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BALZAC


                                              January 1, 2003
Balzac's praises have often
been sung by the literati.
I want to talk him up from the
angle of the SF/Fantasy genre
fiction mindset.

Writing in the early to
mid-1800s, he pulled off
some notable firsts.

  Perhaps most notably from the sfnal
  perspective:

   He invented the multi-volume
   series describing a common
   universe with recurring
   characters. This has become
   a staple of commercial science
   fiction and fantasy.

     Though, in Balzac's case, the
     world he invented was "France".



Smaller achievements:

   Early on he wrote what
   I believe to be the
   first tale of the magic
   talisman stumbled
   across in an "old              "The Wild Ass's Skin"
   curiosity shop":               is my candidate for worst
   "The Wild Ass's Skin"          translation of a title.
                                  There's a double-meaning
                                  in the original, but there's
                                  no sexual connotation I know of.

                                     The original is
                                     "Le Peau de Chagrin"
                                     Where the pun is on:

                                     shagreen - animal skin, the talisman.
                                     chagrin - a sense of sad regret.

                                        (The Toadkeeper suggests the alternate:
                                        "The Anus of the Sorry Animal").


                                                                TOADKEEPER

   He also wrote a very
   early novel about a
   scientist "The Quest of
   the Absolute" (1834).


   He wrote one of the
   world's first polemics
   attacking bureacracy in
   "The Bureaucrats" (1838).


   He played the invent-your-own
   religion game ("Louis
   Lambert", "Seraphita"),
   evidentally with the goal of
   setting himself up as guru,          Though arguably,
   beating El Ron to the punch by       many others got
   over a century...                    there before        As with pretty
                                        Balzac.             much all of his
                                                            get-rich schemes,
                                                            this one was a
                                                            failure.

There's a lot that can be said about
Balzac himself too, and a lot that
has been said...

  We could talk about his Falstaff-like
  presence on the scene in the Paris
  of Dumas, Hugo, Chopin & Sand...;

    We could talk about his amazing
    incompetence at financial matters,
    his tendency to blow money he didn't
    have on decorative frills;

      We could talk about his frantic
      all-night writing sessions
      fueled by massive quantities of          And that might be
      coffee                                   compared to Kerouac's
                                               image...


But for me the overwhelming                        Probably this is
characteristic of Balzac is                        one of the things
"the hunger for omniscience".                      that attracted the
                                                   attention of the
He was a man determined to put                     hippie/beat Ed Sanders:
it all together in his head,
to learn the ins-and-outs of                          Sander's
anything of importance (and                           "Fame and Love
many things that were not).                           in New York"
His one central subject is                            describes a
The Way Things Work.            GORIOT                conspiratorial
                                                      clique called
                                                      "The Balzac
He was a pioneer of                                    Study Group"
literary realism,         He pretty clearly
who's fiction has         failed in many               They begin with the
become one of the         respects (e.g. he            premise that all
primary historical        had a tendency               you need to know of
records of his era.       toward theories              the modern world is
                          about conspiracies           encoded in the works
                          of "Great Men").             of Balzac.
  I admire the
  undertaking                 Much like,               They set about cranking
  greatly.                    say, Rand.               out bestsellers
                              Much unlike              re-working Balzac's
       Was it a sane          Tolstoy.                 material and then pumping
       enterprise?                                     the cash into shady
                                  Balzac was           revolutionary purposes.
         Am I engaged in          quite the            
         a similar task?          romantic                 (Tracing this    
                                  realistist.              reference is     
                                                           how I ended      
                                                           up in the        
                                                           realm of Balzac.)
                                                                                
                                                                            

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