The Sacred and the Profane (March Reading)
Apr. 3rd, 2013 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseI finished the second... section? Book? ...of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables (1862), continuing to switch between the Brick and the Gutenberg translation as appropriate. Hugo is not writing in the 20th century novel format, he is expounding his feelings in narrative format. So one reads that
Thanks, Hugo. I'll keep that in mind when I get to your nuns. You know, the child-less, doll-less ones.
Hugo also dislikes symmetry! He dislikes it so much it takes less than a paragraph to explain why!
I must ask whether anyone has investigated the possibility that Hugo is secretly writing Valjean/Fantine kidfic, in his own angsty way.
The monastery digression, like Waterloo, goes on for a very, very long time, as Hugo wrestles with questions of religion, free will, and whether hyperbole might be necessary (always, M. Hugo, always). If Hugo is a stylist, much of that has been lost in translation, but every now and then something succinct and eloquent, makes the jump acrosss the translation chasm. To place the infinity here below in contact, by the medium of thought, with the infinity on high, is called praying. V, Prayer.
Faunchelvant is my new favorite character. Where he goes, slapstick follows.
And later...
Some time later we part with Fauvent, whose pleasure in the triple return on resolving the burial of Mother Crucifixion - repaying Valjean, tricking the new gravedigger Gribier into thinking F. had saved him from a fine, and of course, the convent's gratitude toward its discreet gardener - is hilarious.
Forcahn I must note the minor digression into Valjean's mad wall-climbing skills for the list of useful knowledge any convict of Toulon might reasonably be expected to acquire (IV, The Gropings of Flight). There are two more Convict Knowledge passages: first, the question of Mother Crucifixion's burial leads, in perfect Hugo style, to another chance to display the prisoner's inexhaustible store of plot-useful knowledge, in this case, how to survive being buried alive. And second, where the text says, It will be remembered that [Valjean] knew all sorts of secrets and receipts for agriculture in VIII, A Successful Interrogatory, is my bookmark annotated, JVJ the Aggie. Oh brain.
When the "who needs an editor" conversation comes 'round again, I'm throwing Les Miserables into the ring for Hugo. There's these moments, like the burial of Mother Crucifixion, which are awesome, and these pithy bits about the soul of France buried in "Waterloo", but much of this is obscured by Hugo's fundamental indifference to narrative momentum (my interpretation).
After heroic slogging through Waterloo and the convent, I got bogged down early in the third book and set aside the Brick for a reread that would free up a few brain cells. Well, that was the intent.
I reread The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman) (1995) and it was everything I remembered: breakneck action, plucky protagonist, mind-blowing worldbuilding, stunning cliffhanger. The Golden Compass establishes a world with several interesting deviations from ours - daemons, long-lived witches, the monolithic church, the Svalbard bears' high and inhuman intelligence, Dust, the alethiometer - that each contribute to the sudden yet inevitable climatic twist. The Subtle Knife (1997), second in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, isn't as good: it tries to introduce a host of new characters on top of the first set, with their own attendant sub-plots. Not all of them are well-introducted, and several of them make the reader want to brain Pullman with his own sense of irony. It's not delicious, it's over-salted. Less than 50 pages into The Amber Spyglass (2000) I really wanted a completely different novel, one with about 10 less protagonists. It's okay to tell your "war against Heaven" story from one or two PoVs with the occasional omniscient breakout! In fact, it would evade a lot of problems with the unending enticements of infinite worlds, and the Mother Hangup, and that thing where the Roger thread almost entirely drops out in the second novel and comes back in a half-hearted way in the last book! Not to mention the siren call of the Great Man theory of history in a thematic muddle with the Kingdom of Heaven / Republic of Heaven / Other Republic of Heaven conflict. Also, the witches were awesome in the first novel and sorf of sidelined in the second and third novels, this makes me very sad.
So, His Dark Materials: starts with a bang, gets tripped up in its own themes. I'm still working through The Amber Spyglass, we'll see if I make it through, or do a "good bits" skim.
Continuing the theme of worldbuilding as a strength, Stray Souls (Kate Griffin) (2012) continues to rock the London of her Matthew Swift series, but will be a hard sell for people who aren't familiar with those novels. The protagonist, Sharon Li, barista and addict of self-help books, starts a facebook group and meetup for people with magical "problems" after she starts walking through walls, and gets sucked into solving one of Greater London's latest magical crises. The story's a little too wrapped up in whether Swift is going to pull strings offscene or have a more significant role (spoiler: he does). In this story, I am less concerned about what Swift and the angels are getting up to, because this is supposed to be about Sharon and her Magical Anonymous group. So that was less than awesome. I don't know if I'm parsing something more in the horror genre with urban fantasy sensibilities, or what, but some parts of the novel didn't mix well with over-lunch reading. On the plus side, I liked Sharon, and I like the ongoing theme of city living as grimy and smelly and buying on credit because you have no money, with clean well-kept offices being the exception and often tangled up in some eldritch horror. There's a sequel coming out this year; if Sharon is going to cross paths with the Midnight Mayor, I am pining for Sharon and Penny to hang out. Shaman and apprentice urban sorceress, what could possibly go wrong?
Numbers game: 3 total finished. 1 new, 2 reread; 3 fiction. Les Miz and The Amber Spyglass in process.
"The doll is one of the most imperious needs and, at the same time, one of the most charming instincts of feminine childhood. To care for, to clothe, to deck, to dress, to undress, to redress, to teach, scold a little, to rock, to dangle, to lull to sleep, to imagine that something is some one - therein lies the whole woman's future. While dreaming and chattering, making tiny outfits, and baby clothes, while sewing tiny outfits, and corages and bodices, the child grows into a young girl, the young girl into a big girl, the big girl into a woman. The first child is a continuation of the last doll.
A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children.
- II.3.VIII, The Unpleasantness of Receiving into One's House a Poor Man Who May Be a Rich Man
Thanks, Hugo. I'll keep that in mind when I get to your nuns. You know, the child-less, doll-less ones.
Hugo also dislikes symmetry! He dislikes it so much it takes less than a paragraph to explain why!
Nothing oppresses the heart like symmetry. It is because symmetry is ennui, and ennui is at the very foundation of grief.
- II.3.IX, Thenardier and His Manoeuvres
I must ask whether anyone has investigated the possibility that Hugo is secretly writing Valjean/Fantine kidfic, in his own angsty way.
Nature, a difference of fifty years, had set a profound gulf between Jean Valjean and Cosette; destiny filled in this gulf. Destiny suddenly united and wedded with its irresistible power these two uprooted existences, differing in age, alike in sorrow. One, in fact, complimented the other. Cosette's instinct sought a father, as Jean Valjean's instinct sought a child. To meet was to find each other. At the mysterious moment when their hands touched, they were welded together. When these two souls percieved each other, they recognized each other as necessary to each other, and embraced each other closely.
Taking the words in their most comprehensive and absolute sense, we may say that, separated from every one by the walls of the tomb, Jean Valjean was the widower, and Cosette was the orphan: this situation caused Jean Valjean to become Cosette's father after a celestial fashion.
-II.4.II A Nest for Owl and a Warbler
The monastery digression, like Waterloo, goes on for a very, very long time, as Hugo wrestles with questions of religion, free will, and whether hyperbole might be necessary (always, M. Hugo, always). If Hugo is a stylist, much of that has been lost in translation, but every now and then something succinct and eloquent, makes the jump acrosss the translation chasm. To place the infinity here below in contact, by the medium of thought, with the infinity on high, is called praying. V, Prayer.
Faunchelvant is my new favorite character. Where he goes, slapstick follows.
"Think, Father Fauvent, if she were to work miracles here! What a glory of God for the community! And miracles issue from tombs."
"But, Reverend Mother, if the agent of the sanitary commission-"
"Saint Benoit II, in the matter of sepulchere, resisted Constantine Pogonatus."
"But the commissary of police-"
"Chonodemaire, one of the seven German kings of entered among the Gauls under the Empire of Constantius, expressly recognized the right of nuns to be buried in religion, that is to say, beneath the altar."
"But the inspector from the Prefecture-"
"The world is nothing in the presence of the cross. Martin, the eleventh general of the Carthusians, gave to his order this device: Stat crux dum volvitur orbis."
"Amen," said Fauchelevent, who imperturbably extricated himself in this manner from the dilemma, whenever he heard Latin.
-II.7.VI, The Absolute Goodness of Prayer
And later...
"We have not even the right to give our dust to Jesus Christ! Your sanitary department is a revolutionary invention. God subordinated to the commissary of police; such is the age. Silence, Fauvent!"(Please note the poor man hasn't gotten a word in edgewise in several long paragraphs.)
-II.7.VI, The Absolute Goodness of Prayer
Some time later we part with Fauvent, whose pleasure in the triple return on resolving the burial of Mother Crucifixion - repaying Valjean, tricking the new gravedigger Gribier into thinking F. had saved him from a fine, and of course, the convent's gratitude toward its discreet gardener - is hilarious.
For
cahn I must note the minor digression into Valjean's mad wall-climbing skills for the list of useful knowledge any convict of Toulon might reasonably be expected to acquire (IV, The Gropings of Flight). There are two more Convict Knowledge passages: first, the question of Mother Crucifixion's burial leads, in perfect Hugo style, to another chance to display the prisoner's inexhaustible store of plot-useful knowledge, in this case, how to survive being buried alive. And second, where the text says, It will be remembered that [Valjean] knew all sorts of secrets and receipts for agriculture in VIII, A Successful Interrogatory, is my bookmark annotated, JVJ the Aggie. Oh brain. When the "who needs an editor" conversation comes 'round again, I'm throwing Les Miserables into the ring for Hugo. There's these moments, like the burial of Mother Crucifixion, which are awesome, and these pithy bits about the soul of France buried in "Waterloo", but much of this is obscured by Hugo's fundamental indifference to narrative momentum (my interpretation).
After heroic slogging through Waterloo and the convent, I got bogged down early in the third book and set aside the Brick for a reread that would free up a few brain cells. Well, that was the intent.
I reread The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman) (1995) and it was everything I remembered: breakneck action, plucky protagonist, mind-blowing worldbuilding, stunning cliffhanger. The Golden Compass establishes a world with several interesting deviations from ours - daemons, long-lived witches, the monolithic church, the Svalbard bears' high and inhuman intelligence, Dust, the alethiometer - that each contribute to the sudden yet inevitable climatic twist. The Subtle Knife (1997), second in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, isn't as good: it tries to introduce a host of new characters on top of the first set, with their own attendant sub-plots. Not all of them are well-introducted, and several of them make the reader want to brain Pullman with his own sense of irony. It's not delicious, it's over-salted. Less than 50 pages into The Amber Spyglass (2000) I really wanted a completely different novel, one with about 10 less protagonists. It's okay to tell your "war against Heaven" story from one or two PoVs with the occasional omniscient breakout! In fact, it would evade a lot of problems with the unending enticements of infinite worlds, and the Mother Hangup, and that thing where the Roger thread almost entirely drops out in the second novel and comes back in a half-hearted way in the last book! Not to mention the siren call of the Great Man theory of history in a thematic muddle with the Kingdom of Heaven / Republic of Heaven / Other Republic of Heaven conflict. Also, the witches were awesome in the first novel and sorf of sidelined in the second and third novels, this makes me very sad.
So, His Dark Materials: starts with a bang, gets tripped up in its own themes. I'm still working through The Amber Spyglass, we'll see if I make it through, or do a "good bits" skim.
Continuing the theme of worldbuilding as a strength, Stray Souls (Kate Griffin) (2012) continues to rock the London of her Matthew Swift series, but will be a hard sell for people who aren't familiar with those novels. The protagonist, Sharon Li, barista and addict of self-help books, starts a facebook group and meetup for people with magical "problems" after she starts walking through walls, and gets sucked into solving one of Greater London's latest magical crises. The story's a little too wrapped up in whether Swift is going to pull strings offscene or have a more significant role (spoiler: he does). In this story, I am less concerned about what Swift and the angels are getting up to, because this is supposed to be about Sharon and her Magical Anonymous group. So that was less than awesome. I don't know if I'm parsing something more in the horror genre with urban fantasy sensibilities, or what, but some parts of the novel didn't mix well with over-lunch reading. On the plus side, I liked Sharon, and I like the ongoing theme of city living as grimy and smelly and buying on credit because you have no money, with clean well-kept offices being the exception and often tangled up in some eldritch horror. There's a sequel coming out this year; if Sharon is going to cross paths with the Midnight Mayor, I am pining for Sharon and Penny to hang out. Shaman and apprentice urban sorceress, what could possibly go wrong?
Numbers game: 3 total finished. 1 new, 2 reread; 3 fiction. Les Miz and The Amber Spyglass in process.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-04 03:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-04 03:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-05 04:48 am (UTC)Hugo is totally writing (completely weird) Valjean/Fantine kidfic. It is kind of impossible for me to read that section and not just want them to get together and rescue Cosette and have lots of babies.
FAUCHELEVENT! He is definitely the best! I also love the part where the Reverend Mother congratulates Valjean on being such a great conversationalist despite Fauchelevent not letting him get a word in :)
I vaguely thought the agriculture stuff was supposed to be his peasant background (I think it also comes up as M. Madeleine) but could be wrong?
Oh man, the convent digression was the one that nearly killed my read, even though Waterloo and the sewers are longer and less intrinsically interesting to me -- I think because I knew about them, and I didn't know about the big convent digression...
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-05 05:38 pm (UTC)While a vision of Fantine and Valjean rescuing Cosette and going on to have hundreds of fat children is charming, I also sort of want Hugo's inevitable tragic ending where Fantine's frivolous materialism causes the family's destruction. Because this is Hugo, it will definitely end badly. (Though I would also not be adverse to the slightly less tragic take where Fantine thinks Valjean's lost his fortune and they're contriving an honest living in Paris, and going to services where Valjean's eyes are on God and Fantine's are on the parishioners and Cosette, and at some point there's making out... why am I thinking these thoughts?)
I will not let little digressions about convents and religion stop me. Not when there is Fauchelevent to entertain me!
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-05 08:16 pm (UTC)But okay, yeah, inevitable tragic ending too. That does sound interesting.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-06 01:37 am (UTC)*Innocent whistling*
I would say, blame Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, but honestly neither of them look anything like how I picture Valjean or Fantine when reading the Brick.
BTW, if you want to see what really beautiful critique looks like, try reading HULK VS. TOM HOOPER AND ART OF CINEMATIC AFFECTATION. Every example and digression leads to a spectacular final denouncement. The movie's music and acting tried to crush my heart, and Film Crit Hulk deftly explains why those elements couldn't overcome the power of the lens.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-06 03:28 am (UTC)AHHHHHH THAT LINK IS AWESOME. Wow. Yes. This is, like, all the thinngs that bothered me about the camerawork of the movie but that I didn't have the vocabulary or the understanding to articulate. I loved the movie because it was Les Mis and quite frankly they would have had to do a much worse job for me not to like it, but like you say, it could have really crushed me.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-06 03:40 am (UTC)AND INSTEAD OF PICKING THE MOMENTS TO DO THOSE THINGS HE JUST SHOT THE ENTIRE FUCKING MOVIE IN HAND-HELD, DUTCH-ANGLED, WIDE-ANGLED, HEY-KEY-LIT, CLOSE-UPS WITH ACTORS STARING DIRECTLY INTO THE CAMERA."
After reading that essay, readers understand the vocabulary and Hulk's deep feelings about the deployment of the cinematic techniques the vocabulary represents. It's a thing of beauty.
It's also why the absolute best scenes are Barricade Heaven (can't do a closeup on the entire barricade) and the singing-and-fighting duel. I don't care if it's like a scrap of Dumas transplanted into Les Miz, it keymashes my singing, staging, and actor chemistry buttons.
Ah well, I'm sure someone else will take a stab at Les Miz in another decade or so. Let's hope it's not Chris Columbus (how do you ruin Rent? Let C.C. direct).
(no subject)
Date: 2013-04-06 08:36 pm (UTC)The singing-and-fighting duel was great once I got used to it, I was just taken completely aback :)