How Victor Hugo came to write “Les Misérables”
economist.com
economist.com
I'm not surprised it's also the most adapted novel of all time as it is, in my opinion, the greatest novel ever written and a monument to what literature can be. But I definitely worry that its impact will be more and more limited by alternatives to simply reading the original.
I'm a little surprised by that fact. I had always assumed The Three Musketeers was the most adapted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Musketeers_in_film (If you count the bullet points, it's pretty close...57 vs 65?)
I don't think the article really answers that. It just posits that it did, and offers nothing to back that up.
He also packs a fair amount of (occasionally apocryphal) history into it. I love the many pages spent describing Waterloo from start to finish, and his judgment of the battle is sobering:
http://coldewey.cc/post/19163335604/the-victor-of-waterloo-a...
i also loved les miserables, and took the story to be an implication of the state: of law & order and it's imperfections and corruptibilities. of how right and wrong aren't forever attached to labels, titles, persons, or any of the other mental shortcuts we take in our daily judgements.
it's really interesting to see how this dichotomy continues to play out in the current political environment. some people believe we are safer when we lock up criminals and thugs, to separate our good selves from those bad selves, to harshly punish in the hopes of instilling order in the world. yet we are each but a single mistake away from crossing that divide into a label we would never apply to ourselves. it goes against our own ego to understand that we are, in the same person, at times lawful and at other times lawless, and the application of justice against that backdrop is often neither fair nor just.
But ultimately the story and characters who do what they think is right end up on top. Now this is also in a way the case in many a moralistic book (the patient Christian triumphs over the predatory thief or what have you) but in Les Miserables I think it is deeper than that, an indication that it is the strong and principled that buoy those around them and feed the matrix of society, even at times with their own lives.
Naturally it's all a bit artificial but I liked it immensely nevertheless.
It's really interesting to me that you include Javert in the group that doesn't act according to conscience since I've always seen him as, perhaps, the most conscious driven character in the book.
It's been over a decade since I read the book and I've seen the musical so many more times, so I might be misremembering the story from the book, but it seems like Javert's character arc is one where he starts from seeing the law as absolutely correct and himself as an instrument of enforcing that correctness. His actions aren't expedient or imposed on him by others, but are the result of that steadfast belief in the correctness of the law. It takes the example of Valjean to show him that the his conscience is distinct from the law and there are times that the law might not be correct. And his suicide is the result of his inability to reconcile that steadfast belief with what he begins to see might actually be right.
Categorizing him along with Thenardier, a character with little-to-no moral compass seems wrong since Javert's actions, while shown to us as bad, come from an intention to do good. He always does what he feels is right. And when he arrives at a situation where either choice will lead him to doing something he feels isn't right, he'd rather die that make that choice.
1. Jean Valjean acquired some silver from the bishop. 2. It was established that M. Thenardier looted the deceased soldiers at the battle of Waterloo. 3. The existence of Fantine and possibly Cosette had been established? 4. Perhaps Valjean had become the mayor of some town after using what was formerly the bishop's silver to become an honest man?
Note that Javert, who is the other major character besides Valjean has yet to put in an appearance, despite showing up in perhaps the first 10 minutes of the musical. M. Thenardier is, at best, a minor player in the musical, and prior to his introduction, we get ~50 pages on the history of the Battle of Waterloo.
The Princess Bride gently mocks the genre by advertising itself as "abridged". I can't help but feel it's justified.
Try reading it again. It's worth it, I assure you. It's vastly better than any of the film adaptations or the musical.
He used the sentences to explain why he found it not great. Not every great novel is great to all readers and I found his comments informative.
There was no information to be informative -- it was an admission of the lack of information. If you haven't read the book and don't remember what little you did read, saying you "found it not great" has little value.
As I recall, structurally, the novel is somewhat like The Grapes of Wrath, with expository sections interspersed with sections that directly advance the plot. I quite liked that about the Grapes of Wrath. I'm not sure if I take issue with the exposition/advancement ratio in Les Miserable, or if I feel less of a connection with the period Les Miserables is set in.
For children or not, I certainly won't hold The Princess Bride up as example of greatness. I would claim that the fact that it works as a send-up of a genre, including the alleged abridgement, is illustrative of something.
You have. Hugo takes his time because great artists don't tell you, they take your hand and lead you somewhere so that suddenly you open your eyes and you're in a place you never expected to be.
I understand you, of course. The book is longer than War and Peace. It's huge. When he spends the entire first book just on the Bishop, you're forgiven for thinking, "Why?" That's answered immediately, however. The great scene that follows between Valjean and the Bishop feels utterly natural, rather than stilted or artificial if done another way.
The same is true with Fantine. Her story is light when it starts. Hugo spends a lot of time so that you will feel the lightness of her situation so that he can then turn the lights out, and now you're with her in the dark. She's not some loose woman who should have known better; she's you.
He does this again and again. For the entire novel he doesn't tell you anything, he doesn't even take your hand later but simply grabs you by the collar and shows you, immerses you in these characters. It's the greatest novel I've ever read and I would recommend fully reading it to anyone.
Of course.
> I would claim that the fact that it works as a send-up of a genre, including the alleged abridgement, is illustrative of something.
But it's a send-up of fairy tales -- not great fiction.