"A Life in the Present" proves to be the best book on Gide I
know...Certainly Sheridan's is the first book anyone interested in
this author should consult after reading Gide's own work and--in
the case of certain precariously 'sincere' Gidean texts, such as
'Corydon'--even before...Sensible and sympathetic, as well as
powerful and politic.--Richard Howard "Los Angeles Times "
"Andre Gide" is a remarkable achievement. To portray adequately
Gide's place in literary history is already an impressive
feat...Sheridan guides his reader through Gide's varied literary
output as well. He provides excellent accounts of the social and
political activities Gide became involved in. Most important,
Sheridan provides a frank and sympathetic account of Gide's
personal life, as paradoxical as his public one.--Michael Lucey,
"San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle "
["Andre Gide"] far surpasses earlier biographies...The time was
ripe to demonstrate Gide's intellectual legacy: to show how, in a
career that bridged two centuries, the ground was laid for the
subversive strategies of the nouveau roman and for the all-out war
waged by ideologues such as Sartre and Foucault against
'patriarchal' institutions, above all the family...Alan Sheridan is
an eloquent and perceptive writer...The book has many virtues, not
least of them being Sheridan's ability to weave brief and
penetrating essays on Gide's work into the chronicle of his
restless days.--Frederick Brown "New Republic "
[A] detailed and comprehensive biography of the great French and
Nobel Prize-winning author of the "Journals" and "The
Counterfeiters"...The biography moves chronologically--at the top
of each recto page the reader can find out what year he's in--and
we read what Gide does: the people he meets, the books he reads,
what's on his mind, where he travels and by what means. It's as
though we're living his life in the order that he lived and
experienced it.--Stephen Goode "Washington Times "
Alan Sheridan's account is perhaps best in dealing with the
critical moments of his subject's life. The meetings with Wilde;
the acceptance, then world-shaking rejection, of Stalin, are
narrated as if by an eye-witness.--Geoffrey Heptonstall,
"Contemporary Review "
An excellent new study...Reading Sheridan's biography gives some of
the same pleasure you get from reading Gide's "Journals", which
appeared between 1939 and 1950, or his vast published
correspondence...In absorbing a great deal of Gide's own
distinctive voice, one is reminded both of Graham Greene's
world-weariness and of Joseph Conrad's cosmopolitanism...One of the
reasons to enjoy the book by Sheridan is that Sheridan is an
English academic, not an American one, and even though Sheridan has
been one of Michel Foucault's many translators, he doesn't write in
the trendy jargon of postcolonial studies, using words like
Otherness, upper case, or alternity; He simply accepts that
colonialism was the dominant form of international trade and
culture when Gide was doing his most important work.--Douglas
Fetherling "The Brunswick Reader "
How does personal experience tie into Gide's literary odyssey in
the realms of morality, religion, and politics? Sheridan, an
experienced translator and literary commentator, eschews simplistic
explanations, spiritual or materialistic, psychological,
ideological or historical. General explanations, he claims, should
be confined to particular circumstances in the course of human
activities. This does credit to the complexity of the
subject...Readers of [this] biography will have a fuller
understanding of the actual models for characters in Gide's major
works and even of some of the factual situations.--Allan E. Shapiro
"Jerusalem Post "
In his biography of Gide, Alan Sheridan has accomplished a
magnificent feat. Whereas other biographers have been brought up
short by the daunting intricacies of Gide's life, Sheridan does not
shrink from recounting the full range of his subject's sexual
escapades, musical knowledge, friendships, vexed marriage,
Protestantism, affluence, and literary merits. Without interpreting
the raw materials of Gide's life in a tendentious way, Sheridan
shapes facts into coherent patterns. This is a biography worthily
in the manner of Plutarch; the density of incidence never
overwhelms the clarity of presentation.--Allan Hepburn "Boston Book
Review "
In Andre Gide, Sheridan does an admirable job of showing us why
Gide should not be forgotten...It is the very essence of Gide, the
man and the writer, to bravely defy expected norms of behavior in
his principled search for truth and meaning. It is, Sheridan
asserts, one of the reasons he remains such a compelling figure.
Gide's constant traveling, his unflinching introspection, his cult
of sincerity with always insisting he tell the absolute truth in
his books, no matter the consequence, make him very much a person
of our own times.--Ulysses D'Aquila "Lambda Book Report "
Neither in English nor in French has there been a biography
relating, in appropriate detail and depth, Gide's life and writings
to each other...Happily this lack is now a thing of the past. Alan
Sheridan has given us a biography as scrupulous and critically
alert as it is lively and sympathetic...Alan Sheridan brings
[Gide's relationships] to life with a multiplicity of detail and an
empathy not only with Gide himself but with the others
concerned.--Paul Binding "The Independent on Sunday "
Noted author and translator of works by Sartre, Lacan, and
Foucault, Sheridan provides the most thorough literary biography
since Gide's death in 1951...Writing in remarkable, accessible
prose that leaves scarcely a stone unturned, Sheridan integrates
Gide's life and fiction...Among the best treatments of Gide, this
volume will be a point of departure for anyone interested in Gide
or French literature.--R. Merker "Choice "
One great virtue of Alan Sheridan's beautifully written new
biography is that it does not try to claim Gide as a trophy for
liberalism, modernism, or any other intellectual terrain...With
great clarity and wit, and with a minimum of analytical fanfare,
[Sheridan] brings us into the company of a particular life and a
particular body of work. The miracle is that, in a volume of nearly
three hundred thousand words, the narrative almost never becomes
tedious.--David Glenn "Dissent "
Paradoxically, it was left to an Englishman, Alan Sheridan, to
write the first full-scale life of Gide. Sheridan has the
credentials for the job--the mastery of two languages; the grasp of
political and cultural as well as literary history; the patience;
the sympathy; the sheer industry. He has assimilated all this
material and handles it with easy familiarity, taste, and wit...He
writes with insight about the life, the works, and their
interconnections, and he can suddenly cut straight to the
marrow...Sheridan has no ax to grind, no theory to impose; he
allows us to share the pleasure he takes in Gide's
company.--Richard Dyer, "Boston Globe "
Sheridan uses Gide's Journal (the book Gide said he would choose if
only one could survive), forty volumes of letters, interviews and
the novels themselves to build this outstanding biography.
Sheridan's voice is clear in the narrative, and his personal
comments and insights lighten the over 600 pages of chronological
text. "Andre Gide" often reads like a novel. There are hilarious
sections when an event is described in several different ways, in
several different letters, to several different people. There are
reading lists and journal entries; 'cruising' successes and
failures; and synopses and interpretations of all his
works...According to Sheridan, it is Gide's very un-French
sincerity and the mysterious mix of curiosity and self-absorption
that ensured the endurance and vitality of his work.--H. Shaw
Cauchy "ForeWord "
Sheridan, who is a most careful and conscientious biographer, has
amassed a remarkable amount of detail...[He] is both perceptive and
restrained in his judgement that Gide has had much to say to
several generations. Certainly he presents us with a most
informative and detailed biography.--Douglas Johnson "Literary
Biography "
Sheridan's biography of "Andre Gide" answers a need for a thorough,
well-documented study of the French Nobelist's life, including
insightful analyses of his literary works. Sheridan rightly
acknowledges the futility of strict adherence to literary history
in interpreting Gide's work, but he does 'delineate the process by
which the author transmutes the material of his life into the
work.' Sheridan perceptively examines the structure of each of
Gide's works and their relation to each other...[He] has written an
excellent biography of a great 20th-century writer. Highly
recommended.--Robert T. Ivey "Library Journal "
The strength of Sheridan's biography is its relentless attention to
Gide the man rather than Gide the novelist. Though Sheridan offers
rather informed readings of each of Gide's works, he goes beyond
his call in successfully fleshing out the
man-in-the-world.--Christopher Voigt, "Lesbian & Gay New York "
The subtitle of Sheridan's biography, "A Life in the Present",
explains the exceptionally close focus with which he approaches his
subject. Armed with encyclopedic grasp of Gide's life and works,
including unpublished letters and journals that cast valuable light
on his contradictory nature, Sheridan peers at Gide as through a
microscope...The result is richly detailed and succeeds admirably
in tying the life and work together.--Fredric Koeppel "Commercial
Appeal "
absolute truth in his books, no matter the consequence, make him
very much a person of our own times.
as though we're living his life in the order that he lived and
experienced it.
case, or alternity; He simply accepts that colonialism was the
dominant form of international trade and culture when Gide was
doing his most important work.
interconnections, and he can suddenly cut straight to the
marrow...Sheridan has no ax to grind, no theory to impose; he
allows us to share the pleasure he takes in Gide's company.
of great interest to anyone interested in French letters and
literary modernity.
perceptive writer...The book has many virtues, not least of them
being Sheridan's ability to weave brief and penetrating essays on
Gide's work into the chronicle of his restless days.
perceptively examines the structure of each of Gide's works and
their relation to each other...[He] has written an excellent
biography of a great 20th-century writer. Highly recommended.
stone unturned, Sheridan integrates Gide's life and fiction...Among
the best treatments of Gide, this volume will be a point of
departure for anyone interested in Gide or French literature.
subject...Readers of [this] biography will have a fuller
understanding of the actual models for characters in Gide's major
works and even of some of the factual situations.
successfully fleshing out the man-in-the-world.
work and--in the case of certain precariously 'sincere' Gidean
texts, such as 'Corydon'--even before...Sensible and sympathetic,
as well as powerful and politic.
works...According to Sheridan, it is Gide's very un-French
sincerity and the mysterious mix of curiosity and self-absorption
that ensured the endurance and vitality of his work.
Certainly he presents us with a most informative and detailed
biography.
ÝA¨ detailed and comprehensive biography of the great French and
Nobel Prize-winning author of the "Journals" and "The
Counterfeiters..".The biography moves chronologically--at the top
of each recto page the reader can find out what year he's in--and
we read what Gide does: the people he meets, the books he reads,
what's on his mind, where he travels and by what means. It's as
though we're living his life in the order that he lived and
experienced it. -- Stephen Goode "Washington Times"
This is the first full literary biography to date of the
extraordinary life of the French modernist author Gide. Sheridan
does a particularly fine job of chronicling his notoriety in
matters both sexual and political. Gide's leftist politics and his
open homosexuality are shown to be deeply interwoven with his
literary creations. The book provides an intimate look at a figure
who was, at best, a reluctantly public individual. This will be of
great interest to anyone interested in French letters and literary
modernity.
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