Gide, André. The Counterfeiters (1925). New York: Vintage, 1973.

A novel as much about writing as it is about coded homosexuality in 1920's France (a time, lest we forget, that Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas just about ruled that town). Two rival writers, Edouard and Robert, fall for the same impressionable young boy, Olivier, who decides to run off with Robert, the more famous and less honorable of the two. Edouard, a kind of stand-in for Gide, is Olivier's "uncle" (through marriage), and in the loss of his beloved nephew opts instead of his schoolfriend, Bernard. The intersections that follow among writing instruction, publishing, entry into adulthood, and sexuality are noteworthy, but not too.

Also noteworthy is the form of this novel. It reads precisely like something out of Austen. Many of the novels are structured around the meeting of two characters. Even the titles indicate such: "Bernard and Olivier", "Vincent Meets Passavant at Lady Griffith's", Bernard Meets Olivier", etc. The novel has that 19th-century breadth of including everyone from the aristocracy to the poor girl pregnant out of wedlock. And this in 1925! The Great Gatsby came out in 1925!

I can't quite figure it out. There's a strong anti-decadent bent in this novel. Robert, the "comte" who drags Olivier to the dark side, is painted as a kind of Wildean figure, which is interesting given the friendship shared between Wilde and Gide. It's only when Olivier realizes he needs to abandon Robert and side himself with a more modernistic writer like his uncle that he is safe. Perhaps Gide's trying to resurrect an approach to the novel the decadents tried to do away with. I mean the novel ends with a boy's accidental suicide, out of the blue. It's practically right out of Dickens, but like act two of Dickens....