Extract

“His anger boiled up against these people who would not understand. How gladly would he have made them a present of his fat salary if he could have had their tough hide and could have copulated like them, easy come, easy go! Why couldn’t he sit them at this table and stuff them with his pheasant, while he went off fornicating behind the hedges, laying girls without bothering about who had done so before. He would have given up everything—education, comfort, luxurious life and his powerful position as manager—if just for one day he could have been the humblest of these poor devils under him and be free with his own body and be oafish enough to beat his wife and take his pleasure with the wives of his neighbours. He found himself wishing he were dying of starvation too, and that his empty belly were twisted with pains that made his brain reel, for perhaps that might deaden this relentless grief! Oh to live like a brute, possessing nothing but freedom to roam in the cornfields with the ugliest and most revolting haulage girl and possess her!” —from Germinal by Emile Zola, inveterate lover of minor-key American satires (and big Mila Kunis fan)