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The Counterfeiters: A Novel
by Andre Gide
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Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
A young artist pursues a search for knowledge through the treatment of homosexuality and the collapse of morality in middle class France.
| Customer Reviews: |
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| Pretense and Compassion |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Andre Gide's "The Counterfeiters" is a novel about individual development in a society structured by deceit. The French writer began the novel after World War I and continued working on it for years until it was published in 1927. Set in Paris, the story describes upper middle class adolescent boys and the men who exploit them. The plot progresses in a somewhat disjointed fashion as Gide inserts psychoanalytic insights popular at the time. Some of Gide's journal entries, included as an appendix to the novel, indicate a dissatisfaction with his ability to produce seamless connections between realistic structure and unconscious processes.
In the first half of the novel, the young characters are introduced, and their intellectual, social, and artistic developments are described in an engaging manner reminiscent of Balzac. The reader is involved in the plot and cares about the behavior of each of the boys. The children are becoming adults without the realization that a single immature act can determine a life path.
In the second half of the book, the pace of the plot slows as Gide inserts an increasing number of psychological interpretations into the story. The device he uses is a journal written by a novelist character, Edouard, who is using his experience with the boys and their families to write his own novel. With this voice, Gide is able to discuss events from the point of view of a witness who is intimately involved in the action and assumes a role of psychoanalyst.
The final chapters of the novel demonstrate Gide's success in the integration of form and free expression as the plot accelerates to chaos and resolution. The reader understands that all of the boys are counterfeiters in their interactions with family, friends, and others. This is expected from adolescents who are impulsive and largely ignorant of life's consequences. But we do not expect the adult characters to be counterfeiters, to try to deceive by pretense and dissembling in order to exploit the boys socially, intellectually, and sexually. Though this counterfeit life is entrenched in the adults, Gide provides hope that the younger generation is capable of insight and judgment and can avoid dissolute lives.
Complete redemption by the boys is possible if they recognize the immorality of their external counterfeit roles. They must learn to stop the narcissistic internal voice that speaks to them incessantly reflecting the counterfeit influence of parents and friends. Finally, they can enter the silence of genuine communication with people, without guile or envy, and experience a compassionate and selfless immersion in the lives of others.
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| Minor Masterpiece |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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This qualifies as literature, and should be read by everyone, but, compared to the rest of the literary pantheon, it really is a bagatelle. It's quintessentially Gallic in style, and Gide inserts a great deal of his Oscar Wilde-like wit into the characters' dialogue; this accounts for most of the reading pleasure. There is a plot of sorts, but the narrative isn't plot-driven. Very easy to read, funny, and well-written. (There is a dour, rather melodramatic climax, but I got the sense that this was dutifully tacked on, as it didn't represent the culmination of the overall arc of the novel...which may have been the point!)
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| good read |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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This is not a plot-oriented story, so if you are looking for "what happens next", you will be disappointed, even though there is enough happening. For example, in the beginning, the affair of Vincent and Laura is in the foreground, but then half way through, after Laura goes back to her husband, it's almost forgotten and Vincent is out of the picture, and the reader is not going to be informed about what happened to him or Laura in details. Instead, the other issues of the other characters take over the story. In other words, the "events" aren't the important issue Gide is dealing with.
There are so many, in fact too many, for my little brain to grasp, characters and each of them has his/her own story and issues to be dealt with, and at times I felt I couldn't digest them all (to remember all the names alone was a challenge). As Gide says in his notebook, this book could have been divided into two books. Nonetheless, he decided to put everything in one book, one story, and he "gave everything" he had, as he expected this story to be his last novel.
There are more discussions on art, literature, and moral issues than the story itself, which I enjoyed and learned a great deal. This sort of novels are very rare these days, as the current trend of novels are more "event-based" than "idea-based".
His notebooks are even more enjoyable.
As for homosexuality, I didn't find a trace of it in this novel. Would someone tell me where people got that idea? Or am I missing something? My guess is the affection and respect between Eduard and Oliver is the cause of it, but they're Uncle and Nephew, which makes it only natural that they possess affection, fondness and love, especially if they share the same interest, and both of them being artists, shy and sensitive by nature.
The corruption of the society, both in adults and young people, was brought up brilliantly. Only, I wish it was told through Oliver's eye. (I really wanted to get to know him better, but there were too many other characters who took up the pages.)
The sudden ending caught me by surprise, and I was a bit dissatisfied, but after reading the notebooks and realized that's how Gide wanted it, I decided to respect his decision.
Some of the characters needed a bit more attention and needed to be developed a little more, I think, especially Boris, as he is the one who ends the story by a drastic action such as committing suicide. (I never got to know him well enough to know what was going on in his head.)
The style is unique. It's written mainly in 3rd person omnicient, but often Gide lets Eduard tell the story in his journal, in 1st person. And then he goes back to omnicient again in the next chapter. This repeats throughout. The trouble I had was that there were so many characters, and I really didn't get to know any of them intimately. Eduard was the only one I felt I got to know, but that's because he was given many chances to write journals in 1st person.
There are several main characters obviously, but then occasionally the less important characters also come out in the foreground. So you think there's going to be a story about them, but then they disappear and you don't hear about them for a while.
In the notebook, he says that the important characters shouldn't be in the foreground but instead let the reader figure them out, or something to that effect. It was only then I realized what he was trying to do. It is a rare style, I think, and requires some adjusting.
In any case, it's a very readable novel, has a lot to offer, and I should say you will get your money's worth.
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| "Strip from the novel everything that does not belong to it" |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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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.
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| Decent novel, but overrated |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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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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