Jacques the Fatalist by Denis Diderot

So here’s (kind of) a funny story. I’m always on the quest for a good philosophical novel -- a work that tells a compelling story like a good novel, but whose theme is philosophical in nature and as the characters worm their way through the plot they are also exploring (in their actions more so than their words, but also in their words) deep, philosophical questions.

It was in this spirit that I placed Jacques the Fatalist on my “Books To Get” list, and even offered it up as a possible selection when it was time to provide some Christmas gift ideas to family and friends.

Well, my wife came through, getting me a copy of Diderot’s work for Christmas last year, but when I opened the book that morning and began flipping through it, something odd transpired, as I struggled to decipher anything that was written on any page. Ordering it online, as we so often do these days, my wife has inadvertently purchased a copy in the original French, not one translated into English.

As a result, I read the entire work through the Google Translate feature on my smartphone, holding that device strategically above each page and watching the black characters wiggle and waver from their French originals into something almost approximating intelligent English. It was a long and sometimes exasperating experience - which didn’t teach me much more than the standard and slang uses of the French verb ‘baiser’.

Here, instead, is what Wikipedia says about the work:

The main subject of the book is the relationship between the valet Jacques and his master, who is never named. The two are traveling to a destination the narrator leaves vague, and to dispel the boredom of the journey Jacques is compelled by his master to recount the story of his loves. However, Jacques's story is continually interrupted by other characters and various comic mishaps. Other characters in the book tell their own stories and they, too, are continually interrupted. There is even a "reader" who periodically interrupts the narrator with questions, objections, and demands for more information or detail. The tales told are usually humorous, with romance or sex as their subject matter, and feature complex characters indulging in deception.

Jacques's key philosophy is that everything that happens to us down here, whether for good or for evil, has been written up above ("tout ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas était écrit là-haut"), on a "great scroll" that is unrolled a little bit at a time. Yet Jacques still places value on his actions and is not a passive character. Critics such as J. Robert Loy have characterized Jacques's philosophy as not fatalism but determinism.

Yeah. I think that was the book I read. I did manage to scribble into one of the margins, next to a paragraph that I can’t now understand, “The crux -- are we cause or effect? And how can we know?”

I may pick up an English version sometime, but probably not. Good philosophical novels are, in my experience, not easy to find -- and the classics in this category that I have most recently read have left me wanting -- often sacrificing believable characters and storylines in service of their philosophical intent. Even through the dark glass that I experienced Jacques the Fatalist, it seems very much to fall into that camp.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.