The Counterfeiters

by André Gide

Book Overview

A young artist pursues a search for knowledge through the treatment of homosexuality and the collapse of morality in middle class France.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394718429
• ISBN13: 9780394718422
• Release Date: June 1973
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 4.3" x 7.2"

Customer Reviews

good read

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

"Strip from the novel everything that does not belong to it"

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.

A brilliant, lyrical masterpiece.

"The Counterfeiters" (1926), by Andre Gide (1869-1951) is a fascinating chronicle of life in Paris before World War I. It begins as two high school friends, Bernard Profitendieu and Olivier Molinier, prepare for the bacchalaureat, their final exam. Bernard finds some letters hidden at home which show he is illegitimate, and runs away from home, thus setting in motion a rich set of adventures among a cast of mind-boggling proportions. From Bernard, Olivier and their parents, the story quickly grows to include Olivier's younger brother George, his uncle Edouard, Edouard's friend Laura, Olivier's older brother Vincent, Vincent's friend Robert Count Passavant, Passavant's lover Lady Griffith, Edouard's old schoolmate Victor Strouvilhou, Victor's nephew Gheri, Laura's father Vedel, Edouard's old piano teacher Perouse, and Perouse's grandson Boris, among many others. As this prodigious cast assembles itself, the fireworks really begin!The reader will be amazed by all the ways these characters interconnect with each other. For example, at the beginning of the book, Edouard is traveling from London to Paris to visit and advise Laura, who is trying to extricate herself from an extra-marital affair, but only upon arriving will he learn Laura's paramour is actually his nephew Vincent. Many similar connections between most of the characters will be revealed during the course of this motivating story. "The Counterfeiters" is less a plotted novel than a finely-woven tapestry. Every character interacts with almost every other. The chapters are brief, only a dozen pages or so, but most focus on one of these interactions in particular, making for a compelling narrative. It was notably experimental for its time, but extremely readable, and still fresh today.The title describes a counterfeiting ring which uses children, like something from Dickens's "Oliver Twist", to pass off gold-plated glass disks for coins. Gide's broader theme, however, is that of falsehood in general, like that popular theme of 19th-century French literature, namely hypocrisy. Beside the counterfeiting ring itself, Gide describes fathers with illegitimate children, adults with hidden affairs, and people generally searching for truth among the artifice of life.Gide's characters are brilliantly conceived, executed on a par with his predecessor Balzac, whom Gide himself called "possibly our greatest novelist" (as published in the invaluable reference in the appendix of this book, the illuminating journal Gide himself kept while writing "The Counterfeiters"). There is something of Balzac's Goriot in Gide's Perouse, something of Rastignac in Bernard, and perhaps even a little Vautrin in Passavant. But Gide's literary style is markedly different. Where Balzac told self-contained stories, usually ones with social morals attached (as did most 19th-century French authors), Gide tells us he is "fond of sudden endings," and "it is an insult to explain what the attentive reader has underst

The Counterfeiters: A Courageous, Timeless Classic

If you think that James Dean invented the Rebel without a Cause, read The Counterfeiters. It is easy to see that this book could outrage "cultural conservatives" especially those who never bother to read it but condemn it by its reputation or blurb. On the surface, one may think it is "epater les bourgeois." One could easily call it scandalous in the matter-of-fact treatment of how the younger characters behave amongst themselves and in relation to their elders. But in the end, the message of this book is highly moral. It is a warning against naivete, complacency and delusions about others and oneself. In our dealings with those we love and care about, we fail to communicate our true feelings and thoughts out of timidity, self-absorption, pride, fear, spite and ignorance. (A good word for one cause of miscommunication that probably is taken from the original French is "pique.") Even the desire to protect the object of our love causes us to lie and hide the truth. Because of our lies and omissions we suffer immeasurably and cause others to suffer. In a tribute to the power of love, Gide generously grants his best characters the opportunity to redeem themselves. The worst characters remain stagnant behind masks of insincerity or fall into hopeless degradation. Some of the characters in this book are truly evil. They reach a crescendo of depravity made possible by the misplaced good intentions of those who could have stopped them earlier. And one gets the sense, that as in life, even after the most horrid events, the surviving characters will muddle through, some having learned something valuable, others having learned little or nothing.