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Read Balzac's The Human Comedy: Selected Stories
| cock of michael obama | 06/01/25 |
| metaphysics is fallow | 06/01/25 |
| CapTTTainFalcon | 06/01/25 |
| cock of michael obama | 06/01/25 |
| strike this country down | 06/01/25 |
Poast new message in this thread
Date: June 1st, 2025 2:52 PM Author: cock of michael obama After struggling through two of Alan Watts’ spiritual books over the course of two weeks (even though they were easy to read I had trouble connecting with his style), I decided on reading something totally different: a sampling of the short stories of Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) as represented in The Human Comedy: Selected Stories, where the full magnum opus of La Comédie humaine consists of 91 finished works (stories, novels, or analytical essays). Balzac is known for being incredibly wordy and descriptive, and also for his enormous literary output, which is explained in the introduction: his short stories are supposed to represent Balzac at his least verbose, which is still quite verbose. He tried his hand at a bunch of careers but failed at them all except for writing, which he worked on constantly. His death at 51 may have been due in part to extreme amounts of coffee consumption as he wrote (allegedly over 50 cups a day!).
The stories represent a wide range of life in post-Napoleonic France, especially focusing on the lifestyles of the declining aristocracy. The quality varied (out of 10): Facino Cane is a tale of adventure to find gold from a prisoner like The Count of Monte Cristo (7/10), Another Study of Womankind is about a man discovering his wife is cheating on him, so he entombs the closet the man hid in (5/10); The Red Inn is about a man framed by his friend for the murder of a traveler (7/10); Sarrasine is about transsexuals (6/10), A Passion in the Desert is about the friendship and almost romance between the main character and a tiger in the desert (5/10), Adieu is about post-traumatic stress syndrome after Napoleon’s flight from Russia (3/10), Z. Marcas is about a brilliant man cursed by bad luck and ingratitude despite his amazing political work (9/10), Gobseck is about the cold-bloodnesses and rapacious greed of a brilliant usurer (9/10), and by far the longest of the stories, The Duchesse de Langeais is about a cursed love affair (5/10).
Overall I kind of recommend the book, but only to those interested in this genre. I struggled to get through it both because I don’t have any emotional connection to this era (although the always advancing egalitarian ratchet effect makes it interesting from that angle), and because my interests are increasingly esoteric and spiritual. I don’t think I will be reading more Balzac in the future due to my limitations on time, although I think he was a creative and clever mind.
I could have expanded this into a post with a dozen or so of the best quotes from the book that stood out to me, and I’m not entirely closing the door on it, but don’t really feel motivated to do so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_de_Balzac
https://www.amazon.com/Human-Comedy-Selected-Stories-Classics/dp/1590176642 |
Date: June 1st, 2025 2:54 PM Author: metaphysics is fallow lol ball sack (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5732192&forum_id=2],#48978941) |
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Date: June 1st, 2025 2:57 PM Author: CapTTTainFalcon Try Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5732192&forum_id=2],#48978945) |
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Date: June 1st, 2025 6:35 PM Author: cock of michael obama what did you like about it?
i'm reading bukowski next |
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Date: June 1st, 2025 3:01 PM Author: strike this country down (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5732192&forum_id=2],#48978955) |