Rating: 
Summary: LOVE ON A COLLISION COURSE WITH EVIL
Review:
One of great surprises of reading Andre Gide's classic novel, THE IMMORALIST, is the light it shines on the study of balanced and imbalanced demands made on women within the context of marriage. The novel is largely the story of Michel, a man who emerges from a long bout with tuberculosis to discover that he is a social clone who now yearns for a more individual identity and complete life. Illness generally provides the framework for transformation and the study of loyalty in THE IMMORALIST. The first part of the book finds Michel suffering gravely from tuberculosis and his wife, Marceline, battling triumphantly to save him. However, once Marceline contracts the same disease, Michel becomes too enchanted with his own evolving consciousness to save his wife's life as she did his. With this single brilliant stroke of irony, Gide poses a number questions still challenging for men and women to contemplate. Namely, are the qualities inherent in a woman's love necessarily more capable of sustaining life than those inherent in a man's? And if so, why? Moreover, what personal sacrifices or changes must men make in order to generate a more life-affirming sensibility? What are the likely consequences--social, individual, political, spiritual--if men fail? And mostly, to what degree, and why, do women so often participate in their own oppression? The element of mysticism in THE IMMORALIST is subtle but significant, with Oscar Wilde, in the form of the character named Menalque, providing encouragement to live beyond established social restraints. THE IMMORALIST abounds with the kind of literary, historical, and philosophical allusions that by 1917 had convinced numerous admirers that Gide was a prophet for the 20th century. It also demonstrates why his voice still commands attention all over the world in the 21st century.
Aberjhani
author of ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
and I MADE MY BOY OUT OF POETRY
Rating:
Summary: Superb Morality Play
Review: "The Immoralist" is the narrative of a dazzling hedonist. He is a self-centered aesthete, narcissistic, exploitative, self-indulgant, and wholly inconsiderate. He marries to please his father, as if marrying were no more an obligation than selecting a particular outfit to wear for a special occasion. During his marriage, he will treat his wife like fine china, with delicacy, but as if placed on a shelf behind glass, like a porcelain doll, displayed for benefit, but never held or interacted with. After marrying, he escapes plebian, boring France for exotic North Africa, and becomes sick, probably with tuberculosis. (At the time of this narration, TB was considered a disease of the destitute, such as in the opera "La Boheme", which was modernized as the play "Rent", and the disease modernized to Aids. His disease may indicate that he slept with prostitutes, or generally consorted with unsavory people.) His new wife cares for him deeply, but he whiles away his time following the lives of the local Arab children, not least the little boys, especially one whom he considers especially cunning.They return to France, and he oversees his inherited estate. He takes more interest in the goings-on of some young men who work on and around the estate, and the intruiges of a poaching problem, than in the actual running of the estate. He fails to even deliver the lectures he promised the local university he would do. He quickly bores of this spot, and his wife contracts sickness as well, so they travel to Switzerland for their mutual health. After two months, he bores again, and they travel to Italy, where he hates Naples, embraces Italian boys, travels more, and this time loves Naples. He picks flowers, but his ill wife is sensitive to their fragrance, so he picks them at night. Bored again, he desires to return to Africa, where his wife sickens further. He finds his local children again, but being two years later, he does not enjoy their company any more, except his favorite boy, and now joining the picture, the boy's older sister. The story continues from there, and concludes soon thereafter. This book concerns a vile creature, but we can read it with great interest nonetheless. This is a great credit to the skill of its author, and is also because we are genuinely interested, as fellow humans, to follow the course of the wife's illness and recovery. Andre Gide has written a masterpiece of a monster, with beautiful language and rich narration. "The Immoralist" is a morality play, not an existential meditation. This is demonstrated by the narrator's treatment of his wife. As for playing with little boys and neglecting hereditary estates, one can say yes, the narrator is not a great person, but he is living to the best of his ability, and living true to himself within his psychological limitations, even if the results are distasteful. His disdainful treatment of his wife, however, puts the story in a new light, giving us a strong moral touchstone to stand upon, and a compass with which to clearly judge our protagonist. Other existential novels might ask you to understand their protagonist despite their distastefulness, but in order to understand the protagonist of "The Immoralist", we must understand his treatment of his unhealthy wife, a kindly woman to whom he passed his "street disease" in the first place, and we are justified in judging how he chooses to resolve the story at its end. This book can be recommended to anyone with a taste for good literature.
Rating:
Summary: Getting Immoral
Review: First off, you should (preferably) read this book only if you've read "The Counterfeiters" first. Anyway, Gide has a marvelous voice; even in translation, the prose pours magnificently from the page. Much has been made of the scandalous homosexual undertones of the book; more interesting is the socialist ideas that are subtly portrayed in the novel's simple storyline. Michel is not a hero; he is simply a man who comes to understand himself only through losing everything. Very similar to Camus - think "La Chute" or "L'Etranger". Very original...I have heard life changing, though I wouldn't go that far. However, it does make you think. Definitely high on my reading list.
Rating: 
Summary: Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving....
Review: I acquired Andre Gide's The Immoralist from a pile of free books set outside a used book store that was closing for good. I brought it home and set it aside for about a month before reading it. The 170-odd pages were very easy to digest, in terms of time and complexity. But the ideas filling them were intriguing, at least at first. A man marries, develops tuberculosis, convalesces, and decides to live life more deliberately, more fundamentally, and expose himself, his emotions, his experiences, down to their very foundation. He embraces the pain of sunburn for it's capacity to make a person feel, for the sensation it produces. He strips away all layers of clothing in the outdoors to plunge into an icy pool of water, to expose himself completely to the elements and the world around him. He gives up his scholarly pursuits to run a family farm, and experience a completely different type of life and industry. But here the intrigue of the premise becomes mired in an obviously closeted gay man (not uncommon for the turn of the 20th century) torn between duty to wife and honesty of desire. The second half of this brief novel is merely an endless parade of boys and men that draw Michel's attention and ardor. The desire to experience all in its most basic, honest form is lost in the lie that Michel obviously lives in suppressing his hidden desires and perpetuating his sham marriage. While Gide's concept was initally enough to draw me in and press me to read on, the latter half of the book left me apathetic to my inceptive appreciation of a very promising idea. I found the character of Michel to be hypocritical at best, and failed to feel any sympathy for his longing after the neverending parade of males that slip through his fingers, and his fickle interest in them. I felt some sympathy for Marceline, Michel's wife, but his narrative portrayal of her as more of an impedence and a nuisance gave me more cause to pity her than feel empathy for her eventually contracted case of tuberculosis, no matter how frail she grew; the author always managed to make her more of an annoyance to Michel than anything else, and her character never really has an opportunity of true definition. Gide has a very accessible way with prose, but not a very clear and concise focus on his story with this book, which is the first of his works that I have read. All in all, this book suffers from "When Harry Met Sally" syndrome...and disproves its initial 'thesis'. I would not recommend this book to others, save for anyone interested in examining the conflict of a closeted gay married man at the turn of the 20th century.
Rating: 
Summary: Scary
Review: I probably took it more in the way of, "How could he leave his poor wife," etc., but it's one of the only books I've come back to for a second reading even after getting it the first time around. Absorbing.
Rating:
Summary: Living a Dishonest Life
Review: I will forego mentioning the underlying themes, which have already been mentioned by many other reviewers (see above). Suffice it to say that the voice of this author is hypnotic, sensual, and the words richly fulfilling as is rare to be found in the literature of any time, or on any theme.
Rating:
Summary: Entirely Too Perfect
Review: Many readers of this book are inclined to compare it with the works of Camus. I grant that The Immoralist does suggest existential questions but, unlike Camus' La Chute (for instance), it simply presents the life and actions of the anti-hero without his actual and deliberate existential questioning. This is the subtle richness of Gide's writing. The Immoralist presents a unique disparity in the lavishness in description of setting, and the relatively spare characterizations. Gide does not glorify, chastise nor condemn his Michel. Michel is simply what he is, what he has become. This novel is filled with brilliant writing, lines of which one can't help but memorize. For instance, "The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free, that is the task." and also, "You cannot be sincere and at the same time seem so." Having read both Bussy's pioneer translation and Howard's later one, I much prefer the latter. It's a far more exact translation.
Rating:
Summary: Fin de siecle experiments
Review: Michel married Marceline at the behest of his dying father, not for love. Michel did not know he was rich, the marriage to Marceline brought him nothing, and that he had delicate health. In North Africa Marceline invited a small boy to visit the couple. Michel was amused by the child, Bashir. Michel had a discharge and was seized with a desire for life. Exercise, nourishment, and will became very important.
Michel came to appreciate how maternal and caressing his wife had become. As time passed, Michel came to know a great number of children. Marceline's favorite boys were in general better-behaved than Michel's favorites. Nevertheless, one of Marceline's friends, Moktir, was seen by Michel stealing scissors. Afterwards Michel became particularly fond of that boy.
From Tunis they went to Malta then to Syracuse. Michel became deliberately disdainful of his scholarly learning and his fastidious taste. In Amalfi he had his beard removed. He let his hair grow. At Sorrento he first possessed Marceline.
With his health restored Michel sought a return to work. The young King Athalric attracted him as an historical subject. His father had connections in Rome and Florence and Michel had everything needed to resume scholarly work in Ravenna.
Michel returned to his estate in France. He knew little about the conditions there. Six farms belonged to him. Marceline and Michel watched the son of the overseer, Charles, deal with a difficult to manage colt. He calmed the beast with his voice. Autumn was spent by Michel on the farms and writing lectures about the unruly Goths.
The couple moved to Passy and resided in an apartment. Michel found his acquaintances tedious and Marceline felt burdened by social obligations. Historians accused Michel of too rapid generalization. Michel encountered his friend Menalque who had a different take on the episode of the boy Moktir and the scissors. There was no theft, there was an elaborate game.
Menalque believed that people suffered from a fear of being alone. Marceline was expecting a baby. Returning from a meeting with Menalque Michel learned that Marceline lost the child. Disease took hold of Marceline. She desired to return to their farms in Normandy.
At the estates, Michel met the poacher, Alcide, and went out with him on his poaching expeditions. A relative of Alcide appeared drunk. The overseer sought to take action and wanted the backing of Michel. Michel was faced with a dilemma. Charles entered the pictured and he possessed knowledge of the twists and turns of the situation. Michel arranged with Marceline to go away.
They covered the ground previously undertaken in their wedding journey. Marceline was ailing. The children at Biskra recognized them. Marceline reached the end of her strength.
This taut and pschologically astute tale remains vibrant, bright, through several rereadings.
Rating:
Summary: Sensation as powerful as thoughts
Review: Michel's rebirth after his disease is the most fascinating thing in this book. Everything around him is rediscovered: each sound, each caress, each sensation, each fragrance. He is entranced, enthralled, dazzled, intoxicated. "I had forgotten I was alone, forgotten the time, expecting nothing. It seemed to me that until this moment I had felt so little by virtue of thinking so much that I was astonished by a discovery: sensation was becoming as powerful as thoughts." Michel's new sensual awareness makes him walk and breathe with more freedom, more happiness, more fever.
He trembles and feels with a new intensity. Now he loves life!
His new burning happiness is an ecstasy that is violent, painful, deeply moving. "Ever since the onset of my illness, I had existed without scrutiny, without law, merely dedicating myself to staying alive, like an animal or a child. Less absorbed by suffering now, my life once again became consistent and conscious. Everything was to teach me what still astonished me: I had changed." Now, he despises his erudition, his knowledge, his former studies, his teachers, his colleagues, his family, and even his former self, a bookworm, sickly, weak. He avoids everything that reminds him of decay, death. His new being is shouting with joy, with thirst, with longing for life, for voluptuousness, for harmony.
He strips his outer skin away to reveal a beautiful, healthy, young, and strong man, without shame, yet not without emotion and fear. "The fear grew out of my sense that others could read my thoughts now, thoughts which to me seemed suddenly fearful." Not wanting his wife to interfere with his rebirth, Michel puts his old mask on, and shows her only what she wants to see: the man she used to know and love.
His professional connections, his friends, bore him, and he doesn't have much to say to them, he has nothing to say. "Whenever I talk to one, it seems to me I'm talking to several...
The more they're like each other, the less they're like me... They're alive, they seem to be alive and not know it. As a matter of fact, since I've been with them, I've stopped being alive myself." The only one who interests Michel is Menalque, a man he used to dislike because he found him arrogant. When Menalque is insulted by the rest, he says to Michel with contempt: "You have to let other people be right... It consoles them for not being anything else." Michel is drawn to Menalque because he is very different from the rest, a man who lives with no comfort, no security, no possessions, a man who "loves life enough to try to live wide awake."
Menalque loves a risky, demanding, and challenging life, indifferent to people's approval or disapproval. After the second evening organized at his home, Michel wants to throw all the guests out. He "had nothing more to say, nothing more to listen to," bored and angry. The guests blemish and stain everything in his home, infect his "possessions" with disease, with death. Michel learns more about himself and life through the conversations with Menalque and observing the poor workmen than through the conversations with his and his wife's boring friends. Now, he hates the "man of principles," scorns "culture, propriety, rules." "I reached the point of enjoying in others only the wildest behavior... I came close to regarding honesty itself as no more than restriction, convention, timidity."
Rating:
Summary: Journey into Classic Writing
Review: My fascination with Oscar Wilde led me to the work of Andre Gide. Immoralist is a sensual journey into the life of a man that resides in each of us. Gide's masterful classic style; streamline and beautifully concise, made me feel as though I were experiencing the sensations of his characters. It was easier to sense a feeling of the water than to visualize the stream. Interestingly, Immoralist seems to come from the Gide's own life and one particular character is exactly reminiscent of Oscar Wilde himself. Maybe, thats already known, but I had knowledge of Gide's life long before I read the book. Anyway, I liked the book. It was easy reading and at times I felt just about as "sensuous, almost beautiful" as Gide himself.
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