Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-02-26
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEEELL.

as good a novel as he could. Like any
| true artist, he wanted to write as well
as possible in order to make his picture
as good as possible, and that meant as
interesting as possible.
| We who read novels read them first
and foremost because they interest us.
| Why should any one be ashamed to
admit as much? 1t is not at all neces-
| sary to excuse ones self because of the
| reading of good story.
| Some go to the movies" some read
novels. Your motion picture interest
| you, well and good; We get great deal
more kick out of a well told story and
never have to stand in any line.
"L'Assommoir" is really poem in
prose form, but 1t is not prose poetry by
any means. 1t is prose so constructed
and so handled that the reading thereof
gives the exaltation of thought which a
real poem produces.
| The section in the work dealing with
the feast of the working people. at
| which goose was the main foodstuff
is told with such gusto that the scene
fairly flows before the readers eyes.
No motion picture could make it more
lifelike. And the mystery is how lola
| manages to make such scene, with its
minute details, exalting in any degree.
| We use "eXalt'' in the sense of inspiring
with delight and satisfaction. lola
| throughout this fine piece of work de-
| lights and satisfies the reader, because
| he interests him, first of all, and be-
cause he satisfies his sense of the true
and the just, and makes him sensible
from the first word to the last that
here is one of the masterpieces of world
| fiction.
Charles Reade, who was no mean
novelist himself, with his "Cloister and
the HEARTH etc, dramatized LAS
sommoir" under the name of Drink"
and this play had long run on the
English stage. Such work as this paved
the way for prohibition, the idea of
which is no new thing.
The story is built around the char
acter of GeryaiSe, woman who was
good hearted and who had ambitions.
but who was kept from realizing them
by others, who almost combined to pull
her down.
The slow, relentless degradation of
the poor Gervaise is carried forward
with the cruel certainty of Greek play
in which relentless Fate operated to
the detriment of some deserving but
luck-lacking character.
Environment and conditions took the
place, with lola, of fate. This novel
was worked out before it was written,
but between Zola's elaborate outline"
still extant. and the book itself there
is a wide gulf Of the sort bridged only
by genius.
lola in "L'Assommoir" was a sad poet
who gave to fiction the sweep and
majesty of biblical prose, something OF
touch of the "barbaric yawp" of Walt
Whitman, a little of the universal hui
NOR of most of the human race.
Most wonderful of all, lola secured
all this out of the very lowliest depths
of human society as then constituted
in France. He showed the good in the
worst and the bad in the best, and so
blended them that no reader could
despise the first or unduly praise the
second.
Guy de Maupassant's "a Woman's
Life" has been called the saddest story
in the world" but Zola's "L'Assommoir"
deserves the title because it is more
universal in scope and more true to
humanity.