Père Goriot: A Norton Critical Edition

Norton has done a really fine job on its critical edition of PERE GORIOT. The translation is especially good, vivid and direct. The commentaries are well chosen and organized. Of particular interest are appreciations of Balzac by writers who were influenced by him, including Zola, Proust, Baudelaire and Henry James. Henry James' take on Balzac is particularly interesting. Written in James' late style, the essay is sometimes inscrutable, but still, James, as always when he writes on writers and writing, offers great insight into Balzac and his oeuvre. Highly recommended.

I read this for my book club. We like to read historical fiction and it is often hard to find. All in all we loved it. It really personalized the class struggles and highlighted the superficial clamoring of the bourgeoisie to maintain or better their station at all cost. It felt like it was time of lost community where everyone was trying to get ahead and the characters were all pretty insufferable, but in a way that made it a lovely piece of tragedy.

Bought this for a college class and its mix of text and in-depth analysis really helped me understand the underlying themes of Goriot. Written with quality and flair, I enjoyed the analysis as much as the story itself. Reading the commentary allowed me to think about the story in different perspectives and pushed me to explore more areas of thinking. This might be just me but the font is really one that I prefer so I love the font!

I would not have chosen the title of Pere Goriot for this text. Mainly because throughout the text we focused more on Eugene instead of Pere Goriot.The conflict between Goriot and his daughters appears to be in the shadows of Eugene understanding how the world works but by titling the book Pere Goriot it highlights the importnace of this relationship. Pere Goriot was a man who loved his daughters unconditionally but was rejected by their spouses because he was from a lower social class. The daughters having tasted the high life would prefer to stay with their husbands instead of being supportive of their father. This was the essence of the storyline with Pere Goriot. However, we were able to see development in Eugene Rastignac. We saw him turn from a caterpillar to a butterfly with the help of his cousin Madame Beauseant where he was given a place in Parisian Society. We also see him question things has Vautrin removed the blinders from his eyes. We watched him fall for Delphine and we saw how his relationship blossomed with Pere Goriot. As such it would appear as if the book was about Young Eugene instead of Pere Goriot.

There's little I can say about Pere Goriot which others haven't said better. I can say that this is the best translation you will find in English as it captures all the nuances of the original. The last line in particular, which other editions translate rather forcefully and thus change much of the tone of the preceding narrative, is here much more reflective of the ambiguity which Rastignac found himself in.

Balzac is a fantastic writer. His development of characters as well as his message about Parisian society is complex and well developed. The historical and geographical information presented in the novel is accurate and clearly researched! Overall a great book with some dark and honest points.

I've read about ten Norton Critical Editions of all-time great novels in the past couple years. They're terrific for someone like me, decades out of school, to both read great books and get the historical context and critical analysis without the guiding hand of a teacher/professor. This is not a badly put together Norton edition for what it is. The problem is that Pere Goriot just isn't notable enough to merit a detailed study like this. This is the first book I've read by Balzac, and I knew basically nothing about him going into it and was looking for an introduction to an author who is historically well regarded. The result is that I'm not impressed at all and doubt I'll ever read anything else by him. I mean, this isn't a bad book. It's overly melodramatic and quite short and thus not particularly well developed but entertaining enough for a quick read. But, really, I don't see why is this book is even still remembered nearly 200 years after it was written. It's just not that substantive or impressive an achievement. Certainly it does not come within a thousand miles of belonging in the same company as other Norton editions I've read recently like Tristram Shandy, Don Quijote, Brothers Karamazov, even the likes of Pride and Prejudice or Frankenstein. I think a critical aspect of Balzac's life in large part accounts for the unimpressive nature of Pere Goriot. I find out from the Norton editor's introduction that he was the definition of a hack. He was constantly being hounded by creditors for debts run up in compulsive spending on frivolous luxury goods. So he wrote to make money, churning out as many books as as he could as fast as he could to get cash. The introduction calls this hackery 'industrial literature' as Balzac 'was ever trying to write himself out of debt' incurred because of his 'insatiable appetite for material goods: furniture, clothes, and accessories' like his 'notorious collection of canes with elaborate heads.' The idea that the 'Human Comedy' project of 90 books that resulted is presented by the editor and the critical essays in the Norton edition as a great achievement is silly to me. I call it instead a despicable cheating of the reader. I want to read the best work of an author pouring his everything into every book, not a book churned out to make a quick buck. Nobody had more pressing debts throughout most of his life than Dostoevsky, but he always still gave his everything to every book and suffered terribly as a result. Balzac just churned out book after book for a paycheck. So we as readers get cheated in Pere Goriot. By far the most interesting character is the criminal Vautrim. But he comes and goes having been barely explored. Turns out this was just a first introduction to Vautrim I find out from the critical essays. He ended up being a recurring character in many other Balzac books. After his only basic introduction in Pere Goriot, his story isn't completed until many books later. The protagonist of Pere Goriot, Rastignac, also doesn't have his story completed in the book. He too is a recurring character that only is fully realized in a much later book. So I just wasted my time reading basically the preface to a body of work I have no interest in exploring further. This lack of substance in Pere Goriot itself is reflected in the critical and background materials in the Norton edition. The majority of them either don't talk about Pere Goriot at all or only mention it in passing. They have to focus on the full body of work of the Human Comedy since there is no little there in just Pere Goriot. So, as a bottom line, I'd say unless you're committed to reading 90 books by Balzac to get the full story, Pere Goriot is not worth your time. I have little interest in reading anything else by Balzac after my experience with Pere Goriot, so this was pretty much a waste of my time. On to better Norton editions now!

I read an excerpt of the Oxford World's Edition and will say I preferred that translation to the Norton Critical. That said, this is still a nice edition and the added content is nice. I also quite like the cover art of this one. Yes, I judge books (in part) by their cover.