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Monsieur Goriot is one of a disparate group of lodgers at Mademe Vauquer's dingy Parisian boarding house. At first his wealth inspires respect, but as his circumstances are mysteriously reduced he becomes shunned by those around him, and soon his only remaining visitors are his two beautifully dressed daughters. Goriot's fate is intertwined with two other fellow boarders: the young social climber Eugene Rastignac, who sees a way to gain the acceptance and wealth he craves, and the enigmatic figure of Vautrin, who is hiding darker secrets than anyone. Weaving a compelling and panoramic story of love, money, self-sacrifice, corruption, greed and ambition, Old Man Goriot is Balzac's acknowledged masterpiece. A key novel in his Comédie Humaine series, it is a vividly realized portrait of bourgeois Parisian society in the years following the French Revolution.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
- Sales Rank: #317253 in Books
- Published on: 2011-03-29
- Released on: 2011-03-29
- Original language: French
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.60" h x .70" w x 5.00" l, .55 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 336 pages
Review
''[A] meticulously observed story of love and greed . . . Reminiscent of King Lear, it also resonates today with the clarity of the poet's barbed pen . . . (Narrator) Frederick Davidson is brilliant, deadening his voice for the dreadful daughters and their ghastly husbands, as well as portraying each ridiculous tenant in the boardinghouse . . . But it is Goriot's deathbed scene that causes the hairs to rise on the backs of listeners' neck. Listeners…cannot remain unmoved.'' --AudioFile
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French
From the Inside Flap
Introduction by Daniel Adamson
Most helpful customer reviews
44 of 44 people found the following review helpful.
This is the one...
By GeoX
There's a good reason that this is commonly used as an introduction to Balzac: it's one of his best and most focused works (not that I've read them all, of course...). He wasn't a wholly consistent author (and neither would *you* be, had you written 120+ novels)--at times, he can be downright tedious. Not here, though: Old Goriot is a fast read, and utterly gripping.
The character of Goriot is handled quite delicately: Balzac plays mercilessly on our sympathy for an old man victimized by his daughters (intentional shades of King Lear here). It's not a uni-dimensional depiction, however; as Goriot's boundless love seems at times to go beyond the merely paternal--he may be a Christ-figure, but he's certainly not a straightforward one. Of course, the real show-stealer here is Vautrin, the master criminal. As much as Balzac fancied himself a historian, he was really at his most entertaining when he went over the top, as he does here: Vautrin is wonderfully demonic, and one can't but get a kick out of reading him. In contrast to these twin personalities, which tower above anyone else in the book, you have the titular protagonist, Eugene de Rastignac, a perfectly ordinary sort of guy--your archetypical 'young man from the provinces'. He provides a good counterpoint to all the madness going on, and you can't help but like the guy, even if he's not really an extraordinary person.
Anyway: you should read this. Yes--YOU. I mean come on, you really ought to read at least one Balzac in your life. And if you like it, you can go on to Lost Illusions and Cousin Bette. Highly recommended.
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
An exemplary tragicomedy
By A.J.
Balzac's "Old Goriot" both celebrates and satirizes early 19th Century Parisian society and its idiosyncrasies. In terms of the variety of characters it introduces and the themes covered, it is a novel of incredibly wide scope, written with efficiency and some of the most beautiful prose, at least via Marion Crawford's English translation.
Goriot is an elderly gentleman living in a Paris boardinghouse in 1819. He used to be a prosperous vermicelli merchant, but hard times of late have forced him to pawn off his remaining precious possessions and move into the cheapest room available in the house. Since running afoul of the landlady Madame Vauquer, whose romantic attentions he once spurned, he has become an object of ridicule to the other boarders, due to his shabby clothes and apparent senility.
Most of the novel's action, however, centers around another of the boarders, a law student named Eugene de Rastignac who comes from a modest family. Rastignac's situation and motives are easy for any urban young man to identify with: He is eager to climb into the upper echelons of Paris society, but he finds to his dismay that the fashionable Parisian women are not interested in paupers. His wealthy cousin, Madame de Beauseant, advises him that he must be ruthless to make it in high society. With his cousin's help, Rastignac acquaints himself with two young society matrons, Anastasie, the Countess de Restaud, and Delphine, the Baroness de Nucingen, who happen to be Goriot's daughters.
Goriot's relationship to his daughters provides the basis for the novel. He spoiled them rotten as little girls; consequently, they grew up irresponsible, greedy, and ungrateful. Having married wealthy men, they both seek consolation from their unhappy marriages through reckless spending and extramarital beaus. Despite their faults, Goriot loves and cares for his daughters with something more like a neurotic obsession than warm, paternal devotion. You can't help feel sorry for the guy, suffering from his delusions, selling everything he owns, and living in squalor so that his daughters, who are unable or unwilling to fend for themselves or fight their own battles, can stay financially solvent.
There is an interesting subplot involving another boarder at Madame Vauquer's house, a devilish, unscrupulous fellow named Vautrin who may not be what he initially appears to be. Vautrin knows Rastignac is trying to get his foot in the door of Parisian society and he knows he needs money to do it. He proposes this scheme: Rastignac will marry a poor girl dwelling at the boardinghouse named Victorine; Vautrin will have Victorine's brother killed so that she'll inherit the whole of her father's fortune, which will bring Rastignac into big money and high society, and he can pay Vautrin for collusion. The way Balzac plays out this scenario without letting it become an interference with the main story line of Rastignac's relationship to Goriot's daughters is quite a deft feat of plotting.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Inadequate Translation of GORIOT
By reading man
The problem here is the translation. Done by Ellen Marriage for the Dent collected edition of Balzac at the beginning of the 20th century, it can be best described as workwomanlike but anachronistic. There are too many stilted passages and archaic word choices of the "Gadzooks" type.
A better choice is Raphael's version for the Nortion series or even Marian Cooper's in Penguin, though it was done 50 years ago.
The yarn itself is one of Balzac's best, though you can find dissenters (Martin Turnell, no fan of Balzac, calls it one of his worst in THE NOVEL IN FRANCE). To be honest, the best of Balzac is not as good as the best of Flaubert, Stendhal, or Proust, but given his ability to keep the reader turning pages in spite of ragged prose and melodramatic excess, GORIOT is still "living literature" and a classic of French literature.
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