Word: tournier
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...OGRE by MICHEL TOURNIER translated by BARBARA BRAY 373 pages. Doubleday...
...novel of ideas often suffers a fate similar to that of the goose destined for pâté de foie gras. Both are force-fed; both die sluggishly for the sake of a few rich morsels. Michel Tournier's The Ogre is engorged with ideas, which is one reason why it waddled off with France's 1970 Prix Goncourt. With unanimous praise from the critics ("The most important book to come out in France since Proust," said Janet Planner), the novel became a bestseller. It is not too difficult to see why. Its setting is World...
Bible's first shepherd, slain by brother Cain, a jealous tiller of the soil. As a stand-in for St. Christopher, the bearer of the young Christ, Tiffauges must carry Tournier's most cumbersome load. This is the burden of innocence, the surprisingly heavy weight of the holy child, who is shouldered above the flood but also protects his carrier from sin and danger...
...Thus Tournier's book may seem to be one more demonstration-and a notably self-conscious and unconvincing one-of a mercantile society's well-known and often belabored shortcomings. Tournier intended some satirical comment on civilization's defects, of course, or why else so pointedly rewrite a tract in which the Western world is praised? What gradually dawns on the surprised reader is that the author has accomplished much more. As a 20th century author, Tournier is concerned with Defoe's implicit but largely unexplored theme, the development of a mind in isolation. With...
Crusoe II is alone and traveling fast on an interior journey. Gradually abandoning rationalism as flat and absurd, he whizzes through Descartes, Locke, Freud and existentialism, all experienced not as abstractions but as personal modes of apprehending himself and the mysterious island around him. Like Speranza, Tournier's novel is an island, unique, self-sufficient, imaginative, well worth exploring, and with a number of minor marvels to reveal...