>>24721730
Just going to copy paste my post from an earlier Balzac thread:
I've read about two-thirds of it. Here's a quick ranking with some personal thoughts.
>The Good
The "trilogy": Père Goriot > Illusions perdues (Lost Illusions) > Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (A Harlot High and Low)
Eugénie Grandet
La Rabouilleuse (The Black Sheep)
Cousine Bette
Cousin Pons
Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu (The Unknown Masterpiece)
Sarrasine
Colonel Chabert
Curé de Tours (The Vicar of Tours)
>The Bad
Many of the hastily written Scènes de la vie privée (Scenes from private life)
Études analytiques (Analytical studies)
>The Ugly
La Femme de trente ans (A Woman of Thirty)
Séraphîta
Balzac often carries a Romantic and melodramatic flair, with a focus on extreme emotions, larger-than-life characters, or dramatic moral struggles, all of which contrasts with the detached tone of true realism or naturalism.
He has an interesting metaphysical streak and wrote a few works influenced by magnetism, Swedenborgian mysticism, and the paranormal.
He's a master of mixing comedy and tragedy, but can get overly pathétique. He's at his worst when sentimentality, cruelty, or mysticism override any sense of social commentary and structure.
Balzac is definitely a great, but one who should have concentrated his efforts on what he does best—talking about things he failed at during his life. Writing (before the famous cycle), journalism, printing, publishing, bureaucracy, politics, business in general. It might have saved him from an early grave as well.
For me personally, Lost Illusions was the book that made daily reading a habit.
