#EUGENE DE RASTIGNAC WILL RETURN IN: ILLUSIONS PERDUES | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

coquelicoq · 7 months ago

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i think of all the books i've ever read, le père goriot takes the prize for taking the longest to get interesting, as it doesn't happen until the very last sentence. i'm just bopping along for over 400 pages of whatever and then he slaps me in the face with the last sentence and immediately peaces out. okay you got my attention, just in time to throw it away. respect.

#i'm now reading all the front and back matter and having a great time #this is maybe the best part of reading the classics: reading the essays about the classics #i did not know before i started reading this book that it's part of a series of 90 novels and novellas about the same characters 😂#the editor keeps referencing the others and i'm like. i'm not reading those but i'm happy for you. or sorry that happened #anyway the point is that le père goriot is kind of the backstory for this one character who does a bunch of shit in later books #and the last line of this book is his like. looking up from his dead wife's body covered in blood and vowing revenge moment #not really. it's his girlfriend's dad's body but whatever #the point is that he doesn't become an interesting character to me until the last shot when suddenly the words #EUGENE DE RASTIGNAC WILL RETURN IN: ILLUSIONS PERDUES #appear on the screen. aw! but i'm not gonna watch that!#literature #my posts #this is a tad unfair because some of balzac's prose especially at the beginning of the book is incredibly elegant and incisive #it actually reminded me a lot of jane austen #i just didn't care about the characters until the very end :/#this is making me want to read some scholarship on the use of cliffhangers in the episodic publication model of the 19th century #cuz like. he must have done this on purpose to get the newspaper to pay for the sequel. right?

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