The counterfeiters: With Journal of "The counterfeiters" [Hardcover]

Andre� Gide (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1955

A young artist pursues a search for knowledge through the treatment of homosexuality and the collapse of morality in middle class France.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Novel by Andre Gide, published in French in 1926 as Les Faux-Monnayeurs. Constructed with a greater range and scope than his previous short fiction, The Counterfeiters is Gide's most complex and intricately plotted work. It is a novel within a novel, concerning the relatives and teachers of a group of schoolboys who are subjected to corrupting influences both in and out of the classroom. In a progression of unconnected scenes and events, the novel approximates the texture of daily life. Schoolboys of diverse ages and dispositions attend the Pension Azais. Some are suspected of having attempted to circulate counterfeit coins. Edouard, an author writing a novel entitled The Counterfeiters, observes that if a counterfeit coin is thought to be authentic, it is accepted as valuable; if it is found to be counterfeit, it is perceived as worthless. Therefore, he concludes, value is wholly a matter of perception and has nothing to do with reality. The counterfeiters are thus representative of those who disguise themselves with false personalities, either in unconscious self-deception or through conscious, hypocritical conformity to convention. -- The Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf (1955)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1125899654
• ISBN-13: 978-1125899656
• ASIN: B0007G5SI6
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,522,887 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant, lyrical masterpiece., June 18, 2003

By 

Hovig J. Heghinian (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Counterfeiters: A Novel (Paperback)

"The Counterfeiters" (1926), by Andre Gide (1869-1951) is a fascinating chronicle of life in Paris before World War I. It begins as two high school friends, Bernard Profitendieu and Olivier Molinier, prepare for the bacchalaureat, their final exam. Bernard finds some letters hidden at home which show he is illegitimate, and runs away from home, thus setting in motion a rich set of adventures among a cast of mind-boggling proportions. From Bernard, Olivier and their parents, the story quickly grows to include Olivier's younger brother George, his uncle Edouard, Edouard's friend Laura, Olivier's older brother Vincent, Vincent's friend Robert Count Passavant, Passavant's lover Lady Griffith, Edouard's old schoolmate Victor Strouvilhou, Victor's nephew Gheri, Laura's father Vedel, Edouard's old piano teacher Perouse, and Perouse's grandson Boris, among many others. As this prodigious cast assembles itself, the fireworks really begin!

The reader will be amazed by all the ways these characters interconnect with each other. For example, at the beginning of the book, Edouard is traveling from London to Paris to visit and advise Laura, who is trying to extricate herself from an extra-marital affair, but only upon arriving will he learn Laura's paramour is actually his nephew Vincent. Many similar connections between most of the characters will be revealed during the course of this motivating story. "The Counterfeiters" is less a plotted novel than a finely-woven tapestry. Every character interacts with almost every other. The chapters are brief, only a dozen pages or so, but most focus on one of these interactions in particular, making for a compelling narrative. It was notably experimental for its time, but extremely readable, and still fresh today.

The title describes a counterfeiting ring which uses children, like something from Dickens's "Oliver Twist", to pass off gold-plated glass disks for coins. Gide's broader theme, however, is that of falsehood in general, like that popular theme of 19th-century French literature, namely hypocrisy. Beside the counterfeiting ring itself, Gide describes fathers with illegitimate children, adults with hidden affairs, and people generally searching for truth among the artifice of life.

Gide's characters are brilliantly conceived, executed on a par with his predecessor Balzac, whom Gide himself called "possibly our greatest novelist" (as published in the invaluable reference in the appendix of this book, the illuminating journal Gide himself kept while writing "The Counterfeiters"). There is something of Balzac's Goriot in Gide's Perouse, something of Rastignac in Bernard, and perhaps even a little Vautrin in Passavant. But Gide's literary style is markedly different. Where Balzac told self-contained stories, usually ones with social morals attached (as did most 19th-century French authors), Gide tells us he is "fond of sudden endings," and "it is an insult to explain what the attentive reader has understood" (both also paraphrased from this book's appendix).

Gide weaves dozens of strands of the story, intersecting every character with every other character, drawing lines to question the moral behavior of each interaction, an experimental gambit for its time. But I'm pleased to say Gide's experiment worked. The complete book is a brilliant success. His "novelist's novel" is perhaps one of the most important literary results of the early twentieth century, crafting a compelling story of interesting characters, maintaining great intellectual interest throughout. This novel is recommendable to anyone who enjoys fine literature.

Note: Other reviews invariably paint this book in shocking shades of homosexual or hedonistic material, but this is misleading at best. It's true, a homosexual and hedonistic tone appears at places, Count Passavant being the worst offender, but Gide is not a pornographer, he is a moralist. Homosexual himself, Gide was also Protestant (Huguenot), and like his brilliant work "The Immoralist", he believes in showing a moral lesson through human action.

Finally, two small quibbles: An emotional incident at the end of the book, based on a newspaper article Gide clipped, seems incongruous with the rest. It doesn't detract from the book, but it seems tacked on for special effect. Also, while excellent for the most part, the translation insists on leaving some expressions in the French original, such as "chef d'oeuvre" instead of "masterpiece", or "entr'acte" instead of "intermission".

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Counterfeiters: A Courageous, Timeless Classic, July 26, 2000

By 

Polonius (Flushing, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Counterfeiters: A Novel (Paperback)

If you think that James Dean invented the Rebel without a Cause, read The Counterfeiters. It is easy to see that this book could outrage "cultural conservatives" especially those who never bother to read it but condemn it by its reputation or blurb. On the surface, one may think it is "epater les bourgeois." One could easily call it scandalous in the matter-of-fact treatment of how the younger characters behave amongst themselves and in relation to their elders.

But in the end, the message of this book is highly moral. It is a warning against naivete, complacency and delusions about others and oneself. In our dealings with those we love and care about, we fail to communicate our true feelings and thoughts out of timidity, self-absorption, pride, fear, spite and ignorance. (A good word for one cause of miscommunication that probably is taken from the original French is "pique.") Even the desire to protect the object of our love causes us to lie and hide the truth. Because of our lies and omissions we suffer immeasurably and cause others to suffer.

In a tribute to the power of love, Gide generously grants his best characters the opportunity to redeem themselves. The worst characters remain stagnant behind masks of insincerity or fall into hopeless degradation. Some of the characters in this book are truly evil. They reach a crescendo of depravity made possible by the misplaced good intentions of those who could have stopped them earlier. And one gets the sense, that as in life, even after the most horrid events, the surviving characters will muddle through, some having learned something valuable, others having learned little or nothing.

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent novel, but overrated, July 9, 2003

By 

Steve (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Counterfeiters: A Novel (Paperback)

Three-and-a-half stars. Gide's reputation precedes him. He is generally regarded as one of France's best novelists and is widely admired by American writers as well. I plunged into this novel eagerly and emerged from it, two days later, with little more than a shrug. I hesitate to be too critical about books that I read in translation; one never knows how accurately the translator has captured the original work.

All in all, there's nothing really wrong with The Counterfeiters; it reads and feels at times like Dickens and a spate of other nineteenth-century British novels--the cast of characters is rather large, there are ample doses of melodrama, and the story makes use of several nice "coincidences" to tie otherwise disparate storylines together. It's been said that Gide's style was revolutionary for his day, but it's fair to say that readers today will find it fairly conventional. The same goes for the book's "scandalous" reputation--there is nothing about The Counterfeiters that will shock or amaze readers in 2003 the way it may have in 1926, when it was first published.

That said, The Counterfeiters is a decent book. There are moments when the reader feels that Gide has touched upon something greater than the story itself; some cutting observation about the relationship between Art and Morality, or the decline of social morals. But the material and style is otherwise dated. I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading this book, if so inclined. But as for me, six months from now, I'm doubt I'll remember much about it. It just didn't make much of an impression.