In A Dilemma, which was first serialized soon after the publication of À rebours in 1884, Huysmans once again gives us a satirical look at this cruel power. This time, however, the victim is not an animal but a poor, unmarried, pregnant woman named Sophie, the unlucky mistress of Jules—unlucky because Jules died without marrying her or leaving behind a will. Now, Jules’s father (Monsieur Lambois) and grandfather (Maître Le Ponsart) will do anything to protect their fortune and reputation from this woman, who only asked them for a little money just to get by.

Legally, Sophie is not entitled to anything. She’s also not much of a threat to the two men, but that doesn’t stop them from waging war against her. After all, Lambois and Le Ponsart have spent their lives chewing up women and spitting them out, so why should they treat Jules’s mistress any differently? In fact, they’re not convinced that Sophie’s some naïve, innocent girl. In one scene, Le Ponsart, a notary who does most of the dirty work, goes through Jules’s desk to look for a will. Sophie doesn’t know how to handle him, but Le Ponsart takes her silence for scheming:

“Goodness!” thought Maître Le Ponsart, “this cheeky little hussy is tough; she’s afraid of compromising herself by opening her mouth.” He turned his back to her, his belly before the table; he began to feel exasperated, trying to decide where to begin; given the mean he presumed that this woman had adopted, he would have to dot every i, grope his way forward, haphazardly attack an entrenched enemy lying in wait for him. “Could she have a will in hand?” he asked himself, his temples suddenly damp with sweat.

The irony is that despite his ability to make people fear him, Le Ponsart has a weakness for certain types of women. In one of the novella’s more amusing scenes, he spurns the advances of a prostitute but then changes his mind when she decides to go with a younger man. He doesn’t like to lose to anyone else, yet after all is said and done, the prostitute ends up robbing him.

Meanwhile, Sophie turns to Madame Champagne, a so-called “helper of the poor.” (It’s no coincidence, by the way, that she shares her name with an alcoholic beverage: throughout the novella, there are plenty of references to drinking and the artificial good-feelings it can sometimes bring.) Champagne, who thinks her gift of gab and ability to keep track of gossip makes up for a lack of business sense, isn’t much help; in fact, she takes on Sophie’s cause more to serve herself rather than to truly help the woman in need.

Even though the novella is just under 80 pages, it is packed with venom. Although Huysmans’s main target is the bourgeois, he also shows how Champagne’s tactics—and her ignorance of people like Le Ponsart—only end up making things worse. He also exposes the folly of people in Champagne’s circles, such as Madame Dauriette, who “bore the classic characteristics of a leech” and reveres her benefactor as much as she does the Virgin Mary. Even Sophie’s parents, who are only mentioned in passing, and Sophie herself, who ends up placing too much faith and trust in Champagne, are not spared.

Yet, what’s rather surprising is that Hyusmans—who, according to translator Justin Vicari, “thrived on irascible contradictoriness”—tries to balance his attack on Le Ponsart and Lambois with psychological insight into their motives. He also shows how these men, who live in the country, are products of the dog-eat-dog culture that thrives in Paris. For example, as a young man, Le Ponsart started his career in the city and learned that to save money, you have to be cleverer than other people. Later, his son-in-law, a former hosier, lived by the cutthroat ways of the Parisian political system.

It’s this contrariness that makes this novella such an intriguing work, and as Vicari points out in his introduction, set Hyusmans apart from his contemporaries like Gustave Flaubert, who preferred a more journalistic approach to his subjects. Its viciousness may not be for everyone, but for a lesson on how powerful greed can be—a lesson that is still relevant today—one should definitely pick up A Dilemma.

(We love you, Wakefield!!!)

Here’s the beginning of Chris’s piece:

In Joris-Karl Hyusmans’s most popular novel, À rebours (Against Nature or Against the Grain, depending on the respective translated edition), there is a famous scene where the protagonist, the decadent Jean des Esseintes, starts setting gemstones on the shell of a tortoise. The tortoise, of course, is defenseless to Esseintes, who attaches so many gems that the creature cannot move. Eventually, their weight causes the tortoise to die, and the scene shows how the rich can use their wealth to crush the poor.

In A Dilemma, which was first serialized soon after the publication of À rebours in 1884, Huysmans once again gives us a satirical look at this cruel power. This time, however, the victim is not an animal but a poor, unmarried, pregnant woman named Sophie, the unlucky mistress of Jules—unlucky because Jules died without marrying her or leaving behind a will. Now, Jules’s father (Monsieur Lambois) and grandfather (Maître Le Ponsart) will do anything to protect their fortune and reputation from this woman, who only asked them for a little money just to get by.

For the rest of the review, go here.

For Vasseur the picturesque resort town in the Pyrenées does not offer the sensory calm prescribed by his doctor. Instead, when Vasseur looks out at the mountains he sees a foreboding presence, an enclosure that oppresses and suppresses, that draws to it discouragement and despair. An acquaintance tells Vasseur that landscapes are states of mind, and as Vasseur immerses himself (and us) in stories involving madness, dishonesty, and acts of despotism against the weak and poor, the shadows cast by the mountains weigh disturbingly upon Vasseur’s mind and his accumulating journal entries become darker by the day.

From time to time Mirbeau leavens the heaviness of Twenty-One Days: a few of the stories are light and humorous; one or two others strain credulity to the point of absurdity. Mirbeau obviously has fun naming his characters, and with some—Dr. Triceps, Madame de Parabola, Clara Fistula, Jean-Jules-Joseph Lagoffin—his wit rivals that of Charles Dickens.

Mirbeau, in addition to being a successful, turn-of-the century playwright, travel writer and art critic, wrote a handful of well-regarded novels, and Twenty-One Days is considered one of his unconventional works. Conventional or not, Twenty-One Days leaves the reader unsatisfied. Vasseur is an empty vessel, a protagonist who does little more than make a written account of the many stories told to him. Most often he plays no role in these accounts, nor does he engage with his raconteurs in meaningful discussions about them. Instead, Vasseur is like the master of ceremonies in a long variety show in which each act is a bit different from the last, but when strung together, the performances soon feel redundant, lacking in nuance and meaning.

Twenty-One Days of a Neurasthenic is not without merit. Mirbeau’s prose style is pleasurable, never a chore to read, and his artistry with the written word is evident in Mr. Vicari’s skillful translation. And as a critique of his times it is fun to see Mirabeau poke at many of the pillars of French society—government, military, the bourgeois, artists, corporations, the medical and legal professions—and (as with other of his writings) the great controversy of his time, the Dreyfus affair. Who could quarrel with Mirbeau’s moral that it is man’s lack of compassion and justice that makes his surroundings feel possessed of a menacing mien and that darkens the mind and spirit of humanity?

Now that the Women’s World Cup of Literature is nearing the final results, we’re resuming a less competitive path for reviews. Here’s the beginning of Lori’s:

Twenty-One Days of a Neurasthenic is not a novel in the traditional sense. Rather, it is a collection of vignettes recorded by journalist Georges Vasseur in his diary during a month spent in the Pyrenées Mountains to treat his nervous condition. Vasseur’s friends and acquaintances provide the material for his journal entries and they, like their respective stories, are connected only loosely—the characters through their relationships with Vasseur and his coterie; the stories in their common theme of man’s cruelty and injustice toward his fellow man.

For Vasseur the picturesque resort town in the Pyrenées does not offer the sensory calm prescribed by his doctor. Instead, when Vasseur looks out at the mountains he sees a foreboding presence, an enclosure that oppresses and suppresses, that draws to it discouragement and despair. An acquaintance tells Vasseur that landscapes are states of mind, and as Vasseur immerses himself (and us) in stories involving madness, dishonesty, and acts of despotism against the weak and poor, the shadows cast by the mountains weigh disturbingly upon Vasseur’s mind and his accumulating journal entries become darker by the day.

Go here to read the rest of the review.