Penguin island Anatole 18441924 France 9781172397754 Books
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Penguin island Anatole 18441924 France 9781172397754 Books
This book is quite fun to read, I found. But it is very uneven. Briefly, it mocks every institution known to man, including the church, especially the church, so much so that this book is still on the Vatican's Index of verboten writings. Thus, any Roman Catholic reader risks excommunication in reading it. Just warning you!The conceit is that a group of penguins are inadvertently baptised by a half-blind saint. There follows a deliciously Jesuitical debate in Heaven over whether they now deserve souls. It turns out that they do. But please to ask a member of the aforesaid order on exactly how the logic of all this parses. It's altogether too abstruse for me!
There are other very delicious parts. But, the writing becomes a bit sloppy in points. France frequently forgets his conceit of the nation of Penguinia and calls it what it is: France. Also, too much of the book is devoted to The Dreyfus Affair (herein called Pyrot).
But the book is short enough that one shouldn't allow the unevenness to stand in the way of licking one's lips over jeux d'esprit such as the following declaration by Doctor Obnubile:
"The wise men will collect enough dynamite to blow up this planet. When its fragments fly through space an imperceptible amelioration will be accomplished in the universe and a satisfaction will be given to the universal conscience. Moreover, this universal conscience does not exist."
Have a blast!
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Penguin island Anatole 18441924 France 9781172397754 Books Reviews
france leaves no institution unscathed!
I liked how the book started out actually describing the penguins as penguins, i even liked some of the stories about the penguins after they changed, but most of the stuff afterwards is more centered around philosophy and religion and things like that that have drifted away from the penguin idea and into entirely different subjects. The first few chapters are entertaining...the rest, of what I've read through so far, drifted too much from the main subject...still interesting, though. Just harder to read.
Great, hilarious rewriting of France's history and the French people as penguins converted by a Christian saint that made the she penguins to dress up and thus, inadvertently, created prostitution.
Penguin Island by Anatole France. Translated by A. W. Evans. Published by MobileReference (mobi).
Anatole France spares no one in this satire about the the birth life and death of the Penguin empire. Starting from the baptism of the Penguins by St. Mael through the founding and subsequent fall of the empire, this story pokes fun at the Church, military, courts and every political movement known to man. The trial of poor Pyrot had me in stitches. If you like satire, read this book!
A pious monk discovers a previously unknown island. He is half deaf and more than half blind with age. Even so, he can see that the diminutive people here are gentle, serious, and not yet Christian. He performs a mass baptism, not realizing that he has created Christian penguins.
So begins France's straight-faced satire of the church, the state, and anything else he can think of. First, the innocents must clothe their nakedness. This creates modesty for them, but also creates immodesty, lust-inducing arts of skirt and bodice, and avarice for finer clothes and baubles. Next, they develop property law, proven by disputes over farmland. They create a noble class, when one demonstrates his nobility by killing another penguin and taking his land. They create a royalty, by means of fraud and extortion. They even create their first saint, the miraculous virgin Ste. Orberosia. She seemed best known for her miraculous virginity, which she proclaimed until her dying day (and we don't argue with saints). In fact, she was able to proclaim her virginity even after dozens or hundreds of encounters that would have destroyed it in less holy a woman - miraculous indeed. Perhaps the penguins weren't born subject to Original Sin, but they're mighty quick with the imitation.
The History of Penguinia moves forward, through ages of avarice, adultery, elaboarate scams, false accusations, and all the usual goings-on of the political world. The events are painfully funny, right down to the cynical, cyclical view of modern times, locked into an historical rhythm. The views are painful only because they're so very true.
I imagine they would have been even more true for me if I knew more about the political current events of France and Europe circa 1900, when this book was being written. I also suspect some wordplay in characters' names that would have been amusing if I knew French. It is a measure of Anatole France's genuius that now, nearly a hundred years later, it's still true enough for a modern reader, and one unfamiliar with the book's original milieu. I imagine this book will reward the prepared reader even more richly.
This is satire at its finest - funny, but with an edge, and funny because it's so very true.
//wiredweird
Though this was published in 1909 you would swear it just came from Newsweek, Time or The Atlantic magazines. This is both comforting and disturbing to know that there is nothing new under the sun. Same old politics, revising history, putting a new spin on current events and just plain old human tendencies crop up in this great little book. Anatole France captured the daily lives we're familiar with and shows that it's an ongoing story since time began. Comforting because you feel that we're not the only group of people to live through turmoil and disturbing because "here we go AGAIN". Sometimes it seems a bit tedious but well worth the read.
I read this book for a book club. It was a difficult read for me since it is a satire and I find satirical writing to be tedious. There are however good points about the book. I found several of the authors insights to be credible and his vision of the future is unnervingly accurate. So I gave it a low score mostly because of my personal taste not the quality of writing. The author has a Nobel Prize in literature after all.
This book is quite fun to read, I found. But it is very uneven. Briefly, it mocks every institution known to man, including the church, especially the church, so much so that this book is still on the Vatican's Index of verboten writings. Thus, any Roman Catholic reader risks excommunication in reading it. Just warning you!
The conceit is that a group of penguins are inadvertently baptised by a half-blind saint. There follows a deliciously Jesuitical debate in Heaven over whether they now deserve souls. It turns out that they do. But please to ask a member of the aforesaid order on exactly how the logic of all this parses. It's altogether too abstruse for me!
There are other very delicious parts. But, the writing becomes a bit sloppy in points. France frequently forgets his conceit of the nation of Penguinia and calls it what it is France. Also, too much of the book is devoted to The Dreyfus Affair (herein called Pyrot).
But the book is short enough that one shouldn't allow the unevenness to stand in the way of licking one's lips over jeux d'esprit such as the following declaration by Doctor Obnubile
"The wise men will collect enough dynamite to blow up this planet. When its fragments fly through space an imperceptible amelioration will be accomplished in the universe and a satisfaction will be given to the universal conscience. Moreover, this universal conscience does not exist."
Have a blast!
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