A forgotten classic - revived and translated by Julian Barnes.
Alphonse Daudet was born in Nimes in 1840. He made his name with gentle stories and novels portraying life in the French provinces, notably Lettres de mon Moulin (1869). He died in 1897.
A popular writer in his time and admired by Charles Dickens and Henry James, French novelist, playwright and journalist Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) has been largely forgotten today. According to novelist and essayist Barnes (Something to Declare, etc.), Daudet's work, although considered charming and topical in its heyday, did not have the depth and relevance to transcend its age-with one exception, this small volume, translated into English now for the first time. Basically a loose journal of ideas, metaphors and observations, the book offers a devastating emotional and spiritual portrait of a main in profound physical pain in the tertiary stage of syphilis. Daudet continued to write and publish during his illness, though he experienced bouts of rheumatism and severe fatigue, which progressed on to debilitating "locomotor ataxia (the inability to control one's movements), and finally, paralysis." Daudet's descriptions of his physical ailment are palpably horrifying, and the feelings of isolation and inadequacy that result give readers a new understanding of the psychology of illness. Of the "sheer torture" of his pain, Daudet ultimately concludes that there are no words, "only howls." Words, he says, "only come when everything is over.... They refer only to memory, and are either powerless or untruthful." However inadequate the author may believe his words to have been, the indomitable spirit of life that is conveyed on every one of these pages is Daudet's ultimate triumph. 4 illus. (Jan. 16) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
While largely forgotten today, Alphonse Daudet (1840-97) was, in his time, a popular and prolific novelist and playwright who befriended Turgenev, Flaubert, and Zola and counted Dickens and Henry James among his admirers. Daudet suffered from the effects of tertiary syphilis, which produced profound pain and neurological dysfunction while leaving his mind unimpaired, and he chronicled his pain in a series of notes and sketches titled La Doulou ("pain"), which he had hoped to work into a larger exploration of the nature of pain and suffering. While this never materialized, his notes, marked by a striking clarity, insight, and objectivity, were subsequently published by his son. Novelist Barnes discovered Daudet while working on Flaubert's Parrot. His translation is fluent, including a biographic sketch in his introduction and detailed notes that explain allusion and alternative accounts. An important supplement to the discourse on disease and pain by Susan Sontag, Arthur Kleinman, and David B. Morris though mostly of interest to specialists in 19th-century literature; recommended for academic libraries.-T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah, GA Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
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