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imwaldeI FINALLY finished Les trois mousquetaires, all 874 pages of it. What I mostly feel is relief, which is kind of a shame, given how entertaining the book could be. But, damn, I was reading that for fucking ever.
I must have started reading this book in early summer, because I know I was reading it on the 4th of July. I feel like I can finally move on with my life.
I really like Dumas, I do, but duuuuuuuuuuuude, did he need an editor. The flow and momentum of the book are completely uneven. I mean, I know that he was paid by the word, and it was serialized and that he didn't have the previous chapters in front of him, but still. (Sidenote: Dumas was not one to fact check, and my edition had completely hilarious footnotes which would point out inaccuracies, both historical and in relation to his own story. Like, there's this one chick whose first name changes every other chapter. A letter which crops up several times in the book has its date change every time, sometimes years different than its previous date. Heh.) Every couple hundred pages the momentum would come to a screeching halt for a hundred pages or so, and it took dedication to plough through. And then he would remember how to be entertaining, and then I'd tear through a dozen chapters, and then the momentum would slow, lather, rinse, repeat.
Thing is, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo did not have this problem. It's 600 pages longer, and I read it in significantly less time. It certainly had some subplots that could have been excised, but nothing like the 200 or so pages of deadweight that clogs up LTM. I think it's because there's a driving force behind LCdMC that I didn't feel in LTM. Namely, Dantès' drive for revenge propels the whole book. His revenge scenarios are brewing for years (and hundreds of pages) but the reader knows a payoff is coming (and it's going to be oh-so delicious!) so the long set up only ups the tension.
LTM has no such driving force behind the story. It's a series of episodes. Very entertaining and funny episodes, but still. I mean, I guess, nominally, d'Artagnan is searching for Mme de Bonacieux the whole time. Except...he's totally not. She's forgotten about for, like, 400 pages. Her kidnapping(s) is (are) exciting, but then...nothing. He's got plenty of time to fuck Ketty and Milady, fight some enemies, and periodically heaves a sigh about Mme de B, but really, that can hardly count as driving force. D'Artagnan, sweetie, you want to talk about a man obsessed with finding the woman he loves, read some Balzac, because you do not hold a candle to either Montriveau from Le Duchesse de Langeais or Henri from La Fille aux yeux d'or.
I honestly can't tell if the historical setting was supposed to give a sense of impetus that I didn't pick up on, because yes, while I studied European history, my knowledge extends to the fact that Richelieu was the power behind the throne of Louis XIII and that England was the enemy of France and Catholics and Protestants hated each other. If the names of all the Counts were supposed to alert me to something, it didn't work. Was I supposed to know all about the siege of La Rochelle, like it was important? Was the date supposed to alert me that Buckingham was going to die? Was that supposed to be the tension? Maybe Dumas intended for his readers to be in suspense because they would have known the outcome of the Louis XIII/Anne of Austria/Duke of Buckingham scenario, but I didn't. Dunno.
My favorite character, by far, was Milady. Femme fatale par excellence. There's a reason it's the French who coined the term for the concept of a femme fatale, and I hope it's her. She's AWESOME. She seduces 2 out of 4 of the musketeers, a Baron, a Count (or Duke or something), a priest, a Puritan, and many, many others. Body count needs two hands! Fantastic! A deliciously evil bitch. Dumas clearly has so much fun writing her. Her captivity and seduction of Felton are probably my favorite part. Dumas completely ignores the musketeers for 10 chapters in a row, and that's really when the book picks up steam and carries it right through the end. (Incidentally, I'm no criminal expert, but I'm thinking I wouldn't have had the young, repressed, ardent Puritan guard the woman who can and does seduce everybody.)
Also? What the hell was up with the characterization of Mme de Bonacieux at the end? I mean, all of a sudden she's some completely naïve, guileless innocent. Uh, what the fuck?! What happened to the saavy, court-intrigue-involved Mme de Bonacieux of the first half of the book?! She wasn't a femme fatale or a mastermind or anything, but she didn't trust d'Artagnan at first, and was using her husband, and saw how d'Artagnan could serve her ends, and figured out how to serve the Queen. I mean, she was enough of a threat to have the Cardinal lock her away. But at the end in the convent it's like she's straight off the turnip truck. Annoying!
It may not be coming across, but I really did enjoy the book. In some ways, I just wish I had known better what I was getting into. If someone had said, "the book is damn entertaining with the humor and the seduction and the macho posturing and the man love and the sword fighting and the court intrigue, but be aware that it's going to slow waaaaaaaaay down a couple times, but stick with it, because it picks back up again!" I think I would have read this a lot faster. I'm just annoyed it took me so long, because I'm way behind on my reading for this year. I've only read 11 books this year, and that's just not right. That's very sad, and there's such a huge stack of books I mean to read, and I thought I would have read them already. Hmph.
Anyway, know what you are getting into if you decide to read it. Maybe the English goes faster? Don't know. The French, for those of you this applies to, is not difficult, provided you can passively identify the passé simple and all its forms. There are some past imperfect subjunctives forms that I literally could not form if the fate of the world were at stake, but as long as you can be, "Ok, that's from faire or prendre or whatever," you'll be fine. And if you don't know a word, chances are it's a type of fabric. (Dear Dumas, I know you were paid by the word at all, but could you knock it off with the descriptions of the brocade of the tunics? Thanks! love, Molly)
Here's a selection of choice quotes:
The narrator, about the domestic power dynamic of the Bonacieux house: "Un homme de cinquante ans ne tient pas longtemps rancune à une femme de vingt-trois." (A man of fifty does not stay angry long at woman of twenty-three.) -- Ha!
Milady, to a lover who has not answered her letters because unbeknownst to her, d'Artargnan has intercepted the letters: "Voilà la troisième fois que je vous écris pour vous dire que je vous aime. Prenez garde que je ne vous écrive une quatrième pour vous dire que je vous déteste." (This is the third time I am writing to you to tell you that I love you. Take care I do not write you a fourth time to tell you I hate you.) -- Hee hee hee hee. Awesome. My favorite line.
Felton, to Milady, whom he has been warned is a dangerous criminal, and whom he is charged with guarding: "Ou vous êtes un démon, continua Felton, ou le baron, mon bienfaiteur, mon père, est un monstre. Je vous connais depuis quatre jours, je l'aime depuis dix ans, lui; je puis donc hésiter entre vous deux: ne vous effrayez pas de ce que je vous dis, j'ai besoin d'être convaincu." (Either you are a demon, continued Felton, or the Baron, my benefactor, my [figurative] father, is a monster. I've known you for four days, I've loved him for ten years. I can, therefore, hesitate [to make a choice] between you two. Don't be afraid at what I say, I just need to be convinced.) -- Hee hee heh. Poor Felton, you dumb shit. Really, you are so epically stupid, it's just hilarious. Heh.
The narrator about Felton, to whom Milady has just told a load of bullshit about how she came to be branded (with a fleur de lis) as a criminal, and even better, ripped off her shirt to show him the brand: "Pâle, immobile, écrasé par cette révélation effroyante, ébloui par la beauté surhumaine de cette femme que se dévoilait à lui avec une impudeur qu'il trouve sublime, il finit par tomber à genoux devant elle comme faisaient les premiers chrétiens devant ces pures et saintes martyrs que la persécution des empereurs livrait dans le cirque à la sanguinaire lubricité des populaces. La flétrissure disparut, la beauté seule resta." (Pale, unable to move, crushed by this frightening revelation, blown away by the superhuman beauty of this woman who unveiled herself with an immodesty he found sublime, he ended up falling to his knees in front of her as the first Christians did before the pure and saintly martyrs the persecution of the emperors delivered to the arena for the bloody debauchery of the populace. The brand disappeared, only the beauty remained.) -- HA! That's what happens when you flash a Puritan! Poor repressed little Felton. He never stood a chance.
The narrator about Felton, whom Milady just totally fucked, alas for him not literally, and essentially left for dead: "Il pâlit, porta la main à son cœur, qui se brisait, et comprit toute la trahison." (He turned pale, touched his hand to his heart that was breaking, and understood the betrayal in its entirety.) -- Beautiful sentence. But, sniff! Awwwww. Sad. Poor dumb fuck. There's a reason they're called femmes fatales, you know.
I must have started reading this book in early summer, because I know I was reading it on the 4th of July. I feel like I can finally move on with my life.
I really like Dumas, I do, but duuuuuuuuuuuude, did he need an editor. The flow and momentum of the book are completely uneven. I mean, I know that he was paid by the word, and it was serialized and that he didn't have the previous chapters in front of him, but still. (Sidenote: Dumas was not one to fact check, and my edition had completely hilarious footnotes which would point out inaccuracies, both historical and in relation to his own story. Like, there's this one chick whose first name changes every other chapter. A letter which crops up several times in the book has its date change every time, sometimes years different than its previous date. Heh.) Every couple hundred pages the momentum would come to a screeching halt for a hundred pages or so, and it took dedication to plough through. And then he would remember how to be entertaining, and then I'd tear through a dozen chapters, and then the momentum would slow, lather, rinse, repeat.
Thing is, Le Comte de Monte-Cristo did not have this problem. It's 600 pages longer, and I read it in significantly less time. It certainly had some subplots that could have been excised, but nothing like the 200 or so pages of deadweight that clogs up LTM. I think it's because there's a driving force behind LCdMC that I didn't feel in LTM. Namely, Dantès' drive for revenge propels the whole book. His revenge scenarios are brewing for years (and hundreds of pages) but the reader knows a payoff is coming (and it's going to be oh-so delicious!) so the long set up only ups the tension.
LTM has no such driving force behind the story. It's a series of episodes. Very entertaining and funny episodes, but still. I mean, I guess, nominally, d'Artagnan is searching for Mme de Bonacieux the whole time. Except...he's totally not. She's forgotten about for, like, 400 pages. Her kidnapping(s) is (are) exciting, but then...nothing. He's got plenty of time to fuck Ketty and Milady, fight some enemies, and periodically heaves a sigh about Mme de B, but really, that can hardly count as driving force. D'Artagnan, sweetie, you want to talk about a man obsessed with finding the woman he loves, read some Balzac, because you do not hold a candle to either Montriveau from Le Duchesse de Langeais or Henri from La Fille aux yeux d'or.
I honestly can't tell if the historical setting was supposed to give a sense of impetus that I didn't pick up on, because yes, while I studied European history, my knowledge extends to the fact that Richelieu was the power behind the throne of Louis XIII and that England was the enemy of France and Catholics and Protestants hated each other. If the names of all the Counts were supposed to alert me to something, it didn't work. Was I supposed to know all about the siege of La Rochelle, like it was important? Was the date supposed to alert me that Buckingham was going to die? Was that supposed to be the tension? Maybe Dumas intended for his readers to be in suspense because they would have known the outcome of the Louis XIII/Anne of Austria/Duke of Buckingham scenario, but I didn't. Dunno.
My favorite character, by far, was Milady. Femme fatale par excellence. There's a reason it's the French who coined the term for the concept of a femme fatale, and I hope it's her. She's AWESOME. She seduces 2 out of 4 of the musketeers, a Baron, a Count (or Duke or something), a priest, a Puritan, and many, many others. Body count needs two hands! Fantastic! A deliciously evil bitch. Dumas clearly has so much fun writing her. Her captivity and seduction of Felton are probably my favorite part. Dumas completely ignores the musketeers for 10 chapters in a row, and that's really when the book picks up steam and carries it right through the end. (Incidentally, I'm no criminal expert, but I'm thinking I wouldn't have had the young, repressed, ardent Puritan guard the woman who can and does seduce everybody.)
Also? What the hell was up with the characterization of Mme de Bonacieux at the end? I mean, all of a sudden she's some completely naïve, guileless innocent. Uh, what the fuck?! What happened to the saavy, court-intrigue-involved Mme de Bonacieux of the first half of the book?! She wasn't a femme fatale or a mastermind or anything, but she didn't trust d'Artagnan at first, and was using her husband, and saw how d'Artagnan could serve her ends, and figured out how to serve the Queen. I mean, she was enough of a threat to have the Cardinal lock her away. But at the end in the convent it's like she's straight off the turnip truck. Annoying!
It may not be coming across, but I really did enjoy the book. In some ways, I just wish I had known better what I was getting into. If someone had said, "the book is damn entertaining with the humor and the seduction and the macho posturing and the man love and the sword fighting and the court intrigue, but be aware that it's going to slow waaaaaaaaay down a couple times, but stick with it, because it picks back up again!" I think I would have read this a lot faster. I'm just annoyed it took me so long, because I'm way behind on my reading for this year. I've only read 11 books this year, and that's just not right. That's very sad, and there's such a huge stack of books I mean to read, and I thought I would have read them already. Hmph.
Anyway, know what you are getting into if you decide to read it. Maybe the English goes faster? Don't know. The French, for those of you this applies to, is not difficult, provided you can passively identify the passé simple and all its forms. There are some past imperfect subjunctives forms that I literally could not form if the fate of the world were at stake, but as long as you can be, "Ok, that's from faire or prendre or whatever," you'll be fine. And if you don't know a word, chances are it's a type of fabric. (Dear Dumas, I know you were paid by the word at all, but could you knock it off with the descriptions of the brocade of the tunics? Thanks! love, Molly)
Here's a selection of choice quotes:
The narrator, about the domestic power dynamic of the Bonacieux house: "Un homme de cinquante ans ne tient pas longtemps rancune à une femme de vingt-trois." (A man of fifty does not stay angry long at woman of twenty-three.) -- Ha!
Milady, to a lover who has not answered her letters because unbeknownst to her, d'Artargnan has intercepted the letters: "Voilà la troisième fois que je vous écris pour vous dire que je vous aime. Prenez garde que je ne vous écrive une quatrième pour vous dire que je vous déteste." (This is the third time I am writing to you to tell you that I love you. Take care I do not write you a fourth time to tell you I hate you.) -- Hee hee hee hee. Awesome. My favorite line.
Felton, to Milady, whom he has been warned is a dangerous criminal, and whom he is charged with guarding: "Ou vous êtes un démon, continua Felton, ou le baron, mon bienfaiteur, mon père, est un monstre. Je vous connais depuis quatre jours, je l'aime depuis dix ans, lui; je puis donc hésiter entre vous deux: ne vous effrayez pas de ce que je vous dis, j'ai besoin d'être convaincu." (Either you are a demon, continued Felton, or the Baron, my benefactor, my [figurative] father, is a monster. I've known you for four days, I've loved him for ten years. I can, therefore, hesitate [to make a choice] between you two. Don't be afraid at what I say, I just need to be convinced.) -- Hee hee heh. Poor Felton, you dumb shit. Really, you are so epically stupid, it's just hilarious. Heh.
The narrator about Felton, to whom Milady has just told a load of bullshit about how she came to be branded (with a fleur de lis) as a criminal, and even better, ripped off her shirt to show him the brand: "Pâle, immobile, écrasé par cette révélation effroyante, ébloui par la beauté surhumaine de cette femme que se dévoilait à lui avec une impudeur qu'il trouve sublime, il finit par tomber à genoux devant elle comme faisaient les premiers chrétiens devant ces pures et saintes martyrs que la persécution des empereurs livrait dans le cirque à la sanguinaire lubricité des populaces. La flétrissure disparut, la beauté seule resta." (Pale, unable to move, crushed by this frightening revelation, blown away by the superhuman beauty of this woman who unveiled herself with an immodesty he found sublime, he ended up falling to his knees in front of her as the first Christians did before the pure and saintly martyrs the persecution of the emperors delivered to the arena for the bloody debauchery of the populace. The brand disappeared, only the beauty remained.) -- HA! That's what happens when you flash a Puritan! Poor repressed little Felton. He never stood a chance.
The narrator about Felton, whom Milady just totally fucked, alas for him not literally, and essentially left for dead: "Il pâlit, porta la main à son cœur, qui se brisait, et comprit toute la trahison." (He turned pale, touched his hand to his heart that was breaking, and understood the betrayal in its entirety.) -- Beautiful sentence. But, sniff! Awwwww. Sad. Poor dumb fuck. There's a reason they're called femmes fatales, you know.
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Date: 2005-10-10 07:00 am (UTC)Also, I wrote a paper last year about how Richelieu was really just misunderstood. I tend to get strange crushes on people I research.
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Date: 2005-10-10 07:19 am (UTC)Do you remember swordfighting? There's a lot of that. And Richelieu and Paris and the King and Queen and war with England. All for one, one for all, etc. I just didn't talk about it much because, honestly, when the four musketeers are all together, it's all so familiar. I mean, it's not Dumas' fault that popular culture has taught us the concepts/characters of the musketeers to the extent that those scenes felt familiar, even when I was reading them for the first time. That's the part that everyone knows.
I knew all that from the countless movie adaptations. It was all the other stuff that I didn't know about (ie Milady) that I personally found it more interesting, so I talked about it more. But my focus is in no way proportionate to the number of pages in the book spent on what I talked about compared to pages about the four musketeers drinking/fighting/going on adventures.
I can see why they have tried to film so many versions. And I can see why they fail.
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Date: 2005-10-10 10:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-10 04:07 pm (UTC)With LTM, it's like Dumas had excellent characters and cool/funny episodes in mind for them to kick ass, but them couldn't figure out how to string them together. And I am positive most of that is the serialized nature of the publishing, but that doesn't mean it wasn't annoying.
Yes, you should learn French! Because then you can read French lit, which is awesome. LTM is classic Dumas, where he knows he's being a little over-the-top and cheesy at times, but he's just having so much fun that it comes through in the language. He's probably at his funniest when describing naïve men in love, either d'Artagnan or Felton, because he is just merciless in describing their idiocy.
I mean, the chapter when d'Artagnan sleeps with Milady whom at the time she thinks is her lover, but really d'Artagnan just intercepted the letters and came at the time for the rendez-vous and it's dark and she apparently doesn't notice, is called "La nuit tous les chats sont gris", or "In the night, all cats look gray." Ha! I just KNOW Dumas was cracking himself up with that. (The word "pussy" has the same potential for double entrendre in French as in English, in fact I wonder if that's where we get that from.)
Die französiche Litteratur macht Spaß zum Lesen, deshalb sollst du es lernen! Aber vielleicht macht doch Philosophie Spaß für einen Philosophiehauptfacher, was weiß ich? ;)