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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19380.Candide?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Candide (Thrift Editions)" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167204391m/19380.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19380.Candide?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Candide</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/11619.Voltaire">Voltaire</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8089965?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 3 of 5 stars 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 odd and stilted to me. Characters in an allegory become pointless as far as observations of humanity are concerned, for they become oversimplified symbols. Thus, the style is already so firmly affixed to cultural states and norms that it cannot really say anything beyond the dichotomic, which is an over-simplification.
 
 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 into a representational work, it loses its ability to find that necessary uncomfortable 'grey area'--that rift between what is and what could be.
 
 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 represents.
 
 No doubt much of Voltaire's popularity stems from the fact that he is so narrowly applicable and devisive. In this way he almost works like a philosopher since his ideas are so plainly professed. However, unlike a philosopher he represents his opponents in a state of utter ridicule, which should seem to be 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 nature of satire was more social than strictly political. Pope was another satirist, but is of such a witty and fanciful nature as to escape more simplistic and contentuous forces of literary theory. This leaves us with the more accessible Voltaire, who becomes a useful tool for prising this or that idea, but in the end lacks the depth to inspire further thought.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/84023?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Keely's review
rating:

bookshelves: humor

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 odd and stilted to me. Characters in an allegory become pointless as far as observations of humanity are concerned, for they become oversimplified symbols. Thus, the style is already so firmly affixed to cultural states and norms that it cannot really say anything beyond the dichotomic, which is an over-simplification.

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 into a representational work, it loses its ability to find that necessary uncomfortable 'grey area'--that rift between what is and what could be.

Voltaire is witty a...more 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 odd and stilted to me. Characters in an allegory become pointless as far as observations of humanity are concerned, for they become oversimplified symbols. Thus, the style is already so firmly affixed to cultural states and norms that it cannot really say anything beyond the dichotomic, which is an over-simplification.

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 into a representational work, it loses its ability to find that necessary uncomfortable 'grey area'--that rift between what is and what could be.

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 represents.

No doubt much of Voltaire's popularity stems from the fact that he is so narrowly applicable and devisive. In this way he almost works like a philosopher since his ideas are so plainly professed. However, unlike a philosopher he represents his opponents in a state of utter ridicule, which should seem to be 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 nature of satire was more social than strictly political. Pope was another satirist, but is of such a witty and fanciful nature as to escape more simplistic and contentuous forces of literary theory. This leaves us with the more accessible Voltaire, who becomes a useful tool for prising this or that idea, but in the end lacks the depth to inspire further thought....less

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