[Devin]

Has anyone ever read Isabelle by Andre Gide? If so, would you say it's worth reading?

[Pierre-Henri]

Originally Posted by Devin

Has anyone ever read Isabelle by Andre Gide?

Nope. Sorry.

[guignol]

for some reason gide picked it to start the nrf catalog, but i wouldn't say it's must-read gide, that would be l'immoraliste, la porte étroite, les caves du vatican... as for me i once saw voyage au congo in a bookstore and when i came back an hour later with the money to buy it it was gone... i've been kicking myself for that these 22 years...

on second though it was retour au tchad, VAC wouldn't be that hard to find i think.

[guignol]

i forgot si le grain ne meurt... but that i would suggest you read after or at least in close proximity to:

le petit chose (daudet)
le livre de mon ami (a. france)
l'enfant (vallès)

slgnm is avowed autobiography, but this kind of exercise is always auto bio at some level... in fact all good lit is, maybe that's why i'm a sucker for the "childhood memories" genre.

after that take a good deep breath and dive into combray and mort à crédit. even if you stop reading french lit cold turkey after that you're still light years ahead of all the stendhal and balzac experts on earth.

[Pierre-Henri]

Originally Posted by guignol

in fact all good lit is, maybe that's why i'm a sucker for the "childhood memories" genre.

As the famous joke says, la nostalgie n'est plus ce qu'elle était.

Personally, I can't read Colette without being moved. Why ? This could be, this should be, very cheesy books (childhood, lil' brother, Mum, the good old times...) and, yet, Colette always hits the mark with incredible accuracy. "Sido" and "La maison de Claudine" should be on your list too.

And "Combray" (the first chapter of Proust's complete works) is, of course, beyond everything. Nothing in the entire history of novel, in the whole world, comes close to it.

[Devin]

Thank you all very much.