Review: The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas

The Three Musketeers 
(That’s Les Trois Mousquetaires in the French)

Alexandre Dumas

1844

Ummm . . . Who’s that 4^th guy?

Alexandrine Couplet About The Three Musketeers

                                                  Hot-headed country guy – moves to the capital,

                                                  makes friends, fights some duels – turns into a badass.

 

This is a classic of French literature, and honestly, I kinda have to give it up to French Literature.  It seldom got bogged down in details like Brit Lit did, and as much as I love the Russian classics for being so intensely cerebral and internal (see my future post on Crime and Punishment) the French classics are always prepared to break their own boredom with a quick quip (respect the alliteration), a good sword fight, or a night of heavy drinking.  

Essentially, classic French writers are okay with movies like this. 

Existentialists came later and screwed everything up.

  

The point is: The Three Musketeers is spectacular.  It has everything.  Action, intrigue, spies, politics, class issues, sword fights, love, sex, betrayal, brilliant characters, humor, moustaches.  No really, lots of moustaches.  Musketeer Headquarters is like the most hipster bar in the most hipster area near you.  They make fun of d’Artagnan because he can’t grow one.  Porthos’s bristles when he’s angry.  They curl them.  Really.  Reading The Three Musketeers is like watching an old western, only it makes you smarter.

This guy is Captain Of The Musketeers.

The book runs the gambit from arguments about appropriate clothing to the reasons countries go to war.  The scene where the musketeers and d'Artagnan fight the four English gentlemen in such an honorable fashion juxtaposes brilliantly with the scenes where the French and British armies kill each other for such a terrible reason.  With the eight fighters, they had a fair argument, a fair fight, and they walked away trusted friends.  The war – a big part of the background and setting for this book – is essentially a drunken brawl over who should own Anne of Austria.  She’s married to the French king but the Duke Of Buckingham has a crush on her.  He provokes a war with France so that, a few years and thousands upon thousands of lives later, he’ll be able to arrange the peace treaty, which means he’ll get to travel to Paris and be in the same room as her.  As the French would say, “That’s love, no?”  And I would answer: “NO!  That’s not love, it’s CRAZZZY!”  But hey, it makes for a great book, I guess?    

--Yes, I just said that Alexandre Dumas wrote the whole book, and fashioned an entire, real life war, on the theory that when the Duke Of Buckingham told his friends “I can get any woman I want” he really, really meant it.  Either that or Dumas had been cribbing plot lines from the Iliad.  Now I’m not saying Dumas stole the Anne of Austria/war plot from Helen of Troy/The Trojan War, I’m just saying you can point that out next time you need to sound smart at a lit themed cocktail party. 

Favorite scenes: 

Where d'Artagnan walks in on Aramis with the superior of the Jesuits and the Curate of Montdidier.  The 3 argue on and on (sometimes in Latin) about Aramis’s thesis to join the order (should it be dogmatic and didactic, or ideal?  – THE PRESSURE!).  They try to involve d’Artagnan, but he doesn’t understand Latin, isn’t a big church-goer, and anyway he tends to let his sword do his thinking for him . . . if you know what I mean.  He’s increasingly bewildered and frustrated with his friend’s religiousness and the yammering of the three intellectuals.  Trust me, this is hilarious when Dumas does it.  But only if the translator knows what they’re doing, so watch out for that.

Also, I love the part where the four are required to procure all the horses, weapons, and equipment they’ll need to go to war against England, but all of them are dead broke.  Athos’s plan:  To lie down on a couch in his apartment and not move until a horse, weapons, and equipment fitting his needs and station arrive at his door.  He doesn’t care where they come from, as long as he doesn’t have to stop drinking or go outside.  I have friends like that.

Look, I’m not saying it’s the easiest book to read.  It’s long.  There're some parts where the king and Richelieu go on and on.  Some of the translations are certainly better than others.  And it was originally serialized, so there’s always going to be some issues with that.  But overall, it’s incredible, fun, exciting, full of great characters (and there are a lot of them.  Really, dozens.), and well worth the read. 

Why is d'Artagnan swinging a chicken?  Is he actually swinging his cock around?  Are they rushing to dinner?  Isn’t that Mousqueton’s job?  (Okay, if you remember the part where Mousqueton is poaching for Porthos while he’s squatting in the countryside hotel, that joke was hilarious!)  I’m telling ya, great characters.

All For 1, And For Each A Blimp!  Great job here, Hollywood.  This is exactly what Dumas had in mind.

. . . Okay, he probably would have been pretty entertained.

 

See, I warned you that staying under 350 words would be an issue for me.