September 25, 2008: PageTurners 7 p.m.

Book: Pére Goriot by Honoré de Balzac

Discussion:

We had a smaller group this month, several members having scheduling conflicts, but we did have two new faces and an interesting discussion. This month we read Pére Goriot by Honorè de Balzac. At our August meeting one member envisioned that this book would generate many thumbs down votes. Her prediction proved correct as four Page Turners voted down and only one voted up. However, there were three sideways voters, one of which convinced another who had yet to finish to continue plugging away.

The main detractors of the book seemed to be that it was a bit boring, a little depressing, and that the French names were hard to remember and differentiate. One reader made a list of the characters in order to help keep them straight. We also decided that the main character, Goriot, was too melodramatic, at least where his daughters were concerned. The book discusses how he would wait in the park all morning to catch a glimpse of one of them as her carriage drove by. This, combined with his total deterioration for their sake, seemed a bit over the top, yet we disliked the daughters for their lack of appreciation as well. One Page Turner poised the question of whether Goriot’s deterioration was the cause or effect of his son-in-laws’ rejection of him. We decided the two events were probably simultaneous. Goriot was already lacking in money from helping his daughters in arranging their marriages. His financial deterioration probably began then and had some physical decline associated with it. His sons’ denunciation may have just exacerbated his state.

We also spoke about the amount of detail in the book. Some found that it was too much, while others enjoyed Balzac’s style and use of language. One critic praised the author as one of the greatest novelists of all time, yet said his writing of French, the grammar, syntax, etc., was not excellent. This same critic disparaged Dostoevsky and Tolstoy’s Russian, in addition to Dickens’ English. This led us to discuss the translations of the book. Together, we had about five copies of the book, each translated by a different individual. One Page Turner recommended her translation, which included our novel and another, Eugénie Grandet. Due to the similarity between the second book’s title character’s name and our other main character Eugene Rastignac we thought the two novels might be related, as Balzac’s characters frequently reappeared in other books. This was not this case with these two, but as the Page Turner with this edition read both stories, she was able to give us her comparison between Père Goriot and another of the author’s works, which is always interesting.

The meeting ended with a discussion of the upcoming 2009 reading list. Several members turned in their votes, and I am now hard at work on finalizing the list. Flyers for upcoming programs were also distributed, and an announcement about the blog was made.