Zola: Money
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Money by Émile Zola
This novel continues the story of Saccard, born Rougon, the whirlwind of real estate speculation, money obsession, and sexual drive who, along with his wife Renée, now dead, made reading The Kill such an anticipation of a train wreck. As this book starts, Saccard has fallen on hard times, no longer living in his magnificently gaudy house, but instead renting in the home of princess who has devoted herself to good works after the death of her philandering and corrupt husband. Saccard becomes the manager of one of those good works, the Work Foundation, a combination of a beautifully designed home for children otherwise living troubled lives on the streets of Paris with a conviction that a life of work will enable them to become productive citizens. In the home of the princess, he meets a brother and sister who also live there and who had traveled in the Middle East. Looking at the drawings and paintings the sister, Madame Caroline, made of the sights they saw while the brother, Hamelin, was working as an engineer, he starts dreaming of a bank that could make development possible there: steamer lines, silver mines, train systems. With his vivid imagination, his natural salesman abilities, his temperamental optimism, and his never-ending persistence, he raises the capital for a bank, the Universal, finding rich people of various sorts to participate. As time passes, Hamelin starts building the proposed projects using these investments; Saccard raises additional capital again and again (with a lot of wheeler-dealering and a little illegality); and the share prices keep rising on the Bourse. Both Madame Caroline and Hamelin have some reservations about Saccard's methods but, with his visions of creating good through money they largely keep them to themselves; indeed, for a time, Caroline becomes his mistress.
The subplots in this book introduce not only other characters, but also other ways people are obsessed with money. A thoroughly unpleasant pair consists of Busch and La Méchain: he combs through documents to find ways to blackmail people and she is his spy, tracking people down, gathering documents, and being thoroughly nasty. When she first sees Saccard, she sees a resemblance between him and her cousin's son, a boy she conceived after being brutally raped; on the cousin's behalf, Busch has been holding notes promising payments of 600 francs to the mother. The tale of Victor, now a teenager, who later Madame Caroline finds living in conditions of unbelievable squalor in a vividly described slum, and who is a completely vicious boy, is a thread that runs through the book.
Another important character is Gundermann, an elderly man who is "king" of the Bourse and, importantly for Saccard, who is violently antisemitic, Jewish. Part of the reason he wants to overthrow Gundermann is because he wants his bank, a "Catholic" bank to rule the world of finance. He and other characters frequently make antisemitic remarks or have antisemitic thoughts. With this angle, Zola was reflecting the antisemitism of the time, largely based on the idea that Jews had a natural talent for finance and ruled the financial world, without of course believing this himself.
Many other permutations of the raging desire for money -- and a few variations on rejecting money -- occur in this book. There are people from all walks of life who gamble all their money on the Universal stock, and by and large they are people who can ill afford it, although they are seduced by Saccard's vision and by the fact that the share price keeps rising. Some people are smart enough to sell, but they are far and few between. In addition, Zola examines the issue of capitalism itself: Busch has a brother Sigismund of whom he is extremely fond, who is dying of tuberculosis and who is a committed socialist, working away on a book that will convince its readers that the abolition of money will bring in a new world of harmony and justice.
Of course, being a book by Zola, this isn't just a novel of ideas, but a novel of characters and action and of course a few sexual adventures, most of them sleazy and not a little mean. It is a complex book, and I probably haven't done it justice here.
As a side note, I was delighted to find this Oxford World Classics edition in a bookstore; as the cover notes, this is the first translation in more than a hundred years, and the only unabridged translation. (It is easy to see why the original translator would have cut some of the material in this book.) It also had a helpful introduction and useful endnotes.
This novel continues the story of Saccard, born Rougon, the whirlwind of real estate speculation, money obsession, and sexual drive who, along with his wife Renée, now dead, made reading The Kill such an anticipation of a train wreck. As this book starts, Saccard has fallen on hard times, no longer living in his magnificently gaudy house, but instead renting in the home of princess who has devoted herself to good works after the death of her philandering and corrupt husband. Saccard becomes the manager of one of those good works, the Work Foundation, a combination of a beautifully designed home for children otherwise living troubled lives on the streets of Paris with a conviction that a life of work will enable them to become productive citizens. In the home of the princess, he meets a brother and sister who also live there and who had traveled in the Middle East. Looking at the drawings and paintings the sister, Madame Caroline, made of the sights they saw while the brother, Hamelin, was working as an engineer, he starts dreaming of a bank that could make development possible there: steamer lines, silver mines, train systems. With his vivid imagination, his natural salesman abilities, his temperamental optimism, and his never-ending persistence, he raises the capital for a bank, the Universal, finding rich people of various sorts to participate. As time passes, Hamelin starts building the proposed projects using these investments; Saccard raises additional capital again and again (with a lot of wheeler-dealering and a little illegality); and the share prices keep rising on the Bourse. Both Madame Caroline and Hamelin have some reservations about Saccard's methods but, with his visions of creating good through money they largely keep them to themselves; indeed, for a time, Caroline becomes his mistress.
The subplots in this book introduce not only other characters, but also other ways people are obsessed with money. A thoroughly unpleasant pair consists of Busch and La Méchain: he combs through documents to find ways to blackmail people and she is his spy, tracking people down, gathering documents, and being thoroughly nasty. When she first sees Saccard, she sees a resemblance between him and her cousin's son, a boy she conceived after being brutally raped; on the cousin's behalf, Busch has been holding notes promising payments of 600 francs to the mother. The tale of Victor, now a teenager, who later Madame Caroline finds living in conditions of unbelievable squalor in a vividly described slum, and who is a completely vicious boy, is a thread that runs through the book.
Another important character is Gundermann, an elderly man who is "king" of the Bourse and, importantly for Saccard, who is violently antisemitic, Jewish. Part of the reason he wants to overthrow Gundermann is because he wants his bank, a "Catholic" bank to rule the world of finance. He and other characters frequently make antisemitic remarks or have antisemitic thoughts. With this angle, Zola was reflecting the antisemitism of the time, largely based on the idea that Jews had a natural talent for finance and ruled the financial world, without of course believing this himself.
Many other permutations of the raging desire for money -- and a few variations on rejecting money -- occur in this book. There are people from all walks of life who gamble all their money on the Universal stock, and by and large they are people who can ill afford it, although they are seduced by Saccard's vision and by the fact that the share price keeps rising. Some people are smart enough to sell, but they are far and few between. In addition, Zola examines the issue of capitalism itself: Busch has a brother Sigismund of whom he is extremely fond, who is dying of tuberculosis and who is a committed socialist, working away on a book that will convince its readers that the abolition of money will bring in a new world of harmony and justice.
Of course, being a book by Zola, this isn't just a novel of ideas, but a novel of characters and action and of course a few sexual adventures, most of them sleazy and not a little mean. It is a complex book, and I probably haven't done it justice here.
As a side note, I was delighted to find this Oxford World Classics edition in a bookstore; as the cover notes, this is the first translation in more than a hundred years, and the only unabridged translation. (It is easy to see why the original translator would have cut some of the material in this book.) It also had a helpful introduction and useful endnotes.
