“For a Night of Love”  stories by Emile Zola (1880-1883)  – 97 pages

“I am an artist…I am here to live out loud.” – Emile Zola

 Emile Zola is a prime example of a strong intellectual who was not afraid to speak out.  Many of his statements were blunt, harsh, and controversial.  Perhaps his most famous newspaper article was “J’accuse” which was published in the French newspapers in 1898 as an open letter to the French President accusing the highest levels of the French army of obstruction of justice and anti-Semitism for having wrongfully convicted Alfred Dreyfus of espionage.

I have read several of Emile Zola’s major novels including ‘Nana’, “Germinal”, “La Bete Humaine”, and “The Debacle” as well as his short novel “Therese Raquin”.  These novels are deeply involving, because they contain nearly a complete picture of Parisian society in the middle of the nineteenth century.  The portrayal of the main characters is so vividly detailed that you become intensely involved in their stories almost as if you were there.  Zola does not bypass the rough seamy side of life, and his novels were always in trouble with the censors.  Despite or because his novels were racy and sordid, the novels were extremely popular.

Emile Zola was the primary advocate of literary naturalism which according to Wikipedia was a movement that “used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character.”  Naturalism is not only realistic; it attempts to show how the underlying forces of heredity and environment influence the actions of individuals.  Frequently these underlying forces lead to brutal consequences such as poverty, racism, disease, alcoholism, and prostitution.   Zola’s fiction contained them all. 

Emile Zola was not usually a short story writer.  The strength of his novels is in the vivid detail and the complete depiction of a society.  However, he did write a few stories, three of which are collected in the book “For a Night of Love”.  The first two of these stories, “For a Night of Love” and “”Nantas”, are small examples of Zola’s larger technique.  I don’t want to give away the details of these stories, but I can say they are very much in the style of the novels depicting characters operating within the Parisian society and driven to extreme circumstances.  The last story, “Fasting”, is more a sketch than a story

Although these stories give you a small dose of the Zola technique, I think you need to read one of his great novels to undergo the full brilliant effect.  These novels are about a specific place, Paris, at a specific time, the Second Empire. However the novels cover the Parisian society so completely and in such depth that they are universal and timeless.  They are still a pleasure and well worth reading today. 

The major United States writer who was most influenced by Emile Zola was Theodore Dreiser.  Especially in his novels “Sister Carrie” and “An American Tragedy”, Dreiser gives a full and colorful picture of his society that doesn’t back away from the tragic and gruesome details.