Much shorter than I expected, funny in parts, delightful journey like the Odyssey ( )

This book does not stick so well in my memory in either a negative or positive way, but I think this comes from the book being a mixture of two things which I could not feel more differently about: allegory and satire.

The first I find to be as silly and pointless as Aesop or Passion Plays, and is part of the reason that The Wizard of Oz has always felt stilted to me. Characters in an allegory are oversimplified symbols, and so cannot comment on the nature of actual human beings. The style is already so firmly affixed to cultural states and norms that it cannot really say anything beyond the dichotomous, and dualists are blinded by their egos.

I do love satire, but that is generally because of the wit and skill it takes to subvert and re-imagine. Unfortunately, once one has drawn so deeply on hyperbole in a work, it loses its ability to find that necessarily uncomfortable 'grey area'--that rift between assumption and observation.

Voltaire is witty and funny, but his condemnation and praise falls only on unrealistic absolutes, and hence becomes only political rather than philosophical. In this, he becomes in many ways Shakespeare's opposite; whose characters were so vaguely sketched that they could be held representative of many disparate identities.

It is too easy to force and distort arguments when the accepted givens are so strictly defined and counterpointed. This problem should be evident to anyone in America today who sees how opposition to ideas is transformed into meaninglessly pejorative identities. The temptation of thought-terminating cliches grows ever more in the face of such opposing forces as Voltaire presents.

No doubt much of Voltaire's popularity stems from the fact that he is so narrowly applicable and divisive. In this way he almost works like a philosopher since his ideas are so forcefully professed. However, unlike a philosopher he represents his opponents in a state of utter ridicule, he is less convincing than polarizing.

The other part of Voltaire's popularity comes from his empty century. The Seventeenth had Shakespeare and Milton. The Nineteenth showed the ridiculously fecund blossoming of the Romantics. The Eighteenth, however, has Fielding, Voltaire, and Pope. Fielding has escaped as wide a reading because his satire was more social than strictly political. Pope was another satirist, but is of such a fanciful nature as to escape more simplistic and contentious forces. This leaves us with the more accessible Voltaire, who may be used to attack ideas, but not to build upon them. ( )

I laughed out loud reading Candide. It's vicious, biting, sarcastic, humorous, and outrageous. Voltaire didn't mince a single word. I'm so glad I finally read it. Note: I did not read this translation, I read the translation by John Butt. ( )

Absurd, impossible, vile, vicious and bawdy, Candide is a quick lampooning of Optimism, with a fine if simple final message: "We must go to work in the garden". And we must. All human ugliness is in this short book, but presented so shockingly it glances over your senses and remains in the absurd - so you can dwell in it at the time or think about it afterwards as much as you choose. Candide himself is good company on this short buffeting through horrible time. The horrors are diluted by the impossibility of characters' survival but the sense of witnessing people not learning is realistically frustrating! ( )

Being a French minor couldn't get me into this book. ( )