Name: Andrew Gide
Year Won: 1947
Read: Marshlands
Original Language: French
Reason: "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight"
About: "Marshlands" is a story within a story. The covery story follows a gregarious author who is working on his great novel (mostly telling his girlfriend about it), with an inner story that's a rather pretentious "dude lives alone in a lighthouse and observes the world around him". It's complete with appendecies, authors notes, excerpts from the novel, etc. It's quite surreal.
What I liked: The writing is lovely (a trend)! I also rather love that it gleefully skewers the many, many, many "dude has deep thoughts while in nature" genre that the Nobel committee seems to LOVE.
What I Disliked: It feels maybe a bit trite? (Fortunately, it's a short novel - around 100 pages - but I don't think it could have stood to be much longer without feeling monotonous.) The point truly does seem to be, "let's skewer these pretentious novels". Which, again, I LOVE. But it's not overly meaningful other than that. (At least that I picked up. There's probably hidden depth or something.)
Should it have won a Nobel: On its own, I think it's rather too trite for a Nobel. With that said, I very much enjoyed this work and if Gide shows similar degrees of intellect and creativity in his other work, definitely.
Next Up: The Wasteland, and Other Poems by T. S. Eliot
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