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!

In Which Stephen Plans His Hiatus and Reflects on the Meaning of LES MISERABLES

"The book the reader has now before his eyes  - from one end to the other, in its whole and in its details, whatever the omissions, the exceptions, or the faults - is the march from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from the false to the true, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from brutality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from nothingness to God. Starting point: matter; goal: the soul. Hydra at the beginning, angel at the end."

- Victor Hugo (V.1.xx)

Day Count: 148

Page Count: 1305

Had I stuck to my initial "ten-pages-a-day" plan that I started with at the beginning of the year, I'd have finished reading Les Miserables yesterday. As it stands, I managed to fall a bit behind with the stress of finishing out the school year and still have somewhere around 160 pages left between myself and the finale. My goal is to have the novel finished before mid-June, which seems a completely realistic goal.

The best part about being a teacher is having several weeks off in the summer, time I plan to use to get some reading done. After Les Miserables, I plan to take a one month hiatus from the works of Hugo (returning in July to read Notre-Dame-de-Paris a.k.a. The Hunchback of Notre Dame), during which time I'll likely tackle The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins (if for no other reason than to find out what all the fuss is about). No, it's not "great literature" and I will likely not be blogging or tweeting through my reading of those books, but - the way I figure it - when you finish a meal, you get dessert, something light, sweet, and not necessarily nutritious, as a capper for your meal. The way I see it, The Hunger Games is my slice of cheesecake after the multi-course dinner that was Les Miserables.

The quote I used to start this post is taken from the first book of Volume Five (the volume named after the chief protagonist of Les Miserables, Jean Valjean) in the midst of a discussion of the need for Progress. As soon as I read it, I recognized it as Hugo's statement of purpose, something akin to a thesis statement for his novel as a whole.

Renown more in France for his activism and poetry than his novels, Hugo spoke out against the debasement of the poor in Paris that occurred even in his lifetime. In fact, every character in the novel fits into the category (at one time or another throughout the narrative) as one of "The Wretched Poor," which, coincidentally, is one of the American translations of the title Les Miserables.  Valjean was a convict; Javert, the son of two gypsy criminals; Fantine is forced into prostitution to care for her daughter; Cosette, that daughter grows up unloved and uncared for until meeting Valjean; the Thenardiers are greedy and deceptive, but live in abject poverty; Marius rejects his wealthy grandfather for the life of freedom, that is to say, the life of the impoverished. By making the poor characters that were both (a.) accurately poor (Hugo caught a lot of flack for allowing certain characters - i.e. Thenardier and his gang - to speak in argot, the language of the convict) and (b.) undeniably human, Hugo is able to open people's eyes - both then and now - to the realities of the life of the poor.

In fact, the only character in Les Miserables who was not at one time poor was the Bishop of Digne who, it will be remembered, stands out to my mind as one of the most ideally Christian characters I've ever encountered in literature. While the Bishop is a man of some means (by virtue of his position), he gives all that he has to those who fit the category of "The Wretched Poor." His house he gives to the neighboring hospital, the trappings of his parish he gives to a band of rebels, and - perhaps most famously - he gives his silverware and candlesticks to a former convict by the name of Jean Valjean. It seems clear - even from the beginning - that the Bishop of Digne is the 'ideal' to which the reader ought to desire to aspire, just as Jean Valjean does. The novel then depicts Valjean's ascent to that ideal - transforming "from evil to good." Would that we all were so motivated to aspire so highly.

At any rate, those are my thoughts for today. See you next time!

Coming in January: Hurdling Hugo

I've been remiss in updating this blog and, for that, I apologize. Indeed, since my life has picked up with the busy-ness of late, it's been difficult not only to find the time to update, but also to continue reading Tolstoy. While my neglect and my schedule HAVE diminished any possibility of getting through a fourth Tolstoy text before the year is over, I still hold out hope that I will be able to finish the book of his short stories that I began a couple months back. I've finished "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and moved onto "The Kreutzer Sonata," which is a downright interesting story with echoes of Plato's Symposium and hints toward Capote's In Cold Blood. Sometime soon, I will have to review them for the blog here.

However, in the meantime, I have an announcement to make. It was a little over a year ago that I announced my intention to read Tolstoy's classic War and Peace. From that simple announcement, a journey of two novels, several short stories, and a literary awakening sprang forth. I came to a realization before I had even finished War and Peace that there were a great many fantastic works of fiction in this world and so few that I had ever actually bothered to read. I resolved myself then and there to change that for myself. I wanted to read those books, to better myself in the process, and discover why these classics are considered 'classics' in the first place.

After I had dedicated a year or my life to the work of Tolstoy, I challenged myself to dedicate each and every new year of my life (for as long as I'm able at least) to reading one classic author and their best-known and best-loved work. There came to be so many great authors that began to vie for their place on my bookshelf and in my hands: Joyce, Dumas, Dostoyevsky, Cervantes, the Brontes, Dickens, and many, many others. It was difficult to decide where to go next.

However, after giving it a goodly amount of thought, I found myself coming back to one author (and, indeed, one text) over and over again. For most of my young life (since my junior year of high school if I'm quite honest), one story has followed me. I first experienced it as a film starring Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, and Uma Thurman, then as a musical written by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil. About the only way I have NOT experienced the story of Les Misérables was the way it was originally intended to be experienced - by reading the original novel.

So, my main story was set and, with it, my author for 2012: Victor Hugo. Reading massive novels did not really fill me with feelings of dread and apprehension like they did before I started reading War and Peace. As such, tackling a novel even bigger than that epic tome is not as daunting as it once might have been. In fact, I find the prospect rather exciting. So exciting, in fact, that I'm not ending the fun and excitement there! I've decided that, when I finish Les Mis, I'll take to reading Hugo's original masterpiece, The Hunchback of Notre Dame a.k.a. Notre Dame de Paris (provided, of course, that I can find a good translation of it).

While I am still excited about the prospect of finishing Tolstoy, I am anxiously anticipating beginning this new chapter in my literary journey! I would welcome any and all of you who have not read Les Mis (or even those of you who HAVE) to read it with me! I would love to discuss it with you as I go!