Balzac: A Biography

Rating:
Summary: The Napoleon of Literature
Review: All biographers have to figure out a workable balance between exploring their subject's personal life, works, and societal context. With a man like Balzac this can be exceedingly difficult, because everything about the man - his personality, his writings, and his milieu - are so much larger than life that it seems almost impossible to do them justice.

In this life of Balzac, Graham Robb concentrates on Balzac's psychology. We are confronted with the great writer's enormous ego (he considered himself to be "the Napoleon of literature"), his astonishing output, his many love relationships with older women, and his grandiose failures in business. We see a man so driven that at one point he moved his cot into the printer's shop, keeping the presses going 24 hours a day as he corrected proofs while simultaneously writing new chapters!

Robb traces all this activity back to the roots: Balzac's innate, and nearly infinite, self-regard pouring endlessly into the emotional void induced by a disturbingly unaffectionate mother. Balzac becomes, therefore, a man who had to write, so much so that even his business failures and debts were self-inflicted, a subconscious way of spurring himself on to ever greater literary effort just to keep one step ahead of the creditors.

Throughout this biography, Robb uses extensive quotation to allow Balzac's novels to illuminate his life, and vice-versa. The resulting dialogue between the life and the works is both exciting and nuanced - indeed, so nuanced that Robb's book needs to be read carefully in places. It will also be helpful if the reader is on familiar terms with as many of Balzac's novels as possible - there are over 90 of them! Even readers who have read several of the novels in the past, would do well to refresh themselves before tackling this biography. Three good places to start would be "Le Pere Goriot," "Eugenie Grandet," and "La Cousine Bette," as they are representative of his best and Robb refers to them frequently. It's not always easy going, but readers who can meet the prerequisites will surely enjoy this fine and insightful biography.

Rating:
Summary: Another outstanding biography from Graham Robb!
Review: Graham Robb's biography of Balzac is every bit as good as
his truly excellent lives of Victor Hugo and Arthur Rimbaud.
Robb illuminates many obscure areas of Balzac's life and
thought, and so increases our understanding of this
magnificently eccentric genius.

One aspect which becomes clear is what we might call
"Balzac the counter-jumper" -- something for which many
contemporaries criticized him (unfairly). Balzac's father
was a peasant named Balssa, and the noble-sounding name
"de Balzac" was just something the family made up as they
went along. It is surely hard to think of another major
writer who was so much "on the make" as Balzac: there are
many indications that his prime motivator was money, not
art. If he had succeeded in his printing business and made
his fortune, he might never have written another book.

Maybe. But, then again, it may be that Balzac had an
enormous need to write, and that he occupied his unconscious
mind with schemes which would "force" him to write. Why
did the printing business fail? Why did all of Balzac's
financial schemes fail? (He was not a stupid man.) And then
we have to take a look at Balzac's unending psychological
game with his Mountain Of Debt. He would get (say)
$500,000 in debt, and then figuratively "chain" himself to
his desk, writing 18 hours a day, lashing himself with strong,
hot coffee, all in order to "write his way out of debt."
Well, the books appeared and the money flowed in -- but guess
what? Balzac went right out and spent (or wasted) more money,
so the Mountain Of Debt remained -- and he remained chained to
his desk. Balzac spent many, many years of his adult life in
this pathetic situation, and so his literary output was
of course enormous. And maybe that was the whole point of
the Mountain Of Debt. Who knows??

Well, what kind of books would you expect from such a man?
Given the immense amounts of coffee which Balzac consumed,
you might expect his tales to be slightly "speedy" -- perhaps
edged with a bit of paranoia, and slightly fabulous or
grotesque. And given the Mountain Of Debt and Balzac's
obsession with money, you might expect cash to play a
significant role in Balzac's books.

It turns out that these expectations are generally met.
Balzac's tales typically have plots within plots, and the plots
are frequently about money. More than that, the Balzacian vision
is at times blackly cynical -- everything has a price,
everything is for sale. I recently re-read the first fifty
pages of "Cousin Bette" and finally put it down with a
headache, utterly sickened by the evil machinations of all
the characters, and feeling completely unwilling to spend more
time with such monsters. After all, the book opens with
a wealthy, boring businessman attempting to seduce his best
friend's wife by offering her 200,000 francs, cash on the
barrelhead, and the story goes downhill from there....

But of course I'll go back and finish "Cousin Bette," and many
other novels by Balzac, because the man was a genius. He was
especially gifted at creating vivid and compelling characters,
and he was a true pioneer in French literature, being the first
author to introduce recognizably gay characters. (If you are
unable to figure out Vautrin and Rastignac in "Pere Goriot,"
realize that Vautrin is madly in love with Rastignac and take
it from there....)

So, once again, Robb has written an exemplary biography of a
major French writer. I suspect that Graham Robb is a scholar of
independent means who wrote these three lives out of simple
curiosity and pleasure, and I do believe I envy him!

Hats off, and highest recommendation!

Rating:
Summary: The Writer's Life Exposed
Review: I would rather read a Robb biography than just about anything else. Amazing in its recreation of France (especially Paris) during Balzac's life and in its depiction of the disarray of his life even unto death.

Rating:
Summary: Follow The Bouncing Balzac
Review: One of the major accomplishments of this biography is that it will make you want to go out and read all of Balzac. This is because Mr. Robb has sprinkled a liberal number of excerpts from the novels throughout his text. Balzac was both a keen observer and a tireless researcher, with an interest in, literally, everything. He was also tremendously sensitive. When you put all of these qualities together, you get prose that has great depth.....resonating between the internal and the external. Mr. Robb is the first one to point out that not everything that Balzac wrote was great or even good. He was obsessive.....a writing machine churning out thousands of words per day. He was deeply in debt and had to write just about non-stop in an attempt to get himself out of debt. Mr. Robb maintains a nice balance. He obviously has a tremendous fondness for his subject but he doesn't let that blind him to the great man's faults and contradictions. Balzac was very open and childlike.....he wore his heart on his sleeve and talked non-stop, rarely censoring himself. On the other hand, he was cunning and manipulative, using all sorts of "dodges" to flee from his numerous creditors. He also took advantage of other writers.....creating a sort of writing factory- hiring young, admiring, ambitious writers to write novels on his behalf. He expected these "laborers" to have the same superhuman energy that he possessed and would drive them mercilessly. But, in counterpoint, Balzac never gave up trying to pay off his debts and frequently he did pay people everything he owed them. He also took a genuine interest in the young writers he had working for him.....giving them worthwhile advice and he was also financially generous when he was in a position to be able to help. Balzac was a shrewd judge of human nature and was very intelligent. He could size up a person or a situation very quickly. His contemporaries commented that if a person read Balzac's novels and applied the vast amounts of information and wisdom to real life, they could make a fortune. But Balzac could not turn his genius into wealth. He would get himself into one harebrained scheme after another, and he could not control his profligate spending. No matter how hard he worked and how many books he wrote he was always getting himself deeper and deeper in debt. But he was an eternal optimist: the next scheme or best-selling novel was just around the corner, and then everything would be wonderful! Oftimes, once he had an idea for a book he considered it done. Forget the fact that he hadn't written a word. To Balzac, it was a concrete asset.....just as good as money in the bank. He was a human dynamo and tremendously hard working. Balzac was of the opinion that he wore himself out and Mr. Robb agrees. No one could maintain that intensity forever. (Balzac was only 51 when he died.) He was a fascinating man, as interesting as any of his characters, and Mr. Robb has done a splendid job depicting him.

Rating:
Summary: Balzac rendered for the late 20th Century
Review: One of the virtues of this biography is its repeated references to contemporary history and culture. By presenting aspects of Balzac's character with reference to the modern age, Robb makes Balzac a fully realized personality interpreted to us in our own terms. Every biographer and historian depicts events of earlier times in terms of a modern sensibility. Robb's accomplishment is in conveying Balzac to the 1990's.

He uses more of Balzac's own words to describe him than Andre Maurois' biography, the only other one that I have read. Balzac tells his own story, in a sense, and it is easier to sense the reality of the man, his drives, passions and contradictions. When Robb cannot state with certainty that something is true, he admits that he is engaging in speculation. He never presents these assumptions as undeniable historical fact.

All of the major events of Balzac's life are covered. He really does show how Balzac could have lived the lives of three or four people within fifty years. Balzac's profligacy still seems magical; it seems as though he were taking dictation from a voice inside his brain. Balzac does seem to have prophetic powers, evidenced by all the instances where his life would in some way be a reenactment of a story he had written two years earlier.

With a character like Balzac one inevitably asks for more detail. I would welcome more in depth treatment of his relationships with other writers such as George Sand, Alexander Dumas, and Victor Hugo. There are several people who are mentioned with no thorough explanation of how they came to know Balzac. In some instances, Robb is a little too vague and subtle in his conclusions.

He does convey the reality of the time in which Balzac lived, even in one instance describing the kind of carriage Balzac traveled in on one of his journeys and giving an approximate number of chairs Balzac wore out in the course of writing one story.

I cannot accuse Robb of any lack of research. He says that he has read most of the Comedie Humaine twice as well as all of Balzac's correspondence which is available. If Robb's subject were a figure less gargantuan than Balzac, I would be tempted to ask "What more can be said?" With Balzac, however, there never is a last word.