Balzac's Lives

by Peter Brooks

Enter the mind of French literary giant Honoré de Balzac through a study of nine of his greatest characters and the novels they inhabit. Balzac's Lives illuminates the writer's life, era, and work in a completely original way.Balzac, more than anyone, invented the nineteenth-century novel, and Oscar Wilde went so far as to say that Balzac had invented the nineteenth century. But it was above all through the wonderful, unforgettable, extravagant characters that Balzac dreamed up and made flesh—entrepreneurs, bankers, inventors, industrialists, poets, artists, bohemians of both sexes, journalists, aristocrats, politicians, prostitutes—that he brought to life the dynamic forces of an era that ushered in our own. Peter Brooks’s Balzac’s Lives is a vivid and searching portrait of a great novelist as revealed through the fictional lives he imagined.

Genres: Nonfiction, France, Biography, Literature, Literary Criticism

280 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 6, 2020

About the author

Peter Brooks is the author of Henry James Goes to Paris, Realist Vision, Troubling Confessions, Reading for the Plot, The Melodramatic Imagination, and a number of other books, including the historical novel World Elsewhere. He taught for many years at Yale, where he was Sterling Professor of Comparative Literature, and currently is Andrew W. Mellon Scholar at Princeton.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is perfect for someone like me, who has read the complete works of Honore de Balzac in translation, but wishes to begin re-reading some of my favorite titles. This book, essentially, is a set of short biographies of some of Balzac's most fascinating creations, who weave in and out of various novels and stories. Peter Brooks is a well-known Balzac scholar, and his Balzac's Lives is a must-read for aficionados of Balzac.

[Robert Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent introduction to Balzac‘s overarching themes through biographies of some of his leading characters

[Elisabet Van · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stories about great storytelling and reactions to the great stories told. Makes me want to read those stories again.

[David C Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

2472 characters! Assuming the count is accurate. And this doesn’t count characters who shape shift across the 90 plus books, effectively becoming someone else as they appear and then reappear. The Human Comedy audaciously references Dante’s Divine Comedy not least in its ambition to replicate an entire social system, the world not Hell. There’s something like a divine punishment in Balzac’s obsessive attempt not just to recreate the world but to write it into existence. Brooks’ study is consistently insightful. I do find it slightly amazing that in a discussion of the social and sexual importance of hats in The Fatal Skin it is not remarked that Raphael’s obsessive love is for. . .Foedora.

[Roz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great guide to Balzac’s world, and an interesting treatise on what makes fiction work. Especially rewarding if you’ve read the stories in question (I recommend especially The Hidden Masterpiece and NYRB’s collection The Human Comedy), but I think even a newcomer would find this interesting. Recommended

[Brian Bess · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writer whose mind contained multitudes

[Richard Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great introduction to Balzac’s oeuvre.

[Jeffrey Powanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting approach to Balzac, who developed 2,472 named characters in his fiction. Rather than a biography of Balzac, it's a collection of biographical sketches of nine of his leading characters from The Human Comedy, such as Eugene de Rastignac, Antonette de Langeais, Lucien Chardon, Jacques Collin, Colonel Chabert, and others. I enjoyed it, particularly the section on Lucien Chardon, the protagonist of Lost Illusions, and the final chapter called "Living in Fictional Lives," which discusses how fictional characters give us experiments in knowing the real world. We read fiction to train our mind into learning how to understand what others are thinking.

The book has some great insights on Balzac's imaginative life, but it's no substitute for a well-researched biography. To avoid spoilers, best to read the Balzac novels in which these characters are featured before tackling this book.

[Matthew Conroy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book of essays on the various aspects of Balzac’s ambitious “Comédie humaine.” You don’t need to have read all of the works referenced to appreciate Brooks’ perspective, though a basic acquaintance with major works such as “Illusions perdues” and “Père Goriot” certainly doesn’t hurt. Made me want to reread these works again and gave me a renewed appreciation of Balzac’s audacity.