The Counterfeiters (novel)

Template:Short description Template:Template otherTemplate:Wikidata image The Counterfeiters (Template:Langx) is a 1925 novel by French author , first published in . With many characters and crisscrossing plotlines, its main theme is that of the original and the copy, and what differentiates them – both in the external plot of the counterfeit gold coins and in the portrayal of the characters' feelings and their relationships. The Counterfeiters is a novel-within-a-novel, with (the alter ego of ) intending to write a book of the same title. Other stylistic devices are also used, such as an omniscient narrator who sometimes addresses the reader directly, weighs in on the characters' motivations or discusses alternate realities. Therefore, the book has been seen as a precursor of the . The structure of the novel was written to mirror "Cubism", in that it interweaves between several different plots and portrays multiple points of view.

The novel features a considerable number of bisexual or gay male characters – the adolescent and at least to a certain unacknowledged degree his friend , in all likelihood their schoolfellows and , and finally the adult writers the (who represents an evil and corrupting force) and the (more benevolent) . An important part of the plot is its depiction of various possibilities of positive and negative homoerotic or homosexual relationships.

In the years since its publication, The Counterfeiters has gained a reputation as Gide's masterpiece. It is now generally counted among the Western canon of literature.

The making of the novel, with letters, newspaper clippings and other supporting material, was documented by in his 1927 Journal of The Counterfeiters.

Plot summary

– a schoolfriend of 's who is preparing for his – discovers he is a bastard and takes this as a welcome pretext for running away from home. He spends a night in 's bed (where describes a recent visit to a prostitute and how he did not find the experience very enjoyable). After steals the suitcase belonging to , 's uncle, and the ensuing complications, he is made 's secretary. is jealous and ends up in the hands of the cynical and downright diabolical , who travels with him to the Mediterranean.

Eventually, and decide they do not fit as well together as anticipated, and leaves to take a job at a school, then finally decides to return to his father's home. is now made 's secretary, and after an eventful evening on which he embarrasses himself grossly, ends up in bed together with , finally fulfilling the attraction they have felt for each other all along but were unable to express.

Other plotlines are woven around these elements, such as 's younger brother and his involvement with a ring of counterfeiters, or his older brother and his relationship with , a married woman, with whom he has a child. Perhaps the most suspenseful scene in the book revolves around Boris, another illegitimate child and the grandson of , who commits suicide in front of the assembled class when dared by , another of 's cohorts.

Composition

Gide described The Counterfeiters as his first and only novel, though critics often classify his earlier works as novels as well. Influenced by Cubist painters, Gide sought to portray the novel's events through multiple perspectives, creating what one critic has called a "technique of intentional disintegration of the narrative". Many of the novel's subplots are never resolved, in a deliberate attempt to disconcert the reader and create an "anarchy of novelistic technique". As Germaine Bree describes it, Gide "He introduces a number of seemingly unconnected characters all in motion within an extensive web of relationships going back into the past and on into the future, 'never limited never complete'".

Besides bearing the character traits of himself, some of his characters have been identified with other actual people: in this view, is seen as alluding to , to , and to 's cousin and eventual wife . According to the historian Elizabeth Roudinesco, the character of is based on , with whom had been in analysis in 1921. Boris's suicide is based on a real 1909 incident in Clermont-Ferrand. One actual historical personage, , appears under his own name, though in an unflattering portrait that reflects Gide's growing disillusionment with Dadaism.

Some of the situations in the novel closely parallel those of the major novel of 's good friend, , The Thibaults, which was published in installments beginning in 1922. Gide acknowledged the influence of 's novel in a letter to the author dated July 8, 1925. Gide was also influenced by the work of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, particularly in The Counterfeiters's exploration of suicide.

Interpretation

Scholar David Haberstich describes the novel's themes as follows: "(1) that we face a dichotomy of the counterfeit versus the genuine, in terms of both tangibles (e.g., currency) and intangibles (e.g., emotion, personality, values, subjective reality); (2) that the attainment of the good and full life is dependent upon vigorous intellectual and moral exercise; and (3) that one must be true to himself and follow his own peculiar star, no matter what the consequences may be." Robert Wexelblatt argues that the novel's polyphonic structure forms a theme in itself: "that one should put oneself at the disposal of life without prejudices, be tolerant of other viewpoints, and relish the relativity of the modern world rather than deriding or complaining about it."

Gide was heavily influenced by his friend Oscar Wilde's aphorism that "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life", and the novel plays extensively with what is real and what is false. Though Boris's suicide is real within the world of the novel (and in fact is based on a real-world event), the novelist finds it too unbelievable to include his own fictionalized version of events.

Robert K. Martin has described the novel as focused on a crisis of authority common in modernist literature. In this reading, the characters discover monogamy and heteronormativity to be generally agreed-upon fictions, in the same way that money only has value through social agreement. Catharine Savage Brosman reads The Counterfeiters as challenging the "notion of human character as a stable and knowable entity", given the pervasiveness of hypocrisy and dishonesty among the novel's characters.

Reception

In a contemporary review, Louis Kronenberger of The New York Times praised the novel its use of multiple perspectives, building on "the creative and panoramic method of Balzac and Tolstoy". Lecturing a year after the novel's release, British author E.M. Forster described The Counterfeiters as interesting but ultimately a failure for its illogical narrative structure.

In 1999, a Le Monde survey of 17,000 French people named The Counterfeiters the thirtieth most memorable book of the twentieth century. In 2009, The Guardian included it on its list of "1000 novels everyone must read". The novel was also included in the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2006). and Der Spiegel's 100 best books from 1925-2025.

2010 film adaptation

In 2010, a French TV film based on the novel was directed by , starring as , as , and Dolores Chaplin as Lady Lilian Griffith.

External links

• Full text of The Counterfeiters (English translation by Dorothy Bussy) at HathiTrust Digital Library