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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 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 Much like, They set about cranking
undertaking say, Rand. out bestsellers
greatly. Much unlike re-working Balzac's
Tolstoy. material; pumping
Was it a sane the cash into shady
enterprise? Balzac was revolutionary purposes.
quite the
Am I engaged in romantic (Tracing this
a similar task? realistist. reference is
how I ended
up in the
realm of Balzac.)
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