The publication of the number of books sold by a young American
novelist previous to his untimely taking off does not prove that a
writer has to be alive to be a best seller. If that were the case,
what about Dickens and Thackeray as exceptions? The publishers of
Dickens say that their sales of his novels in 1910 were 25 per cent
more than in 1909, and 750,000 copies were sold in 1911. In many
instances a dead author is worth more than a live one. With Zola this
is not precisely so, though his books still sell; the only interregnum
being the time when the Dreyfus affair was agitating France. Then the
source of Zola's income dried up like a rain pond in a desert. Later
on he had his revenge.
The figures for the sale of Zola up to the end of 1911 are very
instructive. His collected works number forty-eight volumes. Of the
Rougon-Macquart series 1,964,000 have been sold; other novels,
764,000; essays and various works bring the total to 2,750,000,
approximately. In a word, a few years hence Zola will easily pass
3,000,000. Nana still holds its own as the leader of the list,
215,000; La Terre, 162,000; L'Assommoir, 162,000. This would seem to
prove what the critics of the French novelist have asserted: that
books in which coarse themes are treated with indescribable coarseness
have sold and continue to sell better than his finer work, L'Oeuvre,
for example, which has only achieved 71,000. But L'Assommoir is Zola
at his best; besides, it is not such a vile book as La Terre. And then
how about La Debacle, which has 229,000 copies to its credit? The
answer is that patriotism played a greater role in the fortune of this
work than did vulgar curiosity in the case of the others. Another
popular book, Germinal, shows 132,000.
On the appearance of La Terre in 1887 (it was first published as a
feuilleton in _Gil Blas_, from May 28 to September 15), five of Zola's
disciples, Paul Bonnetain, J. H. Rosny, Lucien Descaves, Paul
Margueritte, and Gustave Guiches, made a public protest which is
rather comical if you remember that several of these writers have not
turned out Sunday-school literature; Paul Margueritte in particular
has in L'Or and an earlier work beaten his master at the game. But a
reaction from Zola's naturalism was bound to come. As Remy de Gourmont
wrote: "There has been no question of forming a party or issuing
orders; no crusade was organised; it is individually that we have
separated ourselves, horror stricken, from a literature the baseness
of which made us sick." Havelock Ellis, otherwise an admirer of the
genius of Emile Zola, has said that his soul "seems to have been
starved at the centre and to have encamped at the sensory periphery."
Blunt George Saintsbury calls Zola the "naturalist Zeus, Jove the
Dirt-Compeller," and adds that as Zola misses the two lasting
qualities of literature, style, and artistic presentation of matter,
he is doomed; for "the first he probably could not have attained,
except in a few passages, if he would; the second he has deliberately
rejected, and so the mother of dead dogs awaits him sooner or later."
Yet Zola lives despite these predictions, as the above figures show,
notwithstanding his loquacity in regard to themes that should be
tacenda to every writer.
But in this matter of forbidden subjects Zola is regarded by the
present generation as a trifle old-fashioned. When alive he was
grouped with Aretino and the Marquis de Sade, or with Restif de la
Bretonne. To-day Paris has not only Paul Margueritte, who when
writing in conjunction with his brother Victor gave much promise, but
also Octave Mirbeau. With Zola, the newer men assert that their work
makes for morality, exposing as it does public and private abuses, an
excuse as classic as Aristophanes.
In 1893 the figures for the principal novels of Zola stood thus: Nana,
160,000; L'Assommoir, 127,000; La Debacle, 143,000; Germinal, 88,000;
La Terre, 100,000; La Bete Humaine, 83,000; the same number for Le
Reve; Pot-Bouille, 82,000; whereas L'Oeuvre only counted 55,000; La
Conquete de Plassans, 25,000; La Curee, 36,000, and La Joie de Vivre,
44,000. La Terre, then, the most unmentionable story of them all, has
jumped since 1893 to the end of 1911 from 100,000 to 215,000, whereas
L'Oeuvre moved only from 55,000 to 71,000 in fourteen years. But a
Vulgarian can understand La Terre while L'Oeuvre would be absolutely
undecipherable to him.
Zola always knew his market; even knew it after Dreyfus had
intervened. Of the series called Les Trois Villes, Rome is the best
seller, 121,000; and it is as profound a vilification of the Eternal
City as was La Terre of the French peasants, as Pot-Bouille of the
French bourgeois. Indeed, all Zola reads like the frenzied attack of a
pessimist to whom his native land is a hideous nightmare and its
inhabitants criminals or mad folk. His influence on a younger
generation of writers, especially in America, has been baneful, and
he has done much with his exuberant, rhapsodical style to further the
moon-madness of socialism; of a belief in a coming earthly paradise,
where no one will labour (except the captive millionaires) and from
whose skies roasted pigeons will fall straightway into the mouths of
its foolish inhabitants.
Zola as a money-maker need not be considered now; his gains were
enormous; suffice to say that he was paid large sums for the serial
rights. Nana, in _Voltaire_, brought 20,000 francs; Pot-Bouille, in
_Gaulois_, 30,000 francs; Bonheur des Dames, La Joie de Vivre,
Germinal, L'Oeuvre, La Terre, in _Gil Blas_, each 20,000 francs;
L'Argent, in the same journal, 30,000 francs; Le Reve, in the _Revue
Illustree_, 25,000 francs; La Bete Humaine, in _Vie Populaire_, 25,000
francs; La Debacle, in the same, 30,000 francs, and Docteur Pascal in
_Revue Hebdomadaire_, 35,000 francs. That amounts to about 300,000
francs. Each novel cost from 20,000 to 25,000 francs for rights of
reproduction, and to all this must be added about 500,000 francs for
the theatrical works, making a total of 1,600,000 francs. And it was
in 1894 that these figures were compiled by Antoine Laporte in his
book on Naturalism, which contains a savage attack on Zolaism. Truly,
then, Zola may be fairly called one of the best sellers among all
authors, dead or living.