Roger Gard’s introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of The Red and the Black describes the book as “a thrilling double love story” and also as “satirical and sharp,” a “picture of corruption, grossness, illiberality and deceit in municipality, Church and state” and of “a tottering reactionary monarchy.” All of which I maybe would have appreciated more if I knew more about the politics of the era. I mean, I get it: our young peasant hero/anti-hero, Julien Sorel, reveres Napoleon; his employers, first in the countryside and then in Paris, do not. Meanwhile, two very different rich ladies are bored by the men of their own class and attracted to Julien’s delicate good looks. Julien, who is ambitious, laments the fact that it’s no longer the time of Napoleon: he thinks he would have been a soldier and made his fortune that way; now the path to success seems to be through priesthood, despite “his perfect lack of belief,” and with some echoes of/references to Tartuffe.
Honestly, I found this to be slow-going, though maybe I read it at the wrong time: I would say any book with end-notes is probably not a beach read, and yet the beach is where I found myself reading a whole lot of The Red and the Black. I liked certain things about the book, especially the humorous parts, like the descriptions of small-town life and small-town politics near the beginning, or the part where Julien sends love letters that are just copied from someone else but forgets to change a reference to “London” to “Paris,” leaving the recipient a little confused. And I liked aspects of the “double love story” mentioned in the introduction, though other aspects (like the misalignment in affection between Julien and his second love interest, where he’s most interested when she’s not and vice versa) got a bit tedious.
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