Reviews for Ultra-Boiled

The average rating for Ultra-Boiled based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-05-22 00:00:00 Michael Holden (** ½) Blanche wallowed silently in her desire, like a cake which is being floured. 'This is a book of the richest flavour, full of right hearty merriment, spiced to the palate of the illustrious and very precious tosspots and drinkers, to whom our worthy compatriot, François Rabelais, the eternal honour of Touraine, addressed himself'. (From the prologue) As much as I loved the few episodes of La Comédie Humaine I read so far (Lost Illusions, Cousin Bette, Cousin Pons), I cannot say I was entirely enthralled by this collection of ribald short stories by Honoré de Balzac. Published in three sets of ten stories each, in 1832, 1833, and 1837, known as Contes drolatiques (Droll stories), Balzac conceived these candid and wanton stories as an obvious homage to Rabelais. The Dutch subtitle of the edition I read ('a classic erotic masterpiece') divulges partly what to expect: lively, amatory and slightly grotesque comical stories set mostly in the thirteenth century, on the licentious mores of knights and dames, pages, courtesans, nuns, monks and others representing the ecclesiastic class. Mostly dealing with cuckoldry, disingenuous wiles, faux-naïvité, impotence or lost innocence; the tales are rather to be situated in the sphere of eroticism than in the one of heroism and also turn out more scatological than eschatological. The Contes drolatiques were added to the Index librorum prohibitorum in 1841 - maybe because most women characters are so admirably sensual and cunning in outwitting the men? 'This teaches us to thoroughly verify and recognise women', Balzac muses wisely. These libertine, saucy stories struck me as a curiosum in Balzac's oeuvre. On the historical and social context in which these stories were written and published, Graham Robb in his Balzac: A Biography clarifies that 'The subjects were a form of protest at the new bourgeois society which had no regard for the truly important aspects of human existence: necrophilia, nymphomania, adultery and the essential bodily functions. The first collection was published in what seemed bad taste during the cholera epidemic of spring 1832. Actually it was rather appropriate since Paris was temporarily plunged into the Dark Ages, with a curfew, corpses carried through the streets at midnight, and the rag-pickers revolting when their rubbish heaps were swept away'. And apparently Balzac managed to lift the spirits, as for instance when the first story, on the courtesan Impéria, got published, it worked on the contemporaries 'like an aphrodisiac in a time of miserable chastity'. The collection I read contained nineteen stories in a Dutch translation that modernizes the style, so I assume the meticulous historical wordplay in imitation of 16th century French these stories are renown for was a dimension that was unavoidably at least partly lost in translation (allegedly one of the reasons he chose to write in this for the contemporaries rather remote pseudo-archaic style was his aim to restrain the enjoyment of his lascivious adventures to the elite in order to avoid his book being banned). Nevertheless some of the flowery and juicy language, the vitality and the style mimicry echoes through - with the often ambiguous language and plentiful double entendres, it seems that the translator conveys at least some of what must be the playful qualities of the original. One of my favourites scenes, in which the pleasures of reading are combined with the ones of the flesh, features inThe venial sin, of which I found two illustrations - what will happen can be left to the imagination. Some editions include illustrations by Gustave Doré, which capture the dark and at macabre undertone of some of the stories, in which many a man ends up on the scaffold - exquisitely. Both text and more illustrations can be found here. The repetitiveness and the often clerical context and setting- the stories are supposedly collected from the abbeys of Balzac's native Touraine - for me however made it hard to fully enjoy this collection reading it in one take - possibly just too many nuns to my taste, having seen enough of them at school - and by the end I struggled to get through the whole collection. Good for a grin here and there, it seems more appropriate to pick a tale in between some other books, or to read one in bed to close the day- maybe the smile it gives could inspire some amusing dreams? I am wondering now how I would get along with Rabelais…

Review # 2 was written on 2016-05-01 00:00:00 Patrick Wethington I enjoyed "taking a break" with this book; its humorous style and short story format made it ideal for filling in odd moments throughout the day and providing relief from heavier reading. I really can't understand why any careful reader would think this book dull. True, most of the stories utilize the same main themes (cuckoldry being the most common, I think), but the quality of the writing makes the common-theme stories unique and engaging throughout. If something seems odd or nonsensical upon the first reading, I would suggest going back over the passage to look for double (or triple, in some cases) meanings -- I definitely would have missed a lot of the charming humor Balzac employs if I had not slowed down at certain points when reading his work. I'm sure a lot of his "pun power" was lost in translation, but the editor of the edition I read made quite an effort to fill-in the English reader to the lost complexity whenever he could, a practice I found very helpful. I loved the amazing engravings featured in the work -- their complexity and macabre styling was quite impressive, so don't skip by them if you happen to have an edition where they are included.