Fading in the Stretch

At midnight tonight, I will officially be one book off the pace.  I blame Hermann Broch:  the first part of his trilogy "The Sleepwalkers" has turned out to be fearsomely dull (like a Balzac bereft of wit).  So much for essaying "The Death of Vergil" later this summer.

Latest Books

This week I 've finished three more books:  "The Praise of Folly" by Erasmus of Rotterdam; "The Thirty-Nine Steps" by John Buchan; and "The Leopard" by Giuseppi Tommaso di Lampedusa.

Ah! Balzac!

I've just finished my tenth book, Balzac's unknown "The Collection of Antiquities".  It is classic Balzac and excellent, the story of a Marquis who loses everything during the Revolution and stakes all his hopes on a brilliant, handsome son.  As in most of Balzac's oeuvre, we know in advance that the Marquis is doomed to disappointment.

Fadiman writes of Balzac:  "He lived in a period, like our own, of money-making, money-losing, money-loving; a period in which the greatest sin was not treachery but bankruptcy.  No other novelist before him understood the world of money as did Balzac." 

"Le Cabinet des Antiques" bears out this praise in fascinating form, and I recommend it without reservation to anyone who wishes to glimpse the riches that lie in the forgotten tomes beyond "Pere Goriot".