Customer Reviews

André Gide: A Life in the Present

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The extraordinary work and life of one of the twentieth century's most influential authors is brought to vivid life in this magisterial biography. Sheridan has a complete understanding of both the period and the literature; his precis of the novels and diaries &c are succinct and his own written style is elegant and to the point.

A biographer has a unique perspective on his subject: he can choose how to present the subject whatever way he likes. In this book, Sheridan has opted to present Gide as an artist who is constantly struggling between his homosexual nature and his Protestant upbringing which does not necessarily agree with the former. Contrary to the former reviewer, I do believe that Sheridan has successfully tied together Gide's works and his real life sexual orientation. In presenting Gide as such, Sheridan has demonstrated time and time again how such a life is reflected very closely in his works. My only wish is that Sheridan can present a much more balance view between Gide's sexual life and his other life. Literaly the first half of the book (300 pages plus), contain very detail sexual life of Gide. Many times it feels too overwhelming. Only when you get to Gide's association with Communist Part and his trip to the USSR (half way in the book), do you get more interesting aspects of Gide's life. I think Sheridan's description of Gide's relationship with his wife (Madelaine) and how Gide's dealt with her death, is superb. But this comes almost at the end of the book. If it is not for it's lack of balance, I would have given this book a 5-star rating.

Andre Gide and his highly literate friends obviously left vast amounts of information on his/their lives. Gide also met almost everyone of note in his day in Europe. Mr Sheridan has all this material at his finger-tips and cannot be faulted in any way for that, but the result is a bit over-powering. At times, I felt the detail was bogging the book down. I was not sure I wanted to know quite so much about Gide's endless movements and meetings. It must be a very difficult decision for a biographer and no doubt Mr Sheridan has already suppressed large amounts of material. You do have to want to know an awful lot about Gide though to tackle this book.

i have studied gide for many years now and have a very large collection of his books as well as books on him....i was greatly disappointed by sheridan's bulky text on gide. unfortunately sheridan has decided to give us an intimate portrait of the life of gide that reads like a tabloid trash article. it is of less importance who gide slept with than the ideas that he puts forth over his lifetime that helped change the face of literature. previous biographies of gide have had to divide their time between the facts of his life and criticism of his books because the two are virtually inseparable. sheridan has opted for more of the former and less of the latter but never really makes a convincing case for doing this. he finds fault with many previous biographers, many of them intimates of gide, but never explains why his interpretation of the facts is better. i would suggest reading germaine bree or jean delay or justin o'brien's books on gide. sheridan's ideas fall from the realm of fact into the realm of fiction.