Models of Power: Politics and Economics in Zola's "Rougon-Macquart." (review)

118 the minnesota review and Suvin's concluding essay mosdy does, too. Recent developments have, of course, surprised us all and made many a fresh book and theory look suddenly, uncomfortably, dated. A note on the style in which the essays are written: the writing is generally clear and accessible although it tends to be wordy and is at points a bit chatty. Also, there is (in my opinion) too much insistence on bringing in the names of Shakespeare, Dante, Dickens, Kafka, the Bible, etc. A little bit goes a long way. Sometimes these canonical comparisons are strained, and often they are unnecessary (however understandable the motive for including them). All things considered, in Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction Darko Suvin has given the serious student of SF another good and useful book. RICHARD DANIELS David F. BeII: Models of Power: Politics and Economics in Zola's "Rougon-Macquart." Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988. A strong tradition of Marxist criticism, most famously exemplified by Georg Lukács, has defined Zola's fiction as a particularly offensive instance of the mystified objectivism arising from a certain stage of capitalist development. In proposing a positive Marxist analysis of Zola's work by arguing that "Zola's description of French society in the second half of the nineteenth century contains at the fictional level many of the insights that appear in the great theoretical edifice of the same period, Marx's Capitar' (p. 171), David BeII sets himself against critical judgments and paradigms with imposing credentials in Marxist literary circles. The decision to do so paid off. Bell's book contributes meaningfully to Zola criticism in particular and to Marxist interpretive schémas in general. It argues that Zola and Marx come together in two principal ways: they had comparable understandings of France's Second Empire, and they shared acute sensitivity to the historical force of representational strategies. The two men's analogous visions of representation are in fact directly responsible for their parallel assessments of the Second Empire. For Marx and Zola alike, the reign of Napoleon III was a triumph of appearance over substance that strikingly displays how substantial appearance can be. The standard criticism of Napoleon III emphasized his inferiority to his great uncle, the first Napoleon, the real one. In Marx's view, however, the second emperor forcefully denounced as well as weakly copied his illustrious predecessor. As Marx put it, "in point of fact, he is not only Napoleon Ie Petit, in Victor Hugo's sense, that is, the antithesis of Napoleon Ie Grand: he personifies even more, and quite marvelously, the pettiness of the great Napoleon" (cited in Bell, p. 9). Instead of one emperor deserving the throne the other had no right to, neither actually belonged where he put himself. BeII explores several literary devices through which Zola makes the same point. For social novelist and social theorist alike, what brought both France's emperors to power was political acumen, an ability to convince the diverse elements of a nation that the imperial mantle covered interests peculiar to each. In The Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx memorably explored the ways Napoleon III convinced the French peasantry that his reign would produce the triumph of the smallholders over the forces arrayed against them. The explicitly political novels of Zola's Rougon-Macquart series also attribute Napoleon Ill's successes to his capacity to communicate deep commitment to interests indifferent to him. Several of the social groups Zola depicts are victims of the same delusion as Marx's peasantry: they see a direct expression of their desires in a man committed exclusively to satisfying his own. Paradoxically, it was only because Napoleon III actually represented no social position whatever that he was able to seem to represent so many; had he been sincerely committed to certain principles, he would have inevitably revealed his opposition to others. His gift for political representation was therefore the direct result of his failure authentically to represent anything at all; it was because he was a semiotic sham that he became a historical presence. Various segments of society—peasants, bourgeois, soldiers, even workers—all looked at Napoleon III and saw themselves, a massive...