Della lettura (imposta) di questo romanzo, risalente a ormai più di dieci anni fa, ricordo in maniera molto molto vivida che alcune pagine, in cui Zola elenca tutta una serie di cibi esposta ai Mercati Generali, mi avevano scatenato un sottile ma REALE senso di nausea. Sono sicura che, dietro l’impersonalità naturalistica e asettica, l’intento dell’autore in quelle pagine fosse proprio quello di saziare in maniera nauseabonda il lettore con tali immagini. La lettura non si è ridotta solo a questo, certo, ma talvolta alcuni romanzi rimangono impressi nella nostra mente per i motivi più disparati. In questo caso, è per la POTENZA della parola scritta.

Pauvre Florent. A falsely accused escapee from French Guiana arrives home a much changed man - to a much changed Paris. It's Zola's third book and easy to see how this laid the foundation for his future works of art. While this book in no way compares to Nana, L'Assomoir, Germinal, or his other masterpieces, it is loaded with wonderful symbolism related to food and justice. Les Halles itself represents the gastronomic center of Europe, therefore the world. A character's description of local residents as either "fat" (bourgeois, complacent) or "thin" (needy, revolutionary) again ties the theme together. Zola's descriptions of the lavish foods produced and sold in the neighborhood call to mind the aristocracy's gluttony and greed during the Second Empire. (Zola himself was quite a big eater, apparently.)

Instead of fat versus thin, Zola could have just as easily divided his characters into those who exploit animals for profit, and those who don't. (Florent actually swoons when he witnesses pigeons being slaughtered for the poultry dealer.) Zola's butchers, fishwives, and butter/cheese merchants are universally unsympathetic. Those who make their livings in fruits, vegetables, or flowers are idealized - such as Mme Francois who rescues Florent in the opening pages. It's again quite symbolic that characters who will so thoughtlessly kill and gut a fish, or make sausages out of animal blood, would think little of killing, gutting, and making sausage of their fellow man.

I just encountered this quote from Zola, which I find interesting in the context of this analysis: “The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous.”

For all Zola's beliefs in justice, and his progressive politics, it's important to keep in mind he is a "naturalist"/realist. Therefore there's little justice in his novels, and Ventre de Paris is no exception. Pauvre Florent.

I’ve challenged myself to read the classic Rougon-Macquart book series by Émile Zola - in order. The Belly of Paris is the third of twenty novels, so it’ll take a while :)
The books tell compelling human stories and are down to earth and realistic in style. They provide a fascinating and authentic snapshot of life in France in the mid 1800’s.
This loosely linked series was written over a twenty two year period and is seen as Zola’s greatest achievement. The books I’ve read so far have been accessible (especially the modern translations) and many of the novels have been turned into films and tv series.
It’s the 1859 in Paris. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte having been elected President of France and wresting much power from the Monarchy, has taken things a massive step further - he and his party have staged a coup d'état enabling him to dissolve government and take complete control of France. This period, known as the Second Empire is the backdrop to Zola’s book cycle.
Rather than being all about politics though, Zola’s aim is to study, through the branches of two very different families (the Rougons and the Macquarts) how their heritage and environment acts upon their lives.
Each book looks at a different section of French society.
In the case of this novel the theme is food and the feeding of France, with the centre of the action being Les Halles the massive glass and cast iron central market of Paris.
A rake thin, exhausted and starved man is found lying by the side of the road by a convoy of farmers as they slowly, trundle their produce into the centre of the city. It’s 4am and they kindly pick him up and deliver him to his estranged brother and sister-in-law, who own a smart ‘Charcuterie’ adjacent to ‘Les Halles’. We learn the man is called Florent, has escaped from a far flung prison and is making his way home - he’s a quiet, thoughtful, idealist who was incarcerated during the 1848 revolution.
Florent is at first an enigma to those around him, then he’s treated with warmth ......... and finally with distrust, in a narrative in which half baked political intrigue, petty rivalries and malicious gossip conspire to become very dangerous.
Life within the soaring, fretted halls of Les Halles is meticulously described. The sights, sounds and smells are palpable, stifling even. The sensuous descriptions of food are endless, and gluttony is a constant theme.
The character sketches are sharp - from the powerful, controlling matriarchs of the fish, dairy and meat markets to the men, comically self important as they ineffectually plot and scheme.
Thís is a colourful, bustling, story set among Paris’s working classes, shot through with social commentary and humour, and although not the most well known book of the series it was an enjoyable, fun and illuminating journey back in time.

Links to my reviews of the previous books:
The Fortune of the Rougons
The Kill

The more Zola I read the more I just simply love his stories.I am seriously contemplating reading them in French just to see what its like in the original language.This 3rd installment of 20 in the Rougon-Macquart family saga.His descriptiveness reaches new heights in this book.I felt I was walking through "Les Halles" market with every sentence I read.This is what classic literature is all about.

3.5 stars

I was both glutted, and gutted, by this third novel in les Rougon Macquart series, for the book swings from utter starvation to a surfeit of every imaginable food. It is Zola's intent to demonstrate the gluttony of state by juxtaposing it against the misery of the working poor; in both cases, I became queasy with despair, for there is never a just answer to the injustice of life.

While the contrasts worked well in the broader context of outlining the inherent sins of the Second Empire, it did not work all that well in procuring enough sympathy for the right side -- for it seems Zola lost himself in the very descriptiveness of gluttony. Rather than portraying it as a disease, he almost became the disease in an ironic twist of descriptive excess, revelling in the very lechery of his language. Page after page after page of endless descriptions of food became the nausea of the book. I found it to be quite a slog, at one point, and almost gave it up. The irony not lost on me is that I should be reading this throughout the days of Lent. (Even as a recovering catholic, I feel the weight of the purple shroud on my shoulders at this time of year. See what I mean? Now I'm doing it too -- indulging in the excess of language. It's really such a weighty book, and leaves no room for the imagination.)

Overcome by the sights and smells of Les Halles, I could not even summon the requisite sympathy for Florent, our hapless would-be protagonist. His story is overdone as well -- the luckless hero who walks right back into his own worst nightmare, pulled along more by inertia than determination to seek true justice. This character befuddled me utterly because he doesn't seem to fit, at all, into Zola's master plan: that of painting the revolutionary heroes with empathy and spirit. Instead, he comes across as a dejected and already-defeated malingerer.

I, in turn, was quite -- defeated -- by this novel. Someday I may return to it, and work my way through it again to see if it comes across more clearly. Perhaps I would have more luck if I sipped it accompanied by a pure broth.

As other reviewers have noted, this story has been done better by Dickens and Hugo. In Dickens, for one, it is a far, far better tale, told with less indigestion.

If there had been less food for thought, it might have merited a 4 star rating.

The main character Florent is my kinda people politically. He's active and I guess a revolutionary. He brings alot of the action into the book with his believes and everything he has gone through, also, the fishermen wives have it in for him but in that part he was very much inactive and those women walked all over him.
That was some great story development though!
Anyone who has read it can tell you that the ending is one of the best ever. "Those bastards!" That had me smiling for a while after finishing. You can see the ending miles away but that's so not the point, it's the writing and every character's point of view on it that's the point.
Kind of concluding each character's story sort of.
Zola emphasizes in this book how life goes on and everyone goes about their business no matter what happens around them. It will inevitably always be so.

Paintbrush with oil paint on a classical palette, Hedda Gjerpen

Also known as 'The Fat and the Thin'*

Zola painted in words the Paris food market of Les Halles in the mid 19th century. I found his eloquent passages intoxicating...lapping them up like a purring cat with a bowl of cream...(oh, oh...that skews me to the chubby side)! I felt I was the paint at the end of the brush...lush & creamy...enjoying each stroke no matter what was being rendered whether it could be labeled ugly or beautiful. I missed not a word. I found the plot an afterthought to that. I kept an eye on it...but it did not compel my reading.

The politics I thought were thin. There seemed a naivete in the characterization of the fat & thin. There were no real power brokers in the cast of characters...a shopkeeper, the market people, the street urchins, a tavern owner...the fishwives...the dissidents...the paper doll men. All were sometimes farcically, sometimes tragically, one in the machinations of power. A tale of divide and conquer.

The descriptive was the ingenuity of this book...the opera of human interaction, the symphony of sound, the cacophony of smells...painted so deftly & delicately & democratically. The character of Les Halles was a living breathing structure...the belly of Paris...but also the beating heart.

*I recommend this Oxford edition and Brian Nelson's translation. Vizetelly, a contemporary and friend of Zola's translated Le Ventre de Paris and titled it "The Fat and the Thin"...but altered it with Victorian sensitivity.

شکم پاریس یا چاق و لاغر سومین کتاب از مجموعه بیست کتابی روگن ماکاره و اولین کتاب مجموعه که به طور کامل به طبقه کارگر میپردازه و درسته که به پای شاهکاری مثل ژرمینال نمیرسه اما زولا به خوبی تونسته فضای سال های اول حکومت شارل لویی ناپلئون رو به تصویر بکشه. داستان کتاب حول محور بازار بزرگ و معروف پاریس میگرده و دو روی متضاد فروشندگان این بازار و به طور کلی فضای پاریس در دوران امپراطوری دوم رو نشون میده. از یک سو بازاری رنگارنگ و پویا و از سوی دیگر شرارت، خباثت، حسادت و بی اعتمادی فروشندگان نسبت به همدیگر

i as a huge fat slob appreciate a fat positive novel in these fat-shaming times.

The Kill precedes The Belly of Paris in Émile Zola’s twenty-book sequence on the Rougon-Macquart family, and whereas the former novel emphasizes a focus on material gain—money, property, personal possessions—the latter describes the feeding of the city of Paris. Almost all the action of The Belly of Paris takes place in the vicinity of Les Halles, which is a marketplace complex selling every manner of fish and fowl, various meats, fruit and vegetables, any number of dairy products, and flowers galore. In fact, throughout the novel, Zola expends an overly-generous number of words describing Les Halles.

This is the story of Florent, a recent escapee from Cayenne, better known as the infamous Devil’s Island penal colony, to which France condemned all its convicted felons. When unjustly arrested and convicted several years ago, it was simply a case of Florent being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He now returns to a Paris that is completely transformed thanks to the aggressive urban renewal program of the self-proclaimed Emperor of France, Louis-Napoleon. Florent’s mental and physical well-being is thrown out of balance, and he drifts without direction, despite being taken in by his younger brother Quenu, treated generously with food and lodging, and given a job.

It's difficult discern a dominant plot in the story: rather several mini-plots seem to emerge. As Florent integrates with the local population he develops a growing awareness of French politics, and though he was not an activist when arrested before, he feels he should perhaps be one now. Accordingly, he begins to imagine—and commits to paper—what it might take to overthrow the administration. Another mini-plot is that unwittingly, Florent attracts the romantic attention of Lisa, his sister-in-law and half-owner of a profitable charcuterie, and Louise Méhudin, another marketplace vendor. Yet another teaser is the fact that Quenu and Lisa inherited the charcuterie and money, a share of which should go to Florent. Finally, there is Claude Lantier, nephew to Lisa, a painter passionately committed to his art, and who befriends Florent (both Lisa and Claude are born on the illegitimate side of the Rougon-Marquart family tree). What, if anything, becomes of these potential storylines as they alternately bubble up and subside makes up the story in The Belly of Paris.

Although vastly entertaining, readers may experience disappointment that no one plot gains enough heft to outweigh the others. If readers can tolerate periodic but lengthy descriptions of the diverse edible wares of the marketplace, they will find that the novel moves along at a brisk pace; and in fairness, it remains true to the literary aims of Zola, which translator Brian Nelson states in his excellent introduction. He suggests that Zola uses fiction to illustrate “ways in which human behavior is determined by heredity and environment; and to use the symbolic possibilities of a family whose heredity is tainted to represent a diseased society—the dynamic but corrupt France of Napoleon III’s Second Empire (1852-70).”

Zola’s prose is beautifully elegant and simple, and his characters—seemingly a cast of thousands, once again—are memorable enough. In a series of twenty novels, written approximately over the same number of years, I expect some to be better than others. It still remains an admirable literary feat that Zola was able to conceive and outline all twenty novels during 1868 and 1869.

I had put off reading Zola for so long, and had for so long underestimated him as a writer. This is a wonderful book. Rich, humane, marvelously long descriptions, funny, full of irony and wit and vivid characters. The set pieces of Marjoline and Cadine, scampering about the girders, are truly magnificent.

By turns gross, gruesome, smelly, and wonderful. This is Zola's portrayal of the Les Halles food market of Paris in the mid to late 19th century. The market itself, in its vibrancy of color, activity, and architecture is given as a metaphor for life in the Second Empire. It is a symbol of plenty and prosperity, perhaps broadly reflective of the social reforms and the promise of industrialization of France at the time. But Les Halles has another side as well: the hidden spaces where animals are killed and processed for sale, where stinky cheeses are fermented, where waste water and blood and mud and worse washes through. Zola presents this contrast, captured in his wonderfully evocative naturalist style of writing as a conflict between what he calls the "Fats" and the "Thins."

The "Fats" as portrayed in the book are those who are complacent and happy with their lives under Napoleon III, who rose to power as the result of a coup d'état in 1851. The social reforms elevated some who, as Zola presents them, became more interested in preserving what they had gained without acknowledging the expense. The "Thins" are the have nots or those who are unhappy with the loss of freedoms and voice. Les Halles is used to highlight a dual understanding of the "Fat" being both the result of comfort and complacency from having ones needs amply met but also a more insidious sense of "fattening" as animals are before being processed into food.

Les Halles is the belly of Paris, the stomach that processes food that fuels the life of the city just as the contents of the market fuel the lives of people who purchase its goods. But behind the stalls and displays of plenty are the more violent and gruesome processing, chewing, and disposal of waste that are necessary entailments of the metaphor. And discontent with the socio-political reality that those processes represent is not easily sustained when people are happy with what they have and are suspicious of activities that threaten what they perceive to be the good life.

This was another book in the Rogoun Macquart series, this time following two descendents on the Macquart side: Lisa Quenu and her nephew Claude Lantier. Although the Macquart side is portrayed as having the constitutional predisposition to addiction and vice, I'm convinced that Zola's is not reducing those descendents to their family traits because although they make questionable choices it is easy to see how the stimulus is social and political.