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André Gide: The immoralist (1960, Penguin)

English language

Published June 3, 1960 by Penguin.

ISBN:
978-0-14-018042-8
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OCLC Number:
41974419

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4 stars (10 reviews)

The Immoralist (French: L'Immoraliste) is a novel by André Gide, published in France in 1902. The Immoralist is a recollection of events that Michel narrates to his three visiting friends. One of those friends solicits job search assistance for Michel by including in a letter to Monsieur D. R., Président du Conseil, a transcript of Michel's first-person account.

Important points of Michel's story are his recovery from tuberculosis; his attraction to a series of Arab boys and to his estate caretaker's son; and the evolution of a new perspective on life and society. Through his journey, Michel finds a kindred spirit in the rebellious Ménalque.

54 editions

reviewed The immoralist by André Gide (Penguin twentieth-century classics)

Review of 'The immoralist' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Michel and Ménalque must be my favorite literary characters ever conceived, and if not, then they are up there, roaming the highest of ranks. Gide's poetic yet simple style elevates them to the status of sheer ideal. I extol Michel's and Ménalque's vice for it is superior to any man's virtue. Doctrine dictates that one ought to experience, not merely to live. Philistines dare to refute? Oh, just how beautiful this world would be if got rid of moralists!



“You have to let other people be right,” was his answer to their insults. “It consoles them for not being anything else.”


“I have so little that nothing you see here belongs to me; not even, or especially not, the bed I sleep on. I have a horror of comfort; possessions invite comfort, and in their security a man falls asleep; I love life enough to try to live wide awake, …

Review of 'Immoralist' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Really exceptional storytelling in this. Gide is so spellbinding when his characters tell a story and some of the stories in this novel took complete hold of me. I'd say his conceit paid off, too. From beginning to end I really got the sense of being lead down the path of a character's transformation but without very much obtrusive telling and so naturally that by the end, when this self-indulgent protagonist has come into his own, all the guilt and cringe over his character had transferred completely to me, the reader. He pulls this off by using his pontification only to provide the bare amount of context for his detailed descriptions of people and places (and low key masterful dialogue).

I'm reading the companion novel, Strait is the Gait, now and the experience is only making my feelings for The Immoralist swell. Gide took on such an interesting project to …

reviewed The immoralist by André Gide (Penguin twentieth-century classics)

Review of 'The immoralist' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

And I thought [a:William S. Burroughs|4462369|William S. Burroughs|http://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1459243207p2/4462369.jpg] invented the whole North African artistic pederasty tour idea. You don't hear much about this Nobel Prize winning author these days, but perhaps you should. Gide wrestles with the popular philosophies of the mid to late 19th Century, which seem to leave us without any guidance, through the protagonist of this book.

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