French novelists

[Anonymous No.21538358]

So who is in your opinion the greatest French novelist and why? Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Stendhal, Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, Flaubert, Verne, Zola, Huysmans, Proust, Celine, Camus, Houellebecq, somebody else?
And how do they compare to other nationalities?

[Anonymous No.21538361]

Flaubert is the best novelist, but Huysmans has the best prose.

[Anonymous No.21538370]

>>21538358
Balzac is the greatest, huge work of historical, sociological and artistic importance.

[Anonymous No.21538408]

Gide.

[Anonymous No.21538413]

ngl, they're all pretty mid.

[Anonymous No.21538598]

>>21538361
Topkek

[Anonymous No.21538618]

>>21538598
it's not so bad a choice.

[Anonymous No.21538621]

>>21538358
Claude Simon

[Anonymous No.21538634]

>>21538358
Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is better known than any of their works and his volume published by La Pleiade is their best seller by far.
If I had to pick one I'd go with Verne. Classic tales that stood the test of time and inspired the imagination, the progenitor for basically all of SF, and unpretentious prose accessible to young and old. Dumas comes in as a very close second.
Houellebecq for currently living.

[Anonymous No.21538761]

>>21538634
What a fucking midwit pleb lmao

[Anonymous No.21538784]

Bloy

[Anonymous No.21538822]

For me it's Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. He is the one writer that managed to make the "eerie atmospheric bone chilling slow burn" work. He's also based beyond belief. His work is not unlike Joseph de Maistre writing fiction.
Theophile Gautier and Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam are other favorites.

>>21538634
I wouldn't put it first but Jules Verne is a massive filter of midwits thinking they are above SF/adventure readable by children.

[Anonymous No.21538832]

>>21538598
>>21538761
>kek. midwit. pleb.
fantastic contributions. shit thrown from the gutters.

[Anonymous No.21538840]

>>21538358
michel houellebecq without a doubt

[Anonymous No.21538872]

>>21538370
Based.

[Anonymous No.21538882]

I'm just a pleb who's only read Houellebecq. Are older French novels transgressive and experimental in the same way as he is? That stuff is amazing to me

[Anonymous No.21538966]

>>21538358
Queneau

[Anonymous No.21538986]

>>21538358
Jean Pierre Ngubu

[Anonymous No.21538994]

>>21538358
Sade and the decadents are my niggas.

[Anonymous No.21538996]

>>21538358
Marie Ndiaye

[Anonymous No.21539008]

>>21538634
>Le Petit Prince
do adults actually read this? why?

[Anonymous No.21539209]

>>21538882
french were literally the creators of the decadent movement. Read huysman and i hope you are learning french or else you'll be missing some of the greatest prose that's ever been inked on the page

[Anonymous No.21539222]

it's either Celine or Proust
the rest of you are off your rocker. houllebecq is good in the current year because literature is dead. in comparison to his predecessors he's mid at best. ballsac is overrated and flaubert's flat boring style continues to plague the world via every genre book to this day. shaggy dog tale horseshit about looking at windows and stuffing your face--any book ever written by a woman copies this format.

[Anonymous No.21539244]

>>21538822
>Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
i have a little novella (une histoire sans nomme, in 1001 nuits) of his lying around that i have never been particularly motivated to try (think i bought it by accident thinking it was antoine de saint-exupéry, kek)
but you just persuaded me to pick it up
(you like gaultier so i know your taste is based)

[Anonymous No.21539270]

Richard Petit

[Anonymous No.21539300]

>>21539222
>Celine
im a few pages into this right now, very underwhelming. I dont know if you read it in french or not but the constant 'que's that might have been argot at the time just sound awkward and babyish today. Some parts are great but it's a bit boring. did anyone else think this? does it get better?

[Anonymous No.21539317]

>>21539300
if it doesnt rock your world apart in an existential way you might not have enough life experience yet to appreciate where he's coming from

[Anonymous No.21539355]

>>21539008
>do adults actually read this? why?
Adults read Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.
It's a bedtime story read to kids at the very least.

[Anonymous No.21539377]

montaigne is france's answer to shakespeare, dante, goethe and cervantes
balzac is the best novelist solely off influence alone
proust and flaubert are more overrated than he is

[Anonymous No.21539389]

>>21539377
>montaigne is france's answer to shakespeare, dante, goethe and cervantes
"[x] is [y]'s answer to [z]." Is there a more pseud construction in criticism? I see this shit a lot but in this case it's particularly offensive for different reasons: a) Goethe came way after Montaigne, b) Montaigne wrote non-fiction (essays). That cannot be an answer to theatre writing, poetry writing, or novel writing, c) France doesn't have a totem writer like other countries and languages. They have many.

[Anonymous No.21539633]

>>21539389
it's even worse than that because his comparison has absolutely no basis in reality, it sounds like he took random authors names

>Melville is Britain's answer to Mishima, Guenon and F Gardener

[Anonymous No.21539640]

>>21538832
Fuck off, fag. Read more books so you won’t ever recommend Huysmans as the best stylist

[Anonymous No.21539654]

>>21539317
>>21539317
you may be right, I am still young.

What about it made it rock your world apart in an existential way? What makes it different to other apathetic main character 'life is absurd humans are le bad' type books?

[Anonymous No.21539836]

>>21539317
I read a little Celine, he's definitely doing something but I feel too dumb to understand what it is

[Anonymous No.21539862]

>no Rabelais
c'mon

[Anonymous No.21539957]

>>21539222
>flaubert's flat boring style
Another pleb who thinks he only wrote Bovary

[Anonymous No.21540084]

Maupassant !
he knows how to make the reader feel uncomfortable

[Anonymous No.21541182]

Yourcenar is based and a personal favorite

[Anonymous No.21541192]

>>21538358
Dumas

[Anonymous No.21541221]

>>21538358
I never liked the idea of proclaiming anyone "the greatest", even if one day I would have read enough to compare. One can usually tell who would be a bad writer, but among the good ones it's usually a matter of nuances, and there is the fact different people like different things.
I find Balzac rather dull, but I can see why someone else would love his work. Maupassant is also good, although I'd have to read more to give a proper opinion. Verne is definitely most friendly to an ordinary reader, which is not really a critique of his style (never read him in french), but the fact the themes he tackles are really interesting. Everybody loves a good adventure.

Honorary mention to Maurice Leblanc, who may not have had the best prose, but definitely had the best main character.

[Anonymous No.21541226]

>>21538882
Jean Genet has that 'transgressive' vibe too

[Anonymous No.21541242]

>>21538361
Nice

[Anonymous No.21541246]

Stendhal (Only mentioned once, in the OP!) and Flaubert (flat!)
Radically different, but masters all the same. Throw in Rabelais for good measure. Those three are the essential French writer. Every teenager should read Stendhal so as to become a voracious reader.

[Anonymous No.21541476]

Genet or Klossowski

[Anonymous No.21541532]

Always had a thing for Maupassant but mainly for his short stories

[Anonymous No.21541546]

>>21538882
Uhhh. Ever heard of Marquis de fucking Sade?

[Anonymous No.21541549]

>>21539222
>Celine
overrated edgy garbage, realism is more interesting than this guy

[Anonymous No.21541569]

Roger Nimier, Antoine Blondin, les Hussards en général.

[Anonymous No.21541571]

Leon Bloy is the most powerful French writer, on his pet topics.

[Anonymous No.21541655]

Flaubert without any argument

[Anonymous No.21541673]

1. proust
2. perec
3. wellbeck
Those are also the only ones I've read so take it with a grain of salt. Planning on reading some Honore though.

[Anonymous No.21541807]

>>21538358
Stendhal.
The Red and the Black was the most impressionable novel I'd ever read when I read it in high school. I picked it out knowing nothing about it and it blew me away. It was my first exposure to "real" literature and no novel has given me the same impression since.
Stendhal's talents extend outside of the novel as well. He has a wonderful collection of essays on the philosophy of love.
To put forward a less popular nomination, I'd also recommend Marguerite Duras.
>>21538634
Because of the reasons you gave, I want to support your choice of Verne.
>>21538822
I haven't heard of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. What novel would you recommend?
>>21539222
How can you put up Proust and call Flaubert flat and boring in the same breath?
>>21539654
Not that anon, and while I wouldn't say Celine "rocked my world apart," I did find Journey to the End of the Night highly entertaining, and it did make me think. I think each chapter sort of functions as its own essay addressing a different philosophical topic. And Bardamu shouldn't just be chalked up to a "life is absurd humans are le bad type." Bardamu does recognize life as absurd undoubtedly, but part of this absurdity is the inexplicable goodness of some men. Take Alcide for example. He ends the chapters involving Alcide by writing that he wishes "there were some mark to distinguish good men from bad." Alcide's account is heart-breaking.

[Anonymous No.21541911]

Probably not the greatest, but I've reada couple by Tournier, and he's a fucking awesome writer who seems never to get mentioned

[Anonymous No.21542117]

>>21541807
>I haven't heard of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. What novel would you recommend?
The one where you'd learn not to write in the manner of a marionette

[Anonymous No.21542170]

>>21539222
>t. has only read Celine
Celine is a dime-a-dozen mind-numbingly boring sadfag just like Houllebecq, just Camus for people who are old enough to realize Camus is cringe, and Proust is insufferable and only lauded because reading him is the most delectable torture to the masochist souls of anemic academics, which you would know if you had gotten beyond Swann's Way.

Real answer is a tie between Stendhal, Flaubert and Balzac

[Anonymous No.21542177]

>>21541807
>How can you put up Proust and call Flaubert flat and boring in the same breath?
Because he hasn't read Proust and Proust=GOAT is the established academic opinion which he can't veer from too far when he is talking out of his ass.

[Anonymous No.21542181]

>>21542170
>Camus is cringe
Wrong.
But right otherwise.

[Anonymous No.21542182]

>>21541246
>>21541807
>Stendhal
I literally came here to say Stendhal, so I'm glad you beat me to it. Which works of his, other than The Red and the Black, would you recommend?

[Anonymous No.21542195]

>>21542170
>Proust is insufferable and only lauded because reading him is the most delectable torture to the masochist souls of anemic academics
Bad anon!
Your punishment is 8500 more pages of dinner party conversations with catty social climbers.
No? How about a 35th essay on memory and time that is just like the first one?
Not that either? Then you can have another predictable meditation and jealousy and cuckoldry.
Sorry, that's all there is. You will take it and you will be of the opinion that Proust is le greatest writer of all time.

[Anonymous No.21542258]

>>21539222
>>21541807
Flaubert's pretty flat compared with Proust. I never made it past the first chapter of Salambo. Bovary's better.

Proust's writing is multifaceted. If you get bored, it's usually because there's something you didn't get and you should go back a few pages.

[Anonymous No.21542297]

>>21542177
Shit the fuck up, retard. How about you read both instead of genre schlock and you would know Proust and Flaubert are greats, the former slightly exceeding the latter, his mentor

[Anonymous No.21542301]

>>21542170
You do realize most academics have not read Proust in any capacity and there are only a handful of actual Proust scholars, compared to Stendhal, Flaubert, and Balzac, which you would know if you read “beyond” Swann’s Way

[Anonymous No.21542304]

just bought this

what am i in for?

[Anonymous No.21542339]

>>21542304
An easy read, but a very frustrating ending if you can't stand cowards. Or maybe you will laugh at their stupidity instead.

[Anonymous No.21542346]

>>21542301
>reading 8000 pages of boring dinner party conversations gives you knowledge of the amount of literary scholars on different french authors
Can you reason, my friend?

[Anonymous No.21542431]

>>21542258
>I never made it past the first chapter of Salambo.
Painfully philistine. That first chapter is a gem I'm not sure how it couldn't convince you to go on

[Anonymous No.21542465]

>>21542346
Retard.

[Anonymous No.21542471]

1. Proust
2. Bernanos
3. Balzac

[Anonymous No.21542605]

>>21541807
>I haven't heard of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. What novel would you recommend?
Les Diaboliques is the obvious starting point (technically not a novel but a collection of six slightly connected short stories).

[Anonymous No.21542660]

>>21538358
maybe not 'the greatest french novelist's, but imo Albert Cohen isn't talked about enough in anglo circles. hes a great novelist.

>inb4 (((cohen)))

[Anonymous No.21543192]

>>21542465
Good of you to answer the question.

[Anonymous No.21543383]

>>21538358
Why this board suddenly forgot about Celine?

[Anonymous No.21543394]

>>21543192
Retard.

[࿇ C Œ M G E N V S ࿇ !KNDY/Ar.iI No.21543506]

BEST PRESUPPOSES GOOD: THEY ARE ALL MEDIOCRE, OR PESSIMAL.

[Anonymous No.21543531]

> No Vian

Filtered by the Boris, as expected of /lit/

[Anonymous No.21543551]

>>21538358
Kek at all the hipster opinions

[Anonymous No.21543586]

>>21543531
Everyone has read him, fag

[Anonymous No.21543608]

>>21542170
this is total horseshit to anyone with a grain of sense in them.
without Proust you no longer have Joyce or any of the modernists. And Celine is nothing like either Houllebecq or Camus. Camus was aping american style and Houllebecq is a latecomer degenerate coomer.
Celine is Miller before Miller, is Bukowski before Bukowski, he even highly influences Burroughs, who influences late sci-fi and the deluge of techno punk that came after Gibson, he prefigures not only the Beats but also the self-indulgent 80s and 90s writers too. You're looking at a speck on the ground and missing the fact you're standing on an alligator. Celine is the most important writer of the 20th century. There, I said it.

[Anonymous No.21543788]

>>21543608
>without Proust you no longer have Joyce or any of the modernists.
it's not even clear that Joyce read much of Proust, and the little that he did read, he was critical of. I love Proust but there's no reason to make ties where there are none. No Flaubert so no Joyce? Certainly. No Proust so no Beckett? Of course. No Proust so no Joyce? Really fucking retarded.

[Anonymous No.21543815]

>>21543788
Just like you.

[Anonymous No.21544072]

>>21541807
>Barbey d'Aurevilly
Les Diaboliques, short story collection.

[Anonymous No.21544095]

>>21542258
>I never made it past the first chapter of Salambo
Then your opinion doesn't count, hopeless pleb.

[Anonymous No.21544418]

>>21538358
>Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Stendhal, Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, Flaubert, Verne, Zola, Huysmans, Proust, Celine, Camus, Houellebecq, somebody else?
All dogshit.
The best French writer is Jean de La Fontaine.

[Anonymous No.21544474]

Jesus Christ, the shit taste of this board.

>>21538370
>Balzac is the greatest, huge work of historical, sociological and artistic importance.
Defendable opinion. But it reads like a court case transcript and you know it.

>>21538408
Pedophile shit.

>>21538634
Children's books are not literature. They're respectable in their own sense, but they're not fucking literature.

>>21538784
Satan worshipping hobos under hallucinogens do not make good literature.

>>21538822
Jules is fine, but certainly not the greatest, the English are much better at that style (Sheridan le Fanu, even fucking women write this shit better than the French, like Ann Radcliffe).

>>21538840
Houellebecq is literally toilet paper, this filth is not literature, it's disgusting scat.

>>21538966
I hope nobody here takes writers of the second half of the 20th century seriously, and certainly not the Nouveau roman shit. There is exactly ONE author from that period worth a shit, and it pains me that it is a woman, but it's Marguerite Yourcenar.

>>21539300
>im a few pages into this right now, very underwhelming.
You're right, it's fucking overhyped shit. Dude, let me write like a drunken uncle talks, and put suspension points all over the place, and that'll be my prose, my style, my legacy for the centuries. Fuck off. I have the exact opposite opinion on Celine as the normies: I hate his style and love the substance and content. His tirade on the 160000 bistrots in Bagatelle pour un massacre is one of the best things I've ever read.

>>21539377
>montaigne is france's answer to shakespeare, dante, goethe and cervantes
That doesn't mean anything, but Montaigne is fucking amazing.

>>21539862
Peepee poopoo and faire la bête à deux dos is not literature.

>>21539957
Flaubert is dull as fuck.

>>21541182
Good taste.

>>21540084
He has no style, but it's always an efficient read and always somewhat thought-provoking. I wouldn't hold liking Maupassant against you.

>>21541192
More like Dumbass. He employed ghost writers, and it's impossible to know what exactly is his style. Le Comte de Monte-Cristo is an absolute fucking masterpiece, and you read Les Trois mousquetaires and it's almost embarrasing how terrible it is.

>>21541221
>Honorary mention to Maurice Leblanc
My nigger.

>>21542182
Stendhal is amazing. Read La Chartreuse de Parme and his Chroniques italiennes. Don't read his treaties, despite what you've been told, they're embarrasing at best. De l'amour is a good awkward laugh.

>>21541807
>How can you put up Proust and call Flaubert flat and boring in the same breath?
Because Proust's prose is infinitely better than Flaubert's, and more insightful, more true. Flaubert is terrible.

>>21542258
>I never made it past the first chapter of Salambo.
Of all the dogshit he wrote, Salammbo is probably the shittiest.

>>21542660
(((Cohen)))

>>21543531
Vian is hipster shit.

[Anonymous No.21544484]

>>21544474
Dumas is children's lit

[Anonymous No.21544682]

>>21541182
She was Belgian, but yeah, one of the best

[Anonymous No.21544685]

>>21542304
The story of a brilliant and very lucky asshole that gets away with everything.

[Anonymous No.21544807]

>>21544474
Utterly plebian. Flaubert is the god of the novel.

[Anonymous No.21544901]

What are some French novels about
Fishermen
Farmers
Policemen
Doctors

[Anonymous No.21544914]

>>21544901
Arsene Lupin to all that.

[Anonymous No.21544925]

You have to understand that France was riddled with communists and socialists in all layers of society (especially the higher layers) .
Even now France is ruled by socialists, more or less in disguise.
France has still not recovered from a century of socialism, and miterrand totally destroyed any skills the Bureaucrats may had... A french bureaucrat is a subhuman piece of shit .

All the old politicians nowadays were the young champagne leftist assholes who embarked into politics in the miterrand era and they turned france to shit in less than 40 years by refusing to do anything for the country, but pushing for more muslims and that's it.
All the problems France has right now stems from those scumbags.

[Anonymous No.21544959]

>>21544901
>Fishermen
An Iceland Fisherman by Pierre Loti
>Farmers
Water of the Hills by Marcel Pagnol
>Policemen
All Maigret by Simenon (inb4 Belgian)
>Doctors
Several protagonists of Celine are doctors (as he himself was), otherwise The Country Doctor by Balzac.

>>21544925
>You have to understand that France was riddled with communists and socialists in all layers of society
Perhaps in 1936 and even then it only really became a terminal disease in the 1970s. It was if anything less of an issue than in the rest of Europe before that since those types were periodically massacred and excluded from power most of the time after staging troubles. Obviously most of the literature here has nothing to do with that.

>>21544418
>La Fontaine
>novelist

>>21544474
Mass repliers retarded as usual.

[Anonymous No.21545046]

>>21543531
Let's be serious for a minute here. Everybody's read him and he's an alright read but not worth mentioning next to the greats, come on.

[Anonymous No.21545065]

>>21543551
What's the correct, non-hipster, opinion?

[Anonymous No.21545070]

>>21544925
Retarded sperg can't go 5 minutes without mentioning socialism. 99% of authors ITT have nothing to do with 20th century politics.

[Anonymous No.21545532]

Wouldn't mind some recs for children's books. Can even be toddler level.

[Anonymous No.21545561]

Rabelais, Montaigne, Laclos, Céline and unironically Sartre for La Nausée

[Anonymous No.21545649]

>>21545532
Le Petit Nicolas

[Anonymous No.21545663]

>>21542605
>>21544072
Thanks for the rec, that sounds delightful. One of my favorite books is Faulkner's Go Down, Moses which follows a very similar structure.
>>21542660
Wasn't he Swiss though? At any rate, what's your favorite of his works?

[Anonymous No.21545713]

>>21544901
Balzac and Zola wrote dozens of books about all aspects of French life, dig in and you'll find some. Huysmans wrote about farmers in En Rade.

[Anonymous No.21545827]

>>21542304
I read this for school back when i was in 8th grade, i don't remember much of it but it transcribes the mediocrity of 19th century bourgeousie in a relatively good way, it doesn't get very far and it's a bit dull compared to zola or stendhal though

[Anonymous No.21545921]

>>21545561
>novelist
>Montaigne

>>21545663
If you like Faulkner, I cannot recommend enough the novels of Claude Simon, esp. L'acacia.

[Anonymous No.21546276]

How on earth has no one said Hugo?

[Anonymous No.21546385]

>>21546276
Because he sucks balls

[Anonymous No.21547061]

>>21538358
me (soon)

[Anonymous No.21547371]

bump for interest

[Anonymous No.21547511]

Robbe-Grillet should at least be mentioned, although I suspect that you need to be somewhere on the spectrum to truly enjoy his stuff.

[Anonymous No.21548627]

>>21541807
duras mentioned

[Anonymous No.21549663]

>>21544474
>Houellebecq is literally toilet paper, this filth is not literature, it's disgusting scat.
why do you think that fren. Do you mean it just because his prose is more modern and casual?

[Anonymous No.21549770]

test

[Anonymous No.21549850]

>>21547511
Come on I like the old coomer troll too but he's far from being included in a list of the greatest

[Anonymous No.21550021]

Reminder that if you aren't fluent in French and read any of these novelists in tr*nslation, your opinion doesn't count.

[Anonymous No.21550920]

>>21550021
Reminder that I don't give a fuck lol

[Anonymous No.21551563]

>>21544474
bigget pleb in this thread

[Anonymous No.21551981]

>>21551563
anyone who is actively using 4chan is a pleb, the only difference is that 4chan plebs are self-aware or at least most of them are

[Anonymous No.21553163]

>>21538358
Flaubert is the best novelist, but Huysmans has the best prose.

[Anonymous No.21553261]

>>21538358
Celine by far. He's the only French novelist that I could get through. Currently learning French as my fiancé is French and I've been living here for over a year, and Camus in French is much less obnoxious than he is in English, but still nobody beats Celine.

[Anonymous No.21553601]

>>21553261
You gay?

[Anonymous No.21553779]

>>21551981
Sorry but I don't browse 4chan. I browse 4channel. Nice job on outing yourself as a /pol/ or /r9k/ crossposter, pleb.

[Anonymous No.21553979]

>>21553261
You’ve been living there, have a French partner and you are still learning it? Are you not using any material to learn the language? I can understand that if that’s the case and you chose to go through a natural way to learn it.

[Anonymous No.21555069]

>>21538361
It’s rare to see the first post be good. Tell me, what are your favorite books from then?

[Anonymous No.21556185]

How do I get started with Zola/Balzac?

[Anonymous No.21556260]

>>21556185
>Balzac
Pere Goriot
>Zola
Don't start at all, in case you do go for L'Assommoir which should immunize you against reading more.

[Anonymous No.21558095]

>>21556185
>Balzac
Lost Illusions.

[Anonymous No.21558289]

Proust and Bloy have the best prose I've ever read in french.

[Anonymous No.21558308]

>>21556185
>Zola
Start with Germinal and Nana. The rest of his Rougon-Macquart series is also good. /pol/tards just hate him because he had favorable views on workers and helped an unjustly accused Jewish man.

[Anonymous No.21558964]

>>21538634
>>21538840
>>21538882
>>21539222
>>21542170
>>21543608
>>21544418
>>21549663
What would you suggest to read from Houellebecq after Elementary Particles? I didn't love it per say but it was interesting and his novels are short anyway so I want to try something more from him. Lot of people say that all his books are the same tho

[Anonymous No.21559110]

>>21538358
>Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Stendhal, Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, Flaubert, Verne, Zola, Huysmans, Proust, Celine, Camus, Houellebecq, somebody else?
I like Russo, Jack the Derider, Ballsack, Dumbass, Flubber and i've not heard of the others.. Wurley Beck Q sounds like an idiot from his name. Michael Fucko is pretty lame though, from what I've read.

>>21541546
this post dominates every poseur who visits /lit/ and claims to have read.

[Anonymous No.21559212]

>>21558964
All his books are kinda same, maybe it's not for you. My favorites are The Elementary Particles and Serotonin.

[Anonymous No.21559213]

>>21546385
Filtered

[Anonymous No.21559219]

>>21558964
>per say

[Anonymous No.21559247]

>>21559212
Thanks I'll read Serotonin then, I was already thinking about it bc it has pretty cover
>>21559219
ESL, honestly don't know what's it supposed to mean, just felt natural to put it there

[Anonymous No.21559252]

>>21559247
>ESL
"Per se" is a Latin phrase.

[Anonymous No.21559272]

>>21559252
Yeah i just googled it, I think I used it in wrong way too, whatever tho

[Anonymous No.21559287]

>>21544474
>flaubert is dull
Uliterallywotm8

>A gauche, tout en bas, les canaux de Mégara commençaient à rayer de leurs sinuosités blanches les verdures des jardins. Les toits coniques des temples heptagones, les escaliers, les terrasses, les remparts, peu à peu, se découpaient sur la pâleur de l'aube; et tout autour de la péninsule carthaginoise une ceinture d'écume blanche oscillait, tandis que la mer couleur d'émeraude semblait comme figée dans la fraîcheur du matin. A mesure que le ciel rose allait s'élargissant, les hautes maisons inclinées sur les pentes du terrain se haussaient, se tassaient, telles qu'un troupeau de chèvres noires qui descend des montagnes. Les rues désertes s'allongeaient; les palmiers, çà et là sortant des murs, ne bougeaient pas; les citernes remplies22 avaient l'air de boucliers d'argent perdus dans les cours; le phare du promontoire Hermæum commençait à pâlir. Tout au haut de l'Acropole, dans le bois de cyprès, les chevaux d'Eschmoûn, sentant venir la lumière, posaient leurs sabots sur le parapet de marbre et hennissaient du côté du soleil.

>Il parut; Spendius, levant les bras, poussa un cri.

>Tout s'agitait dans une rougeur épandue, car le Dieu, comme se déchirant, versait à pleins rayons sur Carthage la pluie d'or de ses veines. Les éperons des galères étincelaient, le toit de Khamon paraissait tout en flammes, et l'on apercevait des lueurs au fond des temples dont les portes s'ouvraient. Les grands chariots arrivant de la campagne faisaient tourner leurs roues sur les dalles des rues. Des dromadaires chargés de bagages descendaient les rampes. Les changeurs dans les carrefours relevaient les auvents de leurs boutiques.

>Des cigognes s'envolèrent, des voiles blanches palpitaient. On entendait dans le bois de Tanit le tambourin des courtisanes sacrées, et à la pointe des Mappales, les fourneaux pour cuire les cercueils d'argile commençaient à fumer.

[Anonymous No.21559289]

>>21544474
>Satan worshipping hobos under hallucinogens do not make good literature.
I agree, but how is this anything Bloy? Except the Hobo part.
>>21538358
Now that I think of it, I have read maybe 10 French novelists. Camus, Ballsack, Huysmans, Bloy, Dumas, Proust, Verne, Rousseau, Flaubert. The only one I actually enjoyed from these was Huysmans. He turned out to be one of my all time favorites. La Bas, En Route and The Cathedral were fantastic. Camus, Proust and Flaubert bored me to death. Ballsack was good, but I read him when I was 16 or so so I don't really remember much.

[Anonymous No.21559298]

>>21559289
Proust is VERY boring. I got the first book in his famous series. New condition, $5 bucks. And I still think it was a waste of money. Flaubert is good but you have to be in the mood. Sentimental Education is a book every young man should read.

[Anonymous No.21559302]

>>21559289
Glad I am not the only one who found Flaubert boringーI read him in English though. Will reread once my French is up to snufff

[Anonymous No.21559316]

>>21559298
>Flaubert is good but you have to be in the mood.
I got a physical reaction from how much I abhorred the whore that is Madame Bovary. It isn't as if I felt it was a badly written novel, it's just written about a woman I couldn't stand.
>>21559302
I've read him in Croatian [/ spoiler]. But the translation doesn't really impact the fact that it's boring as fuck.

[Anonymous No.21559823]

>>21559287
jesus fucking christ, that is stupid text. You're literally gushing over flowery yet really basic descriptions of things, this is bad stuff. My french isn't fluent, by any means, but,
>, les escaliers, les terrasses, les remparts,

This is just crap that crap English people were writing in the 1800's, but in French.

[Anonymous No.21559873]

>>21559823
>You're literally gushing over flowery yet really basic descriptions of things, this is bad stuff. My french isn't fluent, by any means, but,

imbecile dog that you are...Flaubert has chosen every single word in french for its sound, it sounds gorgeous and if you can't hear that than stick to dutch or whatever the hell is your native language

[Anonymous No.21560681]

>>21558308
Eat shit, Dreyfus was guilty 100%. Zola was a hack.

>>21559289
>I agree, but how is this anything Bloy? Except the Hobo part.
Read this: http://wordpress.catholicapedia.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Barbeau_Raymond_-_Un_prophete_luciferien_Leon_Bloy.pdf
You won't see Blow the same way ever. It's a case of "cannot unread".

>>21559287
I literally fell asleep reading this.

>>21559316
>I've read him in Croatian
I can't believe you have the guts to spew your stupid opinion.

>>21559873
Mec, arrête, c'est illisible cette merde.

[Anonymous No.21560692]

>>21558308
Zola's mediocre IMO, there are a lot of French authors ahead of him. Huysmans was right about his limitations.

[Anonymous No.21560695]

>>21559316
>not falling in love with emma
KYS ghoul

[Anonymous No.21560719]

>>21559823
>flowery yet really basic descriptions of things
Literally all I care about. And it's not bad at all, you try writing something like that

[Anonymous No.21560733]

>>21560681
>I literally fell asleep reading this.
Because you cant picture things in your head

[Anonymous No.21560913]

>>21560681
Leon Bloy is the only serious Catholic to have lived in the last two hundred years. Histronic cynic-for-Christ is the only authentic Christianity, everything else is of this world paying mere lip service to the radical otherness of the Christian message.

[Anonymous No.21560932]

>>21560913
Tell me more I am intrigued

[Anonymous No.21561053]

>>21560932
Read some of his short stories on Christian radicalism, how otherworldy his demands on Christian practice are. 'The Religion of Monsieur Pleur' in Disagreeable Tales is a good example. A secretly rich miser lives in filth and absolute poverty so that he can flush his riches down the toilet of feeding the poor, the same poor who abuse and villify him in the street for his apparent poverty.

[Anonymous No.21561082]

>>21561053
Sounds interesting thanks

[Anonymous No.21561195]

>>21561082
Blood of the Poor, and Salvation Through the Jews are other examples. Also his historical works on Columbus and Napoleon and their role in Christian providence. Uncompromising Christian radicalism that demands true poverty, meekness, and suffering. Basically Schopenhaur's view of life as suffering but with a Christian exegesis of "and that's a good thing".

[Anonymous No.21561233]

>>21560692
>Zola's mediocre IMO
Only because there are lots of great French authors.
>>21560681
Dreyfus was innocent. He was only targeted because he was a Jew.

[Anonymous No.21561289]

>>21560681
Your link isn't working for me.
And Flaubert sucked. Insufferable twat.

[Anonymous No.21561476]

>>21561233
I think he's just okay, good but not great. I'd read him on a plane and be happy, but literature can be so much more than what Zola offers. Obviously going in to bat for the railroaded Dreyfus was courageous and virtuous of him, but I can't award him bonus points for his lit because of that.

>>21561289
Flaubert is the god of the novel form.

[Anonymous No.21561498]

>>21561476
>good but not great.
yea, that's a fair assessment.

[Anonymous No.21561708]

What's his most underrated work? Also what's up with the nightgown?

[Anonymous No.21561717]

>>21561476
>Flaubert is the god of the novel form.
Maybe, but after Madame Bovary I'm never picking him up again.

[Anonymous No.21561745]

>>21561717
Flaubert was a perfectionist who only wrote four major works because he meticulously crafted and edited each sentence word by word. If one of the world's greatest novels, and the novel which created the modern novel form, was unable to rouse literary taste in you, then there isn't any point in you reading any book, let alone one of the other three.

[Anonymous No.21561750]

Huymans was so dedicated to his literary craft that he endured magical attacks on himself and his cat. What other author can say the same?

[Anonymous No.21561760]

>>21561745
>Flaubert was a perfectionist who only wrote four major works because he meticulously crafted and edited each sentence word by word.
And yet, what he wrote was shallow, obnoxious and vapid. There's thousands of works out there for me to read, great ones at that, but Flaubert isn't one of them. Fuck Flaubert.

[Anonymous No.21561798]

>>21561760
A famous French literary critic said that Flaubert seemed like a shut-in who didn’t know how people interacted or had dialogue with each other. In my opinion, this shows in Flaubert’s works. There is no doubt on my mind he was a great technical writer though with some of the best purple proses I have ever read.

[Anonymous No.21561804]

>>21558308
>muh politics
The two Goncourt brothers were reactionaries and the other big name of literary naturalism and still disappointing. Naturalism is just deficient.

>Zola
>favorable views on workers
Is supporting the strike in Germinal the only thing you remember? Zola thought that workers were congenital morons condemned to stupidity and alcoholism by heredity.

[Anonymous No.21561819]

>>21561798
>There is no doubt on my mind he was a great technical writer though with some of the best purple proses I have ever read.
I can see that. My issue wasn't really with the prose. I don't really care as much about it, prose is great, but it doesn't carry the work on its own. I just found the whole process of reading about a vapid whore for 400 pages incredibly tedious. It's a work without catharasis.

[Anonymous No.21561827]

>>21561819
>It's a work without catharasis.
You're supposed to go "love from Kazakhstan" without needing the author to spell it for you. The spite for Emma wouldn't last after closing the book if you had a catharsis in it.

[Anonymous No.21561830]

>>21561827
>The spite for Emma wouldn't last after closing the book if you had a catharsis in it.
And the spite is the only thing Flaubert is offering me. Spite in pretty words.

[Anonymous No.21561835]

>>21561819
In my opinion, she wasn’t even the worst offender but Charles Bovary. How does a man just go by without finding out his wife is cheating on him? How in the world does Charles thinking (especially at that time) that her male friends are just friends. How does he still not feel angry after finding out she cheated on him but becomes depressed and blames himself instead. It’s so unrealistic

Leo Tolstoy’s did a much better take of that trope through Alexia Karenina who was an incredibly multidimensional character who felt anger, love, regret, delusions, and his wrestling with getting a divorce or giving Anna another chance

[Anonymous No.21561844]

>>21561835
He didn't get as much focus, but I agree on both points. Tolstoy did a similar sort of story, but just so much better and so much more human and multi dimensional.

[Anonymous No.21561846]

>>21561835
>It’s so unrealistic
Top kek, it's extremely believable. There are good reasons Madame Bovary is considered a staple of literary realism.
Charles is a romantic and there are countless men like him. They are completely cucked deep in their minds long before their girl gets penetrated by others. The missus can't do no wrong and everything is his/mens fault. In meme terms we would just call them simps. A cursory glance at society (we ive in it) should be enough to see those types everywhere.

[Anonymous No.21561854]

>>21561760
Wrong and tasteless.

[Anonymous No.21561857]

>>21561819
Kek, of course he's an r9kcel spastic.

[Anonymous No.21561910]

>>21542339
Who’s the coward here, George or the fat Jew whose daughter he stole? Bel Ami is a good novel all things considered, the only likeable characters where the woman, but of course George is who the reader is meant to root for.

[Anonymous No.21561956]

>>21561910
Everyone George manipulates to climb the social ladder. The guy doesn't have much skill and certainly has zero empathy, yet because no one stands up to his selfish desires for money and women he is free to do with them as he pleases. George is not some courageous personality, and the reader is certainly not supposed to root for him, had he met actual resistance he would have pulled back like a dog with his tail between his legs.

[Anonymous No.21561985]

>>21561798
Flaubert did plenty of partying and kept multiple mistresses, his letters are available and highly social. He rarely wrote dialogue because dialogue is shit and interupts the narrative voice.

[Anonymous No.21562021]

>>21561956
I think no one stands up to him because they’re all complicit in the corruption and moral degradation of their day. Most of the characters are cheating on their spouses or involved in shady backroom dealings. It’s portrayed as normal and expected. Particularly the cheating, I remember reading once that ‘there wasn’t a Frenchman who hadn’t grow their horns’ in Cellini’s autobiography, which shocked me a little, because 16th century France was at least nominally Catholic. What is it about French people that makes them so susceptible to infidelity?

[Anonymous No.21562088]

>>21538358

No one mentioned Comte de Lautréamont so far.
Most intense, hallucinated, apocalyptic poetry that any french man ever put on paper.
Not very known though because it's a hard filter, it came out too early (1869) and people were not ready to read a book without logical narration or story.

[Anonymous No.21562172]

>>21561053
I really liked his Disagreeable Tales, I think mainly because some stories impressed a dreamlike atmosphere on me, and feel like reading them again soon (hopefully in the original French). But I’m kinda repulsed by his christian sjw apoplectic hypochondria, “omg poor people suffer, rich people bad” kind of vitriol which borders on what is common to marxian materialism.

[Anonymous No.21562289]

>>21561745
There's much more to literature than how pretty the words sound together.

[Anonymous No.21562295]

>>21561835
>Charles Bovary
It's established on the very first page that Charles is a retard.

[Anonymous No.21562300]

>>21562088
>No one mentioned Comte de Lautréamont so far.
Maybe because this thread is about novelists, not poets.

[Anonymous No.21562314]

>>21562295
Shame no one let the French know that.

[Anonymous No.21562316]

>>21543608
>without Proust you no longer have Joyce or any of the modernists
Yes, one can unfortunately only dream about what a wonderful history of literature we might have had, had Proust never entered the stage. You are quite right, his poison is not contained only in his own works, it seeps down and through the modernists as well, with their conceptual, boring, excruciatingly boring drivel. The only one half-way interesting, because she well and truly mastered the phenomenological method, was Woolf. Joyce was, in her words which will ring true throughout the ages, a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.
But I guess you are right, no Proust, no Woolf, so one tiny speck of light can be gleaned among his consequences.
>Camus was aping american style [...] Celine is Miller before Miller, is Bukowski before Bukowski, he even highly influences Burroughs
So you say Camus is an american, and therefore, unlike Celine, who you then compare to three americans.
You have belligerently repeated my own point back at me. Excellent, well done.

I do not care for "influence". Pursuing questions of who inspired who, and thinking that the one who inspired the most is the best, thereby turning the canon into a self-referential net of masturbatory opinions applauded by anemic academics, with neither hint nor reference to aethetic value, is not a pursuit I consider worthwhile.

And yes, you are quite right, Celine prefigures all the boring, edgy, too-cool-for-this "self-indulgent" and endlessly navel-gazing woe-is-me-but-woe-isn't-even-really-real shlock of the 80's and 90's, quite right, but it is not a testament to his quality.

[Anonymous No.21562373]

How do I go about learning enough French to be able to read French lit?

[Anonymous No.21562492]

>>21562316
I don't know if you are correct, except that Proust is indeed dreadfully dull. Is Celine worth giving a shot? His fascism sounds fun, but woe is me lit is almost as dull as Proust.

[Anonymous No.21562511]

>>21562492
Celine is the diametrical opposite to Proust in style. If anything it is frantic and not dull enough in his mature novels.

[Anonymous No.21562522]

>>21562492
His fascism is cringe and edglord tier and thankfully absent from his actual literature.

[Anonymous No.21562530]

>>21562373
https://www.youtube.com/@learn_french

[Anonymous No.21562572]

>>21542297
>Shit the fuck up

[Anonymous No.21562573]

>>21562522
>His fascism is cringe and edglord tier and thankfully absent from his actual literature.
This is incorrect, as he wrote some fantastic anti Jew poetry.

[Anonymous No.21562984]

can someone rec me some upper beginner tier french lit? here's a qrd on my taste / level

1. my favorite french book is elementary particles. love it. find hollabacks other books kinda boring tho after reading that one
2. don't love camus. find his style boring
3. i loved count of monte cristo, couldn't get through three musketeers.
4. tried reading that famous celine book, dropped it after 3 pages. felt like trying to read jack kerouac who i also hate
5. couldn't get past the first three pages of madame bovary, got bored
6. got bored during the first few pages of in search of lost time

[Anonymous No.21562992]

>>21562984
just read the hunger games in french or some other YA

[Anonymous No.21563340]

>>21559287
Quand on a lu un peu de poésie, la prose de Flaubert, exceptés quelques passages, ne sonne pas si bien que ça. Je préfère mille fois lire un auteur qui est plus authentiquement imagier et mélodiste comme Hugo ou Lamartine l'étaient que les sommes indéfinies de détails et d'accumulations malhabilement harmonieuses de Salammbô.

[Anonymous No.21563354]

>>21563340
filtré

[Anonymous No.21564174]

>>21538358
The Hussards had an extraordinary novelist that rarely gets mentioned here.

[Anonymous No.21564184]

>>21563340
Is Salammbo really not worth reading? The premise is interesting enough.

[Anonymous No.21564207]

>>21562172
Yes Bloy does make bourgeois Christian larpers uncomfortable by taking seriously that the meek shall inherit the Earth, that it is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle, and the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, instead of handwaving it away.

[Anonymous No.21564229]

>>21562984
Take your ADHD pills and restart Madame Bovary, Celine, and the others. You can't be a toddler and have the teletubby jangle car keys in your bassinet to keep your attention, and become literate.

[Anonymous No.21564309]

>>21564184
Salammbo is great, easily the best fantasy and historical fiction work ever written (it's historical fiction that adheres closely to the history, but reads like fantasy).

[Anonymous No.21564357]

>>21564207
I think it is quite admirable of him to embrace a rejection of worldly goods and titles like a desert father and fool for christ in the modern world, and he has even some cool rad quotes like ''my anger is the effervescence of my pity''; that one about giving alms to beggars. But still sounds too importunately affected to me (at least this was the atmosphere I got from him out of skimming through some pages of his non fiction works, especially the Pilgrim of the Absolute). Even Schopenhauer played the flute. Disagreeable Tales is enough for me to respect Bloy, though.

[Anonymous No.21564366]

>>21564229
That anon literally said upper beginner and you recommended him Celine. What the fuck.

[Anonymous No.21564399]

>>21564366
He already started Celine and has ownership or access to a copy, along with half a dozen other French novels he's given up after a handul of pages. His problem is ADHD, not any of his material, he could pick any of them and simply persist and cultivate himself instead of giving up because the Peppa Pig producer forgot to include a chime sound effect for 15 seconds and his eyes have wandered off somewhere else.

[Anonymous No.21564509]

What do you guys think of Romains? I was thinking of picking up Les Hommes de Bonne volonté.

[Anonymous No.21565885]

>>21562373
>learning a language just to read literature
not gonna make it

[Anonymous No.21565901]

Dumas by far. He could write about every theme letting the reader captivated on that.

1- Dumas
2- Stendhal
3- Flaubert
4- Proust
5- Hugo

[Anonymous No.21565912]

>>21562984
I finished all the books you found boring, well, not all of Proust of course. They are indeed boring works and you don't have ADHD. The French just aren't that good at writing novels as they want you to believe.

[Anonymous No.21565949]

>>21564174
I liked his Hécate et ses chiens
How are his other works?

[Anonymous No.21565988]

>>21565885
Literally all educated men before the 70s had some knowledge of Latin and/or Greek, solely for reading

[Anonymous No.21567090]

>>21558964
‘Platform’ is the most clear distillation of pure Houellebecq. Well written and an intriguing plot.
‘Submission’ is interesting but sorta died off at the end, not really sure where he was going with the whole ‘France becomes an Islamic nation, then eventually Europe does too!’ vibe. I guess Andrew Tate converting to Islam is the hyperstitional result of Houellebecq’s predictions lol.
‘Whatever’ is his first novel so mildly intriguing but basically about a beta who does beta things.

[Anonymous No.21567114]

>>21565885
that's the only reason to learn a language

[Anonymous No.21567915]

>>21565988
>educated men
Exactly.

[Anonymous No.21568953]

Flaubert is the only answer possible. In his letters he formalized the epistemology of the modern novel. And Madame Bovary is the model of the literary form, the bible of all the basic literary techniques. Every praiseworthy stylist (Kafka, Hemingway, Nabokov, Joyce etc) knew the book inside out. It is so rich in subtext that it inspired the invention of semioptics and psychoanalisys, not to mention how it influenced all the Golden Age cineasts with Flaubertian psychological cuts and close ups that work just like a movie.

The only one who did it better than Flaubert was Homer, but he didn't write Novels.

Literature can only be properly read by those who are thought the eyes to see.

[Anonymous No.21568960]

>>21568953
Taught the eyes to see*

[Anonymous No.21570144]

Can someone tell me if this was actually written by Verne?
The story of the discovery of the manuscript seemed very suspect, but I couldn't find anything about people denying Verne's authorship.

[Anonymous No.21570155]

Very good book on French decadence (mainly Huysmans and Bloy) and fin-de-siecle occultism and Catholicism, which despite being forgotten about, is the basis for so much contemporary new age, trad-larp, and conspiratorial thinking (the invention of Satanism).

[Anonymous No.21570162]

>>21538358
Zola and Hugo are head and shoulder above the rest
I personnaly like Celine and Camus
Balzac is an historian/documentalist, not a novelist
I almost killed myself while reading Le père Goriot

[Anonymous No.21570172]

>>21555069
I like all of them desu, can't get enough. Sentimental Education is weaker as whole, the narrative doesn't satisfactorily "go off", but very good in its parts and prose. I haven't read a Huysmans or Flaubert work that I haven't loved. The sadsacks on here would love À vau-l'eau, as would anyone wanting to understand the interior life of the bachelor.

[Anonymous No.21570269]

Has anyone read pic related? I distinctly remember some anons in here shilling it and were trying to translate it to English.

Based on a cursory look in the internet it seems this novel is well regarded in the French literary circle. and the only reason it's not more widely known is due to the author's controversial background.

[Anonymous No.21570985]

Would you regard Beckett as a French writer?