Customer Reviews

The Vagabond (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Colette's beginning as a writer is one of the strangest in literature. In her early 20s, she married a no-talent hack named "Willy" (that was how he signed his pieces) and wrote a series of novels about a young girl named Claudine. Willy took these pieces and published them under his pen name, giving his young wife no credit.

In her early to mid 30s, Colette grew weary of Willy, and turned her back on him to embark on a career as a dance hall performer. This is the setting for THE VAGABOND, Colette's first post-Willy novel, and the first to bear her own name.

The main character, Renee Nere, has been touring for 3 years, and although she's sometimes lonely, is enjoying her freedom and self-sufficiency. She's also suffering from what we'd refer to nowadays as Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Her marriage to her philandering and abusive husband was so wretched, that when she meets another man who loves her, the slighest familiar gesture or word will trigger memories that incite revulsion.

THE VAGABOND is a gem of a novel that beautifully shows off Colette's gift for prose as well as her wonderful descriptions of life backstage as part of a touring group. If that isn't enough, she is also very gifted at revealing the psychological insights of her character. The introduction by Judith Thurman is well-done, and both the introduction and the novel left me wanting more Colette.

Gigi may be the best known of her works, but 'The Vagabond' stands out in pure beauty from the rest. The plot (an actress on the stage who faces public scorn and problems in love) seems to be most autobiographical, and narrator and main character, Renee Nere, is a delight. Both beautiful and painful in spots, this book deserves to be read, as well as its sequel, 'The Shackle.'

The Vagabond was my first delicious introduction to Colette, and the first book to make me weep openly. I related strongly to Renée, a professional woman who clung desperately to her independence while falling hopelessly for a man who relentlessly tugged at her vulnerability. Renée's confusion about whether love and happiness could coexist kept me captive in suspense until the very last (and infinitely satisfying) page.

Colette's Renee Nere is complex, her name alone tells us that (the last name is the first name spelled backwards, not to mentioned that Renee means "reborn"). This female protagonist would certainly fit in with the modern notion of being female, and in the early 20th century, this was not only rare, but not very-well understood. I adore this book because of the way it encourages women (by example) to carve out their own existence and not to rely upon men for security. It is also wonderfully written. However, you'll be in for a shocker if you read the sequel, "The Shackle".

This was my first reading of Colette. What a poetic, beautiful, and amazing writer she was. In this novel, we meet a woman who is definitely revolutionary for her time and ours. Colette is aware of the sorrow and happiness that are intertwined in life. The main character's life follows a path that has much loneliness and doubt, but she, most importantly, has her will. This is truly a feminist classic. What I admire most is the courage to write such a work and to write it so well. The language is intoxicating.

a review of Colette's The Vagabond

The opening of the story in the dressrooms of the music hall smell like rancid grease paint, dust, sweat of performers. There's only few people you can relate to, since everyone comes & goes in the music hall, so why make friends?

But the music hall is good place for Renee Nere, a pantomime, who performs half nude in see-through silks, and gets slammed to ground on purpose by her mentor, Brague, who treats her like an amateur: but this a joke between them. Renee is no amateur. At 33 she can out perform anyone

"You get use to not eating, a toothache . . . . but you cannot get used to jealousy." is the way Renee describes her high profile marriage to Adolphe Taillandy, and his many, many mistresses. A marriage ends in divorce when Renee can no longer take it. Divorce from a wealthy man was unheard of in 1910.

Renee, the vagabond, loves the music hall in her own way, even though she hates the dust, the animal abuse, the low-class crowd. But she will never have to deal with Adolphe Taillandy again. She also endures the touring which means terrible food, discomfort, bad hours. It mends her broken life and heart, or gives her a chance to avoid it.

A rich suitor arrives and Renee doesn't want to get involved. She becomes emotionally involve, but then goes on tour, and tries to forget him. She's a vagabond now and she doesn't want to get tied up.

Colette was a master of the word written by a woman, from a woman's heart. She knew how to move from one scene to another and astonish the reader. The most amazing fact of this novel was that it was written in the dressing rooms of the music hall, and on tour too. ("It takes up too much time to write," states Renee, a writer herself, "and the trouble is, I am no Balzac!")

And then there is a nod to people who make up the music halls of Paris: "How unrecognized they are, these cafe concert artistes, how disparaged and how little understood! Forceful, proud, and full of an absurd and outmoded faith in Art . . . . "

Renee's faith in art is on a thin line too, but it saves her from "a woman dying of grief".

The little book, The Vagabond, that I purchased through Amazon, arrived in excellent condition. I enjoyed reading the novel, as well as holding it in my hand. The story itself is as inspirational for women today as it was when Colette wrote it. It is a very quick read, with a timeless tale.

When reading this book, I kept thinking of Orwell's phrase `a good bad book' -- that is, a book whose pleasures exceed its merits.

Many books written in first person share a problem: the writer is vastly more articulate than the character through whose eyes the story is told and written. Here, a dance hall mime has quite the power of description. The story tries to explain this away, but I never quite believed it. This counts as a serious defect: it feels like the author went, "Hmm. . . I need a character with a certain degree of independence and mobility, let's make her a dance hall mime." Of course, the descent into a dance hall is in fact autobiographical for the author, which makes this difficulty in suspending disbelief all the more distracting.

It would be easier to patch over this if it weren't for two things that contribute to the sense that the author arbitrarily gave her main character an occupation that she herself didn't know much about. First is that the main character, Renee, has nothing to say about miming per se. She talks about practicing, audience reactions, costumes, etc. etc., but the word `miming' could be replaced with any other gerund: singing, dancing, acting, verbing. That is, the author feels like she's bluffing about any knowledge of miming. Second, Renee is amazingly indifferent to money for someone whose financial situation is so tenuous. It's hard to believe that a real person would act like this.

Another complaint with the novel is that most of it is static description. Until the end, it feels like nothing is happening even when things are happening. So the first 150 pages feel like an Impressionist's series of sketches of working class Parisian life. How well this works depends on what's being described. When attention is focused on the truly random, like the main character's dog, it's slightly tedious. When attention is on dance hall life, it's engaging anthropology, an introduction to a set of characters unlike what most of us will ever encounter in real life.

When, after fits and starts, attention increasingly focuses on the main character's relationship with men --- that's what prompts all the five-star reviews. Although the first steps of falling into love seem unmotivated, the depiction of the early, vulnerable stage of mutual infatuation is profound. And this is the only work of fiction I've read that grasps the sheer heart-breaking inconvenience of falling in love: people are already making plans, working on their careers, when they abruptly find themselves wanting to spend all their time with someone and are in absolute agony when apart -- yet they can't abandon their own careers without abandoning their own identity. (This torment is made all the sharper because Renee, despite the attraction and the relatively good situation she could have, is enough of a feminist to realize that marriage at the time was a raw deal for women.) The last quarter of the book is, as other reviewers note, painful but satisfying. It looks like some people find this book to be a feminist anthem, probably because of what Renee does at the end. It's not that simple, however: as she herself is aware, she is on a certain level betraying herself.

Incidentally, because the novel is relatively short and the ending could easily generate discussion, this book would likely work very well in the classroom, especially as the early stages of romantic love are something that might resonate with high school and traditional college students.

Also, there is a long out-of-print sequel called _The Shackle_. It confirms that Colette takes _forever_ to get her novels started. (Everything happens in the last hundred pages.) It should have probably been a stand-alone novel: the main character starts off in retirement three years hence and doesn't seem to have any characteristics left: doesn't work, doesn't have a schedule, doesn't have any quirks. (I suspect it's pure autobiography.) There are some beautiful sections --- there's one scene in which she knows that the man turning away from her is dumping her despite his protestations and the narrator says, 'He was lying with all his back.' --- but I can't imagine anyone who liked the ending of the first novel will like the ending of the second.