Old Man Goriot

I was in Paris last month, browsing in the Shakespeare and Company bookstore for something appropriate, something French, when I came upon Honoré de Balzac’s Old Man Goriot. And bought it. I bought it to see what Balzac had to say about old manhood, old men, this old man. I bought it because my own old man, my father, I think, read Balzac as a young man. He doesn’t read books as an old man. He does, however, use the author’s name, “Balzac!” as an expletive on occasion. So, I took that as something of a recommendation. It’s a good novel, though it ends unhappily for old man Goriot. Not that he dies in the end, which he does, but then all old men do, eventually; rather, the specific unhappiness of his dying is Balzac’s point about this particular, titular old man. (I won’t spoil it for you.) Balzac doesn’t generalize about old manhood and old men, as I had hoped. He buried old man Goriot in Père Lachaise cemetery, where, sixteen years later, Honoré de Balzac, was himself interred. A hundred and sixty-nine years after that, I visited Père Lachaise, the final resting place of Abelard and Heloise, Marcel Proust, and Oscar Wilde, among famous others—and neglected to visit Balzac’s tomb. Next time, if I make it till then.