Sunday Morning! The Belly of Paris by Emile Zola

Rufus F.

Rufus is a likeable curmudgeon. He has a PhD in History, sang for a decade in a punk band, and recently moved to NYC after nearly two decades in Canada. He wrote the book "The Paris Bureau" from Dio Press (2021).

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7 Responses

  1. beelzebob says:

    placed a hold at the library just now. thank youReport

  2. LeeEsq says:

    The Belly of Paris is one of my favorite Zola novels along with the Ladies’ Paradise about the new department stores and their competition with the old shops. Zola’s intense descriptions of every little detail seems quite a bit much to us modern but you really get a sense of what life was like back then and how people experienced it in a way that most other novels do not do.

    Zola also wrote a fictionalized version of a Dreyfus affair called The Truth where a Jewish school teacher is accused of a blood libel by a Catholic priest who, big spoiler, turned out to be a child molester. It isn’t really as good as the Belly of Paris or the Ladies Paradise but I might be reading a rather bad translation. Zola is one of those interesting writers that should be read more but isn’t these days. I think there are a lot of social changes in the late 20th and early 21st century that really need somebody with Zola’s unique talent for describing the minute details of life to observe. Like what would a late 20th/early 21st century Emile Zola do with the rise of online shopping, video games, globalization, and online porn. Well maybe not too detailed for the last one.Report

  3. Slade the Leveller says:

    I’m currently re-reading Justin Cronin’s The Passage trilogy. You won’t find a more ripping yarn. They’re great summer time wasters.Report