A French Book Reading Resource

[Carmody]

Jacques the Fatalist and his Master (French: Jacques le fataliste et son maître) is a novel by Denis Diderot, written during the period 1765–1780.

It is a rambling novel presented largely in dialogue-form, with the author popping up occasionally to add his two cents to the proceedings. The dialogue-partners are Jacques and his Master, and while the novel has them have a few real-time adventures along the way (and at the end of their journey) more space is taken up with Jacques' story-telling (though the Master gets in a few episodes as well). But even here, the stories are not related in straightforward form: the Master wants to hear specific things (such as about Jacques' love-life) and frequently interrupts and redirects matters -- and the intrusive author also pushes things along, especially when they threaten to get too tedious.

I have stopped reading it half way through because I simply do not get it. I love Voltaire’s Candide and other French classics and have read rather widely in modern French literature but I have to confess that this book has gotten the best of me and that due to my problems with its vocabulary, vernacular, and structure of two main characters plus the author interjecting his observations I simply am not qualified to cast judgement.

It is the first book which I have to say is beyond my reach. It has shaken my confidence in reading French literature. If others read it and are thrilled, I congratulate them.

That said, I will not give it a score but will add that for me the skill level required was beyond a C2.

I would love to hear if there is anyone out there who has been overwhelmed by a French author they read. Please share the experience.

[Le Baron]

I feel bad now for suggesting it! I thought you would have liked it after Candide.

Have you read any Jacques Prévert? I'll give a sample poem so it's not blind reading this time. I recently read this one from a book I've somehow misplaced since June, so I can't tell you the name of it, but it's a Folio. It's quite odd, but it stuck in my head so I just looked it up:

Le Magasin par Jacques Prévert

I

le nez collé contre la vitrine d’un magasin de curiosités, un nain, curieux, regarde une femme debout au milieu du magasin complètement vide.
D’autres curieux s’approchent à leur tour.
Un incurieux passe sans s’arrêter puis gagne un café, le café du Théâtre afin de boire un café avant d’aller voir au théâtre si le spectacle lui plaît.

II

Au théâtre où le rideau est levé l’incurieux entre et prend place.
le décor représente l’intérieur d’un magasin de curiosités complètement vide.
Une actrice, immobile au milieu du décor, présente aux spectateurs un objet curieux : un nez de nain collé contre un morceau de vitre cassée ensanglantée. UN SPECTATEUR (à l’incurieux) : Curieux spectacle! L’INCURIEUX: Vous trouvez?

Il hausse les épaules, se lève et s’en va. l’actrice : Mesdames et messieurs ; la pièce que d’ici une heure ou deux nous aurons eu l’honneur de représenter devant vous s’appelle "la curiosité punie".

III

Assis sur le trottoir, devant la vitrine brisée du magasin de curiosités sanglote un nain sans nez. À pas lents sur la chaussée s’avance l’incurieux qui jette un regard de mépris sur le nain sans nez. LE NAIN sans nez (furieux) : Je ne demande pas l’aumône, mais ce regard, vous me le paierez! Il se lève, ramasse un morceau de vitre et se précipitant sur l’incurieux lui tranche la gorge. L’incurieux s’écroule, le nain se rassoit et, sans nez, rassis, sourit.

As ever with French, a happy ending.

[Carmody]

Thanks for your kind thoughts.

I remain devastated by my failure and hope to rebound with time.

[Le Baron]

Thanks for your kind thoughts.

I remain devastated by my failure and hope to rebound with time.

Don't be devastated. It's often an illusion when we don't get on with the book.

[BeaP]

I would love to hear if there is anyone out there who has been overwhelmed by a French author they read. Please share the experience.

I've been overwhelmed by a lot of writers, even in my strongest languages. My worst French experience is with Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. I finished his novel in Hungarian, and didn't understand anything from it. Concluded that there wasn't much to understand. Mind you a lot of people have enjoyed his novel immensely, some forum members as well. I just couldn't connect with it at all.

Don't be so hard on yourself. I read a lot of reviews on goodreads, and well-educated people struggle with novels in their native language. If they're really interested, they use a dictionary. Other members find the same novels beautiful and a joy to read.

I think the best way is to look at things with humour. Nothing is obligatory, these are just books, not sacred objects. If they fail to please you, it's their fault. To quote goodreads member Paul Bryant's review on Darconville's cat:

I failed, I failed, I gave up, I'm sorry. It was written in English, Jim, but not as we know it, and I flipped forward and it was all like that. This book has too many brains and it frightened me in the way a sufferer from dementia must be frightened when they look at a clock and realise they no longer can tell the time. It's not a novel at all, it's a cruel and unusual punishment. Using oven gloves I placed it in a plastic bag then I double-bagged it and hid the whole thing in a dark recess of my cellar, shuddering the while. I couldn't throw it in the bin because I tried that the previous week and they refused to take it.

[rdearman]

According to a study conducted by Google Books, there have been 129,864,880 books published since the invention of Gutenberg's printing press in 1440.

I wouldn't worry too much about not liking one of them.

[Iversen]

I would love to hear if there is anyone out there who has been overwhelmed by a French author they read. Please share the experience.

I could read Baudelaire and Rimbaud and Verlaine and Mallarmé and Valéry and other poets from the Francophone Parnassus, and it was only when I got to Saint-John Perse (Alexis Léger) that I felt that the waters had become a little bit too deep for comfort.

According to a study conducted by Google Books, there have been 129,864,880 books published since the invention of Gutenberg's printing press in 1440. I wouldn't worry too much about not liking one of them.

I do worry because those chosen by the Danish libraries in my target languages (apart from English) aren't something I would have chosen myself. Why can't I borrow a book about Ostracoderms in Romanian or Bulgarian or even French from my local library, and why are the few Esperanto books they've got hidden away in the deepest realms of the cellar, together with the musical scores?

A selection of Devonian Ostracoderms from Wikipedia.jpg

[Le Baron]

...and why are the few Esperanto books they've got hidden away in the deepest realms of the cellar, together with the musical scores?

This is always perplexing. And to keep within the remit of the thread, a few years ago I went to the library to see if I could find a copy of Henri-Pierre Roche's Jules et Jim. I found one in Dutch, but I wanted to read the original and not pay through the nose from Bol.com. So I went to the computer catalogue, but had great trouble finding anything at all that wasn't on the shelves. So I inquired at the desk and the woman did a search and said I could have it from the basement stacks, but would have to make a reservation. I asked why it was in the cellar when it's a modern classic (and the available books on the shelves in French are quite sparse anyway). She didn't know.

It was the same story when I was looking for the score to Willem Pijper's 6 Symphonic Epigrams. Despite him being both a home-grown composer and very worthy, many of his scores are languishing in the basement! I had to buy Zes Adagio's (2nd-hand) from Broekman's en van Poppel in Utrecht.

[lichtrausch]

I do worry because those chosen by the Danish libraries in my target languages (apart from English) aren't something I would have chosen myself. Why can't I borrow a book about Ostracoderms in Romanian or Bulgarian or even French from my local library, and why are the few Esperanto books they've got hidden away in the deepest realms of the cellar, together with the musical scores?

Does your local library let you make suggestions for procurement? Some libraries are pretty generous about what they'll get for you, especially when it comes to e-books.

[kanewai]

I would love to hear if there is anyone out there who has been overwhelmed by a French author they read. Please share the experience.

Alain Damasio, La Horde du Contrevent. Some say it's one of the greatest French sci-fi novels. I couldn't follow the plot at all. There was something to do with wind. A lot of wind. I understood that much.

One a more positive note, I can definitely recommend Leila Slimani's Regardez-nous danser (Watch Us Dance), the sequel to Le pays des autres. Now it's the 1960s, and Morocco has liberated themselves from the French, but still isn't quite free. This round we follow the next generation of the same French-Moroccan family, from nouveau-riche pool parties to the poorest parts of the city. One daughter heads to university in France in time for May 1968, an unwanted cousin is hidden away in an orphanage, and a son gets stoned with a German hippie chick and hitches a ride in a VW bus to the surreal counter-cultural colony at Essaouira.

Related: An interview with Leila Slimani from Vogue Arabia, in English: Leïla Slimani on the Inspiration Behind Her New Novel: “The Real Heroes in My Family Were All Women”