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alexandre_rl's review against another edition
3.0
Dix-huitième volume de la série des Rougon-Macquart, qui reprend le personnage d'Aristide Saccard de "La curée". On le retrouve ici se livrant à de nouvelles machinations financières, à la tête de la Banque Universelle, gonflant artificiellement le prix des actions et risquant de gros montants dans un irrépressible élan de mégalomanie. Fidèle à lui-même, Zola s'est livré à un travail de recherche colossal avant d'écrire son roman, dont les fruits nous sont recrachés avec une certaine lourdeur. Beaucoup de passages très techniques sur le fonctionnement de la bourse étourdissent le lecteur qui peine à s'y retrouver malgré la présence d'un appareil critique explicatif. Toutefois, lorsqu'il est question des personnages, du drame humain, Zola s'en tire aussi bien que d'habitude et sa plume est toujours aussi fluide. La lecture de "L'Argent" n'est donc pas déplaisante, mais ce n'est pas le meilleur volume de la série, et on y sent un Zola qui, de son propre aveu, avait hâte d'en finir avec ce projet.
rosielazar1's review against another edition
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
georgialilyw's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I feel my comprehension for this book was around 15% so it feels harsh to review it too critically - I think this was because it was a lot about contemporary politics and economics, which is not something I know too well. However, some of the ideas about money seem just as relevant today (the comment about machines meaning we would all be working only 4 hours a day by 1900 hurt).
sh00's review against another edition
3.0
Вторая серия похождений выжиги Саккара, в которой происходит организация банка капиталом в 25 миллионов франков из пустоты - а дальше вся закономерная жизнь дома на песчаном фундаменте, колосса на глиняных ногах, которые только и ждут, что их смоет К-волной - и она придёт. Обитатели Парижа всё так же грязны внешне и нравственно - кажется, что их пачкают сами деньги, и единственными счастливыми людьми в конце окажутся те, кто денег либо не имел, либо не хотел.
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Золя долго готовился к написанию этого романа и не только расспрашивал очевидцев, но и читал кодексы, ходил на биржу, возможно, даже и сыграл там ненароком.
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Как, кстати, поживают ваши вклады в биткойн?
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Золя долго готовился к написанию этого романа и не только расспрашивал очевидцев, но и читал кодексы, ходил на биржу, возможно, даже и сыграл там ненароком.
_
Как, кстати, поживают ваши вклады в биткойн?
browngirlreading's review against another edition
challenging
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
cha_gbb_'s review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
kiri_johnston's review
challenging
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
booksafterten's review
adventurous
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
ladyeremite's review against another edition
5.0
The disappearance of the obscenely ambitious, gloriously grandiose attempt to encapsulate all of society in a series of novels is one of literature’s great tragedies. In France, this peculiarly nineteenth century project was carried out successively by Balzac, Flaubert and Zola. Between them, these men spanned almost the entirety of France’s tempestuous nineteenth century. Whereas Flaubert concentrated on the nuanced intricacies of individual psyches and Balzac the complex choreography of social relations, Zola was above all interested in the nature of what we would call “modernity”-- the throbbing dynamic of his age as it emerged in everything from department stories to prostitution to coal mines. This obsession sometimes gives his novels a somewhat sensational feel, but always makes them fun and memorable reads.
L'Argent 's contribution to the study of modernity lies in its examination of the force of money and speculation. The main narrative focuses on the rise and fall of Aristide Saccard and the Banque Universelle, a story roughly based on the challenge of the Péreire Brothers' Crédit Mobilier to the Rothschild-dominated haute banque in the 1860s (the Rothschild character, the Jewish banker Gundermann, is not central but particularly well-drawn with his forbidden grapes and his constant milk-drinking). More broadly, however, the story weaves together multiple smaller stories about money: the proud but penniless aristocrats who secretly wash their own clothes in order to maintain a public façade of nobility, the devout princess ruining herself through works of charity in penitence for her deceased husband's ill-gotten gains, the sinister debt collector who tracks down old bills and unveils dirty secrets and his beloved sickly brother who preaches the downfall of capitalist society, a kind of Madame Defarge of the stock market who buys up the remnants of bankrupt companies, the aspiring novelist, his disinherited wife and their beloved four pieces of furniture that they refuse to yield the bailiffs. All of these characters’ fates become tied up in the breathtaking rise and fall of Saccard's megalomaniacal project.
As in La Bête Humaine , the book which immediately precedes it in the Rougon-Macquart series, there is a sense of some grand, inevitable, unstoppable force sweeping along the characters in its path. Yet whereas the unforgettable last pages of La Bête Humaine present us with the ferocious engine crowded with doomed soldiers speeding over the French countryside without a driver, the drunken rollercoaster ride of speculative activity that has ruined so many ends with attempts at rebuilding some of the visions that had inspired the Banque Universelle. Speculation is perhaps the wild and dark side of this unbridled faith in the future, potentially realizing nightmares as well as dreams, but at heart Zola seems to embrace the visions of a better future that wealth (prudently managed) could provide.
Zola is often (and rightly) faulted for his occasionally clumsy handling of his characters' psychological lives. L'Argent largely plays to Zola's strengths in this regard. Concentrating on the giddy superficiality of money, the lack of psychological depth and stability seems completely in line with a Simmelian reading of the topsy-turvey but empty emotional world of speculation creates. The treatment of the female characters is quite compelling, with almost all coming off far more sympathetically and heroically than their male counterparts. Modern readers might be shocked to see the extent of female participation in the stock markets: Zola’s story takes place from 1864 to 1867, years immediately preceding the active suppression of women’s role in financial life (a theme well covered by Victoria Thompson’s book The Virtuous Marketplace). Of all the female character, Madame Caroline in particular comes across as a remarkably modern woman, and the novel’s true heroine.
Zola's story of Second Empire speculation, spot-on accurate in its own day, sparkles with a lurid and disturbing contemporaneity in our own age of speculation. It is written in a clear, lucid and compelling French even when discussing the fine points of stock market transactions. Like Saccard, Zola’s vision may have verged on the grandiose, but, like Saccard, his passion and vision somehow make up for his weaknesses. A masterful feat.
L'Argent 's contribution to the study of modernity lies in its examination of the force of money and speculation. The main narrative focuses on the rise and fall of Aristide Saccard and the Banque Universelle, a story roughly based on the challenge of the Péreire Brothers' Crédit Mobilier to the Rothschild-dominated haute banque in the 1860s (the Rothschild character, the Jewish banker Gundermann, is not central but particularly well-drawn with his forbidden grapes and his constant milk-drinking). More broadly, however, the story weaves together multiple smaller stories about money: the proud but penniless aristocrats who secretly wash their own clothes in order to maintain a public façade of nobility, the devout princess ruining herself through works of charity in penitence for her deceased husband's ill-gotten gains, the sinister debt collector who tracks down old bills and unveils dirty secrets and his beloved sickly brother who preaches the downfall of capitalist society, a kind of Madame Defarge of the stock market who buys up the remnants of bankrupt companies, the aspiring novelist, his disinherited wife and their beloved four pieces of furniture that they refuse to yield the bailiffs. All of these characters’ fates become tied up in the breathtaking rise and fall of Saccard's megalomaniacal project.
As in La Bête Humaine , the book which immediately precedes it in the Rougon-Macquart series, there is a sense of some grand, inevitable, unstoppable force sweeping along the characters in its path. Yet whereas the unforgettable last pages of La Bête Humaine present us with the ferocious engine crowded with doomed soldiers speeding over the French countryside without a driver, the drunken rollercoaster ride of speculative activity that has ruined so many ends with attempts at rebuilding some of the visions that had inspired the Banque Universelle. Speculation is perhaps the wild and dark side of this unbridled faith in the future, potentially realizing nightmares as well as dreams, but at heart Zola seems to embrace the visions of a better future that wealth (prudently managed) could provide.
Zola is often (and rightly) faulted for his occasionally clumsy handling of his characters' psychological lives. L'Argent largely plays to Zola's strengths in this regard. Concentrating on the giddy superficiality of money, the lack of psychological depth and stability seems completely in line with a Simmelian reading of the topsy-turvey but empty emotional world of speculation creates. The treatment of the female characters is quite compelling, with almost all coming off far more sympathetically and heroically than their male counterparts. Modern readers might be shocked to see the extent of female participation in the stock markets: Zola’s story takes place from 1864 to 1867, years immediately preceding the active suppression of women’s role in financial life (a theme well covered by Victoria Thompson’s book The Virtuous Marketplace). Of all the female character, Madame Caroline in particular comes across as a remarkably modern woman, and the novel’s true heroine.
Zola's story of Second Empire speculation, spot-on accurate in its own day, sparkles with a lurid and disturbing contemporaneity in our own age of speculation. It is written in a clear, lucid and compelling French even when discussing the fine points of stock market transactions. Like Saccard, Zola’s vision may have verged on the grandiose, but, like Saccard, his passion and vision somehow make up for his weaknesses. A masterful feat.