Zola’s Money, the 18th in his 20 novel Rougon-Macquart series, centered on the Paris Stock Exchange, the Bourse, is as relevant and topical today in its detailed exposition of money markets as when it was first published in 1861.
The novel describes the spectacular rise and fall of the Universal Bank, established by the enigmatic and morally dubious Saccard (a Rougon by birth who has changed his name to avoid association with past scandal). Alongside providing riches beyond imagination to its founders, the bank sets out with loftier ambitions: to ameliorate the suffering of the poor; bring progress and civilization to the Middle East; and even to conquer the Jews by installing the Pope in Jerusalem (the translator is at pains to point out the anti-Semitic sentiments expressed in the novel belong to the characters and are not shared by Zola). However, from the beginning the bank is built on shaky foundations as regulations are flouted, the press manipulated and dividends paid to shareholders based on speculated rather than accumulated wealth. The banks manipulation of its share price to keep it ever rising soon prove unsustainable, enabling its enemies to swoop like vultures as soon as rumours of liquidity problems begin to surface.
In Money, Zola shows how speculation in the money markets creates a current of artificial optimism that sweeps along even the most industrious and thriftiest in society, turning them into dangerous gamblers where enough wealth is somehow never quite enough whilst there is still the prospect of even greater future gains. It also powerfully depicts the forceful and indiscriminate tidal wave of real human misery unleashed when the financial bubble does finally burst. The novel also examines Marxist ideals of a more equal distribution of wealth, but still concludes that cyclical patterns of boom and bust are likely to continue as men seek money in their vain attempts to shape destiny and become Master of the Universe.
The book in the photograph, published in 1894 by Chatto & Windus, is a first edition of the English translation by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, an English author and journalist who was also a personal friend of Zola.
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Following along a theme of reading works that Hitchcock turned into film, I decided to finally read the original text of Vertigo (D’entre les morts’ being its original French title), whose Saul Bass designed cover has for many a year adorned my bookshelf, to see how much it differed from the film.
The film surprisingly follows the book much more closely than I was expecting. However, there are a few notable differences. Instead of the landmarks of 1950s San Fransisco and it’s environs, the action takes place in Paris during the Second World War. The book’s historical setting, where the living are dead souls who occupy a submerged and shadowy wasteland of their memories, actually give the novel a more ethereal and depressing quality than even the film. Another notable difference is the absence of the character Midge who was the creation of the screenwriter Samuel A. Taylor.
Hitchcock’s narrative is much more playful than the book. In the book the reader learns the truth about Madeline at the same time as the central character. In the film the truth is revealed far quicker to the audience. This doesn’t actually lessen the audience’s sense of suspense but actually works to ‘make the audience suffer as much as possible’ by heightening the impending sense of doom.The end, when it does come, is far more brutal in the book and not quite as clever as the film, but no less disturbing.
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Whilst reading The Girl with The Golden Yo-Yo last week, the novel used to great comedic effect a reference to ‘Le motif secret,’ which it attributed to the French writer Andre Gide, so it seemed the right time to read some of his work.
Strait is the Gate is the story about a young man called Jerome, who falls in love with his cousin Alissa. Their love is, however, thwarted by Alissa’s misplaced sense of familial loyalty as well as religious fervor. However, this alone cannot explain the sadness and tragedy that unfolds. The more abstract, transcendental and metaphysical the expression of their love develops, the more distant and unattainable the physical consummation of their relationship seems possible. It is almost as if there is an underlying fear that the consummation of their relationship would lead to disappointment and the destruction of their love.
From reading this novellla I didn’t discern much more about ‘le motif secret’ but like Gide’s writing, it is something poetically and enigmatically ambiguous and unspoken that you need to interpret the meaning of for yourself.
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Judging books by their cover
