So much of Stendhal's The Red and the Black took me by surprise that I just don't know where to start in summing up how I felt reading the novel. This is true simply at the level of story: I had no idea what was going to happen next right up to the final lines, which floored me. And it's true at the more sophisticated level of style: I couldn't figure out whether Stendhal just didn't know what he was doing and was making it up as he went along; or if the constant shifting of point of view and consequent ironies was cunningly, meaningfully, crafted from the get-go in every particular.
How does a writer manage to create a central character so entirely despicable, yet wonderfully sympathetic?
And how does a reader process a work that defies all categorisation?
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