Balzac

Balzac Synopsis

Balzac was one of the founding geniuses among the world's great novelists. V. S.

Pritchett presents a life-size portrait of the man inside the artist, the exuberant, uncouth provincial who combined encyclopaedic knowledge with the life of an exhibitionist and a would-be dandy, a gourmet, a disastrous financial speculator, a successful pursuer of aristocratic women, a born salesman and an untiring traveller. Yet, with some truth, Balzac called himself a monk, working his sixteen hours a day and keeping going on an ocean of strong coffee.

When he died, he left the huge monument of the Com-die Humaine, an unsurpassed picture of French society from the rise and fall of Napoleon until the revolution of 1848.