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Title: The Counterfeiters: With Journal of the Counterfeiters by Andre Gide ISBN: 0-394-71842-9 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 June, 1973 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.3 (10 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Ten characters in search of a plot
Comment: The title of Andre Gide's _The Counterfeiters_ is derived from one of its character's novel-in-progress about individuals who mask their true feelings for those they care for most. People, instead, choose to hide behind a facade of indifference. Much of Gide's book is taken from entries from a journal kept by Edouard Molinier, the intended novelist. A sub-plot of _The Counterfeiters_ concerns a band of adolescents, one of whom is Edouard's nephew, who are allegedly circulating coins that have a veneer of gold but are in reality worthless. Gide aptly draws a parallel to the human relationships presented in his book. Gide successfully captures the needless agony, with which many of us can perhaps identify, of two people who secretly find joy in the other's company, but wrongly assume, based on surface appearances, that the other person is bored or annoyed with himself. Another character in the book dejectedly leaves home when he discovers that the man whom he has called his father throughout his life was not his natural father. The young man incorrectly assumes that this man never really loved him and would be glad to be rid of him.
Character development is Gide's strong suit in _The Counterfeiters_. Unfortunately, Gide's weak plot development sinks the excellent realization of his characters. Many of the story lines begun by Gide, as reflected in Edouard's journal, are abruptly dropped. One never learns what happens to Edouard's friend Laura in relation to her husband nor to Vincent, Olivier's errant older brother, and the father of Laura's child. The result is that nothing in _The Counterfeiters_ ever comes together or is resolved. Gide chooses to end the book with the suicide of one of its characters. Like several of the other people populating this book, an elderly and despondent relative had misinterpreted the unfortunate adolescent's attitude towards him as indifference. But likening this death to that of Christ dying for his sins is incredibly heavy handed. Nothing that happens in the novel prior to this tragedy prepares the reader to accept such an outlandish conclusion.
Rating: 5
Summary: "Strip from the novel everything that does not belong to it"
Comment: There's no shortage of quality literature, but it's not so often that you find someone who actually seems to be working with the limits of the medium, and stretching them. With this book, Gide did for the novel what people like Lynch and Tarentino have done for film.
'The Counterfeiters' is a novel presumably written by one of its characters, Edouard, who is planning to write a novel titled 'The Counterfeiters,' but is struggling with a case of writer's block. What seems to give him trouble is that the complexity of his experience keeps defying his attempts to apply a scheme of interpretation to it, and a sense of personal crisis which makes it difficult for him to maintain his objectivity as an artist. As a read, though, it isn't half as strange and experimental as that might make it sound; its wide cast of characters is typical of a traditional novel, such as War and Peace or a Tale of Two Cities, but Gide works with incredible subtley behind the scenes. Edouard's musing about the nature of narrative structure (to other characters) is suddenly reflected in his world, as though he were unconsciously God. The themes are tenuous and only gradually developed. Some characters are the ordinary sort of people who began to emerge in the literature of Twain, Dostoevsky and Turgenev, while some are more like the dramatic heroes of Shakespeare and Dickens. There's even a guest appearance by Alfred Jarry, the gleefully profane French dramatist of the period. Halfway through, in a chapter titled 'The Author Stops to Appraise his Characters,' Gide himself (or possibly Eduoard) offers his frank opinions on the characters (or real people?) who populate the novel.
If possible, buy a copy which includes 'The Journals...,' the record that Gide kept while writing this, which provides even more insight into his method.
Rating: 3
Summary: Decent novel, but overrated
Comment: Three-and-a-half stars. Gide's reputation precedes him. He is generally regarded as one of France's best novelists and is widely admired by American writers as well. I plunged into this novel eagerly and emerged from it, two days later, with little more than a shrug. I hesitate to be too critical about books that I read in translation; one never knows how accurately the translator has captured the original work.
All in all, there's nothing really wrong with The Counterfeiters; it reads and feels at times like Dickens and a spate of other nineteenth-century British novels--the cast of characters is rather large, there are ample doses of melodrama, and the story makes use of several nice "coincidences" to tie otherwise disparate storylines together. It's been said that Gide's style was revolutionary for his day, but it's fair to say that readers today will find it fairly conventional. The same goes for the book's "scandalous" reputation--there is nothing about The Counterfeiters that will shock or amaze readers in 2003 the way it may have in 1926, when it was first published.
That said, The Counterfeiters is a decent book. There are moments when the reader feels that Gide has touched upon something greater than the story itself; some cutting observation about the relationship between Art and Morality, or the decline of social morals. But the material and style is otherwise dated. I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading this book, if so inclined. But as for me, six months from now, I'm doubt I'll remember much about it. It just didn't make much of an impression.
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Title: The Immoralist by Andre Gide, Richard Howard ISBN: 0679741917 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 February, 1996 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: If It Die: An Autobiography (Vintage International (Paperback)) by Andre Gide ISBN: 0375726063 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 08 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Lafcadio's Adventures (Vintage International (Paperback)) by Andre Gide, Dorothy Bussy ISBN: 0375713387 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre ISBN: 0802130135 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1988 List Price(USD): $13.50 |
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Title: Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier, John Sturrock ISBN: 081663808X Publisher: University of Minnesota Press Pub. Date: March, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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