I too felt the disconnect, putting it down to both the length of time (12yrs) it took to write it, and the political upheaval (including his own exile from France) at the time. It's amazing to think of how he was able to produce something so profound under those conditions.
Les Miserables was a significant inspiration for the classic TV show The Fugitive, which in turn was a significant inspiration for my Substack. I highly recommend the TV series, it's one of the greatest of all time, but in binge-watching it on DVD in months rather than weekly over broadcast over years it did become kind of exasperating and comical that Dr. Richard Kimble so consistently put his safety at risk to rescue and redeem others. At some point, it becomes "leave the damsel in distress already, go drink a mai tai."
It's probably my favorite television show from the 60s, and that's saying a lot considering how much I love Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, and The Monkees. David Janssen was an incredible lead and you really feel like you're seeing him think and strategize in real time. The fourth season of the show shot in color and doesn't have as much of the noir-ish atmosphere of the black and white first three years, and the finale is somewhat underwhelming, but overall just an incredible series well worth visiting or revisiting.
One of the many great things about Les Miserables is its endless quotableness. I just finished a hiking trip in Mexico, during which Hugo's lines popped into my head (paraphrased from memory) “to travel is to be born and die, as a new world continually opens before one and disappears in one’s wake.” I have a file of great Les Miserables lines on my computer.
Man ALIVE you read so much faster than me! I'm savoring this thing along with several others at the same time, but this one I'm savoring more than almost any other book in my life so far. I haven't written my piece on the bishop yet, but I have thought a lot about the Man of Law in Javert and the Man of Grace in Valjean.
Specifically how, mindful of the current crises, we only get to pick one track. We can't simply hop back and forth at a whim — especially not if we delusionally think appealing to a God of grace will justify our ruthlessness as Men of Law:
I love your discussion with Henry so much, and would read many more, but I also don't want a bunch of podcast appearances to get in the way of you reading more big books. But if you start a podcast where you just talk about the classics, I'd definitely listen!
Re: English majors, reading Chaucer in Middle English was probably the most valuable thing I got out of my major. My professor was also really into Beowulf and making a new translation of it with students in addition to assigning us side by side translations of The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (which I remember feeling was too long with too many long asides, kind of like Don Quixote, though at least the poetry is consistently beautiful).
Re: classics education in general, that actually it's more valuable for English speakers to read and translate Anglo-Saxon writing than to read Greek and Latin. Not saying that forcing everyone to read Greek and Latin is worse than forcing everyone to take math and science and social science classes to be "well-rounded," but if we're going to say that humanism and a liberal education means engaging with the classics and translating them (as we did in the 19th century and before), I think Middle and Old English is probably more valuable for most people to get at what our language really means.
The worst part of an English major is taking a class based on 17th-19th century British literature where the professor could have just assigned novels and poetry in the 19th century, but instead focused nearly all of the class on the 17th and 18th century, including reading the entirety of Life of Samuel Johnson and reading a ton of Pope, Byron, and Swift. I think this was her area of research interest, and she just never managed to convey to me (at 18) why it was interesting or beautiful or important. This was the first English class I ever took in college because I didn't take a 101 class, and it almost convinced me to be a history major instead.
Have you read Dante with the Italian side by side? I'm doing it now and it's giving me the same feeling as it did with Chaucer, this feeling that it opens up everything else in the world of English by seeing how this total genius is thinking through moral and ethical issues and framing them in a narrative and also paying attention to the music of his language the whole time. I also love how much Dante seems to realize he's a genius and worry about how pride is a sin that's going to at least send him to purgatory. To speak the idea that conservatives should actually be wary of the Divine Comedy, there's just so much in the book that's anti-authority: the popes shoved in the ground with their feet burning for selling indulgences, etc.
Me and Henry have a great rapport. I love talking with him.
Agree 100 percent that more people should learn middle english and anglo saxon! These languages have so much to give, relative to the amount of effort they take to learn. It's so much easier to learn AS and ME (compared to Greek and Latin) and the benefit (in terms of coming into direct contact with ancient minds) are very similar.
My man quibble with the musical is that Marius’s grandfather, my favorite character, isn’t in it, but otherwise it nails the book pretty well. I love a cantankerous old man in literature, and usually in life, too.
And I think you’re completely right that many of Hugo’s digressions make the book — the part that got me closest to tears was Hugo telling the reader how much he missed Paris after his exile. I’ll accept the slog through the sewers if it means we get that bit.
After learning the outline in middle school I read it in bits and bits, never cover-to-cover. I figure by now I've read almost all of it although I'm sure there's some chapters I missed. (same deal for Notre Dame de Paris)
Hugo is a fairly suffocating presence in French letters. Not quite as much as Shakespeare in the English-speaking word, but it's a rare young lad who makes it out of high school without being assigned several pieces by him. And Les Misérables is the essential oil of Hugoism, so it's at the core of that. So there's a bit of a backlash against him and it, though it's kind of a reverentious backlash, so to speak (my favorite is Leconte de Lisle's judgement : "Hugo is dumb as the Himalayas").
The hill I'll stand on is that a better traduction of the title would be "the Wretched". In French misérable means both someone who's in a state of misery and someone who's evil and contemptible, and Hugo explicitily picked the title for its double meaning.
Yes I have read a little about Hugo, and it is impressive how highly-regarded he is! It's also amazing that he's equally famous as both a poet and a novelist. It feels like every generation tries to take down Hugo and yet he just keeps rising up again. What an odd figure
A poet and a novelist AND a playwright AND an essayist. It's so overwhelming. Nobody since has been such a totalizing presence and it's probably for the best.
Naomi, when I saw the headline for your post, I assumed it would be about Trump and his inner circle. I have been having 3am anxiety sessions about these things, (here in the UK). How calming it was to read instead this thoughtful and respectful post. Thank you!
Enjoyed how you were able to separate the content of the book from your experience of reading it. I've been trying to articulate my own experience of reading stories, so I've been paying more attention to how you describe your reading experience.
There was a play named "The Bishop's Candlesticks" in my English syllabus, about a convict stealing a bishop's silver candlesticks, and being forgiven when he's caught by the gendarmes. I played the unnamed convict in the play for my school annual day function – on two separate occasions. T'was fun. Today I learned that it was the opening of Les Miserables. Well well.
Cool. I think Victor Hugo may well be the French author which lose the most in translation. His writing is stunning - people may find it too lyrical, but nobody will deny that he is one of the absolute best craftsmen ever of the french language.
The parts on the barricades, poverty and inequalities is also more interesting if you know he took part in political activities, was one of the highly influential public intellectuals of 19th century France, and had to live in exile for a while.
TI agree the sacrificial part is bad (not only Valjean, but also Gavroche, the Thenardier girl that loves Marius, etc.), but that's unfortunately a standard in the 19th century literature, not only in France. Sort of compensated (or worsened?) by all the love that he pours into his characters esp. children.
Well darnit I'm going to have to reread it now. I think I last read it 20 or 30 years ago. I have only a strong impression of that silverware, and a general nighttime atmosphere left.
Ha ha, I first read this book when I was a junior in high school. I remember my English teacher that year asking if anyone had read a longer book than I had (of course, some Asian-American guy had).
Yeah, I have no idea, looking back, I can't recall, but I think it might have just been the printed version of some book versus mine with a higher number of pages. :/
I was incredibly surprised to find that I loved Les Mis. I have never seen the musical (I know someone dreams a dream, or something...) and so it was shocking to find that the book was so capacious. I assumed it would be purely character drama, but Hugo really goes off in so many directions that are somehow all bound together. What sort of people and lives does a certain kind of society produce? What kind of change and redemption is possible for those individuals and the society they live in?
It was borderline Science Fictional in the way that it cared about continental events and political power and infrastructure, and how all of those things were necessary to understanding why these people were as as they were. It seemed to me that Hugo was writing to understand a time of great tumult that he lived through and that was not legible in almost any other way.
Many books that were written more than a century ago read to us as antiquated -- they are from a different time -- but they do not read as historical because they are not interpreting the historical context of the moment they're written in. Middlemarch and Brothers Karamasov, for instance, are more aware of their relationship to recent societal change than the average novel, but they still pale compared to Les Mis in terms of pure scope.
I absolutely adore the digressions. They really place you in the mindset of the times - the references to the Spanish and Greek revolutions, to the contemporary life and politics of France. That's part of why you have the nineteen chapters about Waterloo - he is reflecting on the great battle of his time and how even in its little details it echoes decades later, not least because Napoleon's defeat created his contemporary political situation. And Hugo's concern with even the smallest detail is quite endearing, from the argot and life of street urchins to the individual units at Waterloo. I enjoyed these aspects of it just as much as the wider story beats of Jean Valjean and Javert and Cosette.
I too felt the disconnect, putting it down to both the length of time (12yrs) it took to write it, and the political upheaval (including his own exile from France) at the time. It's amazing to think of how he was able to produce something so profound under those conditions.
Yes I was also impressed that he put it aside for so long!
Good point
Les Miserables was a significant inspiration for the classic TV show The Fugitive, which in turn was a significant inspiration for my Substack. I highly recommend the TV series, it's one of the greatest of all time, but in binge-watching it on DVD in months rather than weekly over broadcast over years it did become kind of exasperating and comical that Dr. Richard Kimble so consistently put his safety at risk to rescue and redeem others. At some point, it becomes "leave the damsel in distress already, go drink a mai tai."
Wow, so is the Fugitive actually good? I've definitely heard of the show but have never considered watching it
It's probably my favorite television show from the 60s, and that's saying a lot considering how much I love Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, and The Monkees. David Janssen was an incredible lead and you really feel like you're seeing him think and strategize in real time. The fourth season of the show shot in color and doesn't have as much of the noir-ish atmosphere of the black and white first three years, and the finale is somewhat underwhelming, but overall just an incredible series well worth visiting or revisiting.
One of the many great things about Les Miserables is its endless quotableness. I just finished a hiking trip in Mexico, during which Hugo's lines popped into my head (paraphrased from memory) “to travel is to be born and die, as a new world continually opens before one and disappears in one’s wake.” I have a file of great Les Miserables lines on my computer.
Man ALIVE you read so much faster than me! I'm savoring this thing along with several others at the same time, but this one I'm savoring more than almost any other book in my life so far. I haven't written my piece on the bishop yet, but I have thought a lot about the Man of Law in Javert and the Man of Grace in Valjean.
Specifically how, mindful of the current crises, we only get to pick one track. We can't simply hop back and forth at a whim — especially not if we delusionally think appealing to a God of grace will justify our ruthlessness as Men of Law:
https://lanceschaubert.substack.com/p/its-javerts-country-now-for-jean
I love your discussion with Henry so much, and would read many more, but I also don't want a bunch of podcast appearances to get in the way of you reading more big books. But if you start a podcast where you just talk about the classics, I'd definitely listen!
Re: English majors, reading Chaucer in Middle English was probably the most valuable thing I got out of my major. My professor was also really into Beowulf and making a new translation of it with students in addition to assigning us side by side translations of The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (which I remember feeling was too long with too many long asides, kind of like Don Quixote, though at least the poetry is consistently beautiful).
Re: classics education in general, that actually it's more valuable for English speakers to read and translate Anglo-Saxon writing than to read Greek and Latin. Not saying that forcing everyone to read Greek and Latin is worse than forcing everyone to take math and science and social science classes to be "well-rounded," but if we're going to say that humanism and a liberal education means engaging with the classics and translating them (as we did in the 19th century and before), I think Middle and Old English is probably more valuable for most people to get at what our language really means.
The worst part of an English major is taking a class based on 17th-19th century British literature where the professor could have just assigned novels and poetry in the 19th century, but instead focused nearly all of the class on the 17th and 18th century, including reading the entirety of Life of Samuel Johnson and reading a ton of Pope, Byron, and Swift. I think this was her area of research interest, and she just never managed to convey to me (at 18) why it was interesting or beautiful or important. This was the first English class I ever took in college because I didn't take a 101 class, and it almost convinced me to be a history major instead.
Have you read Dante with the Italian side by side? I'm doing it now and it's giving me the same feeling as it did with Chaucer, this feeling that it opens up everything else in the world of English by seeing how this total genius is thinking through moral and ethical issues and framing them in a narrative and also paying attention to the music of his language the whole time. I also love how much Dante seems to realize he's a genius and worry about how pride is a sin that's going to at least send him to purgatory. To speak the idea that conservatives should actually be wary of the Divine Comedy, there's just so much in the book that's anti-authority: the popes shoved in the ground with their feet burning for selling indulgences, etc.
Me and Henry have a great rapport. I love talking with him.
Agree 100 percent that more people should learn middle english and anglo saxon! These languages have so much to give, relative to the amount of effort they take to learn. It's so much easier to learn AS and ME (compared to Greek and Latin) and the benefit (in terms of coming into direct contact with ancient minds) are very similar.
My man quibble with the musical is that Marius’s grandfather, my favorite character, isn’t in it, but otherwise it nails the book pretty well. I love a cantankerous old man in literature, and usually in life, too.
And I think you’re completely right that many of Hugo’s digressions make the book — the part that got me closest to tears was Hugo telling the reader how much he missed Paris after his exile. I’ll accept the slog through the sewers if it means we get that bit.
He's in the French original (and has a duet with Marius).
What a great factoid! I would love to have an English version of this song
I’m so glad to hear that! Good to know it was the English version that cut him. Now I know who to be annoyed with
gotta love the power of victor hugo’s imagination, if not his lack of self-restraint
After learning the outline in middle school I read it in bits and bits, never cover-to-cover. I figure by now I've read almost all of it although I'm sure there's some chapters I missed. (same deal for Notre Dame de Paris)
Hugo is a fairly suffocating presence in French letters. Not quite as much as Shakespeare in the English-speaking word, but it's a rare young lad who makes it out of high school without being assigned several pieces by him. And Les Misérables is the essential oil of Hugoism, so it's at the core of that. So there's a bit of a backlash against him and it, though it's kind of a reverentious backlash, so to speak (my favorite is Leconte de Lisle's judgement : "Hugo is dumb as the Himalayas").
The hill I'll stand on is that a better traduction of the title would be "the Wretched". In French misérable means both someone who's in a state of misery and someone who's evil and contemptible, and Hugo explicitily picked the title for its double meaning.
Yes I have read a little about Hugo, and it is impressive how highly-regarded he is! It's also amazing that he's equally famous as both a poet and a novelist. It feels like every generation tries to take down Hugo and yet he just keeps rising up again. What an odd figure
A poet and a novelist AND a playwright AND an essayist. It's so overwhelming. Nobody since has been such a totalizing presence and it's probably for the best.
Naomi, when I saw the headline for your post, I assumed it would be about Trump and his inner circle. I have been having 3am anxiety sessions about these things, (here in the UK). How calming it was to read instead this thoughtful and respectful post. Thank you!
Glad you liked it! Yes, Trump is making too anxious. Cannot imagine how I would post about him.
Really enjoyed this. And in the podcast I love that you champion James Fenimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott. I too found them so fun to read.
They are incredible! Glad you liked this.
Enjoyed how you were able to separate the content of the book from your experience of reading it. I've been trying to articulate my own experience of reading stories, so I've been paying more attention to how you describe your reading experience.
There was a play named "The Bishop's Candlesticks" in my English syllabus, about a convict stealing a bishop's silver candlesticks, and being forgiven when he's caught by the gendarmes. I played the unnamed convict in the play for my school annual day function – on two separate occasions. T'was fun. Today I learned that it was the opening of Les Miserables. Well well.
Cool. I think Victor Hugo may well be the French author which lose the most in translation. His writing is stunning - people may find it too lyrical, but nobody will deny that he is one of the absolute best craftsmen ever of the french language.
The parts on the barricades, poverty and inequalities is also more interesting if you know he took part in political activities, was one of the highly influential public intellectuals of 19th century France, and had to live in exile for a while.
TI agree the sacrificial part is bad (not only Valjean, but also Gavroche, the Thenardier girl that loves Marius, etc.), but that's unfortunately a standard in the 19th century literature, not only in France. Sort of compensated (or worsened?) by all the love that he pours into his characters esp. children.
Well darnit I'm going to have to reread it now. I think I last read it 20 or 30 years ago. I have only a strong impression of that silverware, and a general nighttime atmosphere left.
Ha ha, I first read this book when I was a junior in high school. I remember my English teacher that year asking if anyone had read a longer book than I had (of course, some Asian-American guy had).
No this isn't right! What book could possibly be longer than this????
Yeah, I have no idea, looking back, I can't recall, but I think it might have just been the printed version of some book versus mine with a higher number of pages. :/
I was incredibly surprised to find that I loved Les Mis. I have never seen the musical (I know someone dreams a dream, or something...) and so it was shocking to find that the book was so capacious. I assumed it would be purely character drama, but Hugo really goes off in so many directions that are somehow all bound together. What sort of people and lives does a certain kind of society produce? What kind of change and redemption is possible for those individuals and the society they live in?
It was borderline Science Fictional in the way that it cared about continental events and political power and infrastructure, and how all of those things were necessary to understanding why these people were as as they were. It seemed to me that Hugo was writing to understand a time of great tumult that he lived through and that was not legible in almost any other way.
Many books that were written more than a century ago read to us as antiquated -- they are from a different time -- but they do not read as historical because they are not interpreting the historical context of the moment they're written in. Middlemarch and Brothers Karamasov, for instance, are more aware of their relationship to recent societal change than the average novel, but they still pale compared to Les Mis in terms of pure scope.
Agree! There is something very science-fictional about these types of books--they really have such an urge to understand.
I absolutely adore the digressions. They really place you in the mindset of the times - the references to the Spanish and Greek revolutions, to the contemporary life and politics of France. That's part of why you have the nineteen chapters about Waterloo - he is reflecting on the great battle of his time and how even in its little details it echoes decades later, not least because Napoleon's defeat created his contemporary political situation. And Hugo's concern with even the smallest detail is quite endearing, from the argot and life of street urchins to the individual units at Waterloo. I enjoyed these aspects of it just as much as the wider story beats of Jean Valjean and Javert and Cosette.
The digressions really make it.