723. The Thibaults, by Roger Martin Du Gard translated by Stuart Gilbert (read 7 Feb 1963) (Book of the Year) I found this book and its sequel Summer 1914 utterly absorbing and memorable. On Dec 5, 1964, almost two years after reading this book and its sequel, Summer 1914, I said: Martin du Gard's story has grown in my mind since I read it. I often think of different parts of it, maybe because it was so long. But it was vividly written , and shocking in some ways. ( )

as awarded the Literature Nobel Prize for "The Thibaults." Written between 1922 and 1929, this 800-page chronicle of a Parisian family is a rewarding work for readers interested primarily in psychological motivations of complex, life-like characters.
The book consists of six novels of varying length, although reading the novels out of sequence may result in a lack of overall clarity. The setting of the first novel is 1898, while the last novel concludes in 1913.

The panaoramic novels of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were the main literary influences on du Gard's writings. Like those famous Russian authors, du Gard applied objectivity to produce incorruptible realism.

Roger Martin Du Gard's masterpiece, LES THIBAULT and SUMMER 1914 were published between 1922 and 1940. The novels follow two bourgeois families, one Catholic and the other Protestant, and depict the degeneration of society prior WW I. The principal characters are Jacques Thibaut, a socialist revolutionary, and his brother Antoine, a Cartesian doctor who seeks change through evolution. Jacques and Antoine are opposing personalities – when one is restless the other is calm – and the first two volumes of the series focus on their conflict. Both fail to see the signs of the approaching war. Jacques distributes pacifist pamphlets by air, his plane crashes and he is accidentally shot as a spy. Antoine is caught by a gas attack. His health rapidly deteriorates but he keeps a diary recording his thoughts and finally commits suicide.

Trained as a paleographer and archivist, Martin du Gard brought to his works a spirit of objectivity and a scrupulous regard for details. For his concern with documentation and with the relationship of social reality to individual development, he has been linked with the realist and naturalist traditions of the 19th century. His major work was Les Thibaults, a roman fleuve about the Thibault family, originally published as a series of eight novels. The story follows the fortunes of the two Thibault brothers, Antoine and Jacques, from their prosperous bourgeois upbringing, through the First World War, to their deaths. If intelligence is the word for Jules Romains, integrity is the word for Roger Martin du Gard. There are many who rank Martin du Gard above Romains and would, indeed, place him among the three or four greatest living novelists. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1937 ( )