Men Of Good Will

By Jules Romains

Book Overview

MEN OF GOOD WILL BY JULES ROMAINS CONTENTS Preface Book One: The Sixth of October 1 Paris Goes to Work on a Fine Morning 2 Painters at Work. Woman Asleep 3 Nine oclock in the Morning at the De Saint Papouls and the De Champcenais 4 Schoolmaster Clanricard tells the Children about Europes Great Danger 5 The Comings and Goings of MadameMaillecottin 6 Juliette Ezzelin is Dispirited. Jean Jerphanion is Inspirited 7 Quinette the Bookbinder 8 Wazemmes the Apprentice 9 Quinett, the Stranger, and Blood, Sampeyre 11 Wazemmess First Adventure. How Germaine Baader Awakened, and What she Thought About 12 A Discreet Inquiry 13 The Difficulties of Painting and the Pleasures of Betting 14 A Radical Deputys Disclosures to his Mistress 15 A Child of his Time 16 Two Forces. Two Menaces 17 A Little Boys Long Journey 18 Introducing Paris at Five oclock in the Evening 19 The Rendezvous 20 Wazemmes Meets his Future 21 The Refuge 22 The Lady in the Bus 23 Wasemmess Ideas about Women and Love 24 Parisian Workers 25 Walemmes, the Lady, and People Publishers Note Summary Book Two: Quinettes Crime 1 Maurice Ezzelin Reads the Paper 2 Bustle at Quinettes 3 The Spell of the Street 4 A Talk in Church 5 Leheudrys Mistress 6 Haverkamps Plans and Wazemmess Love Affair 7 Quinette on the Scene of the Crime 8 The Paper Shop in the Rue Vandamme 9 A Safer Hidingplace 10 A Loss of Virginity 11 Gurau is Hemmed In 12 Quinettes Sleepless Night 13 Contact with the Police 14 Council of War at De Champcenaiss. The Gurau File, and a Strange LoveScene 15 Jerphanion Meets Jailer. Gurau is All Alone 16 Heads on die Table 17 On the Banks of the Canal 18 A Profitable Conversation 19 Quinette Drowses Before Dawn 20 Wednesday Night Summary Index of Characters PREFACE I HONESTLY believe that a preface is useless except when it is indispensable If I have decided to write this one to Man of Good Will, I imply that I consider it to be indispensable. It is so for this reason, in the first place: the work whose publication begins with this volume will be of very considerable dimensions. The reader will not necessarily realise that fact beforehand. If he does not realise it, he may gather an erroneous impression of this opening volume, and may apply a criterion of judgment to it which is lacking in foundation. It is obvious that you judge a building in different ways if it is intended to be selfsufficing or if, on the contrary, it constitutes only a portico. Onlookers who pass by it while it is under construction and air their opinionsl about the purpose1 and proportions of the portico will probably be very far wide of the mark if they fail to appreciate the fact that the architect has so far covered only a small part of the site. Some people may pull me up here and point out to me that thoughtful architects surround their site with a high paling as long as the building is unfinished, in order to spare their contemporaries errors of judgment which may make them blush afterwards.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1406732419
• ISBN13: 9781406732412
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: Hesperides Press
• Length: 476 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A novel without any other like it

First I think this novel should be read together with its preceding volume (see "Verdun, the Prelude + the Battle) to be fully appreciated. No other novel conveys an sensation of what it was like to be a soldier in that war. "The Prelude" is very interesting if you want to understand the bigger picture and the shared responsibilities for the war: although a Frenchman, Jules Romains did not engage in any propaganda whatsoever and showed the Germans were not the only bad guys in 1914. This is not a novel based on a plot, in fact the only plot to speak of is the war itself with its slow inexorable advance towards a nominal victory for one side, but a defeat for Europe as a whole. If all you want is a good story, don't read this book. The characters are very real and you feel identifying with them and their sufferings and frustrations all the time. You sympathize with the men and their shattered dreams, their longings for family and girlfriends, their anger at callous higher officers and at profiteers who had contrived to stay behind the lines and be out of harm's way. These two novels (The Prelude + Verdun) are part of a series of 27 (!!) volumes by Jules Romains entitled "The Men of Good Will". I don't know whether they are still available in English but if you can read French go for them and you will get hooked!

Good exploration of life during WW1

I just finished reading this book for the second time and got a great deal more out of it than during my first reading. My problem with the book on first reading, and perhaps the first reviewer's problem as well, is that this book isn't intended as a history of the battle of Verdun. While the author describes the experience of being in the battle of Verdun, he never 'zooms out' to explain the bigger picture. Instead, it explains what the common soldier thought and felt during the second winter of the war. Once I came back to the book with a better understanding of the events of the battle, I enjoyed it thouroughly.The first several chapters give a brilliant review of the first year and a half of the war. The writer explains at a high level the events of the war, and describes how the French general staff vainly struggled to understand the new rules of war. (The entire book is presented only from the French prespective)The remainder of the book is a series of vignettes, each presenting the war from the point of view of soldiers, industrialists, war widows, shirkers, and others. Some characters are present throughout the book, some appear only for a chapter. While one of the 'points' of the book is that the soldiers' attitudes towards the war, the enemy, and their countrymen behind the lines were complex, multi-faceted, and impossible to definitively explain, I feel I have gained a better understanding of what the average soldier in the trenches must have felt.To sum up, this book does a poor job explaining the details of the battle of Verdun, but an excellent job exploring various French wartime cultures. I thought it was extremely well written. The descriptions of being under bombardment were terrifying, and the dialogue between the soldiers cracked me up several times.

Brilliance in the Suffering

I found the other review to this stunning novel rather offensive and misplaced, almost as if the person never read this powerful novel the entire way through. He states the novel lacks a plot and character development but I question both points. First, as far as a plot is concerned, we are talking about human suffering in the face of one of the most catastrophic battles mankind has ever witnessed. There is no need for a "plot." The plot is there, lived by over one million men, both French and German who either lost their lives or were wounded in the filth and suffering of the trenches. Second, as far as character development is concerned, I believe that is one of the startling points of the novel, that is, men do not progress nor grow in an environment such as Verdun. Men die, bleed, cry, agonize and wither away in the insanity of war. This book is a treasure to be discovered and studied by all who wish never to repeat that which happened in our so called "civilized" and "advanced" world.