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Rating: 
Summary: Vital, trenchant, close to the best of French Lit
Review: Anatole France's "The Gods Will Have Blood" (1912) is a meditation on the price of unbridled fanaticism. Several key personages and events of the French Revolution figure in the story; most notibly Maximllien Robespierre and the death of Jean-Paul Marat. But don't expect exquisite characterizations, ala Flaubert, Dostoyevski, Henry James or James Joyce. Such was not France's aim. This is a cautionary tale; one that recapitulates Robespierre, the Terror and Napoleon, and prefigures the Soviets and the Nazis. In fact, France's articulation of the maddening rationale by fanatical judges--that it is they, not their victims, who suffer as they go about the bloody work of enforcing national policies with the murder of perceived enemies--is visited through concentration camp butcher Rudolph Hoess in William Styron's "Sophie's Choice" (1976). Only the translation prevents this novel from five stars. Given the fact that French is second only to ancient Greek in terms of damage from translation, and it becomes a minor complaint. This is a novel by a master (Anatole France won the Nobel for Lit in 1921). Read this book; it's an education.
Rating: 
Summary: A Classic of French Literature?
Review: I once challenged myself to read all the Penguin Classics in the Viking catalogue. I think I've made it through about 70% of the listings and feel rewarded for the effort. I couldn't recall much about this one, so I re-read it recently. Its not a work that I would wholeheartedly recommend. Anatole France, like Flaubert, is known for "le mot juste," however Flaubert was a greater craftsman than France (whose real name was Jacques Thilbault). Perhaps there is need of a better translation. Even the title in this Penguin edition is misleading. There is no reference to "Blood" in the original (Les Dieux ont soif). The story follows the upwardly mobile path of Evariste Gamelin, a young Parisian painter and student of the reknowned Jacques Louis David (whose famous portrait of Marat lying assassinated in his bathtub adorns the cover of the Peguin edition). Gamelin is one of those single-minded idealists who show up wherever and whenever there is a revolution to be fought. His hero is Robespierre, and while Robespierre's star is in the ascendent, during the Reign of Terror, Gamelin's star shines too. He is transformed from struggling artist to magistrate on the Revolutionary Tribunal. He also passes from a rather meek lover of humanity, who engages in such altruistic acts of kindness as giving half his last loaf of bread to a hungry mother and her child, to a monstrous, indiscriminate killing machine, sending innocent victims by the droves to their deaths. He settles scores with most of the characters in the novel, sending them to the guillotine sometimes for personal reasons, at other times simply as a matter of implimenting his messianic impulses. Eventually the bloody excesses of Gamelin and his ilk serve to inflame the populace, who turn on Robespierre and his Jacobin followers, Gamelin included. Frederick Davies, the translator of this edition, contends that "The Gods Will Have Blood is not only the greatest novel Anatole France wrote, it is one of the greatest of French novels." I strongly disagree. I don't see Anatole France even approaching such novelists as Flaubert, Hugo, Huysmans, Gide, Stendhal, etc. This work is definitely of the second rank as well. The novel is structured rather clumsily. France spends almost the entire first half of the book on exposition. Plot and characterization serve primarily as vehicles for France's polemics. The writing is static, the descriptions highly conventional. There is no comparison to Hugo, Flaubert or Stendhal, who wrote historical novels but invested them with riveting characters and who all had a wonderful eye for detail. Flaubert labored and struggled over each word in his novels, but the finished result was seamless. One is not aware of the labor when reading, one simply enjoys the result and is caught up in the narrative. With France, one is conscious of the labor and the fussing and fumbling. He tries very hard, but the mechanics are flawed and the operation is exposed in all its frailty. If you want to read a good treatment of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror that ensued, I would suggest Carlyle. Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities is naturally the most famous novel covering the period, but I'm not a Dickens fan. As you can judge from my reaction to this book, I'm not a big Anatole France fan either, though Penguin Island was at least mildly entertaining.
Rating: 
Summary: Perhaps there's a reason this isn't widely read...
Review: I'll be frank here - I had never even heard of Anatole France before I read "The Gods Will Have Blood." Frankly, though, I don't think I was missing much. That's not to say that the novel is entirely without merit. It offers an amazingly detailed description of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, and the dialogue between the antireligious Brotteaux and the kindly Father Longuemare is well written and engrossing. Nevertheless, "The Gods Will Have Blood" fails in several obvious ways. The characters are static and typecast - Anatole France might as well have hung a sign on Gamelin that reads "EVIL" and be done with it. In fact, the novel is almost completely lacking in subtlety, both in terms of the plot and the characterization as well. Also, the writing style on display here is quite monotonous. The introduction claims that it is "polished perfection", but to me it seems more nondescript and generic than anything else. "The Gods Will Have Blood" is, indeed, quite informative about the French Revolution. Unfortunately, historical accuracy doesn't automatically make for a great novel.
Rating:
Summary: ponderous and rather dull
Review: This is Anatole France's cautionary tale about ideological fanaticism during the "terror" of the French revolution. It is doubly remarkable in that it was published in the decade prior to the Soviet seizure of power, which imposed decades of political terror in Russia as we know, and in that France was a well-known member of the left. Thus, academics rightfully proclaim it as a symbol of the horrors to follow in the 20C. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this book very much. Not only is its tone self-important with ponderous and ever-present references to classical mythology - the myth of Orestes as well as the savage bacchantes - but its innumerable references to obscure figures of the French Revolution, in all their historical accuracy, make it, well, just plain boring. Moreover, the characters appear more like symbols of abstract ideas than flesh-and-blood creatures, and so are both unrealistic psychologically as well as put in situations in which they can carry out long and improbably philosophic discussions. The plot follows the impoverished members of an apartment building during a time of grave threat to the revolution. There is a fervent young man (a painter), his missing sister (shacked up with an aristocrat), his simple mother, and an older cynic atheist (an ex-courtesan and libertine), who gives refuge to a persecuted priest and innocent peasant girl. As the revolution takes an increasingly murderous turn, they become ever more intimately involved with each other as vehicles to portray historical events. As such, the book seems to be written for the French high school student, all of whom memorize survey literature from secondary sources to pass rigorous examinations. This makes them able to spout facts as if they had read widely, implying depth and thoughtfulness that all too often isn't there. Of course, France obviously has great depth and his historical research is indeed exhaustive, which taught me a great deal. But the book just didn't make me feel like I was there, which was why I read it. Instead, while reading I felt like I was studying for a high school exam. As I try to get through the classic authors, I am occasionally surprised at the banality and dullness of some of the most famous works. Perhaps this is because I read them from a rather naïve perspective, open and as if they are not revered for whatever, but just as a pure reading experience. Thus, my perceptions are personal and limited to my own experience. While the overwhelming majority of classics are truly wonderful, this one was not. Recommended only for history buffs and students of French lit.
Rating:
Summary: ponderous and rather dull
Review: This is Anatole France's cautionary tale about ideological fanaticism during the "terror" of the French revolution. It is doubly remarkable in that it was published in the decade prior to the Soviet seizure of power, which imposed decades of political terror in Russia as we know, and in that France was a well-known member of the left. Thus, academics rightfully proclaim it as a symbol of the horrors to follow in the 20C. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this book very much. Not only is its tone self-important with ponderous and ever-present references to classical mythology - the myth of Orestes as well as the savage bacchantes - but its innumerable references to obscure figures of the French Revolution, in all their historical accuracy, make it, well, just plain boring. Moreover, the characters appear more like symbols of abstract ideas than flesh-and-blood creatures, and so are both unrealistic psychologically as well as put in situations in which they can carry out long and improbably philosophic discussions. The plot follows the impoverished members of an apartment building during a time of grave threat to the revolution. There is a fervent young man (a painter), his missing sister (shacked up with an aristocrat), his simple mother, and an older cynic atheist (an ex-courtesan and libertine), who gives refuge to a persecuted priest and innocent peasant girl. As the revolution takes an increasingly murderous turn, they become ever more intimately involved with each other as vehicles to portray historical events. As such, the book seems to be written for the French high school student, all of whom memorize survey literature from secondary sources to pass rigorous examinations. This makes them able to spout facts as if they had read widely, implying depth and thoughtfulness that all too often isn't there. Of course, France obviously has great depth and his historical research is indeed exhaustive, which taught me a great deal. But the book just didn't make me feel like I was there, which was why I read it. Instead, while reading I felt like I was studying for a high school exam. As I try to get through the classic authors, I am occasionally surprised at the banality and dullness of some of the most famous works. Perhaps this is because I read them from a rather naïve perspective, open and as if they are not revered for whatever, but just as a pure reading experience. Thus, my perceptions are personal and limited to my own experience. While the overwhelming majority of classics are truly wonderful, this one was not. Recommended only for history buffs and students of French lit.
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