[.ca] Modern Classics Immoralist (ISBN 0141182997)

From Amazon.com:
With today's headlines and talk shows, it takes a lot to shock a reader--certainly more than was required in 1902, when André Gide's The Immoralist was first published. What was seen then as a story of dereliction translates today into a tale of introspection and fierce self-discovery. While traveling to Tunis with his new bride, the Parisian scholar Michel is overcome by tuberculosis. As he slowly convalesces, he revels in the physical pleasures of living and resolves to forgo his studies of the past in order to experience the present--to let "the layers of acquired knowledge peel away from the mind like a cosmetic and reveal, in patches, the naked flesh beneath, the authentic being hidden there." But this is not the Michel his colleagues knew, nor the man Marceline married, and he must hide his new values under the patina of what he now reviles. Bored by Parisian society, he moves to a family farm in Normandy. He is happy there, especially in the company of young Charles, but he must soon return to the city and academe. Michel remains restless until he gives his first lecture and runs into Ménalque, who has long outraged society, and recognizes in him a reflection of his torment. Finally, Michel heads south, deeper into the desert, until, as he confides to his friends, he is lost in the sea of sand, under a clear, directionless sky. What Gide's story lacks in sensationalism is fulfilled by his descriptive prose, which evokes the exotic nature of Michel's inner and outer journey: "I did not understand the forbearance of this African earth, submerged for days at a time and now awakening from winter, drunk with water, bursting with new juices; it laughed in this springtime frenzy whose echo, whose image I perceived within myself." --Joannie Kervran Stangeland

Sensation as powerful as thoughts:
Michel's rebirth after his disease is the most fascinating thing in this book. Everything around him is rediscovered: each sound, each caress, each sensation, each fragrance. He is entranced, enthralled, dazzled, intoxicated. "I had forgotten I was alone, forgotten the time, expecting nothing. It seemed to me that until this moment I had felt so little by virtue of thinking so much that I was astonished by a discovery: sensation was becoming as powerful as thoughts." Michel's new sensual awareness makes him walk and breathe with more freedom, more happiness, more fever. He trembles and feels with a new intensity. Now he loves life! His new burning happiness is an ecstasy that is violent, painful, deeply moving. "Ever since the onset of my illness, I had existed without scrutiny, without law, merely dedicating myself to staying alive, like an animal or a child. Less absorbed by suffering now, my life once again became consistent and conscious. Everything was to teach me what still astonished me: I had changed." Now, he despises his erudition, his knowledge, his former studies, his teachers, his colleagues, his family, and even his former self, a bookworm, sickly, weak. He avoids everything that reminds him of decay, death. His new being is shouting with joy, with thirst, with longing for life, for voluptuousness, for harmony. He strips his outer skin away to reveal a beautiful, healthy, young, and strong man, without shame, yet not without emotion and fear. "The fear grew out of my sense that others could read my thoughts now, thoughts which to me seemed suddenly fearful." Not wanting his wife to interfere with his rebirth, Michel puts his old mask on, and shows her only what she wants to see: the man she used to know and love. His professional connections, his friends, bore him, and he doesn't have much to say to them, he has nothing to say. "Whenever I talk to one, it seems to me I'm talking to several... The more they're like each other, the less they're like me... They're alive, they seem to be alive and not know it. As a matter of fact, since I've been with them, I've stopped being alive myself." The only one who interests Michel is Menalque, a man he used to dislike because he found him arrogant. When Menalque is insulted by the rest, he says to Michel with contempt: "You have to let other people be right... It consoles them for not being anything else." Michel is drawn to Menalque because he is very different from the rest, a man who lives with no comfort, no security, no possessions, a man who "loves life enough to try to live wide awake." Menalque loves a risky, demanding, and challenging life, indifferent to people's approval or disapproval. After the second evening organized at his home, Michel wants to throw all the guests out. He "had nothing more to say, nothing more to listen to," bored and angry. The guests blemish and stain everything in his home, infect his "possessions" with disease, with death. Michel learns more about himself and life through the conversations with Menalque and observing the poor workmen than through the conversations with his and his wife's boring friends. Now, he hates the "man of principles," scorns "culture, propriety, rules." "I reached the point of enjoying in others only the wildest behavior... I came close to regarding honesty itself as no more than restriction, convention, timidity."

Scary:
I probably took it more in the way of, "How could he leave his poor wife," etc., but it's one of the only books I've come back to for a second reading even after getting it the first time around. Absorbing.

Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving....:
I acquired Andre Gide's The Immoralist from a pile of free books set outside a used book store that was closing for good. I brought it home and set it aside for about a month before reading it. The 170-odd pages were very easy to digest, in terms of time and complexity. But the ideas filling them were intriguing, at least at first. A man marries, develops tuberculosis, convalesces, and decides to live life more deliberately, more fundamentally, and expose himself, his emotions, his experiences, down to their very foundation. He embraces the pain of sunburn for it's capacity to make a person feel, for the sensation it produces. He strips away all layers of clothing in the outdoors to plunge into an icy pool of water, to expose himself completely to the elements and the world around him. He gives up his scholarly pursuits to run a family farm, and experience a completely different type of life and industry. But here the intrigue of the premise becomes mired in an obviously closeted gay man (not uncommon for the turn of the 20th century) torn between duty to wife and honesty of desire. The second half of this brief novel is merely an endless parade of boys and men that draw Michel's attention and ardor. The desire to experience all in its most basic, honest form is lost in the lie that Michel obviously lives in suppressing his hidden desires and perpetuating his sham marriage. While Gide's concept was initally enough to draw me in and press me to read on, the latter half of the book left me apathetic to my inceptive appreciation of a very promising idea. I found the character of Michel to be hypocritical at best, and failed to feel any sympathy for his longing after the neverending parade of males that slip through his fingers, and his fickle interest in them. I felt some sympathy for Marceline, Michel's wife, but his narrative portrayal of her as more of an impedence and a nuisance gave me more cause to pity her than feel empathy for her eventually contracted case of tuberculosis, no matter how frail she grew; the author always managed to make her more of an annoyance to Michel than anything else, and her character never really has an opportunity of true definition. Gide has a very accessible way with prose, but not a very clear and concise focus on his story with this book, which is the first of his works that I have read. All in all, this book suffers from "When Harry Met Sally" syndrome...and disproves its initial 'thesis'. I would not recommend this book to others, save for anyone interested in examining the conflict of a closeted gay married man at the turn of the 20th century.

Journey into Classic Writing:
My fascination with Oscar Wilde led me to the work of Andre Gide. Immoralist is a sensual journey into the life of a man that resides in each of us. Gide's masterful classic style; streamline and beautifully concise, made me feel as though I were experiencing the sensations of his characters. It was easier to sense a feeling of the water than to visualize the stream. Interestingly, Immoralist seems to come from the Gide's own life and one particular character is exactly reminiscent of Oscar Wilde himself. Maybe, thats already known, but I had knowledge of Gide's life long before I read the book. Anyway, I liked the book. It was easy reading and at times I felt just about as "sensuous, almost beautiful" as Gide himself.

Inner struggle between feelings and societal views:
One evening, Michel calls together three of his close friends from his school days to relate a story to them and to let them decide for themselves what should be done: Michel and his new bride, Marceline, are traveling through Northern Africa on their honeymoon when Michel comes down with tuberculosis. During his recouperation in Biskra, Algeria, Marceline does all she can to nurse him back to health. He slowly recovers, but something in him has changed. Michel loves his Marceline, but disdains her company, preferring to be surrounded by the young boys of the area, in particular Moktir, whom he spies stealing from Marceline. When the weather changes, he and Marceline return to his family farm in Normandy, hoping that this change will evince an even stronger change in him. He strikes up a close friendship with Charles, the 17-year-old son of the farm's manager, and begins to spend more and more time with him, trying to find any excuse he can to be away from Marceline and in the company of Charles. Throughout the novel, Michel struggles with his new yearnings for what may, at the time the novel takes place, be considered the immoral things: his attraction to young men and to the darker side of society, while trying to maintain his marriage. Plus, he has to hide his new feelings behind a false acceptance of society, and it just tears him inside that he must act that way. I alternatley felt sympathy for him as he attempted to understand the new emotions that resulted from his near-death expereince with tuberculosis, and loathing him for his treatment of Marceline who understood what was going on and yet remained by Michel's side. A fascinating character study.