#166. Candide (Wednesday, March 15, 2006)
What was you best day…of being impressed by how much you understood something?
To get the proper resonance of this story when you read it out loud, make sure you pronounce the title “can-DYED” like I did. And not the more linguistically appropriate “kon-DEED”. Despite the book being written by one of the most famous French thinkers of all time (and me having ten years of French education behind me at the time), the latter just doesn’t sound right.
I entered this day, the third day of March Break in my sophomore high school year, not knowing a single thing about what Candide was. Or who he, or she, or it was. A real person, a fictional person, a city, an abstract philosophy, a rare seven-letter common noun I had somehow let slip through the cracks over fourteen-and-a-half years existence? All I know was that it was on the list of Top 100 frequently appearing works of fiction in NAQT quizbowl questions. “The list” (#20), as I called it1, had been my entry point into becoming a literature specialist and—two years later—Reach for the Top champion (#10, #1) with my school’s trivia team. But at this primitive point, I barely knew what half these definitionally popular books and plays and poems were even about. Just knowing the authors gave me all the quizbowl cred I needed.
With nothing to do, and this being right after the start of my “hyper-ambitious” phase (#86) where I feel I need to spend this day off school doing something sufficiently productive, I decide to travel to downtown to spend the full day at the large Chapters bookstore (a common practice in my later years, #130). On the third floor, I wander the fiction shelves when the words “Candide, by Voltaire” on the spine of a book catches my eye. Well, seeing the title and author together instantly triggers my “list” reflex, and the unusually thin spine—I had imagined this book to be some mysterious 700-page epic—creates a strange curiosity inside me that leads me to pull it out.
I start reading the introduction, detailing the complex life of Francois-Marie Arouet (aka Voltaire), still not accepting that this novella I’m holding is some classic work of literature, readying myself to face the densest prose ever humanly written. But I start the first chapter:
In a castle in Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the most gentle manners.
Well, besides that nonsensical proper noun, that’s a good start. Seems this book might actually be readable to me.
And it turns out, it is. Candide is only 36,000 words; and this English translation of a French book (which I obviously didn’t bother to realize at the time) uses diction and phrasing that is surprisingly comprehensible. The plot features the titular boy and his loyal teacher Pangloss (who I pictured the entire time as a centaur) magically transporting themselves around the planet and getting into increasingly absurd predicaments, and is one of the most unpredictable, incoherent, yet oddly follow-able things I’ve ever read. Maybe it’s the promised internal glory from finishing this work of great literature in one sitting that forces me to find a way to parse the nonsense; and I literally do not move from the sofa next to the window for the whole day.2
I finish late in the afternoon, and it takes some time for my great accomplishment to hit me. I just read a nearly 250-year-old quizbowl-certified classic book, and understood it all (the events, not the reason they were written that way or merited the book classic status). Had I become a true literature expert, a true philosopher in the span of a day?
Obviously not. But from that point on, every book on that list, every famous philosopher or Renaissance celebrity whose name popped up in quizbowl, did feel a little less intimidating. A little more accessible. Like I was allowed, at my young and ignorant age, to appreciate the meaning of all these high-end artistic and intellectual objects and personages—to step foot into this world. Having just devoured the magnum opus of the most mysterious writers I knew in one peaceful sitting, nothing was off limits.