Fascinating stuff; it's easy to see the influence Chateaubriand has had on later French writing; it's also just damn enjoyable to spend time in his company. I read this too quickly, but I'm very excited to re-read with pencil in hand, because the bon mots come thick and fast. His description of listening to shovelsful of dirt being dropped on a coffin might be the most affecting thing I've read this year. It would be wonderful to have the rest of the Memoirs translated in a modern edition, but I suspect that's not really a good business proposition. ( )

Poetic prose ( )

I picked this up because I read about how well-written it is. And wow, is that true. You could create a pretty good book of quotes from this volume alone--and this is only about 1/4 of Chateaubriand's whole memoirs, which I hope will follow this one. I am not a student of French history, but after reading this book, the French Revolution, which Chateaubriand strongly opposed, comes across as one of the most depraved periods in history. Indeed, as Chateaubriand loses friends and family to the guillotine, it is a wonder he can continue to chronicle his life story, although he is doing it at some remove, years afterwards when his own fortune had reversed to the point that he was no longer in exile, but serving as French ambassador to Great Britain.

This book is notable for Chateaubriand's excursion to America, where he claims to have met George Washington and to have traveled through much of the Eastern part of North America and met lots of traders and Indian tribes. It is all a bit hard to believe (and later readers tend to agree), but it is beautifully written, and North America does serve as the setting for some of Chateaubriand's later novels, so maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt.

The tone throughout is of a man ready to die and content to do so. He takes solace in his religious belief, although he never goes into much depth about it. I think in his case it is necessary to believe that there must be something bigger, something greater, something somehow more human than the pitiless world he portrays in these memoirs.

This is a must read. ( )