BOOKS: Counterfeiters

Counterfeit Person

With all the hubbub about Apple’s release of its latest product, I got to thinking about the actual intrinsic value of many of the products that are released and hyped ad nauseam. Yes I have nothing else to do! And nothing against Apple, I love Apple’s products. Any way this all made me think of Andre Gide’s novel the, “Counterfeiters.” That’s quite a leap I admit. But I had recently reread Gide’s complex and intricately plotted novel, mainly because a friend had made reference to one of its many characters, Edouard, and I could not recall the significance of Edouard in the scheme of things. Stunned by my friend’s pompous literary allusion I retrieved my copy from a box in the basement. My friend was appalled that I had put Gide in a box, but that’s another story. Now it turns out that Edouard is important. He’s not the main protagonist, but he’s central to this rambling post. Edouard is a novelist inside a novel__that is__he’s part of Gide’s plot, Edouard is writing a novel entitled, The Counterfeiters. The underlying theme of Edouard’s novel as well as Gide’s, as I see it, is that a counterfeit, coins in this case, is assumed real if it is accepted as authentic. Therefore the value of something is only a matter of perception. The counterfeiters of the coins in the novel, school boys, thus represent people who put on fake personalities to make their way through the world. We accept them because we perceive their character as genuine, although they me actually be counterfeit and be of much less value morally, ethically, or socially etc. In other words, they are faking it. Think you know anybody like that? This great French novel brings this theme to the fore with a complex menagerie of characters who are all remarkably related to one another in some way. That all being said__ many people have different takes on what this novel means and the book is full of moral and ethical implications. Take a shot it. See if you can figure this book out. Even if you can’t at least you will be able to throw around some pretty impressive literary allusions.