Stendhal [Paperback]

John Keates (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 26, 1998

Stendhal, slave to love and the pursuit of happiness, an elusively attractive figure, is here reanimated in all his triumphs and contradictions. This intelligent, exceptionally well-written biography presents the full operatic flow of a life of lasting accomplishment.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The author of The Red and the Black could ask for no more fitting homage than the lucid, breezy prose and shrewd psychological analyses of his latest biographer. British author Jonathan Keates nearly equals Stendhal (1783-1842) in his ability to dissect his subject's fantasies, evasions and outright lies while retaining tenderness for the human yearnings that prompted them. Intended for the general reader, the book eschews lengthy literary exegeses in favor of a vigorous narrative that does full justice to Stendhal's adventurous trajectory from the stultifying French provinces to Napoleon's army, Italy's romantic charms, and beyond. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Henri Beyle (1783-1842), writing under the pen name Stendhal, was one of the great French novelists of the 19th century, along with Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola. He entered the civil service through family connections and kept that employment through ability and political agility. Despite the focus on love and seduction in his works, he was neither a rape-prone Julien Sorel nor a seduction-prone Fabrice del Dongo, and reserved his self-destructive impulses and, in later years, his romantic forays for his diary and the pages of his novels. In this unpretentious and well-written biography, Keates (Purcell, LJ 11/1/96) integrates Beyle's chronology with the history and background of his various sites of service, particularly the dull Italian port of Civitavecchia. Still, it is helpful if readers already know the history and indispensable that they have read his greatest works, The Charterhouse of Parma and The Red and the Black. For literature collections.?Marilyn Gaddis Rose, SUNY-Binghamton
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; 1st Pbk. Ed edition (January 26, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786705450
• ISBN-13: 978-0786705450
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,845,838 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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