I finished Les Miserables last night. I've been reading it since mid-July.
This book has the worst pacing of any book I have ever read. At least for the first thousand pages. It's not just slow, it's choppy. Teenager-learning-to-drive-a-stick-shift choppy. Hugo is apparently totally unable to resist either a tangent or an info dump. Some of these are amusing (he's very poetic during his rant about monasteries), most are instructive (wanna know about the Battle of Waterloo? how about the history of the Paris sewer system?). But in every case they bring the progress of the novel to a screeching halt.
Things improve greatly around page 1100. And the last 200 pages just zip by. But those first thousand pages or so? I found myself wishing Hugo had a good editor.
Hugo created a wonderful character in Jean Valjean, and his ideas about social justice and mercy are compelling. But I think you can make a case that the musical presents those better than the book.
I am, however, glad that I persevered and read the entire book. What can I say? I'm stubborn that way.
Here are a few quotations that struck me as I read the book.
He declared to himself that he would not doubt, and he began to doubt in spite of himself. To be between two religions, one you have not yet abandoned and another you have not yet adopted, is intolerable; this twilight is pleasant only to batlike souls. Marius was an open eye, and he needed a true light. To him the dusk of doubt was harmful. Whatever his desire to stop where he was and hold fast there, he was irresistibly compelled to continue, to advance, to examine, to think, to go forward. p675
Undoubtedly they seemed very depraved, very corrupt, very vile, very hateful even, but people rarely fall without becoming degraded. Besides, there is a point when the unfortunate and the infamous are associated and confused in a word, a mortal word, les miserables; whose fault is it? And then, when the fall is furthest, is that not when charity should be greatest? p744
He had a square face, a thin and firm mouth, very fierce, bushy grayish whiskers, and a stare that would turn your pockets inside out. You might have said of this stare, that it did not penetrate so much as ransack. p772
There comes an hour when protest no longer suffices; after philosophy there must be action; the strong hand finishes what the idea has sketched. p1127
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5 comments:
Didn't everyone tell you to just read the abridged! :) Your quotations lead me to wonder about whether or not you and M are the sort of readers that highlight passages in books and right in the margins. I love to do this with books I own. I know you're a super reader, what's your opinion?
I know, I know. :-) But I didn't want to experience only Hugo's ideas, I wanted to experience his book. As he wrote it. (Um, except translated into English.)
When I was in college, I highlighted and wrote notes, but I don't anymore. It ruins the book for other readers, and even books I own are likely to be read by someone else. Instead, I write quotations in a spiral notebook.
I don't do any of that. I just read the book.
Congratulations! I'm stubborn like you. I have almost never quit a book in the middle--somehow it seems like cheating or laziness . . . or something.
I was struck by this portion of one of the passages you selected: "Whatever his desire to stop where he was and hold fast there, he was irresistibly compelled to continue, to advance, to examine, to think, to go forward." It seemed so much like you.
Congrats on your literary achievement! Hugo can be quite dauting at that size. (I myself prefer the comparable zippiness of Hunchback, which is slender next to the mass of Les Mis.)
I like the quotes you picked out. I've never been a highlighter, but maybe I should start carrying a reading notebook. At the very least, it would be like scrapbooking lit bits that I particularly enjoyed.
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