The Red (symbolising the church, the scarlet of cardinal's robes) and the Black (symbolising the military, the uniform, etc.) were both options held out to me early; in fact, I rejected both for a while, but have found myself drawn back in the red direction.

The story is one of coming of age as a bookish fellow in a working-class family, then ambition (but not overpowering ambition; in fact, Julien's father wishes he had more), then shifting careers (rare in an era and country where one's path is usually set for life early; however, this was the post-revolution era in France, in which some things were giving way, some more than others, it seems). Julien is pulled by events rather than being the director and creator of realities; Julien finds he loves the affect of various roles in life (more than the substance and responsibilities that come with such roles) -- for instance, he loves the swagger and the horsey-ness of being a soldier, but doesn't particularly like to get dirty or have to fight. He likes the trappings of religious office, but isn't inclined so much to spirituality, and Julien ran up against this in seminary:

The seminary director said to Julien: `Truth is austere, sir. But our task in this world is austere, too, is it not? You must take care to guard your conscience carefully from this weakness: Excess of feeling for vain exterior charm.'

There is love, a love triangle in fact, romance and thwarted desires, and loves fulfilled, if not completely. It ends with a dramatic homicidal act, trial, an execution, and a most bizarre funeral. The melodramatic performance of Mathilde (re-enacting an earlier story with which she was familiar in which the heroine carried the severed head of her lover to his grave) provided the most animated conversation among ministers and psychologists I have ever witnessed.

Stendahl often built a character's name out of words that were descriptive, which is sometimes lost in translation as the names often don't get translated in the same way, or may have lost the immediacy of their meanings over time. Julien may be a play on Julian the Apostate, enemy of Christianity; Abbe Castanede is decidedly Spanish and inquisitional; Noiroud and Moirod come from words meaning swarthy and mottled; many other examples abound.

This is a very hard book to encapsulate in such a small space. It is not easy reading, but it is rewarding reading.

And again, an interior dialogue of Julien in seminary helps inform me, and keeps me thinking (both for and against in many ways):

`In the seminary, there's a way of eating a boiled egg which declares how far one has progressed down the saintly path....What will I be doing all my life? he asked himself; I'll be selling the faithful a seat in heaven. How will that seat be made visible to them? by the difference between my exterior and that of a layman.'

Choose your path wisely.


What makes this book grand AN Alternative View   August 25, 1999
 6 out of 10 found this review helpful

Ah the sweet murmurings of Julien Sorel's soul. A character so deep and written so introspectively it is hard not to mistake for an old memory of a distant friend. Stendhal with unprecedented psychological insight develops characters that live and breathe in the very pages book. While expressing a range of emotions that is so wide in expanse you forget that the human soul is so dynamic. Julien with unmatched character easily sees through each man's character to include his own and recognizes the hypocrisy that so many men refuse to see or hide. A noble character for a noble book that we may never see the likes of again in an age where there is no need for hypocrisy.


the first modern novel   May 23, 1998
 4 out of 6 found this review helpful

A forerunner to the great novels to come for the rest of the 19th century after 1839 onwards. Pre-Freudian, internal surveys of the mind and the man at odds with his hypocritical milieu. Stendhal deals with breathtaking pace and suspense the universal themes that make great literature.


in flagrante delicto   August 21, 1997
 14 out of 18 found this review helpful

About halfway through this arch and amusing tale of the foolish, machiavellian Julien Sorel we read: "He almost went mad with joy on finding an edition of Voltaire. He ran and opened the library door so as not to be caught in the act. Next he gave himself the pleasure of opening each of the eighty volumes." You too will almost go mad with joy when you slip into a book that can startle with its pulse, its passion, its ability to seem like a forbidden pleasure. You will smile with glee as you run your hands across pages racy enough to make you feel like you could be caught in the act. You'll find yourself sighing on page 248 when you realize Julien has a full eighty volumes of Voltaire to keep his fires burning, while you only have 500 pages of the Red and the Black. But don't give into that familiar panic--that it might end, that you will spend years regretting those 500 pages of momentary pleasure--because it only gets better with each successive read. Like Cleopatra, it doesn't cloy where most it satisfies, but leaves you short of breath, wanting more--