Of the great nineteenth-century French novelists, Victor Hugo still enjoys a certain renown in America, thanks to the popularity of the musical version of
Les Misérables
, while Gustave Flaubert and Honoré de Balzac have grown dimmer with age, and Émile Zola gathers dust. Some thirty-six years ago Tom Wolfe tried to revive interest in Zola as an artist who, much like Wolfe himself, went out and about in the world and delivered a nuts-and-bolts report on its workings. But any excitement that Wolfe’s Zola stirred did not last long. The loss is ours. For Zola was far more than a veteran reporter who has seen everything; he used his diligently gathered knowledge and imaginative reach in the service of moral vitality.