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Nana

(Les Rougon-Macquart #9)

Émile Zola

3.83 · Rating details · 21,157 ratings · 705 reviews

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Kindle Edition, 436 pages

Published (first published 1880)

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Jun 25, 2014 Lisa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: rougon-macquart, unforgettable, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die

"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power." (Oscar Wilde)

Had Nana been a child of today, forced to grow up in the social circumstances of her parents' poverty, violence and alcoholism in the depressing Parisian Goutte d'Or, she would have been moved to a foster family, and sent to family therapy with her brothers.

But Nana was born in 1851, according to the plot of L'Assommoir (The Dram Shop) which covers her mother's story. And she learned how to play the underworl "Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power." (Oscar Wilde)

Had Nana been a child of today, forced to grow up in the social circumstances of her parents' poverty, violence and alcoholism in the depressing Parisian Goutte d'Or, she would have been moved to a foster family, and sent to family therapy with her brothers.

But Nana was born in 1851, according to the plot of L'Assommoir (The Dram Shop) which covers her mother's story. And she learned how to play the underworld game early, left to fend for herself, and with a strong will to succeed and exert power.

Blame her if you dare for the life she chose. Blame her if you dare for the lovers she humiliated. Blame her if you dare for the money she wanted and the pain she caused. If she grew up today, she would be a victim from the beginning, entitled to support and pity. In 19th century Paris, she had nothing but what she managed to grab for herself. Cold and manipulative? Yes! But how could she be otherwise, growing up as a child in the abusive home of Gervaise and Coupeau? She had no education to speak of, no social standing, no caring and loving childhood memories, no role models except for the hypocritical Paris society she saw - which was ruled by the sexual desires of men. She never had a chance to enter the official world, and had to provide for herself.

Having said that, Nana is a monstrously self-centred, needy character, and she leaves a trail of broken characters in her professional development as a prostitute. She is daring, energetic, intelligent (but without finesse), superficial and vicious. Nana is the perfect incarnation of the corrupt whore, a child of poverty with conservative taste and values, acquired by copying the men who fall for her sexual power. Living apart from so-called respectable society, she nevertheless cultivates aristocratic opinions and traditional artistic and literary taste. She would not have approved of the realistic descriptions in Zola's novels, leaving no space for romantic dreaming and escapism. Opportunistic and egotistical at heart, her only true desire is control. A modern psychologist would probably see that as a result of her insecure childhood. Nana herself has no need for explanations. She lives for herself. Period.

I read Zola's novel when I spent a summer working in Paris, just at the time when I had left childhood behind but was still too young to understand the limitations of my knowledge and experience. Smiling condescendingly at teenagers, I was barely twenty-two myself, and Nana shook my world. After I had finished the novel, Paris looked, smelled and tasted differently. Layers and layers of hidden life, of secret suffering and vice, seemed to appear overnight. I was in Paris because I loved art and literature, and wanted to make that my profession at some point. Reading Nana made me see the other side of the beautiful medal of artistic achievement: my idealism gave way to a deep crush on the marginalised characters lurking in the side lanes of the big official literary avenues. I still think of Nana each time I visit Paris, just like I think of Oliver Twist whenever I am in London.

That was also the summer that I discovered Manet for the first time, and I remember a trip to Hamburger Kunsthalle afterwards with the sole aim to see his interpretation of Nana, the confident queen of prostitutes, painted three years before Zola published his novel:

My inner picture of Nana remains exactly like that, even though I also vividly remember her brutal, ugly end almost two decades after closing the novel with a sigh of relief and fascination. She dies like most literary sinners: a presumably well-deserved moral vengeance on her physical appearance and appetites. And Zola, the master of realism, lets the appalled reader see each step in the process when Nana's face is slowly destroyed by pockmarks, visualised in extreme contrast to the still beautiful frame of her lovely hair: "La Vénus se décomposait."

The decomposing Venus is a pretty accurate summary of the novel as a whole, puncturing the romantic notion of a sweet and tender prostitute out of sheer necessity. The decomposing hypocritical society goes along with it, illustrating the random roles people play, depending on their social and marital status. What remains?

The brutal reality of a life lived in a balance between sex and power, fear and domination.

A powerfully brutal tale! ...more

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May 25, 2013 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 19th-century, historical, literature, french, european, classics

Nana (Les Rougon-Macquart #9), Émile Zola

Nana tells the story of Nana Coupeau's rise from streetwalker to high-class prostitute during the last three years of the French Second Empire.

Nana first appeared near the end of Zola's earlier novel Rougon-Macquart series, L'Assommoir (1877), where she is the daughter of an abusive drunk. At the conclusion of that novel, she is living in the streets and just beginning a life of prostitution.

Nana opens with a night at the Théâtre des Variétés in April ...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Henry Avila rated it really liked it · review of another edition

In the year of the fabulous Paris World's Fair, of 1867, when the glamorous city is crowded, with thrill seeking foreign and domestic visitors, Nana Coupeau, a prostitute, makes her unlikely debut also, on stage, in "The Blonde Venus", a spectacular but mediocre operetta. That she can't dance, sing or act, and has a horrible voice, doesn't matter, what is important, Nana is quite beautiful and has charisma, Monsieur Bordenave, the nervous owner of the shabby Opera House,"Varietes", isn't worried In the year of the fabulous Paris World's Fair, of 1867, when the glamorous city is crowded, with thrill seeking foreign and domestic visitors, Nana Coupeau, a prostitute, makes her unlikely debut also, on stage, in "The Blonde Venus", a spectacular but mediocre operetta. That she can't dance, sing or act, and has a horrible voice, doesn't matter, what is important, Nana is quite beautiful and has charisma, Monsieur Bordenave, the nervous owner of the shabby Opera House,"Varietes", isn't worried he tells his friends on Opening Night ( they almost believe him). And Bordenave was right, Nana becomes the symbol of the decadent, French Second Empire, of Napoleon the Third, her half naked, stunning performances, just standing there, in front of the curious, enthusiastic, enthralled audiences, becomes the sensation of the city, overnight the unknown, poor woman, reaches the pinnacle of success, at 15, countless affluent, adoring, some very famous suitors, throw money at her feet, taking advantage to enrich herself, bed hopping with hundreds of men and women (no exaggeration), strangely but maybe not, Nana despises them. Spending money recklessly and there are many others around, who do the same, sex seems to be all that anyone does, in this society, as written by Emile Zola, a fierce critic of the regime, corruption, scandals, thievery, anything goes. Ultimately the new star, meets Count Muffat, a honorable, married, but unhappy man, who set's her up in a huge mansion, full of luxuries, expensive jewelry, furniture , clothing, food, servants, only the best for his unfaithful love. Still Nana, (who's hair is blonde on one page and red on another , what gives Zola?), gets bored easily, while spending money faster, than it comes in. Men are always lurking about, everywhere in the premises, slaves to strong emotions, they can't control, or understand, the helplessly infatuated Count, is powerless to stop the debauchery, he is too much in love and can only hope, for a short time with his mistress. Zoe her good friend and servant, runs the house, taking care of Nana's every need, Satin an old schoolmate, and fellow traveler, in their former profession, moves in, and they begin a lesbian affair, which the very jealous Count , doesn't mind a bit... These two tarts, the word is continuously used in the book, by the author, seem to be the happiest together, not caring for the rest of the world, just enjoying being in the same company, hours pass quickly and quietly ... Sex rains down like a torrent, striking everyone, drowning them in lust, corrupting and finally destroying... I liked it. ...more

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Sep 05, 2012 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: france, une-femme-est-infame

Here's why Nana should never be made into a movie... (Too late. It already has been. Four times.) Emile Zola has created a character so preposterous that casting agents in every corner of the globe would be hard-pressed to locate an actress capable of making her believable. Now I am not claiming that a woman like Nana could not exist—because our world is certainly chock-full of the preposterous—but she would necessarily be so exceptional—such an astounding confluence of so many unlikely variable ...more

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Nov 18, 2020 Kalliope rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 19-century, 2020, classics, fiction-french, france

Well, well, well.. What a multifaceted portrayal of Nana has Zola left us. As a woman who moved in the fringes, these had more possibilities than a woman who kept herself in her social corset.

She is coy, and “gross et rose”, like this nereid depicted by Paul Baudry.

But Baudry painted Blanche d’Atigny (1840-1874), the courtesan purportedly inspiring Zola for his Nana, and if Nana could dress as the pagan Venus, she could also sit as the Christian Venus, or Mary Magdalen.

But Nana could also ‘se p ...more

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Mar 25, 2009 Manny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: french, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts

You've heard of The Hooker With A Heart Of Gold? Well, this is the other kind.
...more

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Aug 22, 2010 Traveller rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Disclaimer: Whereas I usually try to be objective with my ratings and reviews, with this specific one, I allowed my gut to lead me.

I hated this novel for it's sanctimonious preaching and its rank offensively aggressive misogynism (or perhaps, as has been remarked, it is misanthropy, plain and simple? ..since both men and women are ripped to shreds by the sharp lash of Zola's ~~tongue~~ pen ).

The general milieu in the period of history that this novel is set in, was very unkind to the poor, so good ...more

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Jan 13, 2016 E. G. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, translated, 4-star, rougon-macquart, france-algeria, zola, own

Introduction
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Émile Zola

--Nana

Explanatory Notes

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Jun 03, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pernod-and-gauloises, pre-1900s, oxford-classics, novels

Zola’s ninth instalment in the Rougon-Macquart cycle tells the tale of steely-hearted coquette Nana—part-time actress, part-time prostitute, full-time booty-shaking Venus mantrap. The first quarter of the novel is a bacchanalian romp through the Théâtre des Variétés demimonde, introducing Nana’s rolling revue of sexual partners and sugar daddies. After her semi-nude debut (where she shows off her ‘corncrake’ singing voice), she has all Paris’s men drooling at her calves. First she settles down w Zola’s ninth instalment in the Rougon-Macquart cycle tells the tale of steely-hearted coquette Nana—part-time actress, part-time prostitute, full-time booty-shaking Venus mantrap. The first quarter of the novel is a bacchanalian romp through the Théâtre des Variétés demimonde, introducing Nana’s rolling revue of sexual partners and sugar daddies. After her semi-nude debut (where she shows off her ‘corncrake’ singing voice), she has all Paris’s men drooling at her calves. First she settles down with the abusive comic actor Fontan who slaps her around and steals her lamb cutlets. Next she humours the doting teenager Georges before yielding to the tortured Count Muffat—a nobleman corrupted by sensual urges, willing to surrender his fortune to collapse into Nana’s arms. As fun as the decadent antics are, the novel is festooned with exhaustive room-to-room descriptions (more so than the overcooked Ladies’ Paradise), which is common for Zola, but far too many pages are bogged down in tedious, prolix passages. Like this mouthful:

The velvet drapes, flesh-coloured like the tea-rose pink sky on fine evenings when Venus is gleaming against the soft glow of the setting sun on the horizon, were dotted with the bright stars of silver buttons, while the barley-sugar gilt mouldings descending from each corner and the gold lace round the central panels seemed like darting flames, tresses of red hair floating loose, half-veiling the stark simplicity of the room and emphasizing its voluptuous cool tints. (p.400)

I know. I also found the novel lacking focus, flitting from character to character in a very distracting way, making it hard to lock on to the story (Nana’s moral corruption as moralising metaphor) or sink your teeth into Nana as a fully-rounded filly out for our hatred or sympathy. The characters’ behaviour is more ludicrously OTT than in other Zola novels (where OTT is a philosophy, but he’s really pushing it here, esp. with Muffat). The central flaw in Nana—her charms are never properly delineated. By Zola’s account, she is chubby, broad-hipped and whorish. To have all Paris’s men begging at her feet, she’d need to be much more than a pretty face with a tongue like a New York cabbie. Still, this novel offers a change from the po-faced social realism of his other famous works. A closing limerick:

Little Count Muffat sat on his tuffet
praying his soul to stay
along came that Nana
as quick as mañana
and sent him to hell that day
...more

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Jun 14, 2015 Teresa rated it liked it · review of another edition

I can imagine the outrage this novel (probably one of those racy French novels kept out of the hands of proper Victorian ladies) provoked at the time of publication with its explicit portrait of an actress-cum-prostitute. Zola didn't write to titillate; he himself was outraged (as usual) at a society that was bored, wasteful and decadent, caring only for its own pleasure, thinking nothing of the future, its own excesses causing its collapse.

I went back and forth wondering whether Zola was blami I can imagine the outrage this novel (probably one of those racy French novels kept out of the hands of proper Victorian ladies) provoked at the time of publication with its explicit portrait of an actress-cum-prostitute. Zola didn't write to titillate; he himself was outraged (as usual) at a society that was bored, wasteful and decadent, caring only for its own pleasure, thinking nothing of the future, its own excesses causing its collapse.

I went back and forth wondering whether Zola was blaming Nana or the men for the destruction of marriages, careers, and morals; and my best guess is the blame is on both, a perfect storm of receptiveness of these upper-class men to the raw sexuality of one woman, a woman who is her body only. Though Zola is a naturalist, Nana is not realistic with these superwoman powers of hers. She is described as a literal man-eater (consumer); but her partners are willing, or as willing as slaves to their own sexual natures can be. In the second half of the book the depiction of Nana reminded me of the stories told about Marie Antoinette by her enemies, though Nana is without pedigree, being the offspring of two alcoholics from the slums of Paris (see L'Assommoir).

Though more complex than The Fat and the Thin, this is my least favorite Zola so far (I've read three others), mostly because I don't care for descriptions of luxury and opulence, though I understand their purpose here. The lives of the aristocratic men worshiping at the altar of this theatrical and concupiscent Venus were not only uninteresting to me, but most of them blended together, which I'm sure was intentional but made the story repetitive.

Zola throws the reader into the scenes in his usual cinematic way; his powers of observation are prodigious. Some of the symbolism is obvious, but the writing is wonderful and this translation is earthy. Zola wrote this to parallel the French Empire, but the reader today will see parallels with our own cult of (sexual) celebrity. (There's even a woman named Gaga.) ...more

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Aug 01, 2017 Roman Clodia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The trouble was not cruelty on her part, for she remained as good-natured as ever; it was as if a wind of madness were blowing ever more strongly through the closed bedroom. Lust deranged their brains and plunged them into the delirious fantasies of the flesh. The old pious terrors of their sleepless nights now turned into a thirst for bestiality, a mania for walking on all fours, growling and biting.

It's easy to see how controversial and shocking this book must have been on publication in 1
The trouble was not cruelty on her part, for she remained as good-natured as ever; it was as if a wind of madness were blowing ever more strongly through the closed bedroom. Lust deranged their brains and plunged them into the delirious fantasies of the flesh. The old pious terrors of their sleepless nights now turned into a thirst for bestiality, a mania for walking on all fours, growling and biting.

It's easy to see how controversial and shocking this book must have been on publication in 1880, not least for the way in which it side-steps more sentimental versions of the love-lorn courtesan such as we see in Violetta from La Dame aux camélias and immortalised in La Traviata. Nana is quite different.

The daughter of Gervaise, the poor laundress from L'Assommoir, she is a child of the Parisian streets: uneducated, vulgar, yearning for the glittering luxury and material possessions that attract her through the rich shop windows. She is also beautiful - magisterially, almost supernaturally beautiful - and endowed with a kind of sexual charisma that drives men mad. Propelled from the theatre stage into the bedrooms of Parisian men, Nana feeds their frenzy as 'the Golden Fly' while also corrupting and being corrupted through the symbiotic co-dependency that results.

Zola's research, as usual, is immaculate and the portraits of the world of the theatre, the press, and the demi-monde is fascinating of itself. Great set pieces include the opening night of a hit show (and it's easy to trace the significance of that lampooning tableau of Venus and Mars caught in Vulcan's net through the story to follow), and a chapter where all of Paris is at the races. This is not a book for readers who need to like characters in order to enjoy a book: everyone is mired in self-interest, and the connections between power, sex and money are front and centre of the text.

For all that, Nana herself is the closest thing to the anti-heroine of this tale: she is selfish and sometimes venial, greedy for luxury and things... but what else can she be as the product of her society? She is also good-natured and sometimes kind; she takes a kind of child-like pleasure in her own beauty and she is under no delusions that she is a good stage performer. She exploits all men but she can also be kind to them; but when she herself takes pleasure, it's with a woman.

Surprisingly, rereading this made me think of Undine Spragg from Wharton's The Custom of the Country - though made wealthy through legitimate marriage, Undine, too, is never able to find contentment, constantly searching for the next triumph, the next diamond necklace, the next priceless painting to adorn her fashionable walls. Each woman, Nana and Undine, seeks to fill an undefined and little understood yearning with material objects, and can't understand why that hunger is never appeased.

Gratifyingly grubby, scathing and quite explicit in its exposure of the moral climate of the Second Empire, this is both coolly analytical and quite a page-turner. ...more

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Jul 19, 2020 Luís rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, favorites, historical-fiction, france, emile-zola

In a couple of brilliant first chapters, Zola describes in detail the role of theatre, a kind of musical comedy of Olympic mythological subject where the eighteen-year-old Nana, unable to sing and act, exhibits her attractive anatomy with cleavage and nudes in transparency. Then he takes us to the girl's house (who has a son since she was sixteen), where the fans stand in line as in a medical consultation, along with the creditors. Nana has to complement what she earns in the theatre and with he In a couple of brilliant first chapters, Zola describes in detail the role of theatre, a kind of musical comedy of Olympic mythological subject where the eighteen-year-old Nana, unable to sing and act, exhibits her attractive anatomy with cleavage and nudes in transparency. Then he takes us to the girl's house (who has a son since she was sixteen), where the fans stand in line as in a medical consultation, along with the creditors. Nana has to complement what she earns in the theatre and with her wealthy lovers with urgent exits to practice prostitution and get rid of the most pressing debts. The banker Steiner and the count Muffat, both older, more than compete, share the work of lovers-maintainers, although Nana does not stop sleeping with others for fun.
One of these lovers of pleasure, the comedian Fontan, falls in love to the point that he leaves his two rich people and his house and settles in a modest neighbourhood to live on what he has obtained by selling all his luxurious belongings. Fontan lives on her and beats her quite often. Still, she complies not only to reject other propositions of more handsome and tender gallants but has to begin to implement street prostitution and on one occasion is about to be stopped for the police.
When Fontan becomes infatuated with another actress and leaves her alone, Naná returns with Count Muffat, with the promise of being only for him in exchange for being kept in a luxurious villa and for him to make a return to the theatre that is soon frustrated. In her mansion, Naná does not deprive herself of anything, including effeminate relations with her friend Satin (who justifies Muffat by saying something very chic and that he does not have to suppose undesirable competition). In his house, besides, other fun-lovers often appear, such as the adolescent Zizi and his brother Philip. They appeared in the house to blame him for his relationships with his younger brother and ended up joining the list of impertinence.
As before banker Steiner, Nana's life is deteriorating the monetary funds of Muffat, who also has a wife in anger and revenge of his infidelity by going with lovers and multiplying their expenses. Without mercy, Nana asks him more and more, and every time he cares less that he surprises her with others in his bedroom. In a reasonably hasty finale (provoked perhaps the writing in typical episodes of the time) and in which it moves away for the courtesan and her lover, Nana moves away from the almost ruined Muffat and goes on a trip. Upon returning to France, he finds that his aunt has neglected his three-year-old son and he has taken smallpox and died. She becomes infected with this disease and soon dies, taken care of in a hotel by one of her old scene rivals and without being able to receive the visit of Muffat.
Zola's mechanistic dye scientism explains Nana as the product of the poisoning of the health of the people and their destructive work before the upper classes as a kind of blind vengeance of mocked good sense. ...more

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Mar 15, 2013 Dolors rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-before-2011, best-ever

A raw critic view of the enriched Parisian society in the late XIXth century.
The degradation, the hypocritical standards, the morals and conscience of a corrupted society.
All tattooed in the flesh of Nana, a prostitute of high standards but low esteem.

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Jun 03, 2008 Ade Bailey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Joy unlimited. A long, long time ago my kindly Headmaster recommended I broaden my reading prior to university, and gave me Germinal. I read it somewhat dutifully and marked as done, a knowledge of Zola. Now, man years later, I can read at last. And this book that has been staring from my shelf for years has bombed me out. Nana is a carbonated torrent of the most high speed and energetic writing I have come across. Decay, decadence, death, power, class, cruelty, the brilliant equation of the mus ...more

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Sep 26, 2016 Shane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A stunning indictment of the excesses of the Second Empire in France which implodes on greed and human weakness. Nana is both the cause and the reflection of that greed, as are her countless lovers.

Zola is truly the master of the crowd scene and many of the chapters in this book involve a crowd of people (albeit the same people); be it a behind-the-scenes visit to a theatre during a performance, a party at an aristocratic residence, a party at a prostitute’s residence, a horse race, a wake. The A stunning indictment of the excesses of the Second Empire in France which implodes on greed and human weakness. Nana is both the cause and the reflection of that greed, as are her countless lovers.

Zola is truly the master of the crowd scene and many of the chapters in this book involve a crowd of people (albeit the same people); be it a behind-the-scenes visit to a theatre during a performance, a party at an aristocratic residence, a party at a prostitute’s residence, a horse race, a wake. The omniscient narrator sets the scene and helps us with the thoughts and motivations of the cast, which would have been difficult to convey through any other POV representation.

Much has been said about the misogyny of the males in this novel and about the over-painted carnality of Nana, but they are merely the symptoms of the malaise and the forces leading to the fall of the Empire. The aristocrats, the idle rich, amuse themselves with parties, theatre and horseracing, while indulging in flagrant affairs with each others’ partners. After awhile it is hard to keep track of who is sleeping with whom, and what will be the new arrangement of couplings when the next chapter begins. Nana, a prostitute with a huge sexual appetite for men and women alike, descends upon this scene and “wreaks the revenge of the lower classes on the upper classes.” In the process she drives rich men into bankruptcy and suicide; fortunes are gutted and inheritances squandered while she strides the land like a dragon consuming everything in her path. She wasn’t always like this; the early chapters portray a struggling actress who has come out of a dysfunctional and poor family. She is impulsive and illiterate but with a kind heart towards fallen men and women, a maternal bent towards her abandoned child, and unable to keep a rein on money. Early success in the theatre, where her body drives men crazy, leads to a increasingly promiscuous life with many a willing, rich but weak man ready to fund her lavish lifestyle. In the end, her nymphomania, self-absorbtion, and material greed get out of control and consume her, just at the Second Empire is launching into a hubristic war against Prussia, an event that leads to its downfall.

There are great visual pieces in this novel: Nana flouting her body on stage while the sexual charge she emanates is portrayed only by the sweating gentlemen and the swearing ladies in the audience; Count Muffat, her hapless lover, reading damning evidence against Nana, while she is admiring her naked body in the mirror before him; the women at her wake talking politics without a glance at her body, while her male lovers are too scared to enter the house of death; the final page of the book where the scars of a profligate life are laid bare, a metaphor for the decaying empire that created it.

I had difficulty initially with the Zola’s naturalistic style where each scene had to be captured in the most excruciating detail; but it also led to a deeper visualization of the streets of Paris—a city that doubled in size during the Second Empire—the squalor of the poor, the grunge of theatre back stages, the stark lives of thespians and prostitutes, and the suppressed desires of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. For instance, in describing the scent of women, Zola gets down to the smell of powder and toilet vinegar, to rice powder and musk. He was trying to paint an entire society through the lens of the prostitute in this novel, just as in his other novels in the Rougon-Macquart series he captured the Second Empire through different lenses, and for this purpose his style succeeds.

Most empires ultimately implode on their excesses and this empire was no different. It is interesting that Zola chose to embody that excess in the person of Nana, the queen bee who beds many drones and destroys them in the process. Only, this queen did not live to lay her eggs and create new colonies, instead she destroyed the old one and perished with it.
...more

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Apr 25, 2011 Ova - Excuse My Reading rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Nana is a French classic, lucky that I read it from an excellent translation.

The relation between Nana & Count Muffat fascinated me when I read this and what an ending; making this an unforgettable novel.

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Jul 21, 2013 Alan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Read this in an NEH (to which great institution, now threatened, I owe my mental growth once I was teaching) seminar on Medicine and the Humanities, at Cornell, with Psychiatry (and German) professor Sander Gilman, later President of the 15K member Modern Language Association of America. Much of our seminar became his later books like Seeing the Insane--images, representaations of patients, but also of nurses and physicians. So art history was involved, and even a bit of music, since Sander's wi Read this in an NEH (to which great institution, now threatened, I owe my mental growth once I was teaching) seminar on Medicine and the Humanities, at Cornell, with Psychiatry (and German) professor Sander Gilman, later President of the 15K member Modern Language Association of America. Much of our seminar became his later books like Seeing the Insane--images, representaations of patients, but also of nurses and physicians. So art history was involved, and even a bit of music, since Sander's wife was a pro.
My own study was of Chronobiology--largely using not my desk at the Olin Library, but the Cornell Agricultural Library across campus, an older building that reminded me of State College Libraries. They had a great collection of three or four periodicals on chronobiology--diurnal rhythms, and monthly, or circavigintan rhythms, or annual, etc. Does Insanity have a monthly cyle, as in the colloquial "Loonies" for "lunatics," Moon-struck. This followed up on my study of 17C lunar mapping in another NEH, this one of the last for a full year, at Brown University, on 14&15C Italian Popular Culture. For that seminar my undergrad prof Archibald MacLeish recommended me, and praised my resulting essay so highly I quoted it on the back of my first book on Giordano Bruno.
I worked on that book for forty years, never did all 400 pp in Latin, but read most of his other 25 books in Italian and Latin. I began reading GB two months after we landed on the Moon, July 1969; I found Bruno's 400p Latin poem, De innumerabilibis, immenso universo & mundis...1592 / 1880s), began the 4th Ch, On Copernicus. Couldn't believe how spot-on he was with a satellite-like circling of the Earth and flight to the Moon. Only thing off, the Moon was inhabited--as he believed there were habitable worlds around every star, an infitnite number: the Inquisitors insisted he give up his mistaken belief, which Harvard Center for Astrophysics is now researching. (Google my talk there,"Giordano Bruno Harvard Video.")
Forgive me if I cannot recall exactly how Nana, and especially Manet's Bar at the Folies Bergeres, fit into the course, but I do recall discussions of how nurses and physicians were represented in films and on TV. And discussions of sexuality and the "other," and sometimes not the other, but oneself: I composed, with my fellow community-college teacher Gus Pelletier, "Onania! Onania! God shed his grace on thee..." ...more

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Feb 22, 2017 BAM Endlessly Booked rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classic-literature, wc-democratic, own, e-book, 1000-before-death

What an enlightening look at the backstage of the Parisian stage! It's as busy as a city sidewalk. Speaking of busy, Nana is a mistress of musical bedrooms. The art of the courtesan is new to her, having been a street walker in a previous novel, but she's taken well to it. But the life of a kept woman has numerous restrictions; she's never really a free spirit. There are constant schedule mishaps ( because of course, there must be more than one man unless he's royalty), there may be a child to n ...more

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Sep 19, 2014 Czarny Pies rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: french-lit

Zola is a writer who normal makes every effort to repel the reader with his sordid naturalism that typically makes a bad reality seem even worse than it is. However, this book about an upscale demi-mondaine is great fun. Perhaps Zola could not bear to make a story about a lady of easy virtue dreary. Read it. You will never enjoy reading Zola as much again.

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Feb 01, 2015 poncho rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2015

It might be weird that I begin by the end of the story, but it was indeed what I liked the most in this novel. Well, actually, the last two chapters, for me, are just magnificent: from the literary style to the story itself. I was amazed by Zola’s way to describe decadence and how this man-eater stops having just ‘little bites’ and starts devouring her preys. What thrilled me the most of this book was the fact that I knew the characters were not likeable at all, which is true; that there isn’t a It might be weird that I begin by the end of the story, but it was indeed what I liked the most in this novel. Well, actually, the last two chapters, for me, are just magnificent: from the literary style to the story itself. I was amazed by Zola’s way to describe decadence and how this man-eater stops having just ‘little bites’ and starts devouring her preys. What thrilled me the most of this book was the fact that I knew the characters were not likeable at all, which is true; that there isn’t any way you can feel attached to any of the characters; so I thought this would be like Wuthering Heights, one of my all time favorites, one of the books that can suck all brightness out of a story. However, I wouldn’t say Nana has this same effect, for when it comes to it, the result is not due to their meanness or their baseness, but it’s rather due to the fact that the characters are quite exasperating! Even Nana, whom I thought would be more strong, malicious and, why not, bitchy: even her sometimes irritated me; but, I think that’s one of the several things that Zola was aiming for with his ambitious and brilliant oeuvre: the follies of youth. If youth itself is just a mess, imagine what it would be for a young woman, left alone in such a city as Paris must be, who’s used to getting what she wants just by her charms… That just worsens everything. Sometimes she’s like a spoiled annoying little girl; sometimes she tries to settle; then she goes back on track and so on. All in all, she’s just a very unstable character; and it’s not until the last two chapters that this I-am-not-sure-of-what-I-want woman raises her inner nature and develops it to the point that destroying lives and ruining them is another hobby, like throwing plates at a wall just for fun. The analysis of human nature that can be found in this novel might be focused specifically on the dark side, but since many of the behaviors described here are in force to this day, it is worth the reading. For instance, we have Nana’s preference for Fontan, who ill-treated her; her intermittent compassion towards others; how she reacted at the race when for a moment she felt she was the homonymous mare getting everyone’s attention; how Muffat what terribly obsessed with her; and the list can go on and on, everlasting — for who can fully understand such a complex creature as a human? It’s like that song by Björk: if you ever get close to a human, be ready to get confused.

Another of my favorite parts is when Muffat notices that Zizi’s blood stain in the carpet begins to fade away, which means every man’s soles have taken a part of it. It is creepily poetic. Oh, and speaking of Muffat, personally, he might be the only character with whom I’d feel more attached. Among the many many characters in this story, he might be the only one for whom I’d feel more empathy. For there are indeed, like I just said, several characters that the first chapter, in which most of them are introduced, was quite confusing! But you get used to it in the second one — one of my favorites too, by the way — the dinner party chapter, which was amazing and I felt as if I were watching a movie, with the camera rotating around the room and moving from one character to another.

Finally, I absolutely loved the book and the last part reminded me, on one hand, that no matter what we do, what our social position is, we are going to end the same way; and on the other hand, that we get what we give: such as Nana’s illness ruining her beauty, as if the venom she used to ruin her preys’ lives had gotten up to her face. It was easy for me to imagine how the story was going to end, but the way how Zola wrote it is what astonished me the most.

I’m so eager to read more of this series (I forgot to mention, though you might know already, that Nana is part of Les Rougon-Macquart: a series of books that can be read independently), and I’m so curious to know more of Zola’s characters, albeit their unlikeable nature. Nonetheless, this implies one concern: I have to add nineteen more books to my already long wishlist. ...more

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Jun 20, 2014 Chrissie rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: audible, france, relationships, 2014-read, dnf, victorian, hf, disliked, returned, classics

Now I have listened to 5 hours, and do not like this at all. I have decided to dump it. I find the book boring and the characters unintelligent, with despicable behavior. I don't feel pity or empathy for any of them. Couldn't Zola have thrown in some humor? OK, Zola was a naturalist, but is it realistic to collect together such a bunch of loosers? Are people really this bad? And I am sick to death of the soirées, one after another filled with empty talk and drunkenness. Those at the soirées are ...more

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Aug 19, 2009 Jason rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I get it--Nana rose from a fetid pile of garbage and alighted arbitrarily on the upper crust of Parisian society, staining it.

I get it--Nana exposed the myriad faces of man's desires, disgracing them.

I get it--Nana digested men wholly and selfishly, wildly prostituting herself.

I get it, but only in the last couple hundred pages. I'm an ardent fan of Emile Zola, especially the 20 part Les Rougan-Macquart series. His writing is powerful. However, the first 200 pages of Nana was downright boring. T I get it--Nana rose from a fetid pile of garbage and alighted arbitrarily on the upper crust of Parisian society, staining it.

I get it--Nana exposed the myriad faces of man's desires, disgracing them.

I get it--Nana digested men wholly and selfishly, wildly prostituting herself.

I get it, but only in the last couple hundred pages. I'm an ardent fan of Emile Zola, especially the 20 part Les Rougan-Macquart series. His writing is powerful. However, the first 200 pages of Nana was downright boring. There was too much dialogue between too many key characters. Up until the end I had no idea how some of the characters related to Nana, simply accepting that they had some part in the plot. None of that brilliant social commentary characteristic of Zola (L'Assomoir, Germinal) appeared until later chapters, when he attacked viciously.

Nana must have struck the literary world like a purple thunderclap. A well-known and ostentatious hussy, Nana was revered by all elements of elite Parisian society, some of her tricks employed by the Empire, by the theater, by the stock exchange--not to mention her wanton, in between forays to the street corner to extinguish her loneliness. How could a tempered, exclusive society welcome a concubine, not just as a peer, but as a trendsetter, a superstar, a national inamorata? Zola answers: man's depravity to behold and worship, and therefore be destroyed.

A favorite quote (obviously near the end) displays Zola's truculent criticism of the powerlessness of man before the opposite sex.

"She alone was left standing, amid the accumulated riches of her mansion, while a host of men lay stricken at her feet. Like those monsters of ancient times whose fearful domains were covered with skeletons, she rested her feet on human skulls and was surrounded by catastrophes...The fly that had come from the dungheap of the slums, carrying the ferment of social decay, had poisoned all these men simply by alighting on them. It was fitting and just. She had avenged the beggars and outcasts of her world. And while, as it were, her sex rose in a halo of glory and blazed down on her prostrate victims like a rising sun shining down on a field of carnage, she remained as unconscious of her actions as a splendid animal, ignorant of the havoc she had wreaked, and as good-natured as ever." (p 452)

Yes, Zola! With both barrels man.

I award 2.5 stars, as the second half eclipsed the insipid beginning. I would only recommend Nana because the sum of the Les Rougan-Macquart series are better than the parts, and Nana the character is essential to understanding that gene pool.

...more

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Nov 06, 2012 Bethan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: regular-fiction

I couldn't help but laugh. It just seems funny and crazy in a lampooning way. It's full of sex and the stupidity of people. The more it went on, the more I hoped that the vapid and well-meaning but fiscally and sexually voracious prostitute Nana of the title would screw everyone over, including herself. As she did, repeatedly. It's such a French romp. I mean, really. France produces 120 Days of Sodom, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, The Story of O.. and Nana.

"Nana shot through like a cloud of inva

...more

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May 31, 2011 Alex rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: french-original, literature

For those who like time travel, not to a virtual time someone makes up, but to a real one such as Paris in the 1870’s, those who want vivid, detailed, and realistic imagery, minimal moralization, or those who want to sample “naturalist” or “scientific” literature, Nana is a perfect specimen.

Here we follow a first-rate Parisian courtesan into her home, every room, including the bathroom, to see her clients, what they do, talk about, eat, and how much money changes hands, what her room maid, cook ...more

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Jul 31, 2018 Ilana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, literature, favourite-books-ever, to-reread, 19th-century, 1001-books

Nana is the ninth installment in the 20-volume Les Rougon-Macquart series, which I undertook to read in publication order some years ago. In some ways, my appreciation for this novel has grown in direct proportion to my increasing dislike for most, if not all the characters in the story, though oddly enough there seems to be no direct correlation between the two factors.

Nana is the daughter of Gervaise Macquart, the doomed alcoholic heroine of L'Assommoir, book 9 in the series. Towards the Nana is the ninth installment in the 20-volume Les Rougon-Macquart series, which I undertook to read in publication order some years ago. In some ways, my appreciation for this novel has grown in direct proportion to my increasing dislike for most, if not all the characters in the story, though oddly enough there seems to be no direct correlation between the two factors.

Nana is the daughter of Gervaise Macquart, the doomed alcoholic heroine of L'Assommoir, book 9 in the series. Towards the end of that book, the young girl is already taking a bad turn, and by the age of sixteen has taken to walking the streets of Paris to finding older men all too willing to finance her taste for luxury for a trade of services.

This novel, set during the waning days of the Second Empire, dedicated to her story, is constructed like a play, with each of the 14 chapters showing a different act in the story of the rise, then fall, the higher rise and inevitably, the complete destruction of a woman who is best described as a 'Golden Fly' ('La Mouche d'Or') by a journalist writing about her in the newspapers of the day. A golden fly originating from five generations of bad heredity, which Zola has presented us with each installment of this truly epic series. Nana, with her ample shapes & golden tresses and boundless appetite for sex & luxury, utterly corrupts members of the upper classes which she happens to land upon.

The first chapter introduces Nana to the reader, in a scene set in a variety theater for her debut as La Blonde Vénus, , a the new sensation in this play produced and designed to show off her ample physical attractions, displaying her in all her nude glory with a pretense for a covering to a rapt audience. She is a huge public success and the upper class men flock to her in search of a good time girl. Counts, viscounts and marquesses alike, none can resist her charms; even the Prince of Whales is a fan.

When Count Muffat, a lifelong scrupulously devout Catholic falls madly in love with her, she dictates all her conditions and installed in her own luxurious private hotel in one of the best neighbourhoods of Paris. She has promised herself to Muffat exclusively at the small cost of an unending stream of generous gifts. Soon bored with this man despite the wealth of gifts, she plunges in a string of intrigues with other men of generous means and dispositions.

Men with everything to lose, lose their fortunes and honour and self-respect, some lose their lives pursuing her, and all the while she is like a stupid, fat and beautiful child who has no respect or interest in anything but her own pleasure, grabbing at everything and turning it all to dust with her clumsy carelessness, taking pleasure in the very havoc and destruction she wreaks.

Nana is not a woman a reader can love or admire, save for the fact that she is guileless and that Zola uses her as a weapon against the corrupt Second French Empire. As a means to that end, she has great entertainment value as The Goddess of Destruction and I have not resisted her charms, having read and re-read this novel three times so far from my teenage years onward, having every intention to revisit it again and again still now.

Zola has always been a painter of vast and sumptuous tableaux with his words I can’t say how well he translates into English, but he is a pleasure to read in French. He paints glittering pictures of seemingly limitless wealth and unrestrained, utterly corrupt luxury.

For those not familiar with Zola's work and famously naturalistic approach, based on the findings on human evolution and a stark adherence to realistic details, this novel stands alone perfectly well. Each novel in the Rougon-Macquart series explores the darker sides of human nature, for which he Zola was harshly criticized in his lifetime. L’Assomoir is certainly stark and brutal and filled with human stupidity and big and small miseries, but Nana is among the most decadent of the series I’ve read so far, and still incredibly, sadly, relevant today. ...more

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Apr 20, 2010 James rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, classics, love

An amazing febrile whopper of a book. Nana, an actress and courtesan, is a one woman wrecking ball, the flame upon which a host of moths blinded by desire hurl themselves. Zola really does not pull his punches at any stage and the book rockets through to ever increasing lurid madness conjuring up the image of the Empire of the 1870s as a boat careening around a whirlpool as anchor after anchor snaps away. The ending in the particular uses a symbolism so pungent and gothic that one forgives the l ...more

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Mar 08, 2012 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, france, author-zola

Nana is the daughter of Gervaise from L'Assommoir (The Dram Shop). Nana is a prostitute, hedonist, and narcissist. She has enormous sex appeal, able to attract men of enormous wealth with the crook of her finger.

It was very interesting reading this practically on the heels of Balzac's Cousin Bette, which had a similar theme. Balzac is told more from the view of the men, while Zola told from the female viewpoint. Nana's character is very well-developed - one is both fascinated and repelled. The p ...more

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Dec 10, 2020 Greg Brozeit rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: zola

That day she had read a novel which was all the rage, the story of a prostitute. And she was indignant, she said it was quite untrue, and declared she found such literature, which claimed to reflect life as it really was, disgusting, highly offensive. As if a writer could possibly describe everything! What were novels written for? To help you pass the time agreeably of course!

Zola’s self-mocking passage in Nana is one of the very few lighthearted moments in this novel. There are few virtuous, li

That day she had read a novel which was all the rage, the story of a prostitute. And she was indignant, she said it was quite untrue, and declared she found such literature, which claimed to reflect life as it really was, disgusting, highly offensive. As if a writer could possibly describe everything! What were novels written for? To help you pass the time agreeably of course!

Zola’s self-mocking passage in Nana is one of the very few lighthearted moments in this novel. There are few virtuous, likable characters in his Rougon-Macquart cycle of novels, but one would be hard pressed to create a potpourri of odious and contemptible miscreants as are to be found Nana. In Pot Bouille they were arguably just as horrible, but I found the story to be more engaging. This time it was harder for me to remain absorbed in the story, although the accompanying essay by Brian Nelson—Nana’s life, lasting as long as and durning the same time span of the Second Republic, mirrors the social and moral decay of the era—helped to salvage my impressions in favor of it.

Nana is the daughter of the hapless, tragic Gervaise from L’Assommoir . She uses her beauty, sexuality, and desirability to quickly climb the Parisian social ladder, a success built on “one of those silly physical, brainless reactions that people have when they are all together in a crowd.” As a theater “actress,” it is her beauty, not talent—indeed she is openly mocked—that brings in the crowds. Her “gifts” would have been at home and likely thrived in today’s shallow tabloid social media-driven idea of celebrity and success. The two times in her life that she does let her her missteps of authentic desires for love guide her, she is cynically exploited by the two lovers she trusts. She realizes that her ambition for fame and wealth can only be achieved with ruthlessness of her own making, by “living at ease on the beastliness and stupidity of men.”

Wealthy Count Muffat, chamberlain to the empress and cuckolded in a loveless marriage to more wealth, whose carnal desire for Nana is unquenchable, turns out to be the ticket to all her desires. He sets her up with an apartment filled with riches and servants while closing his eye to her many other male conquests, which include his sons. One of her lovers names a race horse after her, for good reason as Zola describes, “Deep-chested, she shone in the light like a new louis coin, and her head and neck rose lightly from the long, nervous, elegant back.” As a long shot with ever-improving odds in a race that is the highlight of the social season, much like Nana herself, “in a sustained effort the mare was slowly but surely gaining ground” on the way to winning. Nana mistakes the cheering for the horse as being for her and, fittingly, “[a]ll the ladies had lost money” as “no one knew if it was the animal or the woman who had captivated every heart.”

But it was not just the ladies who lost money. Their husbands, sons, and lovers lost their riches to Nana as well. Her hubris fed a maelstrom “that seemed to be building over a bottomless pit, men and their possessions, their bodies, even their names were sucked into it without leaving so much as as a speck of dust behind.” Men “sought the honor of being ruined by her” as she “passed like an invading army, like a cloud of locusts blazing through a province and stripping it” as “her supple body was decomposing their world.” In the end, her quiet lonely death, which coincided with the cheering crowds of Paris at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War, her “corpse had begun to stink.” Her death, much like the Second Empire, could not be perfumed over to hide the decay of superficial, fleeting glory. ...more

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Nov 29, 2010 Andrew added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 19th-century-french-fiction, french-language-fiction

This is Nana. Watch Nana fuck. Fuck, Nana, fuck.

That is the plot of Emile Zola's Nana. It is a 19th Century French novel, which means it's this big messy melodramatic soap opera. But it's so much fun! Nana is a man-eater to make anyone on Days of Our Lives blush, tangled up not only in prostitution, but in gambling, gluttony, promiscuity, lesbian kidnappings (?!), sadomasochism, suicide, murder, and, most importantly for Zola, economic catastrophe. Not only can she burn down the lives of those a ...more

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May 11, 2007 Bob rated it really liked it · review of another edition

It started with my admission (principally to myself, though I placed it on my blog, which means principally to myself) that I didn't know the difference between realism and naturalism - still figuring it out, but I think naturalism means you don't have to have a plot. ...more

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About Émile Zola

Émile Zola

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Émile François Zola was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France.

More than half of Zola's novels were part of a set of 20 books collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike Balzac who in the midst of his literary career resynthesized his work into La Comédie Humaine, Zola from Émile François Zola was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France.

More than half of Zola's novels were part of a set of 20 books collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike Balzac who in the midst of his literary career resynthesized his work into La Comédie Humaine, Zola from the start at the age of 28 had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the Industrial Revolution. The series examines two branches of a family: the respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts for five generations.

As he described his plans for the series, "I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world."

Although Zola and Cézanne were friends from childhood, they broke in later life over Zola's fictionalized depiction of Cézanne and the Bohemian life of painters in his novel L'Œuvre (The Masterpiece, 1886).

From 1877 with the publication of L'Assommoir, Émile Zola became wealthy, he was better paid than Victor Hugo, for example. He became a figurehead among the literary bourgeoisie and organized cultural dinners with Guy de Maupassant, Joris-Karl Huysmans and other writers at his luxurious villa in Medan near Paris after 1880. Germinal in 1885, then the three 'cities', Lourdes in 1894, Rome in 1896 and Paris in 1897, established Zola as a successful author.

The self-proclaimed leader of French naturalism, Zola's works inspired operas such as those of Gustave Charpentier, notably Louise in the 1890s. His works, inspired by the concepts of heredity (Claude Bernard), social manichaeism and idealistic socialism, resonate with those of Nadar, Manet and subsequently Flaubert. ...more

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“A ruined man fell from her hands like a ripe fruit, to lie rotting on the ground.” — 24 likes

“All of a sudden, in the good-natured child, the woman stood revealed, a disturbing woman with all the impulsive madness of her sex, opening the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was still smiling, but with the deadly smile of a man-eater.” — 18 likes

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