her tragic life, it may well be advisable to listen elsewhere.

There are few novels as bleak and unrelenting as this one, at least in my reading experience. Over 500 pages, you witness the aspirations and grotesque decline of a working-class family into alcoholism, promiscuity, and violence. It is so awful, the blows so continual and harsh, that only the most committed of readers will be able to get through it. But for those that do, I believe there are great rewards.

On many levels, this book broke new ground. First, it is a clinical dissection of the progression of alcoholism, based on direct observation by Zola and scientific research, describing not only its symptoms in gory detail, but its impact on a family. Second, it was one of the first attempts to portray the working class realistically, rather than as a sterotype of inferior crudity or romanticised as noble savages. THis spawned an entire genre of socially relevant novels and is a great contribution. Third, it introduced an entirely new vocabulary into French art, that is, the gutter argot that the Academie Francaise condemned as unsuitable. Taken together, these are remarkable acheivements.

While I hesitate to reveal the plot, I assume that most readers will know it in outline. It involves a good person - a hard-working laundress with dreams of running her own shop - who marries a neighbor a few weeks after her lover leaves her with two children in Paris. For many years, things go well: they love eachother, work very hard and save money, and live cleanly. THen, after a terrible accident, the husband begins to drink, which initiates a downward spiral that is so painful to follow: his work suffers, then his marriage, and finally his health. The laundress, who is so sympathetic and full of hopes, is simply crushed under the burden of supporting everyone financially and emotionally. SHe wants to do what is right and fails utterly, helpless to halt the destruction she is witnessing. In addition, her many enemies, such as her spiteful in-laws and neighborhood gossips, add cruel twists to her decline.

The heroine's misery and debasement are monuments to naturalist realism, through which Zola aspired to show things as they really are: there is none of the growth and romantic redemption that one expects in Anglo-saxon novels from the same period of the late 19C. On a broader longitudinal scheme, the novel also shows the backgrounds of two of Zola's most important characters, the half-siblings Nana and Etienne, who are the central characters in two truly great novels that follow (Nana and Germinal). FInally, it adds a crucial dimension to the portrait of 2nd-Empire France, that of the working class.

Recommended as a truly historic novel. However, the reader is warned that there is little pleasure in store.

L'ASSOMMOIR, the seventh of the series of twenty Rougon-Macquart novels, first appeared in serial form. The first part came out in LE BIEN PUBLIC in April 1876, and provoked scandalized reactions. After six parts publication ceased in early June. The indignation was due, as Zola wrote in a letter to his friend Paul Alexis, to political factors: "L'Assommoir didn't seem radical enough." Official left-wing mythology, in his view, glamorized and flattered the poor working classes and saw them as the noblest part of the human race, attributing any apparent flaws to the oppression of the wicked upper classes. This view had been sanctioned by Victor Hugo in LES MISERABLES, which had come out only fourteen years before. The novel was rescued by LA REPUBLIQUE DES LETTRES, which brought it out in weekly numbers ending on 7 January 1877. It appeared in book form in February, headed by Zola's short preface.

The full title of the saga is LES ROUGON-MACQUART. HISTOIRE NATURELLE ET SOCIALE D'UNE FAMILLE SOUS LE SECOND-EMPIRE. Like so many people of his generation, Zola believed that the two great formative influenced upon human beings wre heredity and environment. The "natural history" of the family is an attempted reflection of the different manifestations of this family's "tainted heredity". By making members of the family ramify through all sorts of trades, professions and social classes, Zola claims to be makig a sociological study of most strata of French society in the reign of Napoleon III or roughly between 1850 and 1870.

The environment in this novel is that of the slums of Paris, a drab area in which only those characters with strength of character and the ability to work hard survive to degradation. One may think that Zola was a complacent conservative. It is probably no accident that the exponent of anti-Empire "socialist" propaganda is the twisted "windbag" Lantier, who never did an honest day's work in ihs life. Still, L'ASSOMMOIR is primarily about drink.

Zola's "scientific" approach to the question of heredity, on the other hand, seems to be, too, overtly simplistic. For instance, Gervaise was conceived when her parents were in an alcoholic frenzy, and her lameness is a reflection of this. (!?) Yet ultimately, it is her lack of "strength of character" that brings about her loss of social standing and moral respectability: "Her only weakness, she said, was that she was over-kind, she liked everybody, she devoted herself to people who only paid her back by hurting her."

But most memorable in the novel is the Paris of the circumscribed district where the action takes place. Virtually the whole of the action takes place within a few hundred yards of what today is the crossing of main roads at which is the Metro station of Barbes-Rochechouart, the district immediately north-west of the Gare du Nord, bounded to the west by the heights of Montmartre and to the north by the rue Marcadet. Many of the main features of the district are still recognizable. The Hotel Boncoeur was on the north side of hte Boulevard de la Chapelle, facing the Lariboisiere hospital, and the rue de la Goutte d'Or is just to the north of this.

Another commendable feature is the unique use of style. Zola's idea in the novel was to use the language of the slums not only in dialogue, but also in the descriptive and reflective passages. The "style indirect libre" secures a certain homogeneity throughout and, most importantly, exemplifies the thesis that the boundaries between individuals and their environment are thin and malleable, at both levels of language and meaning.

When Zola wrote this novel, he was some 16 years into his project of writing _Les Rougon-Macquart_, an enormous, beautifully written series describing French society. It's comparable to Balzac's _La Comédie Humaine_ (which you should also read). This particular novel received a lot of flak from Zola's contemporaries when he published it in 1876, because he dared to portray lower-class French society in all its gritty, realistic detail.

"I don't apologise," Zola replied in his preface. "It's morality in action." He had set out to describe the wide-reaching history of the Rougon-Macquart family, which speaks so well to French society's problems at that time (and as one reviewer said, rest assured it holds true now). In this case, a particular problem was passed down, in Jungian fashion, alcohol abuse. This memory resurfaces not just in _Nana_, but in _La Bęte humaine_ which shows how someone in a more respectable position in society still wrestles with this inherited demon.

One of Zola's great achievements here was to reproduce the language of Gervaise, Coupeau, and their milieu, for the purposes of realism. This is exactly what got him into trouble -- besides portraying the loose morals of so many downtrodden characters. I can hardly imagine how a translator could do him justice -- by having everyone speak as Southern American rednecks? by transposing the slang into cockney? That may work for our personal versions of the story as we hit the "club" (which is pretty-much what the title, l'Assommoir, literally means) to see folks knock their workaday troubles into oblivion. (Absinthe is now illegal because it is dangerously addictive, but pastis is a tasty substitute.) But I am truly sorry for those of you who must buy this in English, unless the dissapointment of reading it convinces you to learn French. You'll never regret the years it takes to get to the level at which you'll enjoy this, and you'll get to read great books like this along the way.

This is the book that made Émile Zola a star, and rightfully so. It is a gripping and heart-wrenching novel. Of all the books in the Rougon-Macquart series, this one is probably the purest representation of the literature of Naturalism. Zola amasses a palette full of sensory experience and observational detail. With it he paints a gritty, unromantic portrait of life among the lower middle class in Paris. The protagonist, Gervaise Macquart, starts out as a respectable laundress. Then the book follows her descent into destitution, via alcohol and moral dissipation, through succeeding levels of hell on earth. The interaction of the characters and the events that take place ring true each step along the way, so one can completely understand, regrettably, how this character you liked and admired at the beginning of the narrative could become so pitiable by the end of it. True to reality, her downfall stems from both events beyond her control and also from poor choices she makes. There were only one or two instances in the story where I felt like the characters made choices that didn't seem in keeping with their natures, but the fact that it bothers me is just a testament to how involved I was with these characters in the first place. This novel is a thoughtful examination of social ills, and an excellent study of human nature. Despite its historical context, it gave me a better understanding of people in today's society who have fallen on hard times. Although this book is a part of the Rougon-Macquart series, you don't have to know anything about the other novels in the series to appreciate it. It stands alone as a great work of literature, and should be read by all.