Emile Zola: Germinal

About to dive into this one. Germinal has quite an interesting history.

By the time of his death, the novel had come to be recognised as his undisputed masterpiece. At his funeral crowds of workers gathered, cheering the cortège with shouts of "Germinal! Germinal!". Since then the book has come to symbolise working class causes and to this day retains a special place in French mining-town folklore.

Zola was always very proud of Germinal, and was always keen to defend its accuracy against accusations of hyperbole and exaggeration (from the conservatives) or of slander against the working classes (from the socialists). His research had been typically thorough, especially the parts involving lengthy observational visits to northern French mining towns in 1884, such as witnessing the after-effects of a crippling miners' strike first-hand at Anzin or actually going down a working coal pit at Denain. The mine scenes are especially vivid and haunting as a result.

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More to come from what will definitely be an awesome read.

I liked the opening scene as depicted in the book. The bleak plains and the heat generated in the horizon by the coal mine and other plants around the area painted quite a strong sense of despair. I don't know that much about mining, but I've read elsewhere that Zola did his homework about whatever it was that he was writing about. The importance of timbering is mentioned quite often, I also enjoyed reading about the process of how the extraction occured, as well as the problems with management regarding what constitued a "full" cart and what the individual roles of the workers were.

A good social justice book will slap you about the injustice, and this one did early. The mother and her children trooping off in front of the Gregoire house did that for me. On top of that, the father lecturing her on the importance of being thrifty and of not having so many kids, oh my blood was boiling while reading that!. I also found the description of the worker's diets interesting, not to mention the lifestyle of the Gregoires, whose daughter lazily slept in and the couple thought it was so darn *cute* and kept the chocolate warm for her on the stove while she slept. Such humanitarians those rich people are.

The relationship between the youth seems to be a bit provocative, I imagine that this book ran into more than a few problems school curriculum wise. I don't doubt it was the truth though, as when people are worked to the bone, whatever little liberties they can enjoy, they do.

I'm currently starting part three and hope to be done with it tonight, more to come hopefully.

I just bought La Bete Humaine by Zola and very much looking forward to it... It is in French though, which is going to be quite a challenge I have to say (I do A level French and only just come to a level of competence where I can read a full book in French). But hopefully it'll be fun and rewarding!!