Hilton Head Island: GERMINAL; a speeding Pole/ quagmire

 I just finished re-reading GERMINAL, the thirteenth novel in Emile Zola’s twenty volume Rougon/Marquart series set during what is called the Second French Empire from about 1850 to 1871.  GERMINAL is often called Zola’s masterpiece.  It is a very great novel indeed, but I think Zola wrote many masterpieces and I rank it with NANA, THE DEBACLE, and THE BEAST IN MAN, and could not say that one is greater than the others.

GERMINAL is said to be about a strike by coal miners in Northern France, but it is about much more.  

Zola’s descriptions of the bestial working conditions of the men, women and children crawling in heat, poor air, coal dust, seeping water, cave-ins and explosions, a half mile and more below the surface for bare starvation wages are vivid.  I remember thinking when I read Upton Sinclair’s THE JUNGLE about the meat packing industry in Chicago at about the same time why the owners treated workers so badly while they themselves were incredibly wealthy?  Why they did not share a little more of the profits the businesses were making?  And concluded that in the cut-throat capitalism of the time the owners had no choice.  If they did not pare costs to the human minimum, others would and they would be driven out of business.  That argument is in fact made in GERMINAL by a mine owner and by the manager of another mine.

Here is an insight to life in the mines.

GERMINAL was first published in 1885, a time when reaction to the extreme exploitation of labor  and to the extremely wealthy and aristocracy was taking place.  There were Marxists, nihilists, anarchists, and millions who merely wanted enough bread to stay alive and even dared to dream of a little bit more.

Zola was clearly in sympathy with the workers, but he depicts the desire of some owners and managers to treat the workers better and some of their own sorrows.

There is a lot of sex in GERMINAL.  Not specifically described, but alluded to, and much unfulfilled, including that of a manager who still desires his wife who will not have sex with him, but does as he knows with other men.

There is one scene in the novel that startled me, and I am not easily startled, so how much more startling must it have been to those who read the novel when it was first published 139 years ago?  I deliberately refrain from saying more so as not to provide a spoiler for any of you who might read GERMINAL

There is also great drama and excitement in the novel.  As I read it I thought:  this would make a good movie.  I am not the only one and have discovered that several film versions exist.  Carol and I found a 1994 French version at Amazon Prime with English subtitles starring Gerald Depardieu and watched the last two nights.  It is a very good movie, true to the novel, though of necessity sometimes sketchy.  To my surprise it contains an abbreviated version of the scene in the novel I found startling.

A great novel.  A very good movie.  I recommend both.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/magnetic-north-pole-earth-2024-qrlnl2zz9

I remember that in the late 1960s early 1970s when I was living in San Diego the variation was 13º East.  It is now about 11º East, not a significant difference if you are navigating by a traditional compass.  I navigate now electronically.  Velocitek, iSailor on iPad and iPhone, my Apple watch Ultra, and set all my devices to display true headings, not magnetic, which is quite revealing when you are crossing the Gulf Stream and find your COG is thirty or more degrees different than the true compass heading.

In my life at what I could do alone I have been almost entirely successful.  In what has involved others I have had mixed results which is probably the common experience.  

I am feeling frustrated.  Here in the Low Country getting anything done that requires others is more difficult than any place I have ever lived, and not just with boats.  I know I have said that before, but I am feeling it strongly now.  I feel stalled, stuck in a quagmire, unable to go forward.  I have wondered if this is part of my being old.  I do not think so.  Carol and others tell me that this is a fact of Low Country life.  If so, it is not a desirable one.  

There is work I would like to get done on GANNET that I cannot myself do.  I have workarounds for some of it and with or without the work being done, hope and expect to be hundreds of miles offshore two months from now.  What a relief that will be.