ŷ������

While this book neared its finishing line I kept thinking, no, something’s going to happen now to stop this. Then I started thinking, “surely not�� and finally I ended flabbergasted, astonished, shocked, bamboozled: the scoundrel, the bastard, the salopard had made it. He’d actually made it.

This was not to be a story of ascent and downfall. It was just his ascension.

Maupassant’s man is Georges Duroy, a former military officer, young and handsome, but a bit untrained and vastly unrefined. Slowly, he learns. He realizes that the best way for penniless young men to succeed is by attracting the attention of powerful women. He does: he seduces them, takes advantage of what they have to offer, be it their money, status or brains, and abandons them when they no longer suit him. He is lucky, but then luck favours the bold, and he must be one to literature’s most audacious characters.

Maupassant’s command of scenes is pitch-perfect. You can see the short-story writer in him: everything is nearly flawless, every element in its place, every scene constructed as tableaus, which together make up the conclusion to Duroy’s triumph. Maupassant showcases the best of 19th century literature, of the so-called classics. Engaging, fast-paced, profound, heart-stopping. This book is 270 pages. It is a study on corruption, on greed and ambition. It is also a meditation on death and how to react to existential dread. It is the closest thing to perfection you can come to in literature.