Candide

Everyone should read Voltaire.

Not good for students. Voltaire himself is okay but not really saying anything that really makes me sit up

I was looking for the French version. It was not clear this book was in English.

So. One finally catches up with Candide, the 84-page novella dashed off by Voltaire in three days and recognised as one of the most influential books ever written. It is the story of a young man who is persuaded of the doctrine of optimism by his mentor Professor Pangloss: “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”.This is a strange dark fairy tale riddled with allegory and overburdened with an exaggerated, almost cartoonish brutality. Also cartoon-like is the resurrection of bumped-off characters, however welcome their return. (I’m looking at you, Pangloss.) Less welcome was the undercurrent of antisemitism I detected in certain parts of this story. (Et tu, Voltaire?)It is only really possible to understand Voltaire’s great work as a satire of its times thanks to the rather odd but undoubtedly helpful footnotes. (I am referring to the Amazon Classics edition with Philip Littell’s introduction - one of the most bizarre pieces of writing I have ever read. Or, to be more precise, skipped.)I close with my favourite quote: “Fools admire everything in an author of reputation. For my part, I read only to please myself. I like only that which serves my purpose.” Quite so. And now the sun has come out and I must cultivate my garden.

Pretty good

Great book but the print is so bad, footnotes are at the very end and the numbering doesn’t even match. Not easy to read. Very disappointing.

I cant even tell people what paper size it is other than its another really poor reprint in addition to the Road to Wigan Pier reviewIi posted (I bought these books at same time in addition to others), the books that are being manufactured by Amazon.com.au are crap, I'll be checking the publisher on any book being bought from Amazon from now on, if they are not a proper publishing house avoid is my experience !

Candide is a man with the worst possible luck; almost every situation and geography that he finds himself in he is perpetually presented with misfortune, death, sadness, injustice, and any kind of hardship conceivable to man. These presentations come in the form of stories and personal experience. His ultimate goal is to be reunited with his first love Cunegonde, who, by the way is a girl he briefly met and fell for in the beginning of the story. The whole story is about his adventure to once again unite with her and his trials and tribulations - most of which are fortuitously unnecessary - are testimony to his bad luck. He endures for two major reasons: his motivation to reunite with Cunegonde and his reverence for his friend, the professor/philosopher Pangloss. This is one of the great ironies of the story: while Candide had constantly convinced himself that Pangloss's advice and philosophy - known as Leibnizian Optimism - that they live in the "best of all possible worlds" was true, almost every single event that he took part in or witnessed was testimony to the diametric opposite. As morose is it is, it is sardonic as well because as a reader you become incredulous to the idea that Candide is genuinely still strung to it (Pangloss's philosophy), although he claimed to be on many occasions. The truth is that he probably wasn't. When Candide visited El Dorado he saw a society that he had never witnessed: one marked by affinity and egalitarianism - even in belief and ideology, the lack of execution and meaningless trials, the lack of jails, void of religious authority and religious disputes, and an overwhelmingly benevolent atmosphere. At this point he remarked "This is vastly different from Westphalia and the Baron's castle. Had our friend Pangloss seen El Dorado he would no longer have said that the castle of Thunder-ten-Tronckh was the finest upon earth. It is evident that one must travel." Another major irony is that when Candide reunited with professor Pangloss at the end, after believing he was executed the whole time, Pangloss himself at this point had reservations about his beliefs.Voltaire writes: "Pangloss owned that he had always suffered horribly, but as he had once asserted that everything went wonderfully well, he asserted it still, though he no longer believed it." The main character Candide reminds me of the fictional Alan Harper on the tv show Two and a Half Men. It's funny when somebody has a constant streak of bad luck. Yet despite the humor, this story is deep and it really assaults the glittering notion that we live in the "best of all possible worlds". As negative as it may be, it is the truth that this is not the case and the best we can do is divorce ourselves from this dream state, acknowledge reality, and take action while living our lives to the fullest extent.

I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but I am excited to report that the book contains footnotes that help explain certain things. I am not a scholar. I just enjoy reading and these notes help out a lot. Many times these inexpensive books contain only the text of the translated original work.