Nana [Paperback]

If you pick up this novel expecting to encounter a Holy Sinner, a prostitute with a Heart of Gold, you'll be sadly disabused. Anna Coupeau - dite Nana, an actress with no assets except her oozing sexuality - is in fact the granddaughter of Antoine Macquart and appeared as an abused child in Zola's earlier novel L'Assomoir; that's the linkage between this novel and the other nineteen novels of the Rougon/Macquart cycle. Nana is corrupted, odiously selfish, contemptuous of nearly everyone, especially the concupiscent old fools who squander their wealth and health on attempting to bind her to them. Her carnal magnetism is lush enough to dominate men of every rank and age, but (fortunately perhaps) her own willful whimsies and compulsions interfere repeatedly with her bedarkened self-interest. Her rise from gutter-wench to the cynosure of the Parisian demi-monde, and back to the gutter and yet again to palaces, is the narrative thread that holds this novel together, but Nana herself is its subject only as a metonymy for the Second Empire of Napoleon III, the depraved courtesan embodying the sluttish society that Emile Zola castigated in all the Rougon/Macquart series. Nana the woman does not "end" well; in fact her final curtain call is ghastly and disgusting. But the curtain call of the Second Empire was no more elevating; the novel Nana ends at the very moment of the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War - the debacle Zola portrayed in his novel Le Debacle - with Parisian mobs howling "to Berlin!, to Berlin!" outside the window of the room where Nana lies stricken with disfiguring small pox.

It's a grand literary irony that "Nana" was ever regarded as disreputable, tasteless,certainly amoral. The book seethes with moral censure; it's an indictment of a foul individual whose follies and 'sins' are congruent with the corrupt society through which she moves. Zola was the "Cato" of Paris, an indignant realist, more censorious than any clerical or political reformer. He was the "conscience" of his era. It makes more sense to regard "Nana" as a fiery sermon of damnation than as pornography.

This translation comes well recommended, but not by me, since I read "Nana" in French. Zola isn't easy to capture in English. If the translator chooses to render the text in the syntax and style of his British Victorian contemporaries, the brutal vigor of Zola's realism is compromised, but if another translator attempts to 'modernize' the text in the plainer, blunter American English of 20th C novelists, the incongruous anachronism is worse. Hey, it's worth learning to read French, even if you never master the spoken language, in order to access some of the greatest novels ever written.

You don't have to be a scholar of French literature (I'm not) to appreciate Nana. Set in the late 1860's and early 1870's, Zola's novel (the ninth in his Rougon-Macquart series) follows a talentless but beautiful stage actress whose physical charms (which she generously shares with upscale men) make her the talk of Paris. Nana is soon living well beyond the means of the various men who support her; their desire for her inevitably leads to their downfall, while the smiling Nana simply moves on to the next admirer.

Zola paints beautifully detailed portraits: the theater, the city, Parisian aristocracy and the crowds that clog the streets all come alive in vibrant color. The characters peopling the novel represent all the traits, good and (mostly) bad, that a sharp-eyed writer could hope to put on display: cruelty, lechery, indifference, pompousness, greed and corruption, occasionally offset by kindness and generosity. Zola was apparently saying something about the superficiality and decadence of society (Nana is ultimately doomed, as is the French empire), but from the modern reader's standpoint, the novel works as sort of an entertaining soap opera, a spoof of the upper class, an old school view of the sexual power women wield over men. Above all, it's often very funny. The novel is easy to read and well worth the time.

Sex, sex, and more sex- if there is a theme to Emile Zola's classic "Nana", it is sex. Not a graphic novel, for the sex is neither described nor actually included in the book, but every thought, action, desire, whim, of every character that dares to enter Zola's decadent world is obsessed and desiring of only one thing: Sex. It is a novel that would have made Freud proud!
The story centers around Nana, a Rubenesque, red headed beauty who takes Paris by storm when she appears on stage, in the nude, as the voluptuous Venus. Nana's shameless willingness to bare all coupled with her desire to sleep with any man available brings her instant fame and wealth in the Paris social scene as men, and women, clamor over themselves in an attempt to love this charitable lover.
Zola sets up the story as a series of set pieces, with each chapter essentially capturing one night in the life of a hedonistic Paris. Nights at the theater, orgies disguised as dinner parties, "Three's Company"-esque farces in Nana's bedroom as dozens of men hide in closets and behind curtains- each chapter not only pushes Nana further into notoriety but also details the debaucherous and sex obsessed society surrounding her. Without going into shocking detail, yet never hesitating to drop a curse word or two into the dialogue, Zola hints at deviances that would shock society today, yet with which he dismisses as a part of normal everyday Paris.
Surprisingly decadent, yet at the same time revealing of life in 19th century France, "Nana" is a tour-de-force of humor, ribadlry, social commentary, and excellent writing. Zola is at the top of his game here, capturing the lusty image of France that has become almost stereotypical. A must read!

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