Les Miserables
Victor Hugo
1862
A
Slew Of Alexandrine Couplets About Les Miserables
(a book as long as this deserves more
than 1)
Javert isn’t so bad, Fantine gets a shit
deal,
and Cosette is a brat—Valjean should go
out more
Les Miserables:
the super classic French novel
Why is
Gavorche cast wrong?—they make him a cockney!
After
1400 pages you learn two things:
Society
hates you—and it sucks to be poor
Valjean’s life
is ruined because he’s a good man
It’s
saved by faith in God—and capitalist skillz
It dreamed a
dream of days gone by, when life was crap
Victor
M. Hugo says: people can do better
 |
|
You other readers can’t deny?
|
So it is that I have conquered Les
Miserables.
It’s affectionately nickname “the brick”
by fans, and not because bricks are red, to match the red of the blood of the martyrs
who watered the meadows of France.
 |
|
The book is actually the same size as
the movie-musical’s billboard.
|
Les Mis
weighs in somewhere around 530,000 words depending on the translation, making
it nearly as long as War And Peace (but, as
discussed in my blog post on War And Peace) less
than ½ the length of Harry Potter). And man, it’s not just that it’s a long
book, it’s that it feels like a long
book. And – full disclosure – I was doing it as an audio book, so it should
have felt faster.
 |
| Me, too. |
Let me put it this way: If the French
penal system told Valjean he could go free as soon as he finished reading Les
Miserables it would have taken him about as long as he was in jail anyway,
and he would have tried to escape just as many times.
“Les Miserables” can actually be
translated (this according to Wikipedia) to English as The Miserable, The
Wretched, The Miserable Ones, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims.
My French is miserable, but based on the content, all of those are appropriate.
We all know the story from the spectacular
movie version starring Claire Danes and Liam Neeson musical, and because
it’s such a part of popular culture, but I’ll recap the major details. A broke
dude named Valjean steals a loaf of bread to feed his family, gets arrested,
and spends 5 years working as a galley slave, which is extended to 19 because
he keeps trying to escape.
After dodging his parole he finds God,
becomes a factory owner and mayor, gets filthy rich, and basically supports an
entire county of France out of the goodness of his reformed little heart.
Eventually, on the run from a determined police inspector (his former warden),
Valjean raises the daughter of a girl who died starving, sick, and alone after
being wrongly fired from his factory. 10 years later there’s a rebellion lead
by doomed college students, Valjean’s daughter falls in love with one of them,
yada yada yada, most of the rebels are shot, the daughter and college student
are married, it turns out he was a baron all along and then they inherit all
the cash from Valjean’s factory days, so they’re rich and noble, while Valjean dies old and sad, but on his own terms.
 |
| YEA! |
The novel itself was more social
commentary than anything. It’s so ridiculously long because Victor goes off on
diatribes about the lifestyles of clergymen, street urchins in Paris, the
nature of truth, the Battle of Waterloo, the way girls dress, on and on. And
on. Most of the characters have an insane amount of backstory. These asides
takes as much as 50 pages each to slog through, and by the time you’re returned
to the story you barely remember what’s going on.
 |
| But sadness. Sadness is always happening. |
At the end of the day, Les Mis is
90% a description of how miserable France is from a socialist, humanist, and
democratic point of view. As history and sociology it’s totally valid, and if
that sounds interesting, read it! If that doesn’t sound interesting, here’s
some advice from the heart: don’t bother, because the plot lines won’t sustain
your interest even if you can find them through all the character backstory.
And just for fun, if you’re still with
me, here are some details comparing the musical to the book:
The 2012 Movie Version
The recent movie
version (which I will henceforth refer to as
the Wolverine-Gladiator-Catwomen Version) includes a great deal of imagery and
context from the book that’s not in the traditional musical. One example is
Gavorche popping out of the elephant – in the book he lived in the elephant.
The filmmakers really went above and beyond to show these details.
 |
|
Good job, everyone!
|
The Priest
The first 50 pages of the novel are
dedicated to the bishop (not actually a priest) who saves Valjean. They discuss
how he lives and runs his church and town, with nary a hint of the book’s actual
plot. 50 pages that are totally irrelevant except to describe a guy who will
later be important. He’s actually important in terms of plot for far less pages
then his introductory description. For real.
Valjean
Valjean was convicted for breaking and
entering and for stealing bread to help feed his nephews and sister. After his
arrest, he never sees his family again and never learns what happens to them.
 |
| What did people DO before Facebook? |
Shocker: They die les impoverished and les
miserables.
Fantine’s Pregnancy
The boy who impregnated Fantine only
gets a few lines in her sad song. In the novel, he was one of 4 rich dandies
that dated her and 3 of her friends. One day, when they had all been couples
for over a year, the boys took the girls for a big surprise in a fun suburb of
Paris. They spent the day gallivanting and cavorting, having a great time. At
diner the boys got them a private dining room and asked the girls to wait while
they went to get the promised surprise. The surprise came an hour later, when a
waiter delivered a note explaining that the boys weren’t coming back, and this
was their official break up. Fantine never saw her man again.
Gavorche, Eponine, And The Thenardiers
 |
|
The Frenchest Character in the story,
and always played with a Cockney accent. Is there no justice? – If you’re
Gavorche, there’s no justice.
|
Though Gavorche chooses to live the life
of a gamin on the streets of Paris,
he’s Monsieur and Madame Thenardier’s son, which makes Eponine and Gavorche
brother and sister. They have another sister who grows up with Eponine and is
equally as spoiled, and also two younger brothers they don’t know, who Madame
Thenardier sold to a couple who claims them as their own for government
benefits. After the couple’s arrest (on an unrelated charge) the two younger
boys become homeless and Gavorche takes them in (to his giant elephant), feeds
them, teaches them street slang, and shows them around, never knowing they’re
his kid brothers.
 |
|
Gavorche deserves a beer.
|
He also assists some older friends who
break Monsieur Thenardier out of jail, without knowing he was helping his own
father. He found out after the fact.
Eponine’s song On My Own is taken pretty directly from the book; in her first
conversation with Marius she talks about walking on the road while it rains,
the pavement sparkling, etc. Her age, personality, and actions are all spot on
in the musical, but Marius and the narrator describe her as being really rough
looking, prematurely aged, and say her voice is so deep and scratchy from her unfortunate
life that it sounds like she’s an old man who spent his life drinking whiskey.
In the end of the novel, Marius gives
Thenardier a great deal of money to leave for the New World. Thenardier moves
to the United States and becomes a slave trader.
Marius
Marius isn’t just a schoolboy (as in the
musical). He’s a lawyer, the son of a man Emperor Napoleon made a baron, and
was raised by his paternal grandfather, a rich man who gives him a substantial
monthly allowance and has no idea that Marius doesn’t take it. He lives with
poor university friends and revolutionaries throughout the events leading up to
the rebellion, works as a translator in a book shop, and regularly goes without
eating, wears really shabby clothes and crashes on friend’s couches because
he’s so broke. Though in the Wolverine-Gladiator-Catwomen Version he insists to
Eponine he doesn’t take money he doesn’t earn, in the novel he borrows money
off his friend Courfeyrac every month.
The
thing is, Marius could have practiced law if he
felt like it, or accepted Granddad’s (substantial amount of) cash, or moved
back into Granddad’s great big house. He could have purchased guns for the
rebellion, which it sorely needed. As a lawyer, he could have litigated on
behalf of the poor. As a Baron, he could have effected change from within the
aristocracy, brought the children of other rich nobles to their side, worked to
influence the police and military on their behalf, or attempted to stop the
military from slaughtering them at the barricade. Instead of all that, he just
crashes at his working class friend’s places and bums money off them. So, Marius
(in the musical) is this dashing, honorable character, but he’s really the
original freeloading hipster trash. If Marius were alive today he’d live on
Haight Street with the rest of the faux-homeless (fauxmeless), secretly rich
gutter punks who spend their time bumming quarters for soy lattes and
Americanos and making noises on their guitars.
 |
|
Taking money from broke people since
1862.
|
What was I saying?
Oh, yeah:
 |
|
Vive la liberte! Vive la France!
|
Les Miserable.
Fairly interesting. Great for French teachers, French history majors, or Lit
majors who specialize in French. But honestly, super long and not really that
fun to read.
 |
|
Sorry, Victor Hugo.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment