Balzac was the great anatomist of French society, and in this early work from La Comédie Humaine, he dissects Parisian pretension with a satirist's gleam. Gazonal arrives in Paris from the provinces with money, ambition, and absolutely no idea how the city actually works. He's a innocent abroad, a wealthy bumpkin who believes he can become a man of letters simply by wanting to. Through his bewildered eyes, Balzac exposes the machinery of Parisian society: the art dealers who prey on provincial naivety, the social climbers perpetually scheming, the fortune-tellers who trade in illusions, and the countless individuals who take themselves far too seriously. The comedy emerges from Gazonal's naive observations, he doesn't realize he's being mocked, and neither do the "unconscious comedians" around him, who are too busy performing their own ridiculous roles to see their own absurdity. It's a sharp, knowing portrait of a world where everyone is pretending to be something they're not, and where the biggest fool may be the one with the most money.
