#25 - Candide

If you've bothered to peruse any or all of these entries, you're probably like me in that you are a fan of not only books, but real, old books. Plenty of the books I've had on this list are ones I could have read free-to-use versions of online, or listened to an audiobook. But the feel of holding a book, especially a cool, leatherbound book is just a special thrill. Whoo, getting a little steamy now. Point being, books are great, and THIS one was a highlight for those who agree. The edition of Candide I procured at a wonderful used book store in Stratford, ON called Book Stage (a horrendously incomplete catalogue can be found here: http://www.bookstage.com/index.php). It is a 1931 edition by Grosset and Dunlap for the Universal Library series, and it is gorgeous. Black hardcover with silver and green on the spine and front, thick pages that just smell of book, all for just 10 dollars. Needless to say, I carried this book around as much for the point of having it as for the actual reading value.

But the reading value was very high nonetheless. Candide is arguably the greatest work of French literature ever, showing that while the French can't seem to fight worth a damn, they can be phenomenal sarcastic writers. Voltaire was the king of this, his biting satire of...well apparently everything around him managed to land every blow. The centerpiece of it is the debunking of the theories of Leibniz that our world is "the best of all possible worlds", thus the subtitle of Optimism. The way he goes about debunking it is by putting all of these characters through multiple rounds of hell and back, experiencing every kind of strife and misfortune until finally the sunshiny optimism is cracked. A rather vicious way to make a point, but it's an amusing ride throughout. Along the way, we're treated to further satires of church, state, French society, British society, the stigmas of the New World, the romance and adventure genres as a whole, military rigour, modern art, individual philosophers and entire schools of thought, and the idea of monarchy. Being Voltaire, the smug bastard he is, he manages to do this with a wink and a smile, ending with a finishing flourish by disagreeing with Leibniz' theory and replacing it with his own that we must "cultivate our own garden", a much more pragmatic philosophy.

The read is a very quick and snappy one, with 30 short chapters totalling 118 pages (in my edition) of bittersweet delight. For those who are looking for a plot, here it goes: Candide loves Cunegonde, daughter of a baron in a German province. They both are taught by Pangloss the philosopher (Leibniz in disguise) that everything is grand and good. They kiss and Candide is thrown out by the baron, where all hell begins to break loose. He's roped into the army, whipped by everyone with something resembling a whip, gets on a boat to the New World, finds Pangloss and Cunegonde (all having their own misadventures) at various points, finds El Dorado - the ACTUAL best of all possible worlds - and then leaves again, gains fortunes, loses them, eventually gets back together with everyone in time to finally lose hope, get a farm and become regular schmoes. Voltaire's humour really makes this book what it is - the points he makes are simple ones, but the way he throws them is what makes this novella such a classic. So there it is - a vicious satire of everything by a fantastically bitter Frenchman, all wrapped up in a sexy 80-year old hardcover edition.

8/10