The Good Doctor Guillotin [Paperback]

Marc Estrin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2009

The Good Doctor Guillotin follows five characters to a common destination the scaffold at the first guillotining of the French Revolution: Dr. Guillotin, of course, a physician and member of the National Assembly, involved in many important events, including the Tennis Court Oath. Nicolas Pelletier, the first victim or patient as they were sometimes called, since the new beheading machine was seen as a humanitarian medical intervention in the state s technique of dealing death. Father Pierre, the curé who accompanies Pelletier in his last days, a man torn between his religious commitment, and an equally strong commitment to the poor and their revolution. Sanson, the famous executioner of Paris who, 9 months later would execute the king and retire from remorse. Tobias Schmidt, builder of the new machine, a German piano maker working in Paris, a freethinker predicting the Terror that will follow, but allowing himself to initiate it. The revolution, after all, had reduced the sale of pianos. Various other interesting figures briefly appear: Damiens, Mozart, Mesmer, Louis XVI, the Marquis de Sade, Marat, Robespierre, Demoulins among them. The eighteenth century narrative is divided into several sections, each introduced by an essay in the author s voice, the first on five-ness and Pentagons; a second on hope and Utopia; a third on revolutionary violence; and a fourth on capital punishment. This is no historical novel. It is, rather, a fictive meditation on a contemporary conundrum using an eighteenth century drum.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Using a hybrid of fiction and political commentary, Estrin recounts the events leading up to the construction of France's first guillotine in this heavy-handed and slow-moving book. The story centers on a doctor, Guillotin, a member of the 1780s National Assembly, who argues for a more humane method of execution. Other important players are Nicolas Jacques Pelletier, the first man to lose his head to the new device; Tobias Schmidt, the piano maker who built the new painless device; Charles-Henri Sanson, an executioner; and Pierre-René Grevier, Pelletier's spiritual adviser. Mozart, the Marquis de Sade and, of course, Louis XVI make appearances, with the latter suggesting a modification to the very blade that would end his life only a short time later. Though Estrin evokes revolutionary and pre-revolutionary France, and Dr. Guillotin becomes real through his political tirades, the other characters remain static. Most troublesome, though, is Estrin's intrusion into the narrative to deliver his case against the death penalty (it reads like something from a freshman civics class). The project, overall, has potential, but the execution is botched. (Sept.)
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About the Author

Estrin is a writer, cellist, and activist living in Burlington, Vermont. The Good Doctor Guillotin is his ninth published book.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Unbridled Books (September 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932961852
• ISBN-13: 978-1932961850
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,411,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Marc Estrin is a writer, cellist, and activist living in Burlington, Vermont.

OR
Marc Estrin's world line approximates a cross between a fungal mycelium and a Rube Goldberg device. Biologist, theater director, EMT, Unitarian minister, physician assistant, puppeteer, political activist, college professor, cellist and conductor, he is baffling, even unto himself.

OR, Alternative:
Marc Estrin was hired to teach theater at Goddard College, but in this departmentless utopia, wound up also teaching music, writing, Finnegans Wake, math, physics, medical self-help and "crazy courses" like Philosophy for Dishwashers, an audio-based lecture/discussion series to sweeten the life of cafeteria volunteers. Such are the fruits of liberal education.

OR, Even more alternative:

Marc Estrin grew up in a small apartment so full of books you had to walk sideways in the hall. Of these, he read not one -- till age sixteen, when he gave up his literary virginity to Franz Kafka: The Trial was his introduction to the larger life. This explains much. A mediocre student in high school, he was teased by his father into reading The Magic Mountain during the summer before college. Epiphany! The book was for him a topo-map of western thought and culture. With Mann as his guide, he sailed through college and grad schools, making a Hegelian leap out of graduate science into the richer, if iffier area of the arts. The Vietnam war and Bertolt Brecht were his siren callers into political activity, and his professional theater work dissipated into organizing, college teaching and communal living. When these ceased to put food on the table, he reached back into a past life to study and practice medicine. With the computer came the possibility of writing without retyping -- a stimulus sufficient to have resulted in his current crop of manuscripts, published and unpublished.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Dreadful writing style & very tough to follow, January 28, 2010

By 

Sabine Henre "Le Chat Noir" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Good Doctor Guillotin (Paperback)

I tried to like this book since the subject matter might have been interesting.

Nothing is better than a good piece of history, especially one that has such a gorrific and enticing subject matter. But this book was a waste of my time and money and I could not recommend it to others.

The writing style is so many voices that I lost track of who was writing the book and what the subject was about. I couldn't figure out if I was reading some person's idea of fiction and what may have occurred in history or if he was trying to tell history from fact and just didn't know how to structure the content and words to make it come across from a storytellers perspective.

I alwys donate my books to a library or charity once I'm done with them, but this book I put in the shredder to save others the pain of trying to get through it and make sense of what the author (or his characters) were trying to say.