"CONFESSION DE CLAUDE"

Zola informed me that Confession de Claude had been published, and all signs indicated that it would be as successful as Contes a Ninon had been.

Confession de Claude was reviewed favorably by Marious Roux in Memorial d'Aix, with the article on the novel prominently shown on the front page of the paper. Marguery, another friend whom I'd had known at Saint Joseph's Academy, said essentially the same thing in L'Echo, another local paper, using flowery and extravagant prose in praising Zola's writing. Something was basically wrong with this, I thought:   a compromising, a hypocritical attitude toadying to a materialistic system, and one which which was very hard to take as being sincere. Both Marius Roux and Marguery picked up on Zola's dedicating the work to Baille and myself as "Sons of Provence," young men in Paris who would undoubtedly honor Aix-en-Provence by their achievements in the years to come. Marguery, in particular, irritated me by his over-literary style as he detailed our close friendships with Zola, the frequent excursions throughout the countryside, and the high ideals that had emerged from the experience. In a letter to Zola, I thanked him for the dedication but criticized Marguery for crediting me with progress in my painting, when in fact, there had been, at least in my mind, no progress at all. "It doesn't make sense," I wrote, "because people laugh at you when they read it, joke about it when they meet you on the street, taking off their hats in sarcastic deference. Louis Auguste reminded me of Marguery's words, repeating a phrase again and again, "winning over all obstacles," obviously enjoying the opportunity to humiliate me. And Zola, even you must realize how this is embarrassing to me among these rotten Axians, who wait for something like this to surface so they can exercise their venom on an easy target. I have never found dealing with the idiots who populate this place an easy game, and now, becoming a big joke has made it much more difficult for me. When I walk down on the Cours Mirabeau, I am conscious of this, I avoid people if it is possible...." Zola, replying to my complaint, accused me of making something out of nothing, "Your paranoid feelings exaggerate everything," he said, "creating situations which do not exist, situations which are distorted into personal attacks on you, situations which are only figments of your imagination. What was merely protocol in literary dedications is stretched all out of proportion in your head, becoming personal attacks aimed at humiliating you, improprieties that are unforgivable.... Can't you see the difference between compliments among friends and outright slurs on your character by your enemies? We all need help, Paul, and that alone was on my mind when I decided to dedicate Confession de Claude to Baille and yourself.... that, and nothing else." Zola was unable to see that private and public images were essentially the same thing, a single entity, based on consistent principle. I disagreed with his assumption that hypocritical concoctions for materialistic advancement, are merely surface impressions, that they have no other significance, more profoundly related to the truth. I have to admit, however, that Zola's pliable ethics, tailored for every problem, were much more effective than my adherence to principle. He moved ahead in his career, adjusted easily, and all signs indicated he had a clear run to his objectives. There was no envy for his successes, his consistent progress, his critical acceptance, which fulfilled the youthful fantasies and dreams we enjoyed during our growing up together in Aix-en-Provence. Nevertheless, in spite of Zola's confidence, there were serious problems ahead for him. In general, the response Confession de Claude did not measure up to the reviews given his previous novel. Zola, desperate to capture the fancy of the public, was brazenly pushing the frontiers of propriety with a sexually explicit style which he called "the new realism." The critics took an unfavorable view of this outright disregard for common decency, and poured out a storm of abuse that Zola accepted in stride without missing a step. He was delighted by the publicity, saying he didn't care what they said, as long as they said it, and gave him the exposure he believed essential to success. The reviewers called the writing lascivious, the outpourings of a latent pervert, a schizophrenic manifestation of pornographic material which demanded the attention of the law. Most of the press fixed their articles on this aspect of Zola's work, seeing it as a chance to enhance their own moral status, get new readers, and sell more newspapers. Their position, it was obvious, was impeccable, giving them a free hand to exaggerate, to print whatever they wished, and to put down an upstart who talked more than he should considering his vulnerable status as a neopyte writer from a provincial background. The critical reviews featured captions like: "Grave Threat To Public Morality," "Degrading, Putrid Subject Matter," "Pornographic Trash," "A Peek In The Bedroom," "Sex Clinic For French Citizens," and one paper, L'Evenement, not noted for its reticence as a troublemaker, had a banner headline saying, "Emile Zola Challenges The Authority Of The French Government To Censor His Rights Of Creative Freedom!" Underneath the article was a cartoon depicting Zola in the guise of Don Quixote, astride his horse with lance at the ready, facing the police, the outraged church authorities, and the politicians. The critics, however, carefully stayed away from advising the government to pass anti-smut laws because they knew that censorship in the long run would come down on their own heads, an eventuality that might place serious restrictions on their freedom to express themselves. What really disturbed Zola's colleagues in the writing profession was his violation of traditional literary practices; he was looked upon as an outsider who was willing, in order to feather his own nest, to change writing norms and subject matter away from the more idealistic and romantic notions that had been prevalent for generations, to a harsher, realistic form which dealt with the depraved aspects of human behavior. An ensuing row in the writing profession, bringing the clinical nature of Zola's prose to the attention of the government finally forced Louis Napoleon's Council on Pornography and Seditious Criminal Acts, to examine the existing statues as they related to the printing of explicit sexual material. The unfavorable publicity delighted Zola because being in the spotlight, for good or bad reasons, was entirely to his taste. He suffered the subsequent discomforts of this with an unusual degree of equanimity, immensely pleased over the amount of attention he was getting out of the controversy over his use of provocative language and intimate details in his novels. When the police came to his apartment to search for incriminating evidence, he welcomed them with open arms. And why not? The whole investigation was ludicrous, a scenario with comic-opera overtones. There was absolutely nothing to find, just a lot of milling around, with Zola sitting quietly behind his desk calmly smoking a pipe as a bunch of embarrassed cops looked behind pictures, in waste baskets, and even peeked through the dresses hanging in Gabrielle's closet. The case was closed when when the Chief Inspector, Gouteau, reported that they had found nothing in violation of the current laws governing possession and dessemination of pornography. The upshot of the "Zola Affair" was that the government decided they had been pushed by the press and the Church into an action which made them look ridiculous and that it was time to backtrack to other problems rather than justifying moral and ethical accusations which would be difficult to prove in court anyway. Zola was delighted: "Now," he boasted, "they know who Zola is and what he can do!" But the publicity turned out to have a bad side when conservative publishers concluded that Zola's writing might turn the reading public away from their books. For years they had enjoyed a steady profit from putting out material which followed established guidelines and they were fearful that rocking the boat would disturb the comfortable position they were in. "Hatchette," Zola told me, "has discharged me because he claims that the association of my name with with his firm has caused a serious loss of sales." Apparently, the publisher had backed off when major newspapers ran headlines linking the name of Hatchette to that of Zola: a writer dealing in scandalous subject-matter abhorrent to readers with close Church affiliations or high ethical and moral values. Letters had poured into the Hatchette Publishing House from subscribers asking questions about the connection and what was going to be done about it making it obvious that Zola's employment with the company had to be terminated. Shortly after his dismissal by Hatchette, Zola informed me that he had been offered a job at Hippolyte de Villemessant's newspaper, L'Evenement. "Good and bad," he exulted, "are only relative terms--what's good for one publisher is bad for another; Villemessant is a different breed than the conservative establishment's stuffed shirts, seeing my work as fitting very nicely into the scheme of things. He takes no stand at all on the morality issue and believes that what the public wants they will eventually get no matter the government says and Villemessant intends to capitalize on this fact." Zola, with his customary flair, had seized an opportunity and come out on top, and was laughing at his adversaries. It was like this in his first meeting with L'Evenement's publisher where he had promised the world, eloquently praised his unique qualifications as a writer, and had stressed his success a novelist in writing Contes A Ninon. Villemessant, prodded by Zola's friend, the critic Ludovic Halevy, to hire Zola, watched the posturing and boasting without comment, not exactly bowled over by the performance. He saw the egocentricity Zola displayed annoying but he shrewdly concluded that these characteristics would fit nicely into the the policy he had decided on for L'Evenement. Zola, when Halevy told him that Villemessant had made the decision in his favor, was delighted, feeling that the road ahead had been cleared of obstacles. "This kind of acceptance," he said in a note to me, "means I have arrived: it is all that I have ever asked for, and I fully intend to make the most of it!"

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