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Pere Goriot (Norton Critical Editions)

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You know right away that de Balzac is an author of realism when, at the start of the book, he takes you on a five page tour of the first floor of Madame Vauquer's Parisian boarding house. One immediately realizes that sanitation standards for such accommodations were seriously lacking. The dining room "table [was] covered with oilcloth so greasy that, if a waggish diner wanted to, he could write his name in it, using nothing more than his finger as a pen." We then quickly learn about the overwhelming contrast between the boarders' life style and that of aristocratic Parisian society..

The protagonists of the story are Eugene, a young and poor law student, and old man Goriot, the aging father of two narcissistic daughters who live in the upper strata of Parisian society. While many mediocre authors manage to make cardboard characters out of real people, Balzac has the task of making cardboard people real. Eugene is invited to a ball held by his cousin, a countess, and falls in love with the beautiful people and their world. He is determined to be a part of it. Vautrin, a fellow boarder, a wise street philosopher, and prototype for modern day CEOs, tells Eugene that money is everything. Eugene promptly appropriates every cent of his family's savings to buy the clothes that will allow him to blend in with the aristocracy. Soon he meets Goriot's aristocratic daughters and falls in love with one of them. These two grasping young ladies, in their need for the necessities in life (fine clothing and jewelry), have taken so much money from their formerly wealthy father that he now lives in abject poverty, sleeping on a moldy straw mattress in Madame Vauquer's boarding house.

By now I am sure that you have discerned Balzac's attitude toward the socially elite. He has no love for people who are famous for being famous. We should resist the urge, though, to shake our heads in wonder over these strange 19th century Parisians. If Balzac were alive today I am sure he would loosen his poison pen on our own celebrities whose meaningless lives are constantly being spotlighted during their fifteen minutes of fame. Balzac is a lively writer. He supposedly drank huge amounts of coffee every day, and his writing often seems to be the product of a highly caffeinated mind. If the highly stylized writing of some Victorian era writers numbs your brain you might want to dip into Balzac.

I strongly recommend that you consider purchasing the Norton Critical Edition of this novel. It provides an additional 150 pages of commentary on Balzac, this novel, and his oeuvre in general; an extra dollar or two well spent.

Norton has done a really fine job on its critical edition of PERE GORIOT. The translation is especially good, vivid and direct. The commentaries are well chosen and organized. Of particular interest are appreciations of Balzac by writers who were influenced by him, including Zola, Proust, Baudelaire and Henry James. Henry James' take on Balzac is particularly interesting. Written in James' late style, the essay is sometimes inscrutable, but still, James, as always when he writes on writers and writing, offers great insight into Balzac and his oeuvre.

Highly recommended.

This work is considered one of Balzac's masterpieces. It is written with this kind of energy and power the same kind of literary ambition that seems uniquely his. Balzac as a writer has a drive and strength , and this is felt in his descriptions of character as well as in the force of his plots. Here we have a variation of Lear, with two ungrateful daughters doing - in the over- solicitous father for whom the daughters are all. One of Balzac's central themes is obsession, the fixing on one particular object as one's life aim or meaning and giving all to it. For old Goriot it is his daughters, as for Balzac himself it is his ambition to capture the whole of his society in his novels. But the Balzac worlds and this in itself another long subject are also worlds in which traditional values are in clash with values of social climbing money grabbers as exemplified by Goriot's daughters. Balzac's works are filled with great dynamism and are for many one of the great peaks of world - literature. At least some of his works should be read by one who wishes to have a taste of the best that has been thought and said. I would only add my own personal reservation. That the energy and greed of so many of the characters in his world , has left me feeling a bit detached from them. I can admire this Literature but I have never especially loved the world or characters presented in it.

Balzac is a master and this book demonstrates his depth and ability to articulate the human condition, to remind us of feelings we once had (and still possess) and to capture in print, the intensity of feelings that many of us would believe are beyond our abilities to describe. A marvelous work.

I would not have chosen the title of Pere Goriot for this text. Mainly because throughout the text we focused more on Eugene instead of Pere Goriot.The conflict between Goriot and his daughters appears to be in the shadows of Eugene understanding how the world works but by titling the book Pere Goriot it highlights the importnace of this relationship. Pere Goriot was a man who loved his daughters unconditionally but was rejected by their spouses because he was from a lower social class. The daughters having tasted the high life would prefer to stay with their husbands instead of being supportive of their father. This was the essence of the storyline with Pere Goriot.

However, we were able to see development in Eugene Rastignac. We saw him turn from a caterpillar to a butterfly with the help of his cousin Madame Beauseant where he was given a place in Parisian Society. We also see him question things has Vautrin removed the blinders from his eyes. We watched him fall for Delphine and we saw how his relationship blossomed with Pere Goriot. As such it would appear as if the book was about Young Eugene instead of Pere Goriot.