Balzac's Lives by Peter Brooks

Abstract

Reviewed by: Balzac's Lives by Peter Brooks Martine Wagner and John T. Booker Brooks, Peter. Balzac's Lives. New York Review Books, 2020. ISBN 978-1-68137-449-9. Pp. 266. The "lives" of the title are not those of Balzac himself (although the number of novels he wrote might make one suspect that he must have enjoyed more than one), but nine of his fictional creations. Chosen judiciously from the thousands that he brought to life, they paint a picture of "the emergent modern world, its nascent capitalism, its valuation of money above all else, its competition for social and political prominence" (4). In the process, naturally enough, they also fashion an "oblique biography" (1) of their creator, providing insight into his "inner world, its obsessions and fantasies, all that drove him in his writing" (8). Brooks begins with Rastignac, as he appears in Le père Goriot, to show how a character who is eager to learn and willing to adapt can reemerge in later novels. That also allows him to introduce Vautrin, who (as Jacques Collin) will have his own chapter in due course, and to note the discrete but crucial presence of Gobseck, the moneylender, who is the next subject. Just two of the characters who merit chapters are women: Antoinette de Langeais and Henriette de Mortsauf. Yet there is "a case to be made for a feminist Balzac," Brooks comes to suggest, at least one "who espoused with imaginative sympathy woman's condition" (75). Freudian theory, always an essential touchstone for Brooks, informs the treatment of a number of characters, such as Raphaël de Valentin, in Balzac's first real success, La peau de chagrin, where "the pleasure principle is inextricably bound up with its opposite, the death drive" (78). Chapters devoted to figures as different as Lucien de Rubempré and the enigmatic Colonel Chabert document Balzac's attentiveness to the rapid transformation of his contemporary world. When Brooks comes back to Collin, it is the role of "creator and manipulator of the lives of others" (131) that he highlights, as if the character might well have been a projection of the author himself. In a wide-ranging final chapter, Brooks muses in a more general vein about the fictional world populated by the sorts of characters he has singled out—particularly the monomaniacal types that obviously fascinated Balzac—and animated by the theatrical, often melodramatic mode that the novelist clearly preferred. "Madness is never far from the surface," he suggests, "because Balzac's whole enterprise is fundamentally mad, a pursuit of a total reckoning with the visible and invisible world" (232). This book will appeal to a broad readership, as titles of novels and quotations are in English translation. The presentation is essay-like, with relatively few notes; the writing straightforward and jargon-free. End material includes a judicious selection of critical studies, ranging from traditional [End Page 269] to more contemporary; a chronology of historical events from the Revolution to 1850, in which key points in Balzac's life are embedded; and an index. For anyone who loves French literature, a new book by Peter Brooks has always been a welcome event, and this one offers a very enjoyable reading experience. [End Page 270] John T. Booker University of Kansas Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French