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Emile Zola: Works
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Before his breakthrough as a writer, Zola worked as a clerk in a shipping firm and then in the sales department of the publishing house of Louis-Christophe-Francois-Hachette. He ... wrote literary columns and art reviews for the Cartier de Villemessant's newspapers. As a political journalist Zola did not hide his antipathy toward the French Emperor Napoleon III, who used the Second Republic as a springboard to become Emperor.
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Before his breakthrough as a writer, Zola worked as a clerk in a shipping firm, and then in the sales department for a publisher (Hachette). He ... wrote literary and art reviews for newspapers. As a political journalist, Zola did not hide his dislike of Napoleon III, who had successfully run for the office of President under the constitution of the French Second Republic, only to misuse this position as a springboard for the coup d'etat that made him emperor.
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With his sacred soul, Zola became a beacon for social reform. His highly-acclaimed Germinal (1885) explored the dismal labor conditions of the coal mines. "The artist is nothing without the gift," Zola claimed. "But the gift is nothing without the work."
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Self-proclaimed leader of French naturalism, Zola's works inspired operas such as those of Gustave Charpentier, notably Louise in the 1890s. His works, inspired by the concepts of heredity (Claude Bernard), social manichaeism and idealistic socialism, resonate with those of Nadar, Manet and subsequently Flaubert.
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Though his subject matter is often tragic, Zola's writing is spiced with bitter and delightful irony. The one modern American writer who perhaps resembles Zola in this single regard is Kurt Vonnegut. In contrast with Vonnegut, Zola was in many respects a harder worker, exerting journalistic attention to evidence-gathering, accurate detail and factual history in a manner worthy of James Michener, Jimmy Breslin or Studs Terkel. For the purposes of the novels, Zola often coalesced historical events or transposed them, but generally he was faithful enough to the historical record that his few artistic or accidental transpositions are footnoted in modern editions.
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It was not a happy time: Zola felt isolated in a country where he did not speak the language, had few friends and was unable to understand English cooking, cricket, Sundays and sash windows. All that concerned him was to get on with the writing of his next novel, Fécondité. He seems to have avoided contact with English writers: it was not until the very end of his stay that he took dinner with his greatest disciple, George Moore. Meanwhile, the influence of French Naturalism was making its mark through the work of writers such as Moore, Somerset Maugham and Arnold Bennett.
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