A book about a medieval hotspot that has lost its relevance in the 19th century and a man who is horribly depressed and sees the city as his emotions dictate it. What doesn’t sound amazing about this? Pretty much the quintessential Symbolist novel.
Recently bodied this. Old big French novel. Technically about the mining strikes in northern France in 1866, and definitely about that, but also just about life during that time. Scrapping in the mines. Living in close quarters, turning up in the village with the other workers. The implied stuff Zola looks at in terms of family structure, mating rules, social life. It moves like novels of that time, like the Russians, say, in how it roams omnisciently in that quintessentially 19th century way. But something about how he starts it, with the protagonist pulling up to a new town, homeless and hungry, and seeing him gradually integrate into the mining community… The intimacy of living in such close quarters… Idk, it’s counterintuitively spicy, I recommend it, it slaps.
Just giving everyone a heads up i’ll be on the hunt for clout in the seattle art museum. There’s an Ai Weiwei exhibit so hopefully there will be a bounty of clout to harvest.
