The Masterpiece

Émile Zola · 1840–1902 · France

Originally L'Œuvre (French)

Why it matters

A painter obsessed with the one great canvas he can never finish drives himself toward breakdown while his novelist friend merely writes it all down: Zola's autobiographical reckoning with Cézanne and with art's power to consume the artist who serves it.

At a glance

Dense discussion of aesthetic theory surrounds an otherwise clear tragic arc.