A line from The Music Man. I want to ask “Why this line? Why this author?”
I never studied French Literature. What I know about Balzac and his writing is limited to “19th Century French author”.
From the context, I always assumed that Balzac wrote indecent or perhaps near-pornographic material by the standards of early 20th century small town America, but a quick perusal of Wikipedia did not leave that impression. I suppose it is likely that the author of The Music Man was using an author of simply frank material about human life (if my pat understanding of “The Human Comedy” based on Wikipedia is correct) as something that these small-minded people would look down on or find scandalous.
But there is probably a little more at play here than that.
So, why “You’ll find it in Balzac!” as a comedic line?
For one, he was French, i.e., scandalous, at least in Iowa ca. 1900. And he had a name which, in English, sounds vaguely scatological. What more do you need?
The “it’s a funny sounding word/name” theory doesn’t work.
Mama Paroo comments about “Balzac and Shakespeare and all those other highfalutin Greeks” a few lines later and there’s nothing particularly funny about Shakespeare’s name. Later on, Mayor Shinn’s wife is upset that Marian recommended “the Rubiat of Omar Khyam” featuring “people sitting around naked eating bread and drinking wine? It’s smutty stuff.”
Marian replies “but Mrs. Shinn, wouldn’t you rather have your daughter reading a classic like that rather than Eleanor Glynn?*”
Mrs. shin says “what Eleanor Glynn’s mother lets her read is her business. It’s a dirty book!”
Later than that, it turns out Marian has been pushing Rabelais on the kids and Rabelais is in fact dirty. In Gargantua, there’s a couple of chapters where the giant tries all sorts of things to clean his ass after he shits. He finally decides that the neck of a goose is the best for your butt .
Finally, both Marion and Howard get their wishes. She get someone she can talk to who is “not afraid of a few nice things” and he gets the worldly wise woman who understands that ignorance cannot be compared to bliss.
Short version: I don’t know about the works of Balzac, but I will bet there’s at least some sexual component to his work given the Shakespeare and Rabelais comments. It’s certainly more involved than Balzac sounds funny/dirty.
A trashy novel about a rich older countess who bangs her way across Europe with young bucks. There’s a famous scene of her and some young Russian? Dude naked on the tiger skin rug in front of a fireplace.
Author Elinor Glyn’s novel Three Weeks. Inspired shortly after its publication, the little rhyme by someone:
Would you rather sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer
To err with her
On some other kind of fur?
And according to Wiki: in the 1930 Disney short The Shindig, Clarabelle Cow is reading Three Weeks, and quickly hides it when Horace Horsecollar shows up for their date.
Balzac – which was not originally intended to be suggestive* – was known as a “racy” writer. French authors were more willing to deal with sexual themes than American authors (not explicit, but there was sex outside of marriage). This led to them being censored.
*Ngram viewer shows that “ball sack” didn’t start showing up until the mid-60s.
The answer is right there is the script. Earlier Mrs. Shinn comes into the library and complains that Marion has been suggesting unsuitable books to her daughter. Among the complaints is Balzac.
So later, when Marion is talking to her mother. She uses the “You’ll find it in Balzac” line to refer back to that earlier conversation.
Read Cousin Bette from the Human Comedy. It’s not pornography by today’s standards, but it’s about a woman who plots against her family, and does it in part by talking an unhappily married woman into having affairs with lots of the men, leaving a trail of ruined marriages. Bette’s health begins to fail, but nothing stops her.
On top of that, Balzac himself led a pretty scandalous life. Even if he wrote Pinocchio, the fact that is was Balzac would taint it.
I always interpreted it as meaning, not that Balzac et al were actually dirty, but just that provincial prudish midwesterners assume that anything foreign and “exotic” must inherently be dirty. The joke is on them, not on the authors.
The two Balzac novels I’ve read (The Magic Skin and Pere Goriot) were both pretty frank about having an affair with a rich and influential married woman being a good way to advance one’s career.
