To say that the novel is dead or dying is to utter a cliche. The evidence is stri-kingly abundant. Yet, paradoxically, never before have so many been written so well. Libraries have been ransacked and techniques have been anatomized. The how of writing a novel has been mastered. But the why of a novel's very being—its significant content—is sadly wanting. And it is this fatal error, this almost exclusive obsession with style and technique that has alienated the novelist from his potential audience. Zola was a Naturalist: a reflector of life rather than an interpreter. He had a story to tell, and his means of telling it was always secondary to the story itself. One may often groan under the weight of his cumbersome sentences, excessive detail, and quaint moralizing, but interest never flags. The man's energy and vigor is larva-like. You are pushed, shoved, and carried along—a willing captive. For in his hand the dazzling Second Empire comes alive in all its tinsel glamour and decadence. Zola's approach to his material was quasi-scientific, almost clinical. He had a case to prove. (And not an existential one!) Man was a victim of his heredity and environment, and no matter how he writhed or struggled in his chains, there was no escape. Society was the arch-villain from whom there was no reprieve. Thus, Zola was never concerned with the subtleties of individual psychology. Man in the mass was his sole quarry—man and his institutions built on corruption, hypocrisy and vice. The publication of Nana (1880) created a storm of protest. It was banned in England, but that was to be expected. And it sold exceedingly well. It was excoriated as being a dirty book, written by a monster and designed to corrupt the morals of both young and old. Years later, a similar fate befell many of the works of that arch-sedu-cer, Theodore Dreiser. Strangely enough, however, the book's advent did not noticeably increase the battalion of streetwalkers. Poor Nana dies much too horrible a death. And her brief period of splendor hardly compensates for the hideous price she has to pay. The truth is that Zola was an impassioned moralist. He used Nana—the slum child—as weapon to flay the shams and pretensions of a profligate society. For Zola to have given us his superb portrait of Nana would have been triumph enough. But his intent and purpose was so much more! Nana, after all, was mere witless pawn, spawned by a corrupt society whose licentiousness was equaled only by its gross materialism. It fed on sensation and thrived on injustice. And it is this society that Zola pilloried with all his matchless weapons. What were they? First and foremost, an intimate knowledge of his subject matter. Secondly, his unparalleled descriptive powers. Actually, Zola does more than merely describe. He literally makes you taste and smell. You are seated at Nana's Nero-like banquets. You are in Nana's intoxicating dressing room. You are a participant in the mass frenzy at the races. And finally, you are present—in the very room—at Nana's death. Everything is painted in livid colors—all the swirl, the ebb and the flow, the pulsating excitement of a society hellbent on destroying itself. Lastly, Zola's outraged moral sense, which gives added weight to his scathing indictment.
单选题
It can be inferred from the passage that________.