Here's another pretty good writer called Emile Zola. Stinky was impressed with these passages from Therese Raquin, published in 1867. Lazy horndog Laurent croaks his lover's husband by tossing him in the Seine. Then Laurent visits the Paris Morgue for several weeks, hoping to identify the discovered corpse:
One morning, he was seized with real terror. For some moments, he had been looking
at a corpse, taken from the water, that was small in build and atrociously disfigured.
The flesh of the drowned person was so soft and broken-up that the running water
washing it, carried it away bit by bit. The jet falling on the face bored a hole to the left
of the nose. And abruptly, the nose became flat, the lips were detached, showing the
white teeth. The head of the drowning man burst out laughing.
Several days later, Laurent sees Camille, the man he murdered:
Camille was hideous. He had been a fortnight in the water. His face still appeared firm
and rigid; the features were preserved, but the skin had taken a yellowish, muddy tint.
The thin, bony, and slightly tumefied head wore a grimace. It was a trifle inclined on
one side, with the hair sticking to the temples, and the lids raised, displaying the dull
globes of the eyes. The twisted lips were drawn to a corner of the mouth in an atro-
cious grin; and a piece of blackish tongue appeared between the white teeth. This head,
which looked tan and drawn out lengthwise, while preserving a human appearance,
had remained all the more frightful with pain and terror.
But wait, there's more:
The body seemed a mass of ruptured flesh; it had suffered horribly. You could feel that
the arms no longer held to their sockets; and the clavicles were piercing the skin of the
shoulders. The ribs formed black bands on the greenish chest; the left side, ripped open,
was gaping amidst dark red shreds. All the torso was in a state of putrefaction. The ex-
tended legs, although firmer, were daubed with dirty patches. The feet dangled down.
Imagine opening up whatever people used for Kindles back then, and reading this!
And please don't tell Stinky's mom he is reading this. She is overly-protective after Stinky was diagnosed with something called "walking night-terrors", and she considers Stinky enough of a danger when he is awake.
Reasonable facsimile of Emile Zola. |
3 comments:
I got confused - thought this was from Peter Ford's biography of Glenn.
There was something before Kindle? Sacre bleu!!!!
Unknown, if that is your real name, the details of Glenn Ford's personal life are only slightly less gruesome.
Anonymous, watch your language!
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