Old Man Goriot (The Human Comedy)

Balzac's Literature, for me, is "a mixed bag". You have to be "patient" because there's alot of "description". I "read" this book as a book on tape which helped keep me from giving up on it which I thought about doing a couple of times during the reading of the book. But, I'm GLAD I DIDN'T GIVE UP on the story because some of the best is near the end. This "best near the end" makes the time and effort worthwhile for the reader. You'll be glad you read the entire book!Let me say a few words about "economics". Balzac apparently was always in debt and never "made a bundle" during his life. So, he was always suffering under a burden of debt----like many of us here on Amazon with our VISA and Master Cards and house payments and car payments! So, many of us can "identify" with the plight of his characters as they try to stay solvent, out of debt, and out of debtors prison! Of course, we don't have "debtors prisons" these days but many people worry about how to pay the bills and many people live paycheck to paycheck. If you're not one of the above, then you are one of the lucky people. Even so, anyone can fall into debt---just get a disabling disease and see what happens when you can't work!Thus, many of Balzac's characters are out of funds and in debt. These economic constraints on the characters, as on Balzac himself, we can have sympathy for. And, economic motivations loom large with the characters. For example, the two daughters are maligned in the book by their father because he "gave them everything they wanted" and "now that he's impoverished they won't even come to see him on his death bed." "Oh, if I had millions of francs they'd be here. But, now that I'm broke they don't come to see me because there's no money I can give them.", says Father Goriot. What I like about Balzac is not that he "blames" the characters, even the ungrateful daughters, but I see Balzac as "telling it the way it is"---that we are all "economic beings" who behave based on "economic motivations"---it's just natural, it's the way the world is, and it's not our fault. Thus, I believe, after reading Balzac, he helps me "understand" and especially "accept" the "normal" way people will react to you based on whether you can help them financially or not. If you want people to "be good" to you, you have to reward them financially. Does that make people "bad" or "greedy" or "selfish"---I have come to think maybe not. That's just "the nature of people"...it's the way they are so we should accept the reality of that and not feel disappointed about it. So, reading Balzac has helped me personally accept people the way they are instead of the way I'd like them to be. Good reason to read this book, I think. Recommended! Email is [email protected]

this book is one of the foundations of modern French literary culture. An ambitious young man from a respectable middle class background comes to Paris, which is divided among extremely rich and grindingly poor beyond even whatever you might have seen in NYC, and is seduced by all the potential wealth, power, and visions of beautiful women just beyond his grasp. He finds an example before him of a father who sacrifices everything for his daughters, who end up despising him as the result of being over indulged and spoiled. All relationships are completely utilitarian other than those that are one sided exploitations. This is a novel to reveal and teach the naive about the dangers of high and low society, once the stakes get high enough to act as a criminalizing force on everyone. This book is a classic of another era but remains modern and relevant to any society in which there is vast and well established inequality. There is also the charm of the descriptions and settings of refined luxury among ultra rich, set against the descriptions of the cheap boarding house, for dramatic contrast. It does tend a bit toward melodrama, but the themes and characters are realist and were among the first to describe the social realities of everyday life.

I read this one for a class. I'm glad I was assigned this book as it was an enjoyable read. I like this translation better than some of the other ones people in my class were using for the "more French" sort of feeling it gave. I can read French as well, and it seemed this translation was true to the original work, from the few excerpts I read comparing the original (French) version to this one. Fast paced and interesting. I grew to like or hate each of the characters as I read. Overall I would describe the book as an amusing read and the end was quite surprising. If you like the book you might like to learn about the author's life as well, because his life was just as eventful as the main character's life in this book.

The problem here is the translation. Done by Ellen Marriage for the Dent collected edition of Balzac at the beginning of the 20th century, it can be best described as workwomanlike but anachronistic. There are too many stilted passages and archaic word choices of the "Gadzooks" type.A better choice is Raphael's version for the Nortion series or even Marian Cooper's in Penguin, though it was done 50 years ago.The yarn itself is one of Balzac's best, though you can find dissenters (Martin Turnell, no fan of Balzac, calls it one of his worst in THE NOVEL IN FRANCE). To be honest, the best of Balzac is not as good as the best of Flaubert, Stendhal, or Proust, but given his ability to keep the reader turning pages in spite of ragged prose and melodramatic excess, GORIOT is still "living literature" and a classic of French literature.

Pere Goriot is an extraordinary commentary on the corrupt, money and status hungry citizens of post-revolutionary Paris, a center of pretentious, nouveau riche cultural “refinement” and spiritual vacuity. Goriot, an uneducated, but prosperous businessman has allowed his daughters to suck his coffers dry by acceding to their never-ending requests for money to support their extravagant lifestyles. Balzac’s character studies are razor sharp and unsparing, yet not without a sense of humor. I’ve read very little French literature - and no Balzac - before, but absolutely loved this classic work.

If you want a memory trip back to freshman college literature class, try this. A devastating portrait of aristocratic Parisian society, Balzac obviously has lessons to teach - but it is not preachy or sentimental. With enough plotting to send every character from despair to ecstasy several times each day, Balzac keeps things interesting up until the end, where irony and tragedy galore await. It is old-school in style (philosophical regressions on man and morals, etc), but a page-turner (and not long, either).

I chose this rating because it was very well written from a literary point of view, and exposed the underlying selfishness, greed, obsessions and ambition that motivated Parisian society in Balzac`s time. The characters include a penniless student ,Rastignac, who covets wealth and fine clothes and seeks to achieve his goals by any means possible, an old man, Goriot, lodged in the cheapest room available but who is regularly visited by two wealthy women, a jovial merchant, Vautrin, who makes clandestine midnight excursions and no-one knows where he goes to or why. As the novel unfolds, the fates of these three characters intertwine,culminating in disaster for some, and leaving Rastignac facing terrible choices as to what the future holds for him.I particularly enjoyed the way in which the stories gradually reveal more and more of the hidden motivations and ambitions of all of the characters living in Madame Vauquer`s boarding- house.The detailed descriptions of both character and settings reminded me of other great novelists such as `Charles Dickens ` and `Victor Hugo`. Highly recommended to students of great literature, and to anyone who enjoys reading ` a good story`.

There is no denying the importance of this novel in European literature or its place in the Human Comedy. Here is the genesis of realism with minute descriptions of everyday life, including the famous or infamous Parisian boarding house. Here is also unrequited parental love for two daughters which culminates in a conclusion which verges on melodrama. And in the background lies Restoration Paris in its diversity, poverty, riches and passion.

If you don't know the novels of Balzac this is the one to start you off. Brilliant descriptions of the atmospheres of places and people. Interesting to compare with his contemporaries Dickens and George Eliot. A masterpiece.

This is the first Balzac novel I've read. I thought it was going to be a character study in which nothing much happens. How wrong I was? It's a melodrama, with love, murder and God knows what going on, though ultimately it's a study in flawed pride and ambition.No character is a hero, here. All are flawed, even Pere Goriot, whose love for his daughters has led to dysfunction.Very enjoyable.Quite short for 'a classic'.

First novel of Balzac Ive read and it wont be the last I suspect.Cant praise this book enough....from Zola and now to Balzac.I thought Zola was great,but I havent read anything of Zolas That comes close..with the possible exception of "earth".If there had been another 300 pages to read I would have read them all.