Status
Available
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Collection
Publication
PENGUIN BOOKS LTD (1970), Edition: New Ed, Paperback, 224 pages
Description
During the author's travels, he meets Menalcas, a caricature of Oscar Wilde, who relates his fantastic life story. But for all his brilliance, Menalcas is only Gide's yesterday self, a discarded wraith who leaves Gide free to stop exalting the ego and embrace bodily and spiritual joy. Later Fruits of the Earth, written in 1935 during Gide's short-lived spell of communism, reaffirms the doctrine of the earlier book. But now he sees happiness not as freedom, but a submission to heroism. In a series of 'Encounters', Gide describes a Negro tramp, a drowned child, a lunatic and other casualties of life. These reconcile him to suffering, death and religion, causing him to insist that 'today's Utopia' be 'tomorrow's reality'.
User reviews
LibraryThing member sometimeunderwater
I think I might have found this profound had I been younger (or high).
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
A unique book - a confession of sorts addressed to the reader. Gide's short novel from the last decade of the nineteenth century presages the twentieth. Through the narrative of travels by one who one shares in the "fruits" of the pleasures of life as he exalts the ego and spirit of one's own
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personal journey. Show Less
Language
Original publication date
1897
Physical description
224 p.; 6.93 inches
ISBN
0140031782 / 9780140031782