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Joy of Man's Desiring

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It's not hard to see why Giono was one of Henry Miller's favorite writers. This opera of rural life looks into the selves of people and animals; even the weather is an active character in the narrarative. The story meditates on the dependence of man on nature, which saddles him with the responsibility of joy on its own terms no matter how opposed they are to culture and modernity. There is a climactic battle between joy and death. All the while, it remains a readable, compelling, deceptively straightforward story.

Full of wisdom and humanity, The Joy of Man's Desiring is one of my favorite books of all time, and its return into print after a long absence is cause for gratitude.

Jean Giono french novelist from Provence;father a cobbler. His work falls into two main sections;the pre-war novels (the best) and the post-war romances.This novel is from the former period and is rightly considered his masterpiece.It is a mysterious,ambiguous,lyrical account of the lives of simple folk, a story that must be told.In Bobi, the con-man saviour, Giono found a perfect surrogate for himself and his pastoral project.This book is alive with an epic sense of people living under the spell of and living in accordance with, the laws of nature. Bobi arrives in a small country community and through his prophetic homolies, distilations of the genuinely important aspects of daily life around them, brings forth their spiritual awakening .Seasons, and the changes wrought are exquisitly rendered in prose of great beauty.The act of eating with friends is described as an almost religious ritual, of communal empathy and staggering enlightenment. This is a book that will bind you in its own magic circle of seasonal change and renewal. Highly recommended.

This book, and Giono's "Song of the World," are the two of the most beautiful, wise, transformative works of fiction that I know -- even in translation. The human characters in these novels are entirely a part of the breathing earth that enfolds them. And conversely there is no aspect of the land that is not alive; the wind, the forest, animals, the ground itself are all active participants in the unfolding of events.

The translations are excellent, yet Giono's writing, and his vision, are among the most ecological and eloquent to be found in any language. These books that gave me the impetus to be a writer. If you care for nature, and the prospect of humankind living in genuine participation and reciprocity with earthly nature, these are your books. An essential tonic for our collective ecological insanity...

Joy of Man's Desiring (Que ma Joie Demeure) by Jean Giono. Translated by Katherine Allen Clark

Jourdan is an old man. He's been married to Marthe for a long time and they never had children. They are farmers in Haute Provence. They had lost all joy. Jourdan was hoping for "someone" to come and help them. One night, he starts plowing his fields--as it starts raining he goes on and on--because he can "feel" his presence. Thus, Bobi enters their life.

Bobi is a wanderer, and he has a "magical" effect on weather, animals, and people. That night Marthe and Jourdan feel the desire they had lost and make love.

The first thing Bobi does for the community is give their wheat to the birds. Then he convinces Jourdan to plant narcissi instead of wheat because they will give him joy. "...It would be you who would seek joy for all of them..."

Then Bobi leaves for a month and returns with a stag, The community is then tasked to find does for the stag. Bobi creates a community from all the people in the valley, where the needs of one are the needs of everyone. "The wheat...they always say is the main thing. No, it isn't...That is just the point..it is exactly like the air you breathe...We use to use wheat as we use air..like something without value, like air. "

Bobi helps them rekindle their connection as a community: "Youth...is joy. for the impractical, the useless." And youth is neither strength, nor supple body, nor youth as you conceive of it. Rather, youth is the passion for the impractical, the useless."

Jourdan's farm is La Jourdane and it is situated in The Jourdan Plateau. Soon Bobi is introduced to all their neighbors: The Maple Tree Farm-Randoulet, Honorine, Zulma and Le Noir. Mouilles: Jaques, Madame Carle, and their son. Maurices Place: Jacqou, Josephine, Honoré, and Barbe. And Fra Josephine Farm: Héléne and Aurora.

Joy of Man's Desiring is the story of this couple aided by a stranger, and how they involve their friends and neighbors on the journey back to the individual and collective happiness.

Using magical realism and poetry, Giono weaves a story of the earth, passion, of men and women, of animals, and weather. Of the magic we call the "laws of nature."

The book is an easy and fast read. If you can read French, I suggest you read the original.

The most stirring exploration of man and of the world that I know. Jean Giono writes with an incredibly full voice that speaks of the earth and of the wealth of its incarnations which he ceaselessly likens to other aspects of nature in a web of interrelatedness with such poetic grace that one cannot help but cry Yes! as one reads them. When it comes to men and women, there is on the part of the voice which guides us an intensely compassionate respect for the ambiguous forces which, as we are reminded again and again as we read these pages, permeate and animate us.

At times the translation reads a bit awkwardly in comparison with the original French, but that's alright. The feelings at which Giono aims are universally felt no matter the particularities of language. These clumsy words of mine, though, are for naught; the only homage that one can do to Giono is to read him, again and again, to keep open the sluices of the soul, to say to oneself, "He will come back. I am sure of it. I am sure of it."

Originally published in 1935, JOY is written in a style that combines obliqueness in its quotidien narrative with the author's introduction of sequences of seasons and events that are vivid to the point of hallucination, or even poetic surreality. JOY starts on a Winter night, ending in an apocalyptic summer thunderstorm.

The story is well-crafted, though this is partly veiled by the indirectness of its style, perhaps an element of the aloofness and privateness that non-French observers have noted about French culture. The momentous fates of key characters are hinted at within the first 100 pages of the novel, important "clues" that may be overlooked if the reader is the sort who dabbles in this book over a long period of time. I think JOY will give greater satisfaction if read in less than 10 sittings, the easier to hold on to the irregular thread that re-surfaces as two fatal and separating cords at the book's close.

There was a great deal of puzzlement for me in JOY, mainly in the use of that term. Giono seems to locate joy in timeless rural life and its rhythms. Yet these folks on the Gremone plateau, especially Jourdan who wonders about its possibility early on, appear to be such fragile vessels in which it can flourish. And uncomprehending. Consider this exchange between the older Marthe and the younger Zulma:

Marthe: Doesn't [your head] bother you?

Zulma: What?

M: My child, why don't you talk like other people?

I don't know, said Zulma, How do you talk, the rest of you?

M: Oh, my child, we talk as life makes us talk

Z: I never know what you others mean.

M: We mean that life is sad.

Z: I don't understand, Madame

M: Sad, do you know what that is?

Z: No

M: Content, when you are content, do you know what that is?

Z: No (etc., etc.)

And there are other patience-trying (for me) passages throughout the novel.

For all of the rural wisdom that Giono seems to want us to recognize, and which we understand is passing with modernity, it is not enough to take root unless it does so by a distancing self-consciousness. We see this today in the U.S. with various attempts to "get back to the land."

And then there's Bobi, who first appears almost like a Christ-figure: he stands on a crest framing a single nocturnal star between his legs. But halfway through the book he appears less a "revelation" to the community of the plateau. He ends up merely among them in their lives, and near the end, a source of anxious sexuality and vexing alienation from the despondent Aurore.

Joy was until the 20th century linked to spiritual insight, a grappling with the ways of God, but this left our literature as the modernist enterprise gained ascendence (and not transcendence!). The loss of this deep joy is poignantly evident at the book's close: alone in the humid rain, a man cries out for his mother and is answered with finality by a bolt of lightning.

I'll tell you right now, this book is absolutely breath-taking. Take my word for it. Awesome book, not really. This raised my awareness about the depths of one man's journey to find himself. I couldn't put it down. I felt that this should be read by all men in grade school. not really. I am lying.

I'll tell you right now, this book is absolutely breath-taking. Take my word for it. Awesome book, not really. This raised my awareness about the depths of one man's journey to find himself. I couldn't put it down. I felt that this should be read by all men in grade school. not really. I am lying.