André Gide stated that The Red and the Black was a novel ahead of its time, that it was a novel for readers in the 20th century. In Stendhal's time, prose novels included dialogue and descriptions from omniscient narrator; Stendhal's great contribution to literary technique was the describing of the psychologies (emotions, thoughts, and interior monologues) of the characters. As a result, he is considered the creator of the psychological novel.
In Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Mains sales (1948), the protagonist Hugo Barine suggests pseudonyms for himself, including Julien Sorel, whom he resembles.
In the afterword to her novel them, Joyce Carol Oates wrote that she had titled the manuscript Love and Money as a nod to classic 19th-century novels, among them The Red and the Black, "whose class-conscious hero Julien Sorel is less idealistic, greedier, and crueler than Jules Wendall but is clearly his spiritual kinsman."[8]
A passage describing Julien Sorel's sexual indifference is deployed as the epigraph to Paul Schrader's screenplay of American Gigolo, whose protagonist is named Julien: "The idea of a duty to be performed, and the fear of making himself ridiculous if he failed to perform it, immediately removed all pleasure from his heart."[9]
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore named The Red and the Black as his favorite book.[10]
