Emile Zola: Nana (1880)

I just started reading Emile Zola's "Nana" (1880). Zola was a contemporary of Thomas Hardy's (born in the same year, 1840), and I bought a paperback Barnes and Noble copy of  "Nana" for cheap from eBay because I didn't know anything about Zola and thought I should... I had no idea what the book was about...a treatise on his grandmother?

(Zola is also famous for the phrase "J'Accuse...!" from the headline of his 1898 open letter to a French paper condemning the French govt for unfairly accusing the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus of espionage---very interesting! Zola was subsequently forced to leave the country.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%27Accuse%E2%80%A6!

Anyway, as it turns out, 100 pages into it, "Nana" is an untalented but very sexy Parisian stage actress who drives men, young and old, wild. After 100 pages, there have been tedious details of Nana's first show, tedious details of a society lady's salon, and then tedious details of a supposedly wild party at Nana's house...

Subject matter seemingly exciting, but writing itself VERY boring! (Conversely, Hardy makes the most seemingly boring every-day things very interesting and insightful.) Maybe Zola is lost in translation---or perhaps he was/is exalted for presenting risque tableaux (the book was hugely successful when it was released) and for politically left-wing opinions that were popular among artists and the left-wing press during his own, and subsequent leftist critics', time(s). Popularity among either group does not necessarily make him a great writer.

I'm hoping "Nana" gets better. If it does, I'm on to 1885's "Germinal." (Another huge success, this one an homage to coal miners and the working class; at Zola's funeral in 1902, mourning miners supposedly chanted "Germinal" as part of his cortege. Which is all very well and good, but... it still doesn't make him a great writer.)