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A review by tittypete
The Red and the Black by Stendhal
3.0
Man this was a slog, man. My lack of literary sophistication continues to rear its dull head and prevent me understanding what the fuck I am reading. This old time-y French novel uses lots of words to tell a melodramatic story of a scheming peasant boy named Julien. Julien is a smart guy and evidently good looking. In the first half of the book, he gets a job at the mayor's house teaching his kids latin. He ends up digging out the mayor's wife in secret on the reg. He does it so good that she falls in love with him. When people fall in love in old time-y France it's super dramatic and they go back and forth emotionally ad nauseam. The wife feels guilty and her husband sort of figures out and Julien is kicked out.
In the second half of the book Julien is now the secretary for a Marquis in Paris who is way fancier than the Mayor. He ends up dicking down the Marquis' daughter and knocking her up. This almost gets him an Aristocrat title and land and a bunch of money but the Mayor's wife from the first half of the book blows up his spot. Julien tracks her down and shoots her in church. She survives. Julien is in prison and both women still have wet knickers for him. It's all very swoon-y. Julien gets the guillotine and that's pretty much the end.
The book has a bunch of notes that you are meant to look up in the back as you go. They explain the importance of various things based on their context in old time-y France. It was a complex time. There'd recently been a revolution and the terror and Napoleon and all that. There was a general conflict of ideals between liberal (pro democracy folks) and ultras (pro monarchy rich dudes) that's sort of the mental setting of the book. I guess the overall story is one of ambition and hypocrisy and the shit someone will do to get to the top.
It wasn't bad. Actually the more I sit with it, I think it was pretty good. And it's supposed to be pretty important for its time, stylewise. Hopefully reading more classics will teach my brain how to digest them more efficiently because this one was a challenge to an aging idiot such as myself.
In the second half of the book Julien is now the secretary for a Marquis in Paris who is way fancier than the Mayor. He ends up dicking down the Marquis' daughter and knocking her up. This almost gets him an Aristocrat title and land and a bunch of money but the Mayor's wife from the first half of the book blows up his spot. Julien tracks her down and shoots her in church. She survives. Julien is in prison and both women still have wet knickers for him. It's all very swoon-y. Julien gets the guillotine and that's pretty much the end.
The book has a bunch of notes that you are meant to look up in the back as you go. They explain the importance of various things based on their context in old time-y France. It was a complex time. There'd recently been a revolution and the terror and Napoleon and all that. There was a general conflict of ideals between liberal (pro democracy folks) and ultras (pro monarchy rich dudes) that's sort of the mental setting of the book. I guess the overall story is one of ambition and hypocrisy and the shit someone will do to get to the top.
It wasn't bad. Actually the more I sit with it, I think it was pretty good. And it's supposed to be pretty important for its time, stylewise. Hopefully reading more classics will teach my brain how to digest them more efficiently because this one was a challenge to an aging idiot such as myself.