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kipahni's review against another edition
4.0
This is my first intro into the literary talent of Balzac (my only exposure prior to now is a reference in the "music man" musical song pick-a-little:
Maud:Professor, her kind of woman doesn't belong on any committee. Of course, I shouldn't tell you this but she advocates dirty books.
Harold:
Dirty books?!
Alma:
Chaucer
Ethel:
Rabelais
Eulalie:
Balzac!
Anyway back to the book. I knew I would enjoy this author when I read the lines"These words, so simple in themselves, were made great by the speaker's intonation, for his voice possessed a sort of mesmerizing charm. Are there not sertain voices, calm and gentle, that strike the ear much as the color ultramarine the eye?"
This pretty much sums up my feelings of this book. This moral tale is full of well rounded characters and discriptive places. I also have an affinity for the location of this book, so that makes me more bias in that if this book were to take place in early america I wouldn't have enjoyed it nearly as much.
Maud:Professor, her kind of woman doesn't belong on any committee. Of course, I shouldn't tell you this but she advocates dirty books.
Harold:
Dirty books?!
Alma:
Chaucer
Ethel:
Rabelais
Eulalie:
Balzac!
Anyway back to the book. I knew I would enjoy this author when I read the lines"These words, so simple in themselves, were made great by the speaker's intonation, for his voice possessed a sort of mesmerizing charm. Are there not sertain voices, calm and gentle, that strike the ear much as the color ultramarine the eye?"
This pretty much sums up my feelings of this book. This moral tale is full of well rounded characters and discriptive places. I also have an affinity for the location of this book, so that makes me more bias in that if this book were to take place in early america I wouldn't have enjoyed it nearly as much.
jasonfurman's review against another edition
4.0
Balzac can't help himself, despite a didactic premise about a society of selfless people doing anonymous works of charity he can't help but let his characters, intrigues, and places shine through. This is a recent translation of the rarely translated last book in the Human Comedy. While it's certainly nowhere near the top of that set of works it is well worth reading -- and a sad reminder that there must be dozens of other Balzac novels that are just as good that haven't been translated in over a century.
jmiae's review against another edition
4.0
When I picked up this translation at the local annual library book fair, I was confused. The cover and title have a distinctly late-twentieth century feel to them, but the author's name was vaguely familiar in an old-timey sort of way. Those contradictory characteristics, plus the unambiguously moralistic nature of the plot summary on the back jacket, convinced me to buy it.
As someone with translation studies background, translated literature will always hold a special place in my heart. And, likewise, when a translated novel is denied the dignity of a proper translator's note, my heart breaks a little. Happily, Jeremy Stump wrote an absolutely phenomenal translator's note that was even longer than the preface (hurrah!) and reading it before I began the novel itself was extremely useful.
I'm not going to write about the history of Balzac's collection of La Comédie humaine, because I am nowhere near an expert in French literature or Balzac. My French history is also apparently rubbish because I relied heavily on this edition's end notes to provide the much needed additional information. As do most authors who write for their contemporaries about their present, The Wrong Side of Paris is full of references to all sorts of cultural and social factoids that were lost on me. I remember very little from my AP European History course, apart from a vague idea of when the Revolution occurred, the approximate years of Napoleon's reign and a faint recollection that at one point the Bourbons were briefly placed back on the throne.
Instead, I'll just add a quick note for why I gave this four instead of five stars, even though I really did enjoy this. As much as I love dramatic, last-minute plot twists (in this sense, TWSOP felt like reading a French Dickensian novel), the story was slightly too caricatured. It was interesting to read about Paris as it was in the early/mid-nineteenth century, though.
As someone with translation studies background, translated literature will always hold a special place in my heart. And, likewise, when a translated novel is denied the dignity of a proper translator's note, my heart breaks a little. Happily, Jeremy Stump wrote an absolutely phenomenal translator's note that was even longer than the preface (hurrah!) and reading it before I began the novel itself was extremely useful.
I'm not going to write about the history of Balzac's collection of La Comédie humaine, because I am nowhere near an expert in French literature or Balzac. My French history is also apparently rubbish because I relied heavily on this edition's end notes to provide the much needed additional information. As do most authors who write for their contemporaries about their present, The Wrong Side of Paris is full of references to all sorts of cultural and social factoids that were lost on me. I remember very little from my AP European History course, apart from a vague idea of when the Revolution occurred, the approximate years of Napoleon's reign and a faint recollection that at one point the Bourbons were briefly placed back on the throne.
Instead, I'll just add a quick note for why I gave this four instead of five stars, even though I really did enjoy this. As much as I love dramatic, last-minute plot twists (in this sense, TWSOP felt like reading a French Dickensian novel), the story was slightly too caricatured. It was interesting to read about Paris as it was in the early/mid-nineteenth century, though.
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