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Title: Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos De Laclos, Douglas Parmee, Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderl Laclos ISBN: 0-19-283867-9 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: January, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.68 (28 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: one of the top three of all time...
Comment: Along with L'Assommoir by Zola and Journey to the End of the Night by Celine, Choderlos de Laclos's masterpiece ranks as one of my favorite books of all time. To fully appreciate the genius of the letter writing form,one must understand that the libertine novels of the 18th century all utilized this format. Laclos admittedly set out to write a book that would depart from other works of the century to leave a dramatic imprint on the world, and he succeeded. While written in the same lingusitic and seductive style of a libertine novel, Laclos transforms the limited and mundane scope of the libertine world into a riveting classic. Each character reflects a different conception of "love" and how the libertine world can go awry when true sentiment is confused with lust. La Marquise de Merteuil reflects the purest degree of libertinage. In perhaps the most spellbinding of all the letters, she explains to Valmont her duplictious conduct after her husband's death to obtain her reputation among men and place herself at the forefront of society's attention. In contrast, Mlle. de Tourvel is the epitome of sentimental love, to the point that she can become physically ill if it is not reciprocated. Clearly what separates this work from other romance novels of the 18th century, elevating it to the level of other world masterpieces, is the character of Valmont. He is the heart and soul of this novel in every way possible. One one hand, Valmont is extremely self-assured in his ways, when describing his calculating, rational strategy in courting naive young ladies. On the other hand, he refuses to accept the reality evidenced by his relationship with Mme. de Tourvel that he is not the manipulative libertine that he, and society, consider him to be. The deep struggle within Valmont between his true feelings and his vanity in preserving his reputation of libertinage is perhaps the most compelling storyline in the novel- because it is physcological and under the surface. At this level, Les Liaisons Dangereuses is often compared to "Crime and Punishment". les Liaisons is more subtle in its physcological dimension in that the reader must form her own conclusions about Valmont's physchosis whereas Raskelnikov's mental state is at the heart of the prose. If I have not convinved everyone yet to go ahead and experience the magic of Laclos (who fortuneatley survived the Terror), then I have failed in my task...
Rating: 5
Summary: A masterpiece of manipulation (and an excellent translation)
Comment: When I read Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 novel, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" (which retains its French title in the 1961 English translation by P W K Stone), I found myself amazed and thrilled by its absolute excellence of execution. Its energy and spirit, and the seductive and machiavellian - perhaps even diabolical - undertones which whisper throughout the work, urge the reader ever onwards in the best page-turning tradition. It is possibly not for nothing that the book itself was eventually decreed 'dangerous' by French officials a full 42 years after it first appeared, long after it might have been expected to have lost its ability to shock. Even if you have seen the films "Dangerous Liaisons" (dir. Steven Frears) or "Valmont" (dir. Milos Forman) based on the book - and whether or not you liked them - this is an outstandingly good novel which is beautifully served by the precise and graceful prose of its translator, whose subtle range of diction manages to convey the tones and tempers of the characters most convincingly. The story's chief virtues - a compelling narrative drive, and a skill in characterisation which permit some superbly-observed insights - easily withstand comparison with the screen versions; even today, when we are so fully exposed to the diverse secrets of the psychiatrist's confessional and the details of the all world's vicissitudes and miseries, it would be hard to improve on their portrayal here in print.
The book succeeds so well for many reasons. Some of its appeal to a sophisticated (or at least blasé) modern audience is, I believe, the multi-layered cynicism of its vainglorious but not unattractive main characters and rivals, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte (viscount) de Valmont, a reminder that profound deceit is not the sole prerogative of the post-industrial era. Part of the reader's amusement is to observe how their egotism - by far the most easily-wounded of their sensibilities - is also an exercise in the deception of themselves as well as of all those with whom they have dealings. Equally, their wily scheming and duplicity simultaneously appal the reader while also appealing to any secret desire he might himself harbour to exercise his own will with equal freedom and with equal heedlessness of conscience or consequences, thus planting a distinct ambivalence in his or her breast. This effect is augmented by the shifting first-person narrative, a device which gives the voices of its protagonists an intimate (and often touching) immediacy and multiplies the scope for irony by giving the reader a consistently better view than the characters, to which the skilful interweaving of the sub-plots also contributes. I should mention that the novel is written entirely as a sequence of letters. This format was common in the 18th century when the book was written, but its relative rarity in modern fiction makes its appearance today refreshing. That it is overtly concerned with the sexual seduction of the weak by the strong partially disguises the fact that it is also a philosophical novel whose themes would easily form the subject of more general discussion. As a depiction of the relations between individual human beings, it is, to be sure, a study of calculating spiritual emptiness, but one which does not shy from laying bare the catastrophic consequences of the conspirators on their victims, just as the report of a war correspondent might describe in detail the horror of a bomb explosion in a hospital. "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" not only contains plenty of anguish on the part of its characters and an affecting deathbed scene, but the reader's own emotions are made to oscillate intensely throughout from amusement to arousal, from curiosity to incredulity, from admiration to dismay... all thanks to the superb manipulation of Laclos, whose mastery of both narrative and reader is absolute and, perhaps, somewhat unsettling. (But how I wish he had written more!)
Rating: 5
Summary: They did not see the bourgeoisie was coming
Comment: An instant scandal when first published in 1782, 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses' remain as one of the most controversial books of all times. Not because it has detailed sexual descriptions --although it has a lot of sexual tension in its pages--, but because it has a candid portrait of the desire and showed the nobles in a way that they weren't used to seeing. Even the Queen, Marie Antoinette, had her copy and read the book with a different jacket, so that nobody wouldn't know she was reading Choderlos de Laclos' masterpiece.
The book is the collection of a more of 100 letters exchanged by a group of nobles in the end of the 18th Century. One of the things that make this novel so brilliant is that is supposed to be a work of nonfiction. The first thing we read is an Editor's disclaimer, where he tells his doubt on publishing these letters. Moreover, he states that the adventures told in those letters could not happen in their time. Then we read a preface written by the author where he tells that he didn't write the letters; therefore, it is not a work of fiction.
And 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses' is so well written that one can believe it is not a work of fiction. Laclos is able to switch his point of view in every new letter; but what is more remarkable is that every person has his/her style and the letters seem to be written by different persons.
In the story there are so many webs perfectly linked that it is almost impossible to put 'Liaisons' in a nutshell. It is easier to state what it is about, albeit different people can have different conclusions on a given work. This novel shows how empty and self-centered the nobles were; that they couldn't notice how much power and money the bourgeoisies had acquired. More than a sexual analyzes, this book is a sociological study of the emptiness of the French nobles.
This book has been adapted to the cinema a couple of times, and my favorite versions are the French one made in the 60s by Roger Vadin, that has a jazzy cool appeal; and the 1988 version directed by Stephen Frears, with a script written by Cristopher Hampton, based on his own stage play --needless to say, based on the novel.
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Title: The Princesse De Cleves (Penguin Classics) by Madame De Lafayette, Walter J. Cobb, Madame de Lafayette, Madame De La Fayette, Madame De Lafayette ISBN: 0140445870 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1992 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Manon Lescaut (Penguin Classics) by Abbe Prevost, Leonard Tancock, Antoine-Francoi Prevost, Jean Sgard ISBN: 0140445595 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1992 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Jacques the Fatalist and His Master (Oxford World's Classics) by Denis Diderot, David Coward ISBN: 0192838741 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: July, 1999 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title:Dangerous Liaisons ASIN: 6304696515 Publisher: Warner Studios Pub. Date: 01 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $13.48 |
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Title: LA Nouvelle Heloise: Julie, or the New Eloise: Letters of Two Lovers, Inhabitants of a Small Town at the Foot of the Alps by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Judith McDowell, Judith H. McDowell ISBN: 0271006021 Publisher: Pennsylvania State Univ Pr (Txt) Pub. Date: December, 1989 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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