Name:Romain Rolland
Year Won: 1915
Read: "Jean-Christophe"
Original Language: French
Reason: "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings"
About: Jean-Christophe follows the titular Jean-Christophe from birth (yes, it literally describes his birth) until I'm guessing death. (I gave up after the first book, which takes him to young adulthood).
It's pretty plot-less, mostly just a description of the character growing up and getting older and falling in love and playing a LOT of piano.
What I Liked: The writing is excellent and some of the characters are really well written. The world is also wonderfully described and complete feeling. It's an ambitious work clocking in at something like 2,000 pages.
What I Disliked: THERE IS NO PLOT. I'm not sure why this seems to be a thing with literary works, but I dislike it.
Jean-Christophe also feels a bit precious to me. He is a man, of course of great misunderstood artistic genius which tends to get me to roll my eyes. I suspect if I was a teenager who felt like I was a great, misunderstood artistic genius that this might appeal somewhat more to me, but I'm not, so there were a number of moments where my eyes rolled back pretty far in my head.
Should it have won a Nobel: Well...it's better than The Bluebird. And it is ambitious. But...ugh, wasn't there anything better this year? (I have to believe there was.)
Next up: Lucky Per by Henrik Pontoppidan (the two after him were poets, so of course the library had nothing by them)
No comments:
Post a Comment