A monumental undertaking, to write a novel with one of the primary characters essentially writing the novel as it's being read, through journal entries. It allows the reader a window into the author's, and meta-author's, thought process. Well written, if at times somewhat tiresome as both authors cast back and forth on the path of the characters and the meaning of the narrative. There is also an element of the French romp, with characters longing for others and hopping around between beds. The principal plot thread is a group of young men as they come of age and try to make their way into the adult world, some good some bad in moral composition, and some meandering between the two poles. I think the lack of singular focus detracted from the reading experience for me, though the author's undertaking is to be admired.

3 bones!!! ( )

I read 210 pages, which is more than half of the novel itself (not the added journal), so I'm calling this read. I really liked the format, with the different changes, but not very much happens. I've read plenty of slice-of-life books, ones that don't have a plot so to speak but talk about people, and some of them have impacted me deeply; this isn't one of them. Glad I gave it a shot, but it's time to move on. ( )

"André Gide, que de tantas cosas dudó, parece no haber dudado nunca de esa imprescindible ilusión, el libre albedrío. Creyó que el hombre puede dirigir su conducta y consagró su vida al examen y a la renovación de la ética, no menos que al ejercicio y al goce de la literatura. Nació en París en 1869, bajo el Segundo Imperio. Su formación fue protestante, su primera lectura apasionada fueron los Evangelios. Tímido y reservado, frecuentó los Martes de Mallarmé y pudo conversar con Fierre Louys, con Paul Valéry, con Claudel y con Wilde. En su primer libro, Les cahiers d'André Walter (1891), usó el dialecto ornamental de los simbolistas. Esa obra es menos de un autor que de una época. Siempre fue fiel, después, a la buena tradición de la claridad. Al cabo de una estadía en Argelia, que fue capital para él, publicó en 1897 Les nourritures terrestres, que exalta los deseos de la carne pero no su plena satisfacción. En ulteriores textos, cuya enumeración sería larga, predicó el goce de los sentidos, la liberación de todas las leyes morales, la cambiante ' disponibilidad ' y el acto gratuito que no responde a otra razón que al antojo. Fue acusado de corromper a la juventud con esas doctrinas. Profesó el amor de la literatura inglesa, dijo que prefería John Keats a Víctor Hugo. Leamos que la voz íntima de Keats era más de su agrado que el tono público y profético de Hugo. En 1919 fue uno de los tres fundadores de la N.R.F., la primera revista literaria de nuestro siglo. André Malraux ha escrito que Gide es nuestro principal contemporáneo. Gide, como Goethe, no está en un solo libro, está en la suma y en el contraste de todos ellos. La más famosa de sus novelas es Les faux monnayeurs, curiosa y admirable narración que incluye un análisis del género narrativo. En su Journal refiere las diversas etapas de su escritura. En 1947, un año antes de su muerte, recibió con aprobación unánime el Premio Nobel."

While there is no doubt that this is an excellently crafted polyphonic novel that successfully leads the reader to a creative (literally, not figuratively) reading process, I did not particularly enjoy the subject material. If there were scales both for "liking" a book and for "quality reading experience," this book would rank much more highly on the second, despite being a bit tricky to follow at times.

The major points of interest to me throughout the reading of this book were the diverse and complicated mess of characters that weave their way through the story, the imposition placed on the reader to read actively, and the frequent occurrences of mise en abîme created by the use of dialogue and multiple narrators who discuss literature in general, the writing process, and the book itself. ( )

It will take me a long time to unpack all of this, all of what it meant... there is so much to mull over. Suffice it to say, 'The Counterfeiters' is the kind of expansive classic that can take over your dreams, even when you are wide awake. It has a plot that is impossible to pin down, but that twists and turns around itself in a way that would make Charlie Kaufman proud - to summarise it would be to re-write it, and I would never want to do that. ( )