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Maureen McGranaghan

@mcgranaghan.bsky.social
79 followers 41 following 1.2K posts

Writer, Reader, Teacher, Student www.maureenmcgranaghan.com

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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Ah, Camusot and the boots. "There are boots everywhere. These would look better in a shoemaker's shop-window or strolling about on a man's legs in the boulevards. Here, however, with no legs in them, they tell a tale which doesn't argue for fidelity." Trying for stoicism. #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Vignon delivers quite a speech re: journalism and the unstoppable French wit. "A newspaper will serve up its father raw, with no other seasoning than its jokes, rather than fail to interest or amuse its public." Lucien is seduced by the irreverence--and Coralie. #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I'm trying to decide if Lucien's article is as witty as everyone seems to think it is--a "revolution in journalism." Like one of those bold new voices proclaimed by book jackets. Hmm. Quoting a couple of my favorite lines from it below. #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"'A German! He'll drink well, listen hard, and we'll say so many outrageous things that he'll write to his Court about them,' cried Blondet. 'Which, of all of us, is a sufficiently grave personage to go down and speak to him?' asked Finot." Dinner at Florine's. #BalzacTogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
"In these dirty corridors encumbered with stage machinery and reeking with oil-lamps reigns a pestilence which destroys the soul. In them life has no longer anything sacred or real...Everything looked hideous." Balzac: NOT romantic about the theatre. 🤣 😬 #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Camusot: "after pocketing the thousand and one affronts of a commercial career [he] has no intention of taking leave of the world before he has enjoyed his full share of this life's pleasures." #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
"Keep hold of my arm unless you want to fall through a trap-door, bring a forest down on you, overturn a palace or run foul of a thatched cottage," said Etienne to Lucien. 🤣 ("Behind the Scenes") #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
"The most dangerous thing is to churn out wit all alone in a corner." #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
"I've been offered eleven hundred manuscripts...I shall soon need an administrative staff to control the receipt of manuscripts and a reading committee to examine them..." (Dauriat, the speculator in literature) Publishers have been inundated for a couple centuries now, at least. 😬 #balzactogether
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Alison @alisonjaye.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
“There’s Finot, the director of my paper, chatting with a talented young man, Felicien Vernou, a little rascal who’s as nasty as an unmentionable disease.” Leading with a compliment, ending with a zinger. #balzactogether
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christina500 @christina500.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Lucien felt like an embryo in this company. 'Must one really sacrifice one's dignity?' he thought. 'Put on your hat, Nathan! You have written a fine book, and this critic has only written an article!' 276 P2 Lost Illusions #Balzactogether Week 8 #Lucien
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
"As evening fell, this terrible bazaar became resplendent in its poetry." The Wooden Galleries #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
"Once the crowd arrived, young people hungry for literature...did their reading--gratis--at the booksellers' shop windows. The assistants employed to watch over the books...charitably allowed these poor young men to go on turning the pages." Love this. But thankful for libraries! #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Lousteau is describing the world of Jasper Milvain in New Grub Street...except it sounds even worse, reviewers entirely mercenary, review copies and theatre comps blatantly sold by the recipients, books panned unless such copies are forthcoming, and no merit recognized without a fee. #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
"You will find out as I did that underneath your beautiful dream-world is the turmoil of men, passions, and needs." But Lucien sees in this a sort of dream-world too, a "terrible poetry of difficulties ahead." Ah, still romanticizing. #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
"At present, d'Arthez was correcting the manuscript of The Archer of Charles the Ninth; he...wrote the finest pages to be found in it and composed the splendid preface which perhaps overshadows the work..." D'Arthez is the real thing. Lucien not so much. #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
"Le Solitaire, a novel...whose abuse of inversions must have wearied the journalists. 'The Solitary in the provinces appearing the ladies astonishes.' ''Read backwards, astonishes The Solitary the Academicians by its exceptional beauty.'" 😂 #Balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
"'A complaint no doubt...But if you are demanding satisfaction I am ready,' he added, with a glance at an array of foils and pistols, an up-to-date panoply bundled together in a corner." Subscriptions and duels--the daily business of a newspaper! #Balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Lucien's family and friends seem to believe in his talent but universally doubt his character. They are eager to give him money to keep him on course (which apparently isn't going to work). I worry about David and Eve's future and child if they're both secretly funding Lucien. 😬 #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
"If you had the misfortune to kill your mistress, I would help you to conceal the crime and could still feel some respect for you. But if you took to espionage I should shrink from you in horror, for you would be adopting treachery and infamy as a system." Hmm. #BalzacTogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
"One evening Chrestien thought of going out singing in the Champs-Elysées with a scarf and four candles, but he was commissioned to write a pamphlet for a man with political ambitions and provided him with six hundred francs' worth of Machiavelli." Like these guys more all the time. #BalzacTogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
"Each of his friends was aware of...the dejection resulting from the efforts of a mind overstrained by the contemplation of nature, the interpretation of which is the poet's function." And then they give him money. Poets take note: here is your GoFundMe script! 🤣 #BalzacTogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
"Envy, an ignoble accumulation of disappointed hopes, frustrated talents, failures and wounded pretensions, was unknown to them...They were too conscious of greatness and happiness to disturb it by admitting new and unknown elements." The Cénacle #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
"D'Arthez had in hand an imaginative work which he had undertaken solely in order to explore the resources of language. This book, still unfinished...was reserved for his days of great penury." A literary nerd. Gotta love him. #balzactogether
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Alison @alisonjaye.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
“A great writer is just simply a martyr whom the stake cannot kill.” #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
"'Monsieur, I would rather burn it!' 'That's a poet all over!' said the old man." So glad Lucien didn't take that offer! And I love Doguereau's response to his tantrum. 🤣 #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Flicoteaux is made for nostalgia. You remember the odd community and friends made and forget the fare, though the potatoes "sprinkled with chopped green-stuff" at every single meal might make an impression. #balzactogether 🤣
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
"Dear Sister, Paris is a strange, gaping maw." #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
"All Madame de Bargeton's fears in regard to Lucien were increased by the attention her cousin had vouchsafed to the Baron du Chatelet, since it was of quite different character from her patronizing politeness to Lucien." Lucien no match for the Baron in Paris! #BalzacTogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
"Lucien sensed that his appearance was that of a man who had dressed up for the first time in his life." The humbling goes on and on. But at least he seems to enjoy the opera (I think he's the only one actually watching it.) #BalzacTogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
This scene at the opera is full of teasers for Balzac's other books (helpful footnotes in Hunt edition). #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
"He was reluctant to linger among the ruins of his self-esteem...so...he went into Véry's restaurant and, to initiate himself in the pleasures of Paris, ordered such a dinner as might console him in his despondency...He was torn from his dreams by the bill..." Oh, Lucien. #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
"The question of costume...is one of enormous importance for those who wish to appear to have what they do not have, because that is often the best way of getting it later on." Ah, Lucien, alone in Paris in his shabby clothes. If only he could be happy in Angoulême. #Balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
"In the case of both Madame de Bargeton and Lucien, mutual disenchantment was setting in, and Paris was the cause of it." But Naïs is in much better shape, with ample funds, a society mentor, and more worldly experience, to effect a transformation. It doesn't look good for Lucien. #Balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
"Monsieur de Bargeton conducted himself like an exceptional man... He delivered [his speech] without passion and with the simplest air in the world." I am delighted with Monsieur de Bargeton's social (and dueling) triumphs. For once he makes fools of them all! #BalzacTogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
"Provincial people are by nature malicious and love to balk nascent passion...The women who hid their faces in horror and talked most loudly of scandal and perversity were of course Amélie, Zéphirine, Fifine, and Lolotte, who were all more or less involved in illicit relationships." #BalzacTogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
"Sixte...had staked too much on the love of Lucien and Louise which, to their very great regret, remained platonic...Two persons make sentiment a matter of tactics, talk instead of acting, and fight in the open field instead of laying siege." They were all about the poetry... #BalzacTogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
"On various occasions, the three friends and Madame Chardon went off on pleasure parties...took walks in the woods...picnicked on the grass...then returned home in the evening...without having spent as much as three francs." I can see the movie montage with a sweet acoustic song. #BalzacTogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
"I may be capable of discovering a gold-mine, but I am singularly incapable of exploiting it. But you...will be able to garner the harvest I shall have sown." David gives a frank account of himself: ruined by Dad, hopeless at business, but convinced he and Eve can conquer as a team! #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
"Darling Eve, marry me for love of Lucien...Lucien's happiness will be our major concern, and his affection for us will be the savings-bank in which we shall invest our fortune, our feelings, and our sensations--all we have in fact." This is like Goriot with his thankless daughters. #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
"'Ideas gestate a long time in the womb of thought.' 'You will have a painful delivery,' interrupted du Hautoy. 'Your excellent mother will be able to help you,' said the Bishop. This apparent witticism, so skillfully engineered, was the avenging shaft they had all been awaiting..." #balzactogether
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David Reader 🐳📚🐦 @thepaleusher.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
A musician or a poet knows at once whether his audience is listening in admiration or fails to follow him, and feels it as the plant that revives or droops under favorable or unfavorable conditions. #BalzacTogether Lost Illusions
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Rae Radford @raeradford.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
100% #BookSky
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
"Noble Angouleme, administrative Angouleme, and bourgeois Angouleme...had looked askance for a long while at this phenomenon of the perfect union of three persons; but finally the mysterious conjugal trinity appeared to them [a] rare and pleasing...spectacle..." Senoches and Hautoy #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
"Astolphe...was as ignorant as a carp, but he had compiled articles on Sugar and Brandy for a Dictionary of Agriculture by wholesale plunder of newspaper articles and pillage of previous writers." And this pre-internet and AI! #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
"It is the wont of imaginative natures to magnify everything, or to find a soul to inhabit every shape; and Lucien took this gentleman, not for a granite guard-post, but for a formidable sphinx, and thought it necessary to conciliate him." 😂 #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
"Satisfied, he smiled; dissatisfied, he smiled again. He smiled at good news and evil tidings; with slight modifications the smile did duty on all occasions." M de. Bargeton #balzactogether
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David Reader 🐳📚🐦 @thepaleusher.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
It was one of those wild letters . . . a delicious tissue of words embroidered here and there by the naive utterances that women love so well—unconscious revelations of the writer's heart. #BalzacTogether Lost Illusions
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
"For her spirit made such appeal to his that he could no longer see the woman as she was." #balzactogether
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Maureen McGranaghan @mcgranaghan.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
"She went with him as far as St. Peter's Gate...and watched him pass down the Rue de Beaulieu to the Promenade... And after he was out of sight, she still stood there, poor girl! in a great tremor of emotion, as though some great thing had happened to them. #balzactogether
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