Exactly the effect intended, we imagine, by one of the 20th century’s most eloquent and incorrigible misanthropes.
Civilized society is portrayed as a constant threat to individual freedom in this savage text—the previously untranslated first half of a two-part novel the perversely great French author (1894–1961) published in 1952.
This confrontational “novel in which invention is grafted onto a presumed autobiography” followed the pseudonymous Céline’s early masterpieces (Journey to the End of Night and Death on the Installment Plan) and preceded his hallucinatory WWII trilogy (North, Castle to Castle, Rigadoon). Composed while its author, indicted by his government for treasonable praises of anti-Semitism and Nazism, was imprisoned in Copenhagen awaiting extradition to France for trial, it’s a bitter howl of protest expressed in Céline’s characteristically fragmented style. Run-on sentences, angry accusations, imaginary conversations with an implied reader (who’s as abusive as the narrator) create a kaleidoscopic impression of terror, resentment, and psychic unbalance. The narrator (referred to by several names, each of which identifies the author) vilifies his tormentors and demands the respect denied both his literary accomplishments and his heroic military service (during WWI). Céline spares nobody, dwelling luridly on details of prison life, mocking the hypocrisies of nationalism and literary convention (critics, translators, and censors are favored targets), indulging a coprophiliac obsession with bodily processes and malfunctions (“Nature, you’re a pile of shit!”), and woolgathering about such remembered figures as a beautiful dancer who excited his lust, a legless artist friend who took seductive advantage of female pity, and his intemperate housecat Bébert (which creature seems to have been Céline’s beloved doppelgänger). The energy and rhythm of the narrator’s voice are intoxicating, but the content is so off-putting, you may hate yourself for not tossing it into the trash.
Exactly the effect intended, we imagine, by one of the 20th century’s most eloquent and incorrigible misanthropes.Pub Date: April 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-8032-1520-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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