Pot Luck

by Émile Zola

Book Overview

Pot Luck, Zola's most acerbic satire, describes daily life in a newly constructed block of flats in late nineteenth-century Paris. In examining the contradictions that pervade bourgeois life, Zola reveals a multitude of betrayals and depicts a veritable 'melting pot' of moral and sexual degeneracy. This new translation captures the robustness of Zola's language and restores the omissions of earlier abridged versions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192831798
• ISBN13: 9780192831798
• Release Date: May 1999
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.5" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Hypocrisy of the middle class

Occasionally you pick up a novel and after reading about ten pages you realize two things. First, that you're in for a great story, and second, you would NEVER be able to write a novel that is as detailed, complex, and readable as the one you are holding in your hand. That is how I feel reading a Zola novel for the first time, and this tale is no exception. If you are new to Zola and stumbled upon this book and these reviews by accident, Emile Zola was a French author of the second half of the nineteenth century and wrote what could be called social commentary. His novels are typically cynical and scathing attacks on virtually every aspect of French society. Nobody is spared from his pen, not the lowest drunk living on the street nor the Emperor. Zola's primary work is a 20 volume series (the Rougon-Macquart series) which are linked in the style of Balzac with recurring characters and themes. The novel Pot Luck is the tenth in this series. Although linked, there is no need to read them in order (with one or two exceptions), they are all independent. In this novel, a young bumpkin from the country, Octave Mouret, moves into an apartment building in Paris searching for his fortune and a few sexual conquests along the way. The primary theme of this novel is the bald-faced hippocracy in which most of the residents of the building live. There is lots of talk among the residents about chastity, purity, up-right living, but behind the facade is a cesspool of lies and immorality. The men are trying to bed as many of the women as possible (each others' wives, the servants, and outside mistresses), and the women are greedy, gossipy, and vain. On top of this, the happy middle class residents of the building are constantly hounding the servants complaining about their immorality and filth. There are three things I love about Zola, and this novel is no exception. First, nobody develops realistic, complex characters like Zola. His characters talk and act EXACTLY like people really talk and act. Second, his themes are timeless and even though he is writing about 19th century France, a few small changes and it would sound as if he was talking about 21st century life in the West. The central themes of this novel (hypocrisy and contradiction) are as relevant today as when the novel was written, and you may well re-exam your life after reading this story. Third, he has a tremendous insight into people and exposes all their petty, dishonest machinations. Zola's writing style is gritty and direct, very different from his contemporary English counterparts. Many Americans may be shocked at the directness of his prose. If you haven't read any of the other Rougon-Macquart novels, I don't know that I'd start here. This is a great story, and far better than virtually anything written by any other author, but it doesn't stand up to Zola's best works. If you are a newbie, I'd start with Nana or L'Assommoir, they are overall better stories and typical

An underappreciated masterpiece

In my opinion this is one of Zola's greatest works. This is the tenth book in his Rougon-Macquart series, though that's not vitally important because they all stand alone as individual works of literature. The novel gives us a window into the secret lives and discrete liaisons of the inhabitants of a middle-class apartment building in Paris during France's Second Empire. There are many shades of gray within that "middle class", and in this book everyone tries in some way to claw and scratch their way to a higher level of status. This book features an ensemble cast of characters, including Octave Mouret, son of Francois Mouret and Marthe Rougon from Zola's earlier work The Conquest of Plassans. Octave moves into the building, and soon begins seeking an affair with an older, wealthier woman who will provide him with a foot-in-the-door of Parisian society. Elsewhere in the building, a mother pimps her daughters at dinner parties, trying to secure a match that will improve the family's bleak financial future. Siblings of a well-to-do family squabble over the leavings of their dead father. Men squander their wealth on mistresses. Illicit affairs take place from the basement to the attic, all covered by a veneer of respectability. Away from the street-side facade of righteousness, however, the servants in the courtyard know the real goings-on and offer commentary like a sort of Greek chorus. This is what Zola does best. He creates a setting, populates it with a cast of diverse characters, engages them in an intricate series of events, and puts the reader right in the middle of it. This book is a real treat for any reader of classic literature, even if you're not familiar with Zola or the Rougon-Macquart series. Fans of Zola's other works will find it on a par with his great masterpieces Germial and La Terre.

*Smile, Laugh and Cry With Your Neighbors*

"Pot Bouille" is indeed a piece of treasure. Even now, I can still find myself holding on to each word since the very first page. Each page will keep you wanting for more. It tells a story of an apartment building and its occupants. One might imagine the type of brownstone mansions in New York City or Beacon Hill in Boston divided to apartment units to be rented out. Except that in Zola's pot, neighborly interactions take place regularly and make up the heart of the story. Although many stories about bourgeoisie lives have been written, I've never come across characters as vivid, comical, harsh, evolving and disgusting as those portrayed in this book. Gossips, money, sex, adulteries, self advancement and selfishness are so well mashed in the pot, they'll warm up to readers' hearts. I can really feel for the characters cause they seem very much alive, it almost seem that I'm living next door to them. Although Monsieur Octave Mouret is described as the hero in this book, I feel that the true hero is Monsieur Josserand. "Pot Bouille" is a story about temptations and human feelings. It has every power to make me cringe, laugh, smile and cry. "Pot Bouille" is a truly wonderful piece that will spark readers' imaginations. I've enjoyed reading the copy by Oxford World's Classics. Professor Brian Nelson has done a terrific job in translating it from its original French. Read it and have fun!!!!

House of Fools

Zola's literary terrain was the victim with no voice, the laborers, those that made civilization run at great human cost. In "Pot- Bouille", (Boiling Pot), Zola has taken on the middle class residents of an apartment building and savages their collective pretensions of moral superiority. The stink of petty economies, money lust and aristocratic yearing is everywhere. His hero is Octave Mouret a young cloth merchant from the provinces who comes to 1860s Paris to make his fortune. In this residential building whose public areas are overdone with architectural garnish Mouret makes his home among an unhealthy bunch of souls. There are voracious mothers trying to marry off lackluster, shallow daughters, philandering husbands, besieged, toiling husbands, cold indifferent wives, callous mistresses. The servants are stored away for the night in their garret rooms after a day of being subjected to the customary regimen of abuse and bullying dished up by their employers. That the servants are a crude, ignorant crowd makes them no more worthy of respect than their masters. In the parallel world of house help slop bucket throwing, vulgar gossip, same sex seduction and infant death figures prominently. On the quest to conquer big, bad Paris Mouret helps himself heartily to all this messy stew offers whether neighbors' wives or solitary widows. He tastes whatever his manipulations bring his way. Women are a banquet fit for the taking if they can be emotionally and physically overpowered, so says the masculine imperative of the times. But then the female characters here have little to admire. The women represent a menu of every sort of female vice, wallowing in vanity, indolence and self-complacency served up in heaping portions. There is so much tragedy in this house that the horrors of greed and duplicity become almost farcical in Zola's hands. On these pages we live through a years worth of Jerry Springer moments top hats and crinoline hoop skirts flying in contentious free-for-all. "Pot- Bouille" is a feast of poisonous family values to be savored comfortably by the modern reader from the vantage point of a new (more humanist?) millennium.

What they don't teach you in business school

A good jolly soap opera of a book. Young man comes from the provinces to the capital. Gets a room in an apartment block. Learns about life in general and the opposite sex in particular. Nothing new so far. Other authors had already trod the same path. Here, the whole process is meticulously described with Zola's usual skill (he is now on the tenth novel in his cycle). One cannot help thinking, though, that the apartment block must have been a pox doctor's paradise. But the book's real interest is in how the hero uses his acquired knowledge - which is revealed when he becomes the great retailing tycoon in the next book "Au Bonheur des Dames". So, this book is really the first part of a two-part series and it does its job of whetting the appetite for part two. It shows that the university of life is better than a business studies course any day.