This book is such a joy! It's really difficult to describe what it is about: Jacques and his master are going somewhere and they have some adventures, but it doesn't really matter - this book could have no plot at all and it would still be wonderful. There are lots of fun stories, lots of discussions about life, God and philosophy, the book is still really fresh, entertaining and original, although it was written so many years ago. Definitely five stars. ( )

Le livre de poche, Paris, 403 (1963)

'And your Jacques is only an insipid agglomeration of facts, some real, some imagined, written without grace and distributed about with no order.'

Philosophical comedy. Its almost stream-of-consciousness writing the author often breaking the fourth wall.
Most of it are these philosophical musings interrupted by various stories. The tales themselves are often broken up and interwoven, so at times even the characters telling them get confused as to where the stories left off.

Whenever i started to get bored there would be some funny moment or interesting idea thrown out. However i still might be rounding up to get to 3 stars. There were some genuinely funny parts, some of the conversations seemed like a Marx Bros sketch at times.

Edit: I seriously doubt that this translation by J. Robert Loy, is the best version. ( )

Hilarious. I didn’t know how funny, when I bought this in Quebec City, Libraire Generale Française, over two decades ago. Nor did I know how metaliterary, like its contemporary, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, but here, Diderot notes all the fictional clichés he refuses to write, telling only the truth. Ignorant of its humor, I chose this book because of a couple passages in the middle: one, "Never pay in advance, unless you want to be badly served"(112); the other directly opposed my Puritan upbringing, where I/ one must work to get ahead, but one must act morally, or be wracked with guilt. Here? Not at all. All is pre-determined on high, “ecrit en haut” (236).

Such rollicking humor. The surgeon who must repair Jacques’ knee broken by a fall from his horse, tells the housewife to go down “à la cave,” to the wine-cellar, “boirons un coup, cela rends la main sûre.” I’ll have a drink, it’ll make my hand more steady (56). Benefits of wine: Jacques says it helps his memory, "refraîchit la memoire"(182). The surgeon sets up his host holding one leg, the wife holding another, turning patient on his side, then sends the wife back down to the cellar for another bottle. (Why only wives to the wine-cellar? Maybe the ceiling height, maybe her pacing her supply.)

Meanwhile, the patient, Jacques quizzes the chirurgeon, “Will I boiter/limp?” The doctor says, You should be glad I didn’t amputate like that other doctor suggested. “Je vous aie vous sauvé votre jambe” I’ve saved your leg. Do you like dancing? You may walk a little worse, but “danserez que mieux …Commère, le vin chaud.” You will dance better…Ma’am, some warm wine? (58)

Mostly a play, with two main speakers, Jacques and Le Maître / Master (no given or family name). Meta-literary, writing about writing, Jacques / the writer again and again rejects interruption to fulfill narrative clichés. But he does employ one common 18th Century novel device, direct address of the reader: “Vous concevez, lecteur…”(26), “Où? lecteur, vous êtes d’une curiosité bien incommode!” Where? What does it matter if the road’s going to Pontoise or Saint-Germain? Your curiosity’s inconvenient.(44) “Je vous supplie, lecteur…”(48). “Ma, si vous m’interrompez, lecteur…”(61).

This book contrasts the speakers (Jacques, Mme La Pommeraye) versus the non-speakers, though sometimes it's merely a situation, as when the Marquis is silent from worry, afraid to tell Mme La P that he did what she told hi not to. He walks around the room, stops in front of her, goes to the windo, then back to the door, all silent. "il se promener...sans mot dire: il allait au fenêtres, il regardait le ciel"(188).

Again and again, Diderot tells us what he will surely not tell us, the expected stories of fiction. For instance, Master and Jacques debate women, one saying “qu’elles étaient bonnes, l’autres méchantes,” and they were both right, one saying they were “sottes, l’autre pleines d’esprit” and they were both right. The one said miserly, the other, generous; the one, they were liars, the other, honest…and again , both were right (44).

After the surgery when the couple learn of the months of recovery, they suggest the “soeurs gris,” the nuns of St Vincent de Paul— who, by the way, had a home for wayward boys (to avoid jail time) down the street from us, at the end of Cornell Road, Westport. (Now they’ve torn down all the bunk rooms, turned the land over to a grandiose Land Trust property, with spindly acceptable maples replacing the century old Norway maples along the road. Invasive Norwegians. But so are Rosa Rugosa, and I don’t see anyone pulling beach roses up.)

One of several times Jacques falls from his horse, he's rescued by a well-dressed man who even gives him a horse--though a badly behaved one which eventually throws him. Later Jacques sees a man with braided hat, well clothed with gold braid, with two big dogs; he runs up to him and embraes him, thanking him. The man is impassive, hardly acknowledges, though he admits he did help him (103). (BTW, Jacques newly-given horse had run straight for the scaffold.) When Jacques askes his Maître who the man is, he is shocked to find he's "Le Bourreau'/ the undertaker. (No wonder the man is unused to gratitude.)

BTW, Diderot wrote this at the end of his life—he a central philosophe whose Enlightenment Encyclopédie suggested the future could be better, a founding idea of the United States. Previously, in the Renaissance, authors like Ben Jonson looked backward to the Golden Age.
Jacques says many things which draw universal agreement, like Long live Dogs (146):
"Vivent les chiens! il n'y a rien de plus parfait sous le ciel."

Read in 1989 edition, Pocket, 1989. ISBN 2-266-8322-8 ( )

Confusing book. The setting changed so rapidly that i did not always know what was happening. The structure of this novel was a strange one, with a narrator that sometimes appeared to know less than the reader and references that are not too familiar for a reader in 21th century. The annotations earned the second star. ( )