The Assommoir Author:Émile Zola Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: NOTES UPON THE "ASSOMMOIR." Once in a railway carriage, I saw a Frenchman, who was reading a book very attentively, exhibit, from time to time, signs of surpr... more »ise. Snddenly, whilst I was trying to diseover the title upon the cover, he exclaimed, " Oh ! this is disgusting !" and put the volume into his valise in the most contemptnous manner. He remained for some moments lost in thought, then re-opened the valise, took up the book again, and began reading. He might have finished a couple of pages, when he snddenly burst out into a hearty langh, and turning to his companion, said, " Ah ! my dear friend, here is the most marvellous deseription of a wedding dinner !" Then he resumed his reading, showing plainly that he was eujoying it intensely. The book was the " Assommoir," and that which happened to the Frenchman when perusing it occurs to all who take up the novels of Zolafor the first time. You must conquer the first feeling of repugnance ; then, whatever may be the final jndgment pronounced upon the writer, you are glad to have read his works, and you arrive at the conclusion that you ought to have read them. The first effect produced, particularly after the perusal of other works, is similar to that experienced on coming out of a close and heated theatre, when one feels the first whiff of fresh air in one's face with a keen sense of pleasure, even if it bring with itanodotirnot altogetheragreer.ble. Afterrcading Zola's romances it seems as though in all others, even in the truest, there were a veil between the reader and the things deseribed, and there is present to our minds the same difference as exists between the representations of human faces on canvas and the reflection of Signer tle Amicis is one of the moat brilliant and powerful of the present generation of Ita...« less