Comprising the title novella plus seven short stories.
The Seamy Side of Life is a 184 p tale of a rootless young man who determines to get out of debt by adopting a quiet and lowly life for a year or two. He inadvertently enters the godly establishment of Mme de la Chanterie and her equally steadfast acolytes. Young Godefroid is soon moved to embrace their faith and their charitable works....
This tale both inspires but also has a mysterious tale, with adventure and horror, going back to the Revoliution some 40 years earlier..... A definite parallel within to Christ's sacrifice on behalf of an unworthy world.
The most stand-out of the short stories was Z Marcas. Again in wretched Parisian lodgings of (the description of which, Balzac is masterly) two students befriend their slightly older neighbour. Marcas is a brilliant man with much to offer the world, but through his 'face not fiting'; through political dealings and colleagues eager to offload this more able individual, he finds himself scraping a living in a garret.
Gaudissart II picks up the theme of Balzac's earlier tale of a canny commercial traveller geting shafted by a lunatic. THIS Gaudissart is head of a ladies' clothing department in a Parisian store; and here the salesman DOES get one over on a difficukt English customer...
A Prince of Bohemia is a truly tragic tale of an obsessed young woman, sacrificing all for an utterly worthless and uninterested love interest.
Sarrasine and A Man of Business were- I thought- lacklustre.
Facino Cane and An Episode Under the Terror I have mentioned as appearing in another anthology. ( )

This lesser-known, final finished Balzac novel comprises 2 halves and is the concluding segment of the Parisian Life chapter of the Human Comedy. There are 3 translations into English with alternate titles, this one being the most recent.

As in most of the author's work, there is a display of bottomless wisdom, an assured, master's touch, and an incredible condensation of narrative and pathos. It is, from the start, a condemnation of refined tastes, a repudiation of vanity and empty boasts, and a charming character study. Balzac acknowledged influence from Dickens' contemporaneous "The Cricket and the Hearth," and it is easy to see that he borrowed a bit of his English rival's whimsicality.

But Balzac delves deeper with his themes, I think, and challenges the reader in different ways. Dickens was also a master of capturing his time, of putting relevant themes to good use, but in much of his work, he wraps the literary innovation into the form of a fable. Some of his novels lack the immediacy of Balzac's work. Balzac's Realism feels more real. At least to me.

Here we have our hero putting on a show for propriety, cultivating an impressive reputation, but also failing at managing his finances. Finances are the great obsession of the human race, and Balzac's Comedy derives its modus operandi from this principle. Our main character must put on a brave face, as he faces ruin. All he wants is to make a splash on the Paris scene, but he is floundering. The inertia of the mediocre life assaults him with its inevitability.

The ruination of business ventures and disenchantment with hopeful works is also explored in the first part of the book. Dissolute children, wayward sons, prodigal offspring, the onslaught of melancholy, advantageous marriages, impending old age, the social plight of the invalid - these concepts are given their turn throughout. Finding success from the strength and works of others, the morality of wealth, making your own luck, society's inherent flaws, unbridled disdain for the historical precedents of class hierarchies, established orders and moral strictures - Balzac manages to incorporate far more imperatives than I anticipated.

Along with an analysis of ambition, failure, talent, perception, societal duties, expectations, the privileged versus underprivileged roles in their community, the unfair distribution of ability, wealth, fame and hardship, bitter familial relationships, false modesty, dandyism, and the values of the monastic life, envy and self-important rage, the impotent existence of ambitious youth - what, seemingly, has he left out? Godefroid, the drowning man, finds his saviors in an unexpected form. Not surprising, many of these literary views intercept one another. It would be a jumbled concoction, except Balzac is a consummate weaver of tales, and knows how to subtly introduce tributaries of meaning without drawing attention from center stage.

Yet, as side characters rail against the seductions of ordinary Parisian life and overflow with didactic, preachy critiques, Balzac's unorthodox Catholicism begins to take shape. Balzac has cherrypicked specific principles for a melange of hypothetical Good Samaritans. They pointed claim in the novel they are not Good Samaritans, but for lack of a better comparison, they could be called that for the sake of shorthand. Balzac crafts a compelling narrative around this secret society of charity. It's a simple formula: have them go out and put their faith into practice, and one wonders if Balzac would have lived longer, if he would have followed the adventures of these fellows for many more volumes. All we know is that this was a definitive end to the Parisian segment of his Comedy and of the 40 or so unfinished works he left behind, these characters did not return for encores.

The question of decency in the world is present throughout the Human Comedy. So far I have not found a better example in his corpus of backstory revealing the characters' motivations and relationship with society. The backstories were riveting, and served as a counterpoint to the main character's decision making.

The inevitable disappointment life has in store for the man of means: That sums up Godefroid. This being a reversal of the traditional harrowing upward struggle of rags-to-riches stories. Could this be an answer to Dickens' idealism?

Balzac lived in the long age of Chauvinism. But his female characters are well-rounded, thick-souled beings, very influential and heartfelt. Patriotism is omni-present - the point of the Human Comedy after all is to measure up to Dante's Divine Comedy, but to bring it down to the human level. The devotion to a life of goodwill toward men - Dante was familiar with the concept. But in Balzac's fabulous appraisal of the lives of selfish and selfless saints and sinners, he seems to understand the full impact one soul can have upon another. The subsuming of the baser instincts in Man is a common literary trope, but through obedience, subservience, meekness, the humble joys of service, industry and heartfelt relationships of Platonic love, we can observe a side of humanity we rarely see. This is an exquisite study of religion, which has wider application for its vague precepts. It is hard to live a life in this modern age without either patently ignoring or pursuing the allure of divinity. The only question that remains unanswered is whether or not it is another ambition born from a fear of death, a vain hope indeed. No matter where you find yourself on the question of faith, this book is a pure expression of humanness, and another notch on Balzac's amble belt. ( )

At the start of this short novel, Godefroid roams the streets of Paris, having squandered his fortune and fallen into debt. Resolving to change his ways, he is going to respond to an unusual sounding ad for a room to let for a "lodger of quiet habits" when he chances upon a priest offering advice to a worker, and lo and behold, they are going to the same place, a home nestled into the Île de la Cité. Godefroid moves in and discovers that the owner of the home, Madame de La Chanterie (known as Madame), and her other boarders, are involved in mysterious comings and goings, and have equally mysterious visitors who also come and go. Eventually he learns that they are all devout Catholics who go by their first names (as monks would) and who, with their own fortunes and money given to them by others, practice Charity by giving money (or really lending it, with the borrower deciding if and when to repay) to change the lives of the poor. Godefroid becomes interested in this and is instructed by Monsieur Alain, the priest he originally encountered, in both religion and in how they practice charity; he is also in training to become their accountant. Alain reveals to him, through court documents, Madame's secret history, which involves the turbulent counter-revolutionary era in the west of France, chronicled in Balzac's The Chouans.

At a certain point, Godefroid is deemed experienced enough to go live in a boarding house in a very poor area of Paris where a man focuses his life on caring for his appallingly sick grown-up daughter, along with her teenage son who is already studying law. Godefroid is supposed to figure out how to help them, both medically and financially. The man is writing a treatise on law and is deeply in debt to shady publishers, to whom the landlady of the house is connected; in fact, she is spying on them and getting involved in schemes to oust the family from her house. The story becomes a little convoluted at this point, and there are many complications, before an astounding secret is revealed, and the plot comes to a somewhat surprisingly forgiving conclusion.

This novel has the detailed descriptions of how people live, the vivid characters, and indeed the melodrama that are typical of Balzac. As it drew near to its end, I couldn't put it down. Although it definitely has a theme of the power of faith, charity, and forgiveness, this is mixed with so much else that it didn't really annoy me as much as I expected it would. There is also a tad of antisemitism (the rich Polish Jewish doctor has piles of money displayed in his office), but it is not more than what would have been standard at the time.

This is a new translation of a book whose French title would translate more as "the underside of contemporary history," which is certainly apt, if a mouthful. The translator discusses this in an interesting translator's introduction, as well as the place of this novel in Balzac's overall work, and has provided very helpful notes which oh so sadly are not referenced in the text so the reader has to guess what might have a note.

Balzac can't help himself, despite a didactic premise about a society of selfless people doing anonymous works of charity he can't help but let his characters, intrigues, and places shine through. This is a recent translation of the rarely translated last book in the Human Comedy. While it's certainly nowhere near the top of that set of works it is well worth reading -- and a sad reminder that there must be dozens of other Balzac novels that are just as good that haven't been translated in over a century. ( )

Balzac can't help himself, despite a didactic premise about a society of selfless people doing anonymous works of charity he can't help but let his characters, intrigues, and places shine through. This is a recent translation of the rarely translated last book in the Human Comedy. While it's certainly nowhere near the top of that set of works it is well worth reading -- and a sad reminder that there must be dozens of other Balzac novels that are just as good that haven't been translated in over a century. ( )