Today in Labor History April 16, 1884: Anatole France was born. He was a poet and novelist and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1921. Many of his works satirized religious and political ideas. The son of a bookseller, France spent much of his childhood in his family’s bookstore, reading voraciously, and meeting many of the writers who frequented the store. He was active in the movement to free Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer falsely accused of espionage. And he signed Emile Zola’s letter in support of Dreyfus, “J’accuse.” France wrote about wrote about the affair in his 1901 novel “Monsieur Bergeret.” France's novel, “Penguin Island depicts penguins transformed into humans after the birds have been mistakenly baptized by the almost-blind Abbot Mael. “The Gods Are Athirst” (1912), about a true-believing follower of Maximilien Robespierre and the Reign of Terror of 1793–94, is a wake-up call against political and ideological fanaticism. “The Revolt of the Angels” (1914) it tells the story of Arcade, a bored guardian angel who starts reading his mentee’s books on theology and becomes an atheist, moves to Paris, falls in love, and loses his virginity causing his wings to fall off. He then joins the revolutionary movement of fallen angels.
Today in Labor History April 2, 1840: Émile Zola, French novelist, playwright, journalist was born. He was also a liberal activist, playing a significant role in the political liberalization of France, and in the exoneration of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army officer falsely convicted and imprisoned on trumped up, antisemitic charges of espionage. He was also a significant influence on mid-20th century journalist-authors, like Thom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer and Joan Didion. Wolfe said that his goal in writing fiction was to document contemporary society in the tradition of Steinbeck, Dickens, and Zola.
Zola wrote dozens of novels, but his most famous, Germinal, about a violently repressed coalminers’ strike, is one of the greatest books ever written about working class rebellion. It had a huge influence on future radicals, especially anarchists. Some anarchists named their children Germinal. Rudolf Rocker had a Yiddish-language anarchist journal in London called Germinal, in the 1910s. There were also anarchist papers called Germinal in Mexico and Brazil in the 1910s.
Today in Labor History January 13, 1898: Émile Zola's J'accuse…! exposed the Dreyfus affair. The scandal began in 1894 when the state convicted Captain Alfred Dreyfus of treason. He was a 35-year-old French artillery officer of Jewish descent, falsely convicted for espionage and imprisoned in Devil’s Island in French Guiana. Émile Zola’s open letter “J’Accuse” helped build a movement of support for Dreyfus, putting pressure on the government to reopen the case. In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France, retried and convicted again, but was pardoned and released.
Emile Zola was French novelist, journalist, playwright. He was an important part of the literary school of naturalism. He was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prizes in Literature in 1901 and 1902. He published over 30 works, the most well-known being “Germinal,” about a coal miners’ strike in northern France in the 1860s. He influenced many modern writers like Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote. “Germinal” influenced my novel, “Anywhere But Schuylkill.”