Pot Luck by Zola

The English title of this book doesn't really reflect the seething activity taking place in it; a more literal translation of something like "boiling pot" would have been better. In this novel, Zola tackles the hypocrisy of bourgeois life by focusing on the residents of a single, recently built apartment building.

The story starts when Octave Mouret, related to both the Rougons and Macquarts in a complicated way (explained by the genealogical chart on this Wikipedia page)), comes to Paris to seek his fortune, and through an acquaintance from his home town of Plassans, movies into the apartment building on the Rue de Choiseul and finds a job as the head assistant at a large draper's shop run by the Hedouins. Octave is impressed by the modernity of the building, with a grand heated stairway (at least partway up the building for the tenants, only an unheated back stairway for the servants); the acquaintance, an architect named Campardon, assures him there is water and gas on every floor, although he also points out cracks in the paneling and peeling paint. He insists (as many other will insist throughout the book) that this is a "respectable" building. He tells Octave: "The only thing, my boy, is that there must be no noise and above all no women. My word! If you brought a woman here, there would be a revolution in the house." Then, after Campardon introduces Octave to his family and takes him to his new place of employment, Octave overhears him talking very familiarly with Gasparine, a supposedly estranged cousin of Madame Campardon who also works at the Hedouins. In subsequent chapters, the reader encounters the Josserand family (father, mother, two daughters who the mother is desperately trying to marry off), other tenants in the building and, very importantly, many of the servants who work for the tenants, living in tiny rooms at the top of the building and sharing news and gossip with each other by yelling out of their courtyard-facing kitchens. While Octave and the Josserats (and the family of the landlord) are at the center of a lot what happens in this novel, it is almost the building that is the main character, with the varied tenants acting as an ensemble cast.

And what happens is a lot of intrigue, both sexual and financial, among the tenants, between the tenants and the servants, between the tenants and outsiders, and between outsiders and other outsiders. "Respectable" men decry "slutty" servants one minute and visit their mistresses the next. Across the board, the contempt most of the men have for most women is spectacular. Although there are horrifying moments (including one, towards the end, that is a tour de force of Zola's naturalistic style), this is largely a satirical work, with Zola showing the dirt (sometimes literally) that lies under the veneer of bourgeois "respectability." He also manages to poke a little fun at the church, as represented by the local priest who does the bidding of his bourgeois parishioners, and to allow a few characters, including the local doctor, to express anti-Empire sentiments. The servants, who are treated terribly by their employers, of course know everything that goes on in the building and are eager to share their thoughts on their employers with each other; thus, Zola brings class issues into the mix.

As always, Zola's varied characters jump of the page, the suspense builds through his expert story-telling, and the set pieces at parties satirize pretensions while advancing the plot. While this is not my favorite of the Rougon-Macquart novels I've read so far, I couldn't put it down.

I actually liked Pot luck quite a lot. It's just that the sequel to it 'The ladies paradise' just expands on it in so many interesting ways--particularly in an historical sense--the modernizing of the streets and avenues of Paris and the birth of the department store. Ladies paradise is definitely (at least IMO) one of Zola's best works.

I'm looking forward to reading The Ladies Paradise next. There's a lot about the wider streets in Paris in The Kill too.

I think the modernizing of the streets and the land speculation accompanying it was a much more important part of The Kill than in The Ladies' Paradise, where it arose primarily in connection with Octave's expansion of the store.

Here is my review of Pot Luck from when I read it last year.

Having completed Pot Luck, I am now half-way through my Rougon-Macquart journey. In Pot Luck, Zola takes on the bourgeoisie, in a story revolving around Octave Mouret. Octave is the son of the Mourets whose downfall is chronicled in The Conquest of Plassans, and the brother of the priest whose downfall is told in The Sin of Father Mouret. Octave will fare somewhat better, but perhaps only because for the most part he is simply the vortex around which the tragedies in this story swirl.

Everytime I see the title of this book in French (Pot-Bouille), I think "Pot Boiler" (I don't speak French). According to the translator, the French title is actually untranslatable. Zola meant to convey the idea of a melting pot of sexual promiscuity, as well as "the messy mish-mash of moral and physical corruption concealed beneath the veneer of bourgeois respectability."

The main characters all live in an apartment building, which in itself is a metaphorical character in this novel. The building has an impressive facade, and an ornate lobby and stairways. But beneath the facade, the building is crumbling. The central courtyard of the building is a frequent element--here the inhabitants dispose of their waste, and here, at the rear windows the servants gossip of the foibles of their employers. A constant stench permeates the core of the building.

No one character takes precedence in this novel; there is an ensemble cast. All are essentially flawed and hypocritical, engaging in adultry while insisting on absolute propriety from their servants and from the other tenants. Even the parish priest participates in maintaining the facade of respectability: "He had finally been obliged to concern himself with outward appearances only, as a sort of master of ceremonies covering the corrupt bourgoisie with the cloak of religion...."

Octave himself is told by one of the other tenants: "You see, these kinds of houses are built for effect. The walls, though, aren't very solid. The house was built twelve years ago, and already they're cracking. They build the frontage with all sorts of sculpture, give the staircase three coats of varnish, and touch up the rooms with gilt and paint; that's what impresses people and inspires respect." Nevertheless, Zola tells us that, "from the dark bowels of the narrow courtyard only the stench of drains came up, like the smell of the hidden filth of the various families, stirred up by the servants' rancour."

My review:

Pot Luck examines the lives of the residents of a single apartment building in Paris during the 1860s. It is the height of France's Second Empire and a time of materialism, ambition, glamour and pretense. The building is clean, stylish and well-maintained on the outside. The entry and central staircase impress visitors with their opulent glitter. But a closer look shows that the gold is only gilding, the paint is already peeling, and the walls are beginning to crack. Go where only the servants go and you will find a central courtyard reeking with stench of rotting waste and ordure.

The building is a metaphor for the lives of its residents. The are all solid and respectable members of the bourgeois class: a judge, a silk merchant, an architect, and various clerks. To outsiders they conduct their lives with impeccable rectitude. But their lives are a cesspit of sexual infidelity and crass materialism. The judge maintains a mistress, and his wife approves for it keeps her from having to perform "that detestable act" herself. The architect's wife has syphilis, so he keeps her cousin as his mistress in the adjoining bedroom. A mother trains her dowry-less daughters in the arts of seduction and entrapment while her brother, a gluttonous drunkard, keeps a 13-year-old mistress.

Into this house of carnality and hypocrisy comes Octave Mouret, a member of the Rougon-Macquart family whose lives, representing a cross-section of French society, form the framework for Zola's series of 20 novels. Trained in the fabric business, Octave is talented and ambitious. One of his ambitions is to seduce as many married women as possible, and his new domicile offers many enticing targets. But even he is shocked at the number of intrigues that are already under way.

Zola contrasts the blind eye that is turned to the affairs of the bourgeoisie with their intolerance for similar behavior among the servant and working class. Maids and cooks are ruthlessly dismissed for activities that pale in comparison to those of their masters. An unmarried tradeswoman who rents an attic room is turned out for becoming pregnant. As she is being evicted, "Her belly seemed to cast a shadow over the frigid cleanliness of the courtyard, and even over the imitation marble and gilded zinc decorations of the hall. It seemed to bring disgrace to the whole building, tainting the very walls and, as it swelled, undermining the placid virtue of each apartment."

Zola indeed lays it on rather thick at times, but there's no mistaking his point about the hypocrisy of the middle class and the institutions such as the church and courts which were complicit in its deceptions. Pot Luck must have been shocking when first published in 1882 with its frankness about sex and venereal disease as well as a graphic description of childbirth. It's still rather disturbing, and a story that's not easily forgotten.