Forward Momentum, Albeit Not Without Trepidation

"A novel... is born, necessarily as it were, with all its chapters; a drama is born with all its scenes."

- Victor Hugo (in his introductory note to the Definitive Edition to Notre-Dame de Paris)

Day Count: 181

Page Count:  1463

As I prepare to begin what I will, for lack of a better term, call the second leg of my journey through the works of Victor Hugo, I find myself filled with the same sort of anxiety I felt a little over a year ago as I prepared to read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

I feel like "anxiety" is the right word, because it certainly captures the equal parts of excitement and trepidation I'm experiencing with regard to reading another great classic by another renowned author. This is especially increased due to the fact that I enjoyed Les Miserables to the extent that I did; I feel as though no matter how good Notre-Dame de Paris* is, it won't be nearly as incredible as Les Mis.

I suppose I'm not without precedent on this particular issue, seeing as how I had a similar, if not equal, situation last year. Don't get me wrong - Anna Karenina was a great book and I very much enjoyed the reading of it, but... War and Peace was (and, honestly speaking, still is) one of the best reading experiences of my life and I have yet to read something that comes close to its brilliance in my mind. Compared to a novel that wonderful, Anna K - though wonderful and compelling - fell a bit flat.

There is, of course, a very apropos response to this way of thinking, which is essentially that each novel cannot be compared to another, but must be read and appreciated on its own merits. This is a very good point, and worthy of consideration, but I can't help but feel as though it is, on some level, an exercise in futility. I feel like the nature of my exercise - reading the essential works of Victor Hugo in 2012 - renders such an objective appreciation impossible.

Allow me to explain. When I set out at the beginning of last year to read the essential works of Leo Tolstoy (a task at which I feel I was marginally successful), that goal had within it an implied amount of comparison built in. I'm not reading each of these books in a vacuum, but instead within the context of other books by the same author! It stands to reason that if I'm reading the works of Hugo for no other reason than to read the works of Hugo, there will be some comparison between the books.

I feel as though this comparison was especially apt last year in my study of Tolstoy, with both War and Peace and Anna Karenina being regarded as one of the best novels ever written. I felt like my comparison was not only encouraged, but mandated - as though it were my job as a thinking literary person to come up with an answer to the eternal question of which I preferred (a question I feel I have more than adequately answered to this point).

So, I suppose the question I'm posing to you, my conspicuously-absent-and/or-silent-of-late readership, is this: is comparison the prerogative of the reader/scholar or is it his/her own hubris that he/she asserts over the text being read? (Believe it or not, this is not a rhetorical question - I actually would like feedback. Please consider commenting on this post with your own thoughts.)

That having been said, I feel as though I'm taking some steps to keep myself mentally engaged in preparation for my next classic. Part of that was reading the Hunger Games series (as discussed in my last post), but those were read relatively quickly and provided little in the way of mental stimulation (leastways in the ways that Les Miserables did).

No, to keep my mental faculties engaged, I have turned to one of the greatest authors in the English language - William Shakespeare! There are upcoming auditions with a local community theatre group for an outdoor production of Shakespeare's immortal A Midsummer Night's Dream and I have decided that I want to go out for the show! Having never performed any Shakespeare before (outside of high school English and college-level Acting classes, that is), I figured I needed to get some advice. To that end, I dug up a copy of Barry Edelstein's Thinking Shakespeare, which I picked up on a whim at a Half Price Books a couple of years back. I've found the book extraordinarily helpful for an actor, filled with very practical, and at the same time, thought-provoking advice regarding the performance of the Bard.

Then, yesterday, on something of a whim, I read A Midsummer Night's Dream for the first time in... well, maybe ever. Certainly, I had read excerpts from the play over the years, but having never needed to study it in either high school or college, I cannot think of a time when I've needed to read it... so, I never have. (Don't worry. Sometime in the next decade, I am planning to devote a year of study to Shakespeare, at which point, I would like to read all of his plays in their entirety.) It was deceptively easy to read - especially after having read the first several chapters of Thinking Shakespeare.

Auditions are still two weeks away, but I can't help but get a bit giddy about the prospects of performing Shakespeare for the first time! Here's hoping I do well!

I'm more or less finished with this post, but I want to leave you with a story that totally happened while I was writing this post. Being without Internet access at home, I often find myself seeking Wi-Fi hotspots when the need to update my blog roll around. About half the time (maybe more), I end up at the Panera Bread down the street from my apartment as the food there is always tasty and the atmosphere is conducive to reading, study, and reflection (especially when you happen to be pumping Brandi Carlile through your earbuds). At any rate, knowing I was planning to update my blog today, I brought along my copy of Notre-Dame de Paris as well as Thinking Shakespeare and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

As I sat quietly typing away at my blog, a woman approached my table (completely innocently - I'm seated by both a trashcan and the front door, which is, admittedly, not the best of seating arrangements for a 100+-degree day, but allows for many people to walk by my location) and pointed to my stack of books.

"Are you reading it or teaching it?" she asked.

"Uh... neither," I answered. "I'm auditioning for Midsummer next month, so I have these two," I here indicated A Midsummer Night's Dream and Thinking Shakespeare, "and I'm getting ready to read this one [Notre-Dame de Paris] for my own amusement."

"Wow," she said. "That's pretty ambitious!"

"Well, I just finished Les Miserables earlier this month," I responded.

"I could not read Hugo for my own amusement," she said as she walked out the door, "but I can read Shakespeare!"

I suppose I could comment further on this story (or you could), but I feel the need to let it speak for itself. At any rate, I feel like reading great books is the ultimate conversation starter!

Until next time...!

* For the record, I am refusing to call this novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, which is, admittedly, its more popular name. I am doing this for two reasons: (1.) Notre-Dame de Paris is the intended name for the novel, the one that Victor Hugo gave it when it was first published in 1831. In French, this translates to, literally, Notre Dame of Paris and, roughly, Our Lady of Notre Dame. The Hunchback is, of course, a reference to the book's 'protagonist,' Quasimodo. Still to call the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is, I feel, to do a great disservice to the cathedral itself, which I am told becomes something of the central figure of the novel. (2.) The edition of the text that I am using (the aforementioned Alban Krailsheimer translation) is not entitled The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, but is, in fact, called Notre-Dame de Paris (potentially for any number of the reasons I listed above).

Sabbatical Blues ...or... How I Started My Summer Vacation

"Oh, yes, forbid me to die. Who knows? Perhaps I will obey. I was just dying when you came. That stopped me, it seemed to me I was born again."

- Jean Valjean to Cosette (V.9.v)

Day Count: 167

Page Count: 1463

Forgive me, readership, for I have sinned. It has been fourteen days since my last blog post. In that time, I have not only finished Les Miserables (exactly when I said I would - one day after my last post), but have finished three 'popcorn' novels (which will not contribute to my overall 'page count' as I'm reserving that for Victor Hugo novels only).

As I mentioned in my last post, June will be a month of sabbatical for me, an opportunity to pause for a few moments to gather myself for what will be the second novel in my 'Year of Hugo' - The Hunchback of Notre Dame (or, as I will likely be referring to it, Notre-Dame de Paris - the novel's original title). But more on that in a moment...

Finishing Les Miserables may be the greatest literary achievement of my life so far. Weighing in at 1463 pages, it is over 250 pages longer than War and Peace, the massive novel I 'scaled' last year. I feel a massive sense of accomplishment, which has only been amplified by the number of people who have been inspired by my blogging and incessant tweeting of quotes from the novel itself to pick it up and give it a read. This, more than anything, is my favorite part about my reading of this novel this year.

As to the novel itself, what can I say that I have not already? I loved it, first of all (though this should go without saying). Second of all, I have to say I was surprised - not just by the amount of digression Hugo does (which, after Tolstoy, is something I come to expect from authors - anything less is merely 'concise'), but at just how woefully short of 'close' all the adaptations of Les Miserables I've seen come to the mark. Hugo does a masterful job of crafting these characters very carefully - all of his characters really, from the major characters like Valjean and Javert to the comparatively minor ones like M. Myriel (the Bishop of Digne) and the students at the barricades (Courfeyrac, Grantaire, et al).

As I was reading, I came to an inevitable conclusion - Les Miserables is, not unadaptable, but certainly it has not yet been sufficiently adapted in any media so far. I think the closest we have come so far is the Orson Welles-produced radio play from July through September 1937 (predating his Mercury Theater on the Air by about a year). (The entirety of Welles' production - all seven parts - can be downloaded here on MP3 or RealAudio.) However, one of the reasons this adaptations is so effective is that it doesn't attempt to distill the major action of a 1400-page novel into two or three hours. Instead, it takes its time, as the author does, and develops the story over seven 'episodes,' each half an hour long. This still doesn't quite do the story justice, but Welles' respect for literature made him probably the most ideal candidate to undertake this adaptation.

In my mind, an ideal adaptation would be a television mini-series - masterminded by the BBC, preferably - which would take no less than five hours to develop the necessary plot points and create the fully-realized characters present in Hugo's work. This is a pipe dream, I know, but it seems the best way to do it. (And, yes, I do realize that there is a movie adaptation due out later this year, but it is, in essence, an adaptation of an adaptation, as it is actually adapting the Les Mis musical, rather than the actual novel.)

That having been said, the themes of Les Miserables are universal - the merits of grace, salvation, redemption, the dangers of legalism, poverty, and the transformative power of faith. It has been strongly encouraging to read through this book and take these themes to heart over the last several months. I've found that literature is not a dead thing, nor should it be. It is alive and capable - if one is willing - to challenge one at whatever point in their lives they currently occupy. The goal is to enter into the reading, to engage the text on a very REAL level, honestly allowing it to speak to one's circumstances. I learned this last year from reading War and Peace and have found it to be true once again in my reading of Les Miserables.

As to my current reading, I've taken to picking up some 'popcorn' literature - that is to say, novels that to literature what summer blockbusters are to film. I decided to make a go of Suzanne Collins' highly regarded Hunger Games trilogy, which I borrowed from my little sister. I must say that there was plenty in the series to like - especially for one like myself who is a HUGE fan of dystopia as a literary construct - and it was oddly deep and disturbing for a series of novels written for children. That having been said, these were quick reads (hence, 'popcorn' literature) - I began the first book (The Hunger Games) on June 2 (a scant few minutes after finishing Les Miserables) and finished the third book (Mockingjay) yesterday afternoon. (I would have been finished sooner, but I had to wait a week for my sister to get me the third book as she had let a friend borrow it. The third one ended up being the one that took me the longest to finish - five days.)

From here, I will likely continue reading Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder, a novel on the history of philosophy that will be my primary text for a philosophy class I will teach next year. That should take me through to the end of the month, at which point, I will start reading the second of the Hugo novels I plan to tackle this year, Oxford World's Classics edition of Notre-Dame de Paris (more commonly known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame), translated by Alban Krailsheimer.

Just what I look for in a novel - partial nudity on the cover!

In doing research into translations of the novel, I lighted upon Krailsheimer's, which is widely regarded to be among the best modern translations of the work, which - naturally - appealed to me. When reading a work translated from the original language, one wants as much of the author's original voice as possible. So much gets lost in translation from one language to another - a lot of nuance, subtlety, and wordplay - that it is essential for a translator to retain as much of that as possible. I've been lucky so far to find great modern translations of some wonderful classic novels (I believe modern translations are also important as is tends to be more accessible to a modern audience), and Krailsheimer's looks to be just what I'm looking for!

As always, tweets and blog posts will round out my reading of the novel and help to inform you, my occasional readership (I have no delusions about my online popularity - or lack thereof), of the progress I am making with the book.

So, there it is. The long-awaited "I've-finished-Les-Miserables" post. Hope you enjoyed it! See you in July!

A Final Hesitation

"It is nothing to keep my peace? To keep silent is simple? No, it is not simple. There is a silence that lies and my lie, and my fraud, and my unworthiness, and my cowardice, and my treachery, and my crime, I would have drunk drop by drop, I would have spit it out, then drunk again, I would have finished at midnight and begun again at noon, and my 'good morning' would have lied, and my 'good night,' too, and I would have slept on it, and eaten it with my bread, and I would have looked Cosette in the face, and answered the smile of the angel with the smile of the damned, and I would have been a detestable imposter! What for? To be happy. To be happy, I! Have I any right to be happy? I am outside of life, monsieur."

- Jean Valjean (V.7.i)

Day Count: 153

Page Count: 1428

I stand at a threshold of a new achievement - with only 98% of the novel finished, I am decidedly a day away from completing Les Miserables. By the end of this week, that is to say, two days into the month of June, I will have finished an endeavor that I began at the first of this year. It's an exciting time, to say the least.

Still, I find myself confronted with a feeling I've not felt since I finished War & Peace last May. There is, welling up within me, a hesitation - something that holds me in a sort of suspended animation. Almost limbo. I don't want it to end. As the novel winds down, the former convict Jean Valjean reveals his true identity to Marius, who has married Cosette. After this realization Valjean begins to distance himself from the couple so as not to taint their happiness with his depravity (the discussion of which precipitated the quote that started this post).

As Valjean works to distance himself from Cosette, I find myself irrevocably drawn closer to him. As the pages to complete dwindles, I find that I can't bring myself to close that gap. I will miss these characters and I will miss that world. Tomorrow, I will post some concluding thoughts about the world of Les Miserables, but for now, I just want to revel in this brief moment of hesitation and expectation. It's quite the place to be...

Until next time...