The Vatard Sisters Read Online Free
a physiological and psychological eye that is fairly good and broad, so that one can tell him quite plainly that his book is nothing but a poor copy of M. Zola’s and he is mightily mistaken if he imagines that it is sufficient, in order to obtain a success similar to that which L’Assommoir had the good fortune to achieve, to write a book which a sterner reader than ourselves would say was nothing but the portrayal of unspeakable morals…
By retaining only the infected parts from M Zola’s only too infamous book, M Huismans [ sic ]has written a novel which nothing can excuse…
( Le Soir , 19 March 1879)
Aurélien Scholl, a journalist renowned for his cutting, ironic manner (which had led to him frequently being called out for duels as a result), also used comparisons with L’Assommoir to Huysmans’ detriment, arguing that at least Zola had other tools in his literary armoury:
The Vatard Sisters has its admirers, so much the better for M. Huysmans and M. Charpentier. As for me, although I’m aware the author has a very real talent, I’ll wait for a different novel than this one to make a judgment.
There is in The Vatard Sisters a desperate monotony of description. The atmosphere always smells bad; every ten pages a heavy stench obliges one of his characters to “open the fanlight”.
Every time the author mentions a pair of boots they’re oozing and stinking; of a gathering of the fair sex M. Huysmans tells us about the women’s sweat, adding that there was “a strong smell like that of goats that had gambolled in the sun,” and he concludes by saying that these odours “mingled with the putrid emanations of cold meat and wine, acrid cat’s piss, and the nauseous stench of the toilets.”
Well that may be true, but I prefer other things.
It’s Naturalism, so they tell me.
But excuse me. When a certain number of female workers, even those in the bookbinding trade, get together, there are other things than smells. There are physical appearances, different characters, various emotions. However, I swear to you that after finishing the book I’d be hard put to it to say what Céline or Désirée looked like.
( L’Événement, 23 March 1879)
Firmin Boissin, a Catholic journalist and writer who went on to slate a number of Huysmans’ subsequent books, including À rebours and Là-bas , fulminated in typical fashion against the crudities of Naturalism he felt the book contained:
M. Émile Zola has created a school, and the disciples of this master, who can’t equal him in talent, have far surpassed him in filthy extravagances, in Naturalistic stupidity. Here is a Belgian, M. J. K. Huysmans, whose debauched pen doesn’t recoil from the description of anything, not even what occurs in certain houses of ill-repute. Marthe, the first novel by this shameless writer, is the cynical and brutal history of a prostitute. It would show a lack of respect to our readers to analyse this obscene production. And from the same author we have The Vatard Sisters , which isn’t much better, but whose subject one can at least talk about.
From time to time, the author tries to introduce poetry into his disgusting descriptions, a poetry which murmurs its song, in the evening, in deserted streets, through the immortal mouthpiece of “a softly gurgling urinal, its entrance bubbling with a froth of chlorine.” Enough, it’s too much.
( Polybiblion Revue Bibliographique, October 1880)
Interestingly, most of the reviewers who took such an outraged stance at the “filth” and the “obscenities” they affected to find in the book, seemed to have no qualms about reproducing the most offensive passages in the columns of their paper. Huysmans was not unaware of the likely reaction to his novel, indeed he was even looking forward to it: “I hope we’ll create a fine stir,” he wrote to Hannon in September 1878, a few months before the book’s publication. To Lemonnier, he was even more explicit: “I know that with
By retaining only the infected parts from M Zola’s only too infamous book, M Huismans [ sic ]has written a novel which nothing can excuse…
( Le Soir , 19 March 1879)
Aurélien Scholl, a journalist renowned for his cutting, ironic manner (which had led to him frequently being called out for duels as a result), also used comparisons with L’Assommoir to Huysmans’ detriment, arguing that at least Zola had other tools in his literary armoury:
The Vatard Sisters has its admirers, so much the better for M. Huysmans and M. Charpentier. As for me, although I’m aware the author has a very real talent, I’ll wait for a different novel than this one to make a judgment.
There is in The Vatard Sisters a desperate monotony of description. The atmosphere always smells bad; every ten pages a heavy stench obliges one of his characters to “open the fanlight”.
Every time the author mentions a pair of boots they’re oozing and stinking; of a gathering of the fair sex M. Huysmans tells us about the women’s sweat, adding that there was “a strong smell like that of goats that had gambolled in the sun,” and he concludes by saying that these odours “mingled with the putrid emanations of cold meat and wine, acrid cat’s piss, and the nauseous stench of the toilets.”
Well that may be true, but I prefer other things.
It’s Naturalism, so they tell me.
But excuse me. When a certain number of female workers, even those in the bookbinding trade, get together, there are other things than smells. There are physical appearances, different characters, various emotions. However, I swear to you that after finishing the book I’d be hard put to it to say what Céline or Désirée looked like.
( L’Événement, 23 March 1879)
Firmin Boissin, a Catholic journalist and writer who went on to slate a number of Huysmans’ subsequent books, including À rebours and Là-bas , fulminated in typical fashion against the crudities of Naturalism he felt the book contained:
M. Émile Zola has created a school, and the disciples of this master, who can’t equal him in talent, have far surpassed him in filthy extravagances, in Naturalistic stupidity. Here is a Belgian, M. J. K. Huysmans, whose debauched pen doesn’t recoil from the description of anything, not even what occurs in certain houses of ill-repute. Marthe, the first novel by this shameless writer, is the cynical and brutal history of a prostitute. It would show a lack of respect to our readers to analyse this obscene production. And from the same author we have The Vatard Sisters , which isn’t much better, but whose subject one can at least talk about.
From time to time, the author tries to introduce poetry into his disgusting descriptions, a poetry which murmurs its song, in the evening, in deserted streets, through the immortal mouthpiece of “a softly gurgling urinal, its entrance bubbling with a froth of chlorine.” Enough, it’s too much.
( Polybiblion Revue Bibliographique, October 1880)
Interestingly, most of the reviewers who took such an outraged stance at the “filth” and the “obscenities” they affected to find in the book, seemed to have no qualms about reproducing the most offensive passages in the columns of their paper. Huysmans was not unaware of the likely reaction to his novel, indeed he was even looking forward to it: “I hope we’ll create a fine stir,” he wrote to Hannon in September 1878, a few months before the book’s publication. To Lemonnier, he was even more explicit: “I know that with
Readers choose
Scott Nicholson
John Dahlgren
Nancy Warren
Iain Rowan
Morgan Wolfe
Conn Iggulden
Victoria Klahr
Andrew Cracknell
Will Shetterly