Saint–Simon & the Court of Louis XIV

Not very easy to read for most scholarly but if you have the time also most thoroughly researched, as one can expect from this author.

This book is only for readers who know the memoirs of Saint-Simon in advance! It does not contain the actual narrative of Saint-Simon describing the events at the court of Louis XIV. It is more a scientific analysis of the memoires.The memoires themselfe comprise approx. 1500 pages, and I thought this would be a summary of th most interesting aspects. It is not!

I rather think Mr. McCollim is a professional scholar, and was looking for more or different than what a casual, moderately well-informed lover of Ancien Regime history would be satisfied with. I don't disagree with either his strictures on Ladurie's book -- which is indeed a bit of a mess -- or his description of the "petit duc" himself.Having said that, if you are NOT an academic, and moderately well-informed about the "black hole" period, you may findsome pleasure and illumination in this book. First, because while it may be an "explication de texte" it is also what I might call a riff, or an "essay"....it rambles, it over-emphasizes, it has quirk asides, it reveals its authors biases andKing Charles' heads -- but so what? A professional historian could view Lytton Strachey as a poseur who gets Queen Victoria and Cardinal Manning wrong. True, but... Sometimes there is somewhat-sub-academic history, but written with style. I think of Garrett Mattingly, Henry Adams, some of Richard Cobb, much of Trevor-Roper, all of AJP Taylor. Like a curate's egg, there is SOME good in this book -- both academic (the quantitative study of life expectancies and "marrying up" and "marrying down" among the upper class -- and atmospheric. As McCollim says, this is a very difficult period to get hold of -- and especially for France rather than England, for the Anglophone reader. (McCollim mentions Dangereau -- true, but I don't think he's been translated. And by the way, Goldhammer while he may not everything to the satisfaction of a reader as strict as McCollim, is, inn my view, a very fine translator, here as in the many other works he has done.)And if you really doubt whether Saint-Simon, with all his faults, is nonetheless a fascinating and even attractive figure,please try reading Proust's 25 page pastiche of Saint-Simon translated and published in the small book, The Lemoine Affair. As Proust saw, there is something endlessly fascinating and funny about Saint-Simon. I suspect it is that he was interested in PEOPLE. The fact that his judgments are (often) not only wrong but obviously wrong, and that he wears his narrowness on his sleeve, is part of the performance and the readers' pleasure. S-S is a frequently hilarious monstre sacre. I only wish I knew French well enough to enjoy him in the original.