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Tristesa de la terra
Alors, le rêve reprend. Des centaines de cavaliers galopent, soulevant des nuages de poussière. On a bien arrosé la piste avec de l’eau, mais on n’y peut rien, le soleil cogne. L’étonnement grandit, les cavaliers sont innombrables, on se demande combien peuvent tenir dans l’arène. C’est qu’elle fait cent mètres de long et cinquante de large ! Les spectateurs applaudissent et hurlent. La foule regarde passer ce simulacre d’un régiment américain, les yeux sortis du crâne. Les enfants poussent pour mieux voir. Le cœur bat. On va enfin connaître la vérité.
144 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2014
21 people are currently reading
539 people want to read
About the author
Éric Vuillard
23 books337 followersBorn in Lyons in 1968, Éric Vuillard is a French author and film director. His books include Conquistadors (winner of the Ignatius J. Reilly prize 2010), and La Bataille de l'occident and Congo, for both of which he was awarded the 2012 Franz-Hessel prize and the 2013 Valery-Larbaud prize. Sorrow of the Earth is the first of his titles to be translated into English.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 70 reviews
November 16, 2022
Mucha clase, mucho estilo, muy bonito. Pero parece un proyecto a medias. Una recopilación de ideas en torno a un personaje (Buffalo Bill), la gente que lo rodeó, el circo que le dio de comer, y una cierta reflexión sobre los indios a los que se masacró y la superficialidad del show business que se montó. Una biografía que no se sabe donde empieza ni donde acaba. Un final que bien podría ser el principio. Una historia, que en manos de Carrere o Echenoz (por citar a otros dos colegas galos), bien hubiera merecido la pena, pero que en este caso se queda en un “po vale”.
February 26, 2019
This is a very odd little book. Not quite straight up non-fiction history, not quite historical fiction but something in between. The author recounts historical events but every now and then inserts the reader into specific moments in vivid descriptions of how the participants in these events may have felt at the time. This was effective at some points, confusing at others.
There were some very beautiful and poignant moments and it paints Buffalo Bill as a complex character whose fame got ahead of him and who had warm feelings toward the Native Americans in his shows whilst still clearly exploiting their terrible history for entertainment. The accuracy of this portrayal is can be debated I suppose.
However, I was left with a bit of an odd feeling. Why is a Frenchman with no apparent connection to Native Americans telling this story? I really would have preferred to hear it from those whose ancestors were involved and who are still affected by the racist tropes that originated in Buffalo Bill's shows.
There were some very beautiful and poignant moments and it paints Buffalo Bill as a complex character whose fame got ahead of him and who had warm feelings toward the Native Americans in his shows whilst still clearly exploiting their terrible history for entertainment. The accuracy of this portrayal is can be debated I suppose.
However, I was left with a bit of an odd feeling. Why is a Frenchman with no apparent connection to Native Americans telling this story? I really would have preferred to hear it from those whose ancestors were involved and who are still affected by the racist tropes that originated in Buffalo Bill's shows.
January 18, 2018
Éric Vuillard nos narra con una belleza demoledora, como de la masacre, la humillación y la invención de la historia, nace uno de los mayores shows de la época. Este espectáculo fué el Wild West show creado por Búfalo Bill, y el pueblo masacrado fué el indio. (”El espectáculo es el origen del mundo"). Un show que llegaron a ver más de cuarenta mil personas cada día ("para atraer al público había que contar una historia que millones de americanos primero y luego europeos querían oir") , donde lo más importante eran los actores. Los mismos indios ridiculizados, que en la mayoría de los casos se veían obligados a representar una y otra vez su propio sufrimiento. (" Zinkala Nuni nos parece una parodia, no es solo porque su mirada triste y agotada nos grite que ...moriremos quemados por nuestra máscara, el motivo es más terrible. Si así vestida, nos parece que vaya disfrazada es porque ya no es india"). Para mí este es un librazo en mayúsculas. El merito de Vuillard, sin duda por su estilo impecable, bello y demoledor.
August 22, 2021
Nova crònica literària d’en Éric Vuillard, el flamant premi Goncourt 2017 amb l’Ordre del dia i, encara que Tristesa de la terra és anterior, es publica ara per primera vegada al català. El llibre guarda, per descomptat, l’essència i l’estil d’un dels millors escriptors francesos contemporanis. Amb aquesta crònica va arribar a ser finalista del Premi Goncourt l’any 2014.
Tristesa de la terra ens parlarà... https://www.obrirunllibre.cat/tristes...
Tristesa de la terra ens parlarà... https://www.obrirunllibre.cat/tristes...
January 20, 2020
Pudo haber sido un gran gran libro. La historia de Buffalo Bill, considero, ameritaba mucho más. Es un libro que parece un resumen a medio terminar. Me gustó, pero siento que quedó a mitad de camino. Está bien, es un 2,5.
May 5, 2024
Vuillard strikes again, once again demonstrating his uncanny ability to re-inhabit history and cast a grim but necessary light on areas where other writers just don’t go. He’s an absolute original. Like all his other books, this can’t be categorised as ‘non-fiction’ or ‘fiction’: it’s both. Vuillard uses meticulous research as a starting point, and then imagines the rest, travelling inside and alongside ‘characters’ that just happen to be real people. In this case, he demolishes the hollow myth of Buffalo Bill, and reveals the painful exploitation and degradation of Native Americans in the kitsch recreations of the Plains Indian Wars that were put on for the entertainment of American and European audiences. Essential reading, as always.
October 27, 2015
Me ha parecido sublime. Una lectura fascinante, por su historia, su significado, su lenguaje.
June 20, 2016
No he sabido encontrar nada excepto una escritura bonita. No sé. Creo que no he sabido conectar con esta obra. O tal vez no haya querido. Nunca se sabe. :)
July 25, 2017
What did I just read?
(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review. Trigger warning for violence against Native Americans, including genocide.)
"However, the real spark was elsewhere. The central idea of the Wild West Show lay somewhere else. The aim was to astound the public with an intimation of suffering and death which would never lose its grip on them. They had to be drawn out of themselves, like little silver fish in a landing net. They had to be presented with human figures who shriek and collapse in a pool of blood. There had to be consternation and terror, hope, and a sort of clarity, an extreme truth cast across the whole of life. Yes, people had to shudder—a spectacle must send a shiver through everything we know, it must catapult us ahead of ourselves, it must strip us of our certainties and sear us. Yes, a spectacle sears us, despite what its detractors say. A spectacle steals from us, and lies to us, and intoxicates us, and gives us the world in every shape and form. And sometimes, the stage seems to exist more than the world, it is more present than our own lives, more moving and more persuasive than reality, more terrifying than our nightmares."
"There’s no mistaking the sound of iniquity on the move."
Originally published in France in 2014 (under the title Tristesse de la terre), Sorrow of the Earth is the first of Éric Vuillard's novels to be translated into English. A work of historical fiction, it tells the story of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show, which traveled throughout the United States and Europe, under various names, for thirty years around the turn of the century (1883–1913).
While the show featured a number of performers and attractions - including Annie Oakley and her husband, Frank Butler; trick shooter Lillian Smith; Calamity Jane; and reenactments of the riding of the Pony Express trail and stagecoach robberies, to name a few - Vuillard centers the narrative on Native Americans, to great effect. The Wild West show employed a number of Indigenous performers, most notably Sitting Bull, as well as survivors of the Wounded Knee Massacre. Perversely, these last were hired in part to perform in a reenactment of their own victimization; only instead of a massacre, the audience witnessed a battle: "the Buffalo Bill interpretation of the facts," to quote Vuillard. Likewise, in Cody's reimaging of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, none other than Buffalo Bill himself swoops in at the last moment to avenge Custer and his men.
In other words, the show glorified its star and ringmaster, while rewriting history and vilifying the oppressed Native populations. To add insult to injury, Indigenous people were recruited to assist in their own denigration.
With echoes of James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, as well as a promise to deconstruct the spectacle of circuses and carnivals, Sorrow of the Earth piqued my interest. I plowed through it in one day ... and was left feeling more than a little disquieted. Some of this, I'm sure, was intentional on the author's part; e.g., a feeling of unease as to how the Native Americans were (are) treated. But the rest? Mostly I just couldn't figure out what the heck Vuillard was trying to say. And that last chapter, wtf did I just read?
Perhaps it's an issue of some meaning being lost in translation, but much of Vuillard's writing is overblown and even a little pretentious. It's clear that he's trying hard - too hard - for a deep sense of philosophicalness, but the result often alternates between strained and comical. (e.g., "One night, the storm was so harsh, the sea so wild, that he began to feel afraid. At times, he felt he was dissolving into the sky." A. How could you possibly know that? and B. What does this even mean?)
Additionally, there's the narration. I went into the book with the erroneous assumption that the story would be told from the perspective of one of the Native American performers in the Wild West show. This is not the case. Normally, I wouldn't hold my own misguided expectations against an author; except, in this case, I think the story would have been better served by having an Indigenous narrator. Instead, it feels rather detached. Bombastic, even, as the narrator makes GRAND STATEMENTS about a travesty as an outsider looking in. The narrator himself sounds quite like a showman, which doesn't help his argument.
When Zintkala Nuni is introduced at the 37% mark, I thought for sure that she would be revealed as the story's narrator. Just four months old at the time of the Massacre at Wounded Knee, Zintkala Nuni was found strapped to her mother's back four days later. She was rescued, in a manner of speaking: initially cared for by members of the Lakota, she was later "adopted" by General Leonard Wright Colby (Wikipedia says she was "removed," while Vuillard's narrative has her being bought by Cody and promptly resold to Colby, to be used as a prop in his business dealings with Native Americans). Colby abandoned his family not long after, and his wife, suffragette Clara Bewick Colby, raised the girl, now named Margaret Elizabeth Colby. She spent time in a boarding school and, later, an institution for unwed mothers - possibly after being sexually abused and impregnated by Colby. She married, contracted syphilis from her husband; left him, and went on to perform in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, as well as bit roles silent movies. She died in poverty at the age of thirty, struck down by the flu.
We learn a little of Zintkala Nuni's fate from Vuillard; the problem is, the story requires some prior knowledge of these events, as Vuillard's writing can sometimes prove confusing (so damn flowery!). Suffice it to say that the narrator is not Zintkala Nuni, but remains a distant, third party observer.
Finally, as a reader who doesn't claim any Native American ancestry, I'm not comfortable speaking to Vuillard's sensitivity or accuracy. Overall I thought the story was compassionate and probably more authentic than most of the white supremacist BS you'd find in American History textbooks. Certainly it inspired me to want to learn more. But what the heck do I know?
Vuillard does employ a number of terms that are both offensive but also appropriate for the time period (e.g., savages, bums). Several times Vuillard insinuates that the Native Americans' time is coming to an end - "The spectacle that seized upon the Indians in the final moments of their history was not the least of the violence perpetrated against them." - which is both insulting and untrue. For example, this myth formed the basis for the title of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker's 2016 book, "All the Real Indians Died Off": And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans .
In summary, Sorrow of the Earth shows promise, but is at least partially undone by the author's over-the-top writing style.
http://www.easyvegan.info/2017/10/17/...
(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review. Trigger warning for violence against Native Americans, including genocide.)
"However, the real spark was elsewhere. The central idea of the Wild West Show lay somewhere else. The aim was to astound the public with an intimation of suffering and death which would never lose its grip on them. They had to be drawn out of themselves, like little silver fish in a landing net. They had to be presented with human figures who shriek and collapse in a pool of blood. There had to be consternation and terror, hope, and a sort of clarity, an extreme truth cast across the whole of life. Yes, people had to shudder—a spectacle must send a shiver through everything we know, it must catapult us ahead of ourselves, it must strip us of our certainties and sear us. Yes, a spectacle sears us, despite what its detractors say. A spectacle steals from us, and lies to us, and intoxicates us, and gives us the world in every shape and form. And sometimes, the stage seems to exist more than the world, it is more present than our own lives, more moving and more persuasive than reality, more terrifying than our nightmares."
"There’s no mistaking the sound of iniquity on the move."
Originally published in France in 2014 (under the title Tristesse de la terre), Sorrow of the Earth is the first of Éric Vuillard's novels to be translated into English. A work of historical fiction, it tells the story of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show, which traveled throughout the United States and Europe, under various names, for thirty years around the turn of the century (1883–1913).
While the show featured a number of performers and attractions - including Annie Oakley and her husband, Frank Butler; trick shooter Lillian Smith; Calamity Jane; and reenactments of the riding of the Pony Express trail and stagecoach robberies, to name a few - Vuillard centers the narrative on Native Americans, to great effect. The Wild West show employed a number of Indigenous performers, most notably Sitting Bull, as well as survivors of the Wounded Knee Massacre. Perversely, these last were hired in part to perform in a reenactment of their own victimization; only instead of a massacre, the audience witnessed a battle: "the Buffalo Bill interpretation of the facts," to quote Vuillard. Likewise, in Cody's reimaging of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, none other than Buffalo Bill himself swoops in at the last moment to avenge Custer and his men.
In other words, the show glorified its star and ringmaster, while rewriting history and vilifying the oppressed Native populations. To add insult to injury, Indigenous people were recruited to assist in their own denigration.
With echoes of James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, as well as a promise to deconstruct the spectacle of circuses and carnivals, Sorrow of the Earth piqued my interest. I plowed through it in one day ... and was left feeling more than a little disquieted. Some of this, I'm sure, was intentional on the author's part; e.g., a feeling of unease as to how the Native Americans were (are) treated. But the rest? Mostly I just couldn't figure out what the heck Vuillard was trying to say. And that last chapter, wtf did I just read?
Perhaps it's an issue of some meaning being lost in translation, but much of Vuillard's writing is overblown and even a little pretentious. It's clear that he's trying hard - too hard - for a deep sense of philosophicalness, but the result often alternates between strained and comical. (e.g., "One night, the storm was so harsh, the sea so wild, that he began to feel afraid. At times, he felt he was dissolving into the sky." A. How could you possibly know that? and B. What does this even mean?)
Additionally, there's the narration. I went into the book with the erroneous assumption that the story would be told from the perspective of one of the Native American performers in the Wild West show. This is not the case. Normally, I wouldn't hold my own misguided expectations against an author; except, in this case, I think the story would have been better served by having an Indigenous narrator. Instead, it feels rather detached. Bombastic, even, as the narrator makes GRAND STATEMENTS about a travesty as an outsider looking in. The narrator himself sounds quite like a showman, which doesn't help his argument.
When Zintkala Nuni is introduced at the 37% mark, I thought for sure that she would be revealed as the story's narrator. Just four months old at the time of the Massacre at Wounded Knee, Zintkala Nuni was found strapped to her mother's back four days later. She was rescued, in a manner of speaking: initially cared for by members of the Lakota, she was later "adopted" by General Leonard Wright Colby (Wikipedia says she was "removed," while Vuillard's narrative has her being bought by Cody and promptly resold to Colby, to be used as a prop in his business dealings with Native Americans). Colby abandoned his family not long after, and his wife, suffragette Clara Bewick Colby, raised the girl, now named Margaret Elizabeth Colby. She spent time in a boarding school and, later, an institution for unwed mothers - possibly after being sexually abused and impregnated by Colby. She married, contracted syphilis from her husband; left him, and went on to perform in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, as well as bit roles silent movies. She died in poverty at the age of thirty, struck down by the flu.
We learn a little of Zintkala Nuni's fate from Vuillard; the problem is, the story requires some prior knowledge of these events, as Vuillard's writing can sometimes prove confusing (so damn flowery!). Suffice it to say that the narrator is not Zintkala Nuni, but remains a distant, third party observer.
Finally, as a reader who doesn't claim any Native American ancestry, I'm not comfortable speaking to Vuillard's sensitivity or accuracy. Overall I thought the story was compassionate and probably more authentic than most of the white supremacist BS you'd find in American History textbooks. Certainly it inspired me to want to learn more. But what the heck do I know?
Vuillard does employ a number of terms that are both offensive but also appropriate for the time period (e.g., savages, bums). Several times Vuillard insinuates that the Native Americans' time is coming to an end - "The spectacle that seized upon the Indians in the final moments of their history was not the least of the violence perpetrated against them." - which is both insulting and untrue. For example, this myth formed the basis for the title of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker's 2016 book, "All the Real Indians Died Off": And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans .
In summary, Sorrow of the Earth shows promise, but is at least partially undone by the author's over-the-top writing style.
http://www.easyvegan.info/2017/10/17/...
May 3, 2025
Quel beau récit remplie d’une profonde tristesse, le titre n’est pas un mensonge. Je pense que nous sommes tous au courant de la colonisation vécue par les Premières Nations, mais lire le récit du massacre d’un peuple entier en lien avec l’histoire de Buffalo Bill Cody a été très difficile. Lire mot sur mot les atrocités faites à ce peuple « indiens » excusez moi le terme (Eric Vuillard les appelle les Indiens, comme les Premières Nations sont appelées au États-Unis), le Wild West Show, une narration complètement fabriquée pour mettre en valeurs les colonisateurs blancs… Il est difficile d’avoir de la pitié pour Buffalo Bill, chausseur de bisons et « showman »…. Lui qui a inventé cet univers du spectacle au dénigrement des autres. On raconte qu’il est mort seul dans sa tristesse. Tant mieux pour lui. Merci à Éric Vuillard d’écrire la vérité des choses et de ne pas couper dans la narrative de l’histoire des Premières Nations.
November 5, 2015
El libro es excelente, una reflexión sobre la relación entre masacre y espectáculo, aculturación y construcción de una ficción sobre los indios. También, un bellísimo (por cómo está escrito, por el mimo con el que Vuillard elige cada palabra)retrato sobre ese mundo que se disipaba ante los ojos, cuyo único testimonio quedaba en las fotografías, el folclore y las narraciones orales que pervivían mientras el show, el capital y la primitiva cultura del entretenimiento masivo reescribían la Historia.
De propina, Vuillard sintetiza ese descorazonador esfuerzo de captar lo efímero, el detalle que se esfuma tan pronto tratamos de capturar, en la historia de Wilson Bentley, fotógrafo de copos de nieve y muchas más cosas. Brutal.
De propina, Vuillard sintetiza ese descorazonador esfuerzo de captar lo efímero, el detalle que se esfuma tan pronto tratamos de capturar, en la historia de Wilson Bentley, fotógrafo de copos de nieve y muchas más cosas. Brutal.
December 30, 2015
Como una biografía mínima de Michon, como la realidad ficcionada de Carrère, esta especie de novela cuenta la historia de Buffalo Bill, aunque extrañamente termina hablando de otra persona, quizás por contraponer su figura y así dibujarla mejor, quizás porque le viene en gana al autor, que escribe estupendamente bien esta elegía sobre una cultura extinguida a manos no sólo del imperialismo del hombre occidental, sino de la sociedad del espectáculo, que tuvo a Buffalo a uno de sus pioneros. Lo que más me interesa es esa descripción del origen del espectáculo de masas en una idealización de la épica que luego el cine repetirá sin cesar. No en vano el western será siempre su genero más auténtico.
March 10, 2019
This book is intensely poetic and moving. This is a book that makes you slow down and feel. It deconstructs traditional tales of the Wild West shows into their more grotesque, yet truer, selves.
After reading this I feel more accepting of the futility and fragility of my own life, but at the same time I feel a deep gratitude for the little joys and sorrows of my own experience. To be fully human is to sense the terrifying immensity of our solitude and insignificance, and yet to sense also its antidote in compassion and beauty.
Anyway, this book is definitely a thinker.
After reading this I feel more accepting of the futility and fragility of my own life, but at the same time I feel a deep gratitude for the little joys and sorrows of my own experience. To be fully human is to sense the terrifying immensity of our solitude and insignificance, and yet to sense also its antidote in compassion and beauty.
Anyway, this book is definitely a thinker.
December 5, 2021
This is a very interesting story, as I love to learn about the History of Native americans, but I struggled to understand the genre of this novel. It's a mix between real facts and a lot of narrative liberties from the author. I didn't quite enjoy the writing style, it felt too rushed, and we never actually get a proper description of the life of Buffalo Bill, we are just thrown into the story.
Interesting and worth a read nonetheless, in particular for the photographies and some vivid and realistic depictions of the life of Native americans during those times.
Interesting and worth a read nonetheless, in particular for the photographies and some vivid and realistic depictions of the life of Native americans during those times.
November 17, 2023
premier livre de l’année, rétrospective de la carrière de buffalo bill à travers le wild west show, son spectacle qui eut une tournée mondiale pour montrer aux gens les ‘indiens’; reconstitution de batailles, de scènes de la ‘vie quotidienne’, d’objets, d’animaux qui faisait l’imaginaire collectif de l’époque sur les autochtones des grandes plaines américaines; met en lumière la fétichisation des premières nations, encore très d’actualité malheureusement.
March 27, 2018
El libro más bonito y triste de 2016 va a ser el libro más bonito y triste de 2018, qué sorpresa.
November 1, 2017
Nick and Emma are friends, and both have decided that love and marriage aren’t in their futures. Nick’s issues stem from his father, a cold and mean-spirited man who did all in his power to keep him bowed and insecure despite his destiny to be a Duke. Emma is guilty over the loss of her best friend Lena at the hands of her abusive husband: she’s determined to see women provided with their own ability to provide for themselves and make choices that are broader than marriage or hidden spinsterhood. But, the attraction that keeps these two dancing around one another, despite their clinging to their fears and prejudices against love is something that, despite their best intentions, will not be denied.
From the prologue where we get Nick’s backstory, his personality and retreat into someone who is rather removed and scornful, all while being little boy lost is rather intriguing: unfortunately he never really did grow from that as completely as Emma did, and their interactions often suffered from this imbalance. Emma, for her part did have some intriguing moments and a solid backstory that gave her intentions some purpose, but that too felt shuffled to the background as the author worked to put the couple’s relationship forward. So much richness here for exploration that went largely untapped: the subjugated role for women in the time, property rather than people of their own right, society’s scorn and dismissal of women who wish to follow their own path and challenge that status quo, and even Emma’s rather ham-handed attempts to ‘save’ yet another woman that lands her in the middle of the wagging tongues.
MacGregor again uses some complex issues to fuel the backstory, but these issues have again been relegated to background as the growing affection between Nick and Emma is created, lacking that emotional feel from characters that show a pattern of growth that would bring them together organically. Pacing is again uneven, and prose moves from some fabulous dialogue between Emma and Nick to flowery and almost painfully forced sexy moments where neither character truly presented a conviction to the reader that would show them together. While I was excited to see a more feminist character in Emma, and an understandably closed off Nick coming to see that his childhood belief in love as a curse was wrong, neither grew into their potential, and the unevenness between the strides and changes Emma made were starkly contrasted to the stalled growth of Nick. Yes, this is the author’s second book, and while I saw some improvement in style and development from the first, there are still points where character, intention and issues could be more fully flushed out, providing emotional connection to the couple that readers couldn’t deny. I’ve read the first two in this series now, and am curious to see MacGregor’s progression and growth in her next book.
I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via NetGalley for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.
Review first appeared at I am, Indeed
From the prologue where we get Nick’s backstory, his personality and retreat into someone who is rather removed and scornful, all while being little boy lost is rather intriguing: unfortunately he never really did grow from that as completely as Emma did, and their interactions often suffered from this imbalance. Emma, for her part did have some intriguing moments and a solid backstory that gave her intentions some purpose, but that too felt shuffled to the background as the author worked to put the couple’s relationship forward. So much richness here for exploration that went largely untapped: the subjugated role for women in the time, property rather than people of their own right, society’s scorn and dismissal of women who wish to follow their own path and challenge that status quo, and even Emma’s rather ham-handed attempts to ‘save’ yet another woman that lands her in the middle of the wagging tongues.
MacGregor again uses some complex issues to fuel the backstory, but these issues have again been relegated to background as the growing affection between Nick and Emma is created, lacking that emotional feel from characters that show a pattern of growth that would bring them together organically. Pacing is again uneven, and prose moves from some fabulous dialogue between Emma and Nick to flowery and almost painfully forced sexy moments where neither character truly presented a conviction to the reader that would show them together. While I was excited to see a more feminist character in Emma, and an understandably closed off Nick coming to see that his childhood belief in love as a curse was wrong, neither grew into their potential, and the unevenness between the strides and changes Emma made were starkly contrasted to the stalled growth of Nick. Yes, this is the author’s second book, and while I saw some improvement in style and development from the first, there are still points where character, intention and issues could be more fully flushed out, providing emotional connection to the couple that readers couldn’t deny. I’ve read the first two in this series now, and am curious to see MacGregor’s progression and growth in her next book.
I received an eArc copy of the title from the publisher via NetGalley for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.
Review first appeared at I am, Indeed
September 20, 2022
"La civilización es una enorme bestia insaciable." Así empieza uno de los capítulos de esta corta novela del escritor francés Eric Vuillard, en la que nos cuenta como William Cody, mejor conocido como Buffalo Bill, saltó a la fama recorriendo EUA y Europa con el Wild West Show, considerado el primer gran espectáculo que ha existido, en el que contrataba a los indios que habían sido, y continuaban siendo, víctimas de las masacres cometidas por el hombre blanco. Lo macabro de este espectáculo era que efectivamente esas víctimas reales tenían que representar una y otra vez el drama de sus vidas para el entretenimiento del público. Buffalo Bill se nos presenta como un personaje que explotaba a estas víctimas para ganar dinero con su show aunque es verdad que según el autor hizo intentos de que el público empatizase con los indios. Pero nunca funcionó, el público tenía un odio profundo y arraigado hacia ese pueblo y Buffalo Bill lo alimentaba ofreciendo versiones de la historia muy retocadas y omitiendo lo que él consideraba, en otras palabras daba a los espectadores lo que estos querían ver.
January 11, 2026
« L’Histoire se prosterne devant le spectacle »
J’ai beaucoup aimé la façon dont ce récit est mené.
D’abord parce qu’on dirait une fiction, dans la façon romanesque de raconter mais pour autant les faits sont réels. Et pour cause, parce qu’ici Vuillard, déconstruit l’idée qu’on se fait de Buffalo Bill, ce célèbre cow-boy et créateur du Wilde West Show, et donc rétablie la vérité sur une partie de l’histoire des Indiens. Cela se construit d’ailleurs à partir d’un questionnement sur le divertissement : ce que c’est pour ceux qui le produisent, ceux qui le consomment et ceux qui en sont victimes.
Egalement dans le choix des faits. Car si on suit la vie de Buffalo Bill on ne sait jamais quel événement sera raconté par la suite et sous quel point de vue.
Enfin, parce que l’écriture instructive de l’auteur est très accessible et rythmée.
- 3,75
(j’ai tout donné pour ma review du premier livre de l’année yass)
J’ai beaucoup aimé la façon dont ce récit est mené.
D’abord parce qu’on dirait une fiction, dans la façon romanesque de raconter mais pour autant les faits sont réels. Et pour cause, parce qu’ici Vuillard, déconstruit l’idée qu’on se fait de Buffalo Bill, ce célèbre cow-boy et créateur du Wilde West Show, et donc rétablie la vérité sur une partie de l’histoire des Indiens. Cela se construit d’ailleurs à partir d’un questionnement sur le divertissement : ce que c’est pour ceux qui le produisent, ceux qui le consomment et ceux qui en sont victimes.
Egalement dans le choix des faits. Car si on suit la vie de Buffalo Bill on ne sait jamais quel événement sera raconté par la suite et sous quel point de vue.
Enfin, parce que l’écriture instructive de l’auteur est très accessible et rythmée.
- 3,75
(j’ai tout donné pour ma review du premier livre de l’année yass)
January 23, 2024
C’est difficile de donner une note à ce livre car il est irrégulier. C’est difficile aussi de le catégoriser, et c’est plutôt un bon point. L’auteur tourne autour de Buffalo Bill et de son Wild West Show, l’examine, le décrit, l’analyse, essaye de le faire ressentir d’une façon assez décousue. Et c’est également un bon point. Son écriture est parfois belle, mais aussi parfois forcée et tombe à plat. C’est le risque avec cette approche.
Mais cela reste un beau livre.
Mais cela reste un beau livre.
November 15, 2025
Mouais bon… finalement je suis un peu déçue, on parle surtout de Buffalo Bill et même si effectivement l’auteur met en plein jour les atrocités que les indiens ont subi, ça ressemble surtout à un récit biographique de Buffalo Bill, or je m’attendais à l’histoire entière qui se cachait derrière l’invention du Wild West Show…
April 30, 2025
Lecture obligatoire pour un projet collégial
January 8, 2017
4'5/5
Excelente relato breve sobre el auge y caida de Buffalo Bill, que además incide en el nacimiento de la cultura del espectáculo con el circo Wild West Show que viajó por todo el mundo; la construcción de tópicos que han calado hondo en el imaginio popular ("se dan palmadas contra la boca y "¡auu, auu,auu! Brota una especie de grito salvaje, inhumano. Pero este grito de guerra no se ha emitido ni en las Grandes Llanuras, ni en Canadá, ni en ningua otra parte: es pura invención de Buffalo Bill (...) no pueden ni imaginarse que todos los niños del mundo occidental, a partir de entonces, harán vibrar la palma contra la boca, en corro alrededor del fuego, para "gritar como los sioux") y, especialmente, la desolación del pueblo indio (masacres como la de Wonded Knee, figuras como la de Toro Sentado, la participación en farsas como la del circo Wild West Show, etc).
Excelente relato breve sobre el auge y caida de Buffalo Bill, que además incide en el nacimiento de la cultura del espectáculo con el circo Wild West Show que viajó por todo el mundo; la construcción de tópicos que han calado hondo en el imaginio popular ("se dan palmadas contra la boca y "¡auu, auu,auu! Brota una especie de grito salvaje, inhumano. Pero este grito de guerra no se ha emitido ni en las Grandes Llanuras, ni en Canadá, ni en ningua otra parte: es pura invención de Buffalo Bill (...) no pueden ni imaginarse que todos los niños del mundo occidental, a partir de entonces, harán vibrar la palma contra la boca, en corro alrededor del fuego, para "gritar como los sioux") y, especialmente, la desolación del pueblo indio (masacres como la de Wonded Knee, figuras como la de Toro Sentado, la participación en farsas como la del circo Wild West Show, etc).
July 17, 2017
Éric Vuillard’s ‘Sorrow of the Earth. Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business’ is a very short book, notwithstanding its large font, occasional blank pages and use of an entire page for each chapter heading and most of the photographs. Indeed, what one basically has here is an essay rather than a book.
The book has been translated from its original French. Unfortunately the author’s pretentious style has not been lost in translation.
He writes, for example, that a spectacle “must catapult us ahead of ourselves, it must strip us of our certainties and sear us. Yes, a spectacle sears us, despite what its detractors say. A spectacle steals from us, and lies to us, and intoxicates us, and gives us the world in every shape and form. … Spectacle draws its power and its dignity from being nothing. It leaves us irremediably alone, with no wound to see the light of day, no trace of evidence. And yet, in the midst of this noisy vacuum, in the great pity we feel, even in our very scorn – there’s something there.”
Or take Vuillard’s incoherent ramblings on the subject of reality:
“Reality is an excessive thing; it’s everywhere and nowhere; and for some time now it seems to have been fading. It’s strange, and it’s hard to explain: reality is still there but it’s as if it had lost its substance. Everything you thought it was founded on has suddenly been disrupted, altered, damaged, exposed. Nothing looks the same; everything seems to have been swept up by speed, money and trade! And you can’t really say what former dreams and images fill you with regret. What do we regret? What society? What ideal? What sweetness?”
I can tell Vuillard precisely what I regret, namely, his padding out his book with this sort of sorry stream-of-consciousness verbiage.
Vuillard provides no bibliography, so it’s impossible to know the sources of his information. It is nevertheless fairly clear that his imagination far exceeds what the sources can tell us. Thus describing the meeting at which John Burke recruited Sitting Bull for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show he tells us that “Between two compliments he [Burke] rearranged his hair, pushing it back and clamping it round his ears.” I think we can safely assume that this minute detail was not recorded and what we therefore have here is the frustrated novelist Vuillard supplying ‘colour’ because he lacks the confidence or temperament to allow the historical facts to speak for themselves.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, a few more pages on, and Vuillard presumes to tell us what was in Sitting Bull’s mind (“Sitting Bull feels a profound solitude … In that moment, he forgets everything”), mystically divined from his appearance in a particular photograph. This is not only unhistorical but profoundly patronising, which is ironic given that a central message of Vuillard’s book - insofar as a farrago can be said to have a message at all - is that the treatment of Sitting Bull and the other Native Americans in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was incredibly patronising.
When Vuillard fleetingly and ill-advisedly engages with historical fact he is apt to get it wrong. Thus he writes that after one season with the Wild West Show Sitting Bull “abandoned his acting career” when in fact it ended because the Indian Agent refused him permission to leave the reservation. Similarly, readers coming to the chapter entitled ‘The Massacre of Wounded Knee’ expecting to see that event placed in the context of the Ghost Dance will be severely disappointed, although they will be informed that a snowflake is “like a weary little secret, a forlorn and inconsolable touch of gentleness”. If you enjoy this kind of blather then you can look forward to the book’s last chapter, which is entitled ‘Snow’.
Anyone who, despite this review, makes the mistake of reading ‘Sorrow of the Earth’ will discover a very brief passage in which Vuillard writes insightfully about Buffalo Bill becoming the victim of his own myth. In so doing they will have an experience akin to finding a small denomination coin in a vacuum cleaner dirtbag full of fluff.
It is a pitifully insufficient reward for the general sensation of feeling soiled by coming into contact with Vuillard’s sloppy thought processes and garrulously self-indulgent prose.
The book has been translated from its original French. Unfortunately the author’s pretentious style has not been lost in translation.
He writes, for example, that a spectacle “must catapult us ahead of ourselves, it must strip us of our certainties and sear us. Yes, a spectacle sears us, despite what its detractors say. A spectacle steals from us, and lies to us, and intoxicates us, and gives us the world in every shape and form. … Spectacle draws its power and its dignity from being nothing. It leaves us irremediably alone, with no wound to see the light of day, no trace of evidence. And yet, in the midst of this noisy vacuum, in the great pity we feel, even in our very scorn – there’s something there.”
Or take Vuillard’s incoherent ramblings on the subject of reality:
“Reality is an excessive thing; it’s everywhere and nowhere; and for some time now it seems to have been fading. It’s strange, and it’s hard to explain: reality is still there but it’s as if it had lost its substance. Everything you thought it was founded on has suddenly been disrupted, altered, damaged, exposed. Nothing looks the same; everything seems to have been swept up by speed, money and trade! And you can’t really say what former dreams and images fill you with regret. What do we regret? What society? What ideal? What sweetness?”
I can tell Vuillard precisely what I regret, namely, his padding out his book with this sort of sorry stream-of-consciousness verbiage.
Vuillard provides no bibliography, so it’s impossible to know the sources of his information. It is nevertheless fairly clear that his imagination far exceeds what the sources can tell us. Thus describing the meeting at which John Burke recruited Sitting Bull for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show he tells us that “Between two compliments he [Burke] rearranged his hair, pushing it back and clamping it round his ears.” I think we can safely assume that this minute detail was not recorded and what we therefore have here is the frustrated novelist Vuillard supplying ‘colour’ because he lacks the confidence or temperament to allow the historical facts to speak for themselves.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, a few more pages on, and Vuillard presumes to tell us what was in Sitting Bull’s mind (“Sitting Bull feels a profound solitude … In that moment, he forgets everything”), mystically divined from his appearance in a particular photograph. This is not only unhistorical but profoundly patronising, which is ironic given that a central message of Vuillard’s book - insofar as a farrago can be said to have a message at all - is that the treatment of Sitting Bull and the other Native Americans in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was incredibly patronising.
When Vuillard fleetingly and ill-advisedly engages with historical fact he is apt to get it wrong. Thus he writes that after one season with the Wild West Show Sitting Bull “abandoned his acting career” when in fact it ended because the Indian Agent refused him permission to leave the reservation. Similarly, readers coming to the chapter entitled ‘The Massacre of Wounded Knee’ expecting to see that event placed in the context of the Ghost Dance will be severely disappointed, although they will be informed that a snowflake is “like a weary little secret, a forlorn and inconsolable touch of gentleness”. If you enjoy this kind of blather then you can look forward to the book’s last chapter, which is entitled ‘Snow’.
Anyone who, despite this review, makes the mistake of reading ‘Sorrow of the Earth’ will discover a very brief passage in which Vuillard writes insightfully about Buffalo Bill becoming the victim of his own myth. In so doing they will have an experience akin to finding a small denomination coin in a vacuum cleaner dirtbag full of fluff.
It is a pitifully insufficient reward for the general sensation of feeling soiled by coming into contact with Vuillard’s sloppy thought processes and garrulously self-indulgent prose.
Want to read
December 11, 2024For some reason this novel has received almost no attention compared to Eric Vuillard's other novels translated into English. It is not even in many UK libraries. Until I can read/buy the novel I provide an excerpt from a review in the Times Literary Supplement (London). I am reproducing as much of the review as was available outside of a pay wall. I hope it wets your appetite:
"In 1883, William F. Cody began to change the face of mass entertainment, and he did it on the backs of Indigenous peoples. In the past few decades there has grown what the Dakota historian Philip Deloria calls an “industrial-strength” literature on Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, as bigger and bigger books with longer and longer endnotes work to reconstruct the experiences of Native performers. Decked out in versions of Plains Indian regalia, required to play the howling warrior (if male) or sometimes their accomplices in savagery (if women), how did those Lakota, Pawnee, Cheyenne, Kiowa and Arapaho performers see themselves and each other? When Cody took young men and their families from starving reservations and defiant Ghost Dancers from federal prison on world tours, was he saviour or exploiter? In the spectacle of the circus ring, what strategies for cultural survival, solidarity and agency did these Indigenous performers negotiate?
"This is the arena which the French author and film director Éric Vuillard, as translated by Ann Jefferson, enters with Sorrow of the Earth, perhaps the shortest and most intense book on the Wild West ever published. While his historical reconstruction clearly owes much to extant scholarship, its expression is powered by sheer creative will. The author imagines his way into the felt lives behind the pasteboard fronts: the inner thoughts and feelings of the performers, the audience, impresario Cody, his publicist John Burke, and the readers of this book. It’s a grim vision, fuelled by the identification of a death drive at the heart of the new entertainment machine. Native cultures are killed off by their caricaturing; Native peoples are murdered at Wounded Knee only to be massacred again in fictional re-enactments; Bill Cody is hollowed out by this new celebrity culture; audience members are alienated by the experience of mass spectatorship, 70 million of them over Cody’s career (“As if this grand ephemeral entertainment, this desperate forgetting of ourselves, this way of turning our heads to get a better look were one of the most tragic moments of our being”). This is show business as cultural genocide.
"Relieving this grim landscape are flashes of brilliance when Vuillard takes unexpected turns and makes revelatory conjunctions. Most lyrically, the snowflakes that fall delicately on the hair, lips and eyelids of those massacred at Wounded Knee – “like a weary little secret, a forlorn and inconsolable touch of gentleness” – become…" unfortunately that is all I had access to.
"In 1883, William F. Cody began to change the face of mass entertainment, and he did it on the backs of Indigenous peoples. In the past few decades there has grown what the Dakota historian Philip Deloria calls an “industrial-strength” literature on Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, as bigger and bigger books with longer and longer endnotes work to reconstruct the experiences of Native performers. Decked out in versions of Plains Indian regalia, required to play the howling warrior (if male) or sometimes their accomplices in savagery (if women), how did those Lakota, Pawnee, Cheyenne, Kiowa and Arapaho performers see themselves and each other? When Cody took young men and their families from starving reservations and defiant Ghost Dancers from federal prison on world tours, was he saviour or exploiter? In the spectacle of the circus ring, what strategies for cultural survival, solidarity and agency did these Indigenous performers negotiate?
"This is the arena which the French author and film director Éric Vuillard, as translated by Ann Jefferson, enters with Sorrow of the Earth, perhaps the shortest and most intense book on the Wild West ever published. While his historical reconstruction clearly owes much to extant scholarship, its expression is powered by sheer creative will. The author imagines his way into the felt lives behind the pasteboard fronts: the inner thoughts and feelings of the performers, the audience, impresario Cody, his publicist John Burke, and the readers of this book. It’s a grim vision, fuelled by the identification of a death drive at the heart of the new entertainment machine. Native cultures are killed off by their caricaturing; Native peoples are murdered at Wounded Knee only to be massacred again in fictional re-enactments; Bill Cody is hollowed out by this new celebrity culture; audience members are alienated by the experience of mass spectatorship, 70 million of them over Cody’s career (“As if this grand ephemeral entertainment, this desperate forgetting of ourselves, this way of turning our heads to get a better look were one of the most tragic moments of our being”). This is show business as cultural genocide.
"Relieving this grim landscape are flashes of brilliance when Vuillard takes unexpected turns and makes revelatory conjunctions. Most lyrically, the snowflakes that fall delicately on the hair, lips and eyelids of those massacred at Wounded Knee – “like a weary little secret, a forlorn and inconsolable touch of gentleness” – become…" unfortunately that is all I had access to.
February 17, 2023
LA TRISTEZA DE LA TIERRA, de Éric VUILLARD, es la tristeza que te trasmite esta historia de una masacre, un genocidio y un espectáculo en el que los indios (pueblo aniquilado) tuvieron que actuar “representando” ante un gran público (en cantidad, obviamente) la muerte de su pueblo, cómo si de una doble tortura se tratara. Si el público que acude en masas al espectáculo de Buffalo Bill ¿que responsabilidad tenemos (tenían) como sociedad? Ahora bien, ¿que responsabilidad tenemos como una sociedad que no aprende de los errores que se repiten, y se repiten y se vuelven a repetir? ¡Perdón! Creo que mis dedos golpean las teclas del ordenador comandados por una especie de rabia probablemente a la misma velocidad a la que leí el libro (no te lo recomiendo, la lectura rápida me refiero) para el enriquecedor club de lectura capitaneado por Patricia Almarcegui y me ha servido para salir de mi zona de confort y leer textos diferentes a los que hubieran estado al alcance de mis manos, mejor dicho, mi mente.
Hay frases que resaltan por si solas (aunque yo las he subrayado) dentro de un lenguaje directo y sin parafernalias, de frases contundentes en las que ocasionalmente hay espacio para frases irónicas por un lado y poéticas por otro.
Un texto en el que he visto cómo se resaltaban algunas paradojas de la vida de Buffalo Bill en particular, y de la vida en general.
Hay frases que resaltan por si solas (aunque yo las he subrayado) dentro de un lenguaje directo y sin parafernalias, de frases contundentes en las que ocasionalmente hay espacio para frases irónicas por un lado y poéticas por otro.
Un texto en el que he visto cómo se resaltaban algunas paradojas de la vida de Buffalo Bill en particular, y de la vida en general.
December 15, 2020
I do love when the French write about America - they get it so right, AND so wrong!
This is a Creative, Imaginative, Imagistic writing of History and Cultural Criticism.
I don't think he has ever been to Cody, WY - and if he has, he understood it only superficially. No mention of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West - which is stunningly great, and awful, at the same time.
OK, I hate the new American "historians" who take a POV of, "You are there, and in his mind as well! You can share all the feelings and thoughts our main character is (supposedly) experiencing." And you know what, Vuillard does the same thing. And it is just as questionable, and cheesy.
Fun, quick read. Lots of photos, smaller format pages, and blank and chapter title pages. So you can pretty much read the "153" pp in one sitting.
The connection to "spectacle" throughout works well, and I enjoyed some of the connections he unearths (especially Luna Park in Coney Island).
Vuillard would like to be Baudrillard, but he's not. Insightful, but light. Some occasional interesting factoid or insight, but not enough to make this a brilliant work.
OTOH, I will be reading his "The Order of the Day" soon.
2/3 out of 5.
This is a Creative, Imaginative, Imagistic writing of History and Cultural Criticism.
I don't think he has ever been to Cody, WY - and if he has, he understood it only superficially. No mention of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West - which is stunningly great, and awful, at the same time.
OK, I hate the new American "historians" who take a POV of, "You are there, and in his mind as well! You can share all the feelings and thoughts our main character is (supposedly) experiencing." And you know what, Vuillard does the same thing. And it is just as questionable, and cheesy.
Fun, quick read. Lots of photos, smaller format pages, and blank and chapter title pages. So you can pretty much read the "153" pp in one sitting.
The connection to "spectacle" throughout works well, and I enjoyed some of the connections he unearths (especially Luna Park in Coney Island).
Vuillard would like to be Baudrillard, but he's not. Insightful, but light. Some occasional interesting factoid or insight, but not enough to make this a brilliant work.
OTOH, I will be reading his "The Order of the Day" soon.
2/3 out of 5.
December 29, 2022
I thought the other two books I read by Vuillard were very interesting and stimulating - The Order of the Day and The War of the Poor - but this not so much. However, he writes with clarity and does say interesting things. The story of Buffalo Bill seems to be just the hanger on which to consider the issues of war against the Indians, showmanship, our thirst for spectacle and the appropriation of cultures. A lot to pack in, but it is the life of Bill Cody that is always to the fore. I think it is what makes Vuillard interesting that his themes resonate with today. Cody's Wild West Show is a precursor to Hollywood westerns and the rewriting of history. The spectacle the constant iterations of the Marvel universe. The persistence of genocide against communities that get in our way. However, I felt that he needed to explore these ideas a little more. One interesting element, was Cody's obsession with the mistress he put on stage in one flop after another, investing more and more money in her success (that never happens). It reminded me of Citizen Kane and Kane's obsession with his young 'opera singer' wife.
March 12, 2023
je sais pas pourquoi mais j'ai capté TARD que c'était l'histoire de Buffalo Bill et pas de la conquête en elle-même... (alors que c'est littéralement dans le titre???) du coup c'était assez cool parce que certes on parle de ses moments difficiles mais l'auteur n'essaie pas d'en faire une excuse à ce qu'il a fait et au massacre des amérindiens en général! on apprend plein plein de choses et c'est assez facile à lire donc lisez!!!
j'ai noté ce passage qui est super parlant : "Ils [les amérindiens] font claquer leur paume sur leur bouche, whou! whou! whou! [...] Mais ce cri de guerre, ils ne l'ont poussé ni dans les Grandes Plaines ni au Canada, ni nulle part ailleurs - c'est une pure invention de Buffalo Bill. [...] ils ignorent encore le destin de ce truc inventé par Buffalo Bill, ils ne peuvent pas imaginer que tous les enfants du monde occidental vont désormais, tournant autour du feu, faire vibrer leur paume sur leur bouche, en poussant des "cris de sioux" [...] Et cependant, ils durent en éprouver en secret toute l'horreur."
j'ai noté ce passage qui est super parlant : "Ils [les amérindiens] font claquer leur paume sur leur bouche, whou! whou! whou! [...] Mais ce cri de guerre, ils ne l'ont poussé ni dans les Grandes Plaines ni au Canada, ni nulle part ailleurs - c'est une pure invention de Buffalo Bill. [...] ils ignorent encore le destin de ce truc inventé par Buffalo Bill, ils ne peuvent pas imaginer que tous les enfants du monde occidental vont désormais, tournant autour du feu, faire vibrer leur paume sur leur bouche, en poussant des "cris de sioux" [...] Et cependant, ils durent en éprouver en secret toute l'horreur."
May 1, 2023
Hay gente que dice que este es el mejor libro de Vuillard y tengo que decir... que creo que tienen razón. Es el más poético, al menos. Vuillard siempre ha tenido el don de convertir su ira e indignación en poesía, pero en este libro parece menos enfadado (o al menos lo controla más) y toda la narración está teñido de un tono melancólico.
Se supone que habla de Buffalo Bill, pero en realidad no lo hace, porque Buffalo Bill es una leyenda, una falsedad, como la Historia de los Estados Unidos que él ayudó a crear en sus espectáculos, una Historia en la que la conquista y destrucción de los Primeros Pueblos se relató como una justa guerra con buenos y malos, la civilización contra la barbarie, el progreso contra el atraso.
Al final, como siempre, Vuillard habla de los perdedores, los pobres, los oprimidos, los marginados, que nunca consiguen pasar a la Historia. Porque no son quienes la escriben.
Se supone que habla de Buffalo Bill, pero en realidad no lo hace, porque Buffalo Bill es una leyenda, una falsedad, como la Historia de los Estados Unidos que él ayudó a crear en sus espectáculos, una Historia en la que la conquista y destrucción de los Primeros Pueblos se relató como una justa guerra con buenos y malos, la civilización contra la barbarie, el progreso contra el atraso.
Al final, como siempre, Vuillard habla de los perdedores, los pobres, los oprimidos, los marginados, que nunca consiguen pasar a la Historia. Porque no son quienes la escriben.
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