Where the Allegory Gets Tedious Quick

The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Wow, this is drag. I almost never give a 1, but this one asked for it. IMO.

It was a self-imposed homework assignment. If it were a novel, I would have DNF'ed it about 50 pages in. The only things I've finished with almost as little interest were Tristram Shandy and Gargantua and Pantagruel. I did like one thing about this--I enjoyed the pencil notations in the margins made by some earnest student. (I imagined a young, serious-minded Chinese-American English major, for some reason, reading this for her degree. The tiny perfect handwriting put me in that mind. It could have been anybody, though.)

The first 60 pages, written by the original poet, are passable. Silly, but okay. The rest, added by another author, just get ridiculous. This silly conceit, of a dreamer imagining a perfect rose he loves and wants to possess, where every character is an allegorical quality like Fair Welcome or Jealousy or whatever, is a slightly amusing look at the difficulties of love. But it is at least mostly on topic. The rest of the work is all over the place. It talks about government and the abuses of corrupt judges; it talks about religion and hypocrites; it retells myths and legends; discusses philosophy and optics; and on and on. The author's point is opaque. In places, the dreamer (the narrator) is relating what a character said, who is at times quoting someone else, and figuring out if the author agrees or disagrees with the claims is about impossible. (Which even the editors of the book I read it from said.) But they give huge speeches that are basically sermons--even called sermons a time or two--and they are so far off topic from anything happening in this dream story that it's just nuts.

I thought something would emerge that interested me. I was wrong. If you like pointless digressions and wild bird-walks away from anything resembling a rational point, this--like Tristram Shandy, probably, and lots of Dickens--is gonna be your jam. (I'll send you my copy.) : ) If you prefer a point, well, here's my point: there is no FOMO to worry about. You are definitely not missing out. Read a better book.

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Where He Should Have Risked It

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Yes. It *is* that good. For real. 5 stars.

I first read this back in 10th grade. Mr. Vanciu (he was awesome) made us do book reports in world history class, and this was one of my choices. Even then, reading it on my own, going into it without a great deal of interest, I liked it. Almost fifty years further on, after enjoying a few different adaptations, I've finally come back to the original (in translation still, obviously), and found it entertaining and engrossing and thought-provoking and touching (and infuriating!) all at once. I'm a big fan of happy endings, but once in a while a really good story can have a sad ending (kinda sad; mostly sad) that still works for my brain and my psyche, and this is one of them.

The language is great. The plot is classic. And the love story is beautifully tragic. (You idiot! Take a risk! Speak to her!) But that's Cyrano. He's brilliant and brave and utterly, immovably stubborn. He loves the beautiful woman, but his appearance prevents him from taking a chance with Roxane. Instead, he puts all of his love and all of his poetry in letters that he sends under Christian's name. He's already handsome; with Cyrano's fine words, his compliments and deep thoughts, Roxane falls completely in love with the young soldier. But it was really the words that won her, not Christian's handsomeness. She has loved the man behind the letters the whole time without knowing it was Cyrano she loved; Cyrano didn't believe Roxane could truly love him until it was too late to matter.

Damn.

Anyway, the updated adaptations are fun, but this doesn't really need any updating. It's perfectly comprehensible as is, and the story does everything it needs to do for a modern audience to totally get it, IMO. Even just reading it, the play works. (I wonder if there's a novelization?) Yes, again, it's that good.

Highly recommended.

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Where Roland Plays His Horn. Eventually.

The Song of Roland by Unknown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Battle of Roncesvals took place in 778. This epic poem of the event comes from maybe two centuries after, give or take, and it can't be relied on to be accurate history, but it serves as a quality literary attempt at telling the story. Honestly, it feels quite foreign to me as a 21st century reader in America, and I suppose that makes sense--I'm not French or Spanish or Catholic or Muslim, and I'm definitely not from the Middle Ages--but it's strange to read the story and just not understand why they do what they do. That's part of what makes this so intriguing and entertaining: trying to understand people from a remote time and place, seeing how they are different and still like us, just the same.

This is an action story, with exaggerated battle scenes like you'd find in King Arthur tales or the Iliad or the Shahnameh or other epics, with one warrior or another wiping out scores of opponents. The army sizes here also have to be wildly exaggerated, but it works in epic like this. The good guys and the bad guys are all heroic in battle, capable of amazing feats, though the Christians are made righteous and the Muslims are slandered horribly. (The poet clearly understood nothing about Islam, even naming Apollo a focus of Muslim worship. The author's errors are as illuminating in their own way of the times and people and general milieu as the stuff he/she/they got right.) In battle, though, even a bad guy can be admired for his heroic feats, and there's a lot of that.

I'll never understand why Roland would rather sacrifice himself and all his troops than blow his horn and call for reinforcements. It's explained, in a way, but I just don't get it. It's just bad tactics, and it's a terrible waste of lives. And the court martial at the end for the traitor--who makes a case for his actions, claiming that Roland deserved it, that his betrayal wasn't treason against the king--ends with thirty of Ganelon's kinsmen being hanged. What? Why?

It's a wild story but entertaining, and brief enough that it's still a good read despite the challenges it poses to a modern reader. The copy I have includes a really good afterword by Guy Gavriel Kay, and he does a good job of putting the poem into perspective for the reader. I recommend getting that version.

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Where We Dig the Secrets out of the Snow

The snow man by George Sand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this novel, and I may have some criticisms, but I thought it did all that it should do. 5 stars.

I have only read one other book by George Sand, and I liked it some. I expected about the same, but this was a lot more to my liking. Set in 18th century Sweden, in a remote manor, it's not the Paris I was expecting. The main character is a likable twenty-something man raised in Italy by his adopted parents, and he has a lot of questions about his past. He's made his own way in the world in a variety of ways, but when the story opens is providing for himself with a puppet theater, and he's scheduled to perform at the manor. Like many such novels, he starts to discover clues to secrets and mysteries in the snowed-in nobleman's retreat, and some of the clues seem to point to his own past.

This could have been a Sir Walter Scott novel, which is my usual yardstick. If you had switched covers, you could easily have fooled me. The historical setting; the very powerful sense of place; the family secrets coming to light; the importance of lawyers and documents and courts; the men and women of honor facing powerful enemies; the positive contributions of minor characters, especially servants and the lowest class of workers; and the feeling of destiny hanging over the whole thing. That's Scott all over. Oh, and like many Scott novels, it's got a real Gothic vibe, with a partly ruined manor across the frozen lake from the new manor with secret rooms and maybe ghosts, and I love it.

(BTW: there are many differences between this and Scott's novels, and I could probably summon a paragraph describing them, but let's just pretend I went to all that trouble. Clearly Sand is her own writer, not a mere imitator, with her own style, and I'm enjoying it.)

Though there's plenty of action here, both of the novel-of-manners type (rich people in drawing rooms type of stuff) as well as the physical kind, including bear hunts, sleigh crashes, and fighting, it isn't packed. Like so many 19th century novels, are long stretches of exposition that modern novels tend not to include, and if you're used to that and expect it, it's all good. (I am. I do. It was.) For example, Christian recounting his life's story to the lawyer, M Goefle, takes a lot of pages. (I counted. About 80. Is that a lot?) It's fine in context, but would be weird in a modern bestseller.

There's a lot of great characters. The rotten earl hosting the Christmas party is a very bad guy and his henchmen are quite dangerous. The good guy has a bunch of people on his side from all walks of life, people ready to lend a hand, and he has a great love interest. The kindly lawyer who becomes Christian's biggest support is really cool, kinda old but up for a lark. And the seeress who hints at solutions to all the secrets is fun (and another nod to Scott). Nice cast.

And I liked the ending.

As always, if this is your thing, you'll like it, and if it isn't, you won't. I liked it. I'm eager for more George Sand, and hope she has more like this.

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Where Figaro Fights the Powers that Be

The Marriage of Figaro by Beaumarchais
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the play, not the opera.

And it's okay. Frothy. All hijinks and mistaken identities and hiding behind furniture.

To be fair, the play deals with some important themes, especially the unearned power and authority of the aristocracy. Figaro is going to marry Suzanne, but the nobleman they both work for wants to sleep with her before Figaro does. He's said it. Everybody knows it. It's gross. In a long speech, Figaro is lamenting a political system that could allow that:

No, Your Lordship, you will not have her, you will not have her! Just because you're a great nobleman, you think you're a great genius! Being an aristocrat, having money, a position in society, holding public office--all that makes a man so arrogant! What have you ever done for all this wealth? You took the trouble to be born and nothing else!

Such language coming just years before the French Revolution, you can see why authorities didn't like it. In fact, in that same long speech, Figaro complains about censorship in the press and theater. But he also complains about women being unfaithful. It's kind of a wide-ranging rant and feels tacked on.

But mostly this is a silly romp. Figaro is getting married; the count has lost interest in his own wife and wants Figaro's; young lovers are getting in trouble; and a number of characters have designs on other characters, to the point that Marceline tries to force Figaro to marry her through appeal to the court but turns out to be his long-lost mother. Ooops! And we just move on. The play is filled with schemes that don't work and tricks that are discovered and lucky coincidences, making the plot such a muddle you're just glad it all gets sorted in the end.

I can imagine this being staged in a clever, witty way, earning laughs, if the direction is really strong, but if they're not careful I think it'd end up just a mess.

I agree about the aristocrats, though. He had a point.

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Where Alceste Doesn't Care What You Think

The Misanthrope by Molière
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I can't quite explain, but I liked it.

If I described this play to myself, including the plot and the characters, I'd expect to hate it. 17th century French verse translated to English--not necessarily promising. And I read Moliere's Tartuffe, and found it not to my taste at all. By all rights I should have disliked this play. But I thought it was entertaining and interesting and thought-provoking.

Alceste is the misanthrope in question. I don't, as a rule, like stories about unlikable people, and he's kind of a jerk, but that didn't throw me. He's a nobleman stuck in a society where everyone compliments everyone else to their face, where flattery is the norm, but most of it is insincere. He's not like that. He hates that. It's strange that he's in love with a young woman, Célimène, who is exactly like that--she is sweet and friendly with everyone, allows all kinds of men to court her, gives and receives flattery at all times, refuses to offer a harsh opinion. She seems to care for Alceste, even though he criticizes her for this and demands she change.

Meanwhile, other women, for whatever reason, are in love with the misanthropic Alceste. He doesn't care. But it creates a number of love triangles.

Another plot point that shows his irascible but honest approach to life is when a powerful man reads a sonnet he wrote and Alceste is very direct, very rude about it. He hates the poem and advises the man to give up writing. To me, that's mean honesty, but it's perfectly consistent with his personality. So yeah, he's a real jerk. Amusingly, the injured man takes him to court over it (I don't know how that's a thing) and wins a settlement because Alceste refuses to apologize or make up in any way. So despite being grumpy and hard to be around, Alceste is the only one who's principled. He's the only one who's honest. I don't normally appreciate that kind of honesty, but I like it here.

When it is revealed at the end via intercepted letters that sweet Célimène is, behind their backs, talking crap about every man who's chasing her, including Alceste, I kinda thought he'd applaud her for it, because she's pretty harsh, using the kind of language he prefers. Nope. That's not how it was received. (If she had said all of these things aloud, in person, even to him, I think he would have been happy about it. Said in secret and revealed by accident didn't work.) He said he'd forgive her anyway if she'd run away with him, since he's wants nothing to do anymore with society, but she won't go.

I would have liked a happier ending, but I think, in the end, everybody's fine. His friend is gonna marry another nice young woman, Célimène is gonna keep having men adore her, and Alceste is gonna go be grouchy in some country home. Maybe he'll meet an overly-direct woman out there, in the imaginary life that happens after the play is over. But it doesn't matter--the message is key here, and I'm fine with that. Be direct and honest. Don't give false praise. Don't keep suitors dangling, leaving them in doubt and wasting everyone's time. Don't pretend to be devoted to a friendship with someone you despise. Don't worry so much about keeping everyone's good opinion.

Quit being such a hypocrite.

All good advice.

Recommended. Now I need a recommendation for a performance of it, preferably in English. I'm gonna go look.

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Where I Offer Molière a Few Notes

Tartuffe by Molière
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Though there are a number of things about this play that I don't appreciate and don't much enjoy, there is enough to like that, even from a 21st Century English-speaking American perspective, I can give a modest nod to Tartuffe and say "Pretty entertaining."

In terms of construction, emerging as it does from its own history and tradition, it has a different organization and approach than I am used to. It's got 5 acts broken into scenes, so that's pretty much the norm, but it doesn't feel like 5 acts; it feels like one long scene. The play takes place all in the same place, the home of the family unfortunate enough to open their doors to the scammer, Tartuffe, and over a very short time. On the page, that comes off as bland, lacking in imagination, but I can't answer for the play as staged. Maybe it works.

Another format kind of issue is the annoying back-and-forth of the dialogue. It didn't resonate with me, and I had to work to try to fit it into my understanding of the work as a whole. Much of the dialogue found throughout, in scene after scene, is simple argument, with the same points repeated again and again in almost identical language. It read as if a rough draft had been left unedited, so much so that I wondered if it was truly a stylistic choice intentionally made (which is the default assumption when reading classics of world literature). The maid especially, arguing with Orgon, the head of the house, says nearly the same thing multiple times. (In much the same way that TV characters hang up without saying goodbye, you seldom find them repeating an argument. There isn't enough time for that, and it would sound weird.) However, considering that this is coming out of a tradition rich with homegrown farce and the broad slapstick of Italian Commedia dell'arte, the angry, snappy, in-your-face dialogue makes more sense. If I could see an audience laughing red in the face with the Dorine's effrontery, I expect it would make more sense than it did on the page. (I assume they laugh. I hope.)

The plot is terribly straightforward. It's all about the family hating having Tartuffe live with them while the father loves him. Every scene is about that central idea, and it's that single-mindedness that makes it feel like a long one-act play. Hiding a friend's subversive materials for him emerges very near the end as a bit of secondary plot, but it would have been so much better to introduce that near the beginning and make a little more of it, IMO.

And so on. The play didn't match my expectations. But it did some things I like.

For one, it pokes religious bigots and hyper-devout hypocrites in the eye. That's good. It got Molière in trouble--a lot of trouble--with religious authorities, and anything that upsets them is good in my book. Too bad we didn't continue down that road.

Also, I liked the ending. The scene with Orgon hiding to eavesdrop on the foolish Tartuffe trying to seduce his wife would make good comedy, I'm sure. And though I didn't love that the problems are solved off-stage by the king, I liked that the bad guy got caught and the good guys (the family, the daughter and her betrothed) all reconciled. A better version of this story (again, IMO) has someone, maybe the maid, producing evidence that convinces the king what was happening, or maybe something is done with the hidden materials that Tartuffe stole--frame him for the damning documents?--but I understand Molière was working with his audience's expectations, not mine. So bummer for me.

Kudos for annoying the religious extremists of his day, and fair play to Dorine, who showed no deference to her bosses at all. Class solidarity.

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Where It's a Sequel and It Isn't

The Forty-Five Guardsmen by Alexandre Dumas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I always enjoy Dumas. Lots of action and intrigue, lots of hiding and sneaking and telling lies, lots of heartbreak, and lots and lots of dialogue--clever, witty, insulting, clowning, railing, arguing, amusing. It's that dialogue that keeps the whole thing rolling forward even though the plot is constructed like a wagon built out of odds and ends with four different-sized wheels.

Not to be taken as criticism.

This is the third (last, I think) of the Valois romances, telling the story of the sons of Catherine de Medici. (Try googling that to see if I'm right--the internet does not have a coherent answer to any questions about his historical novels. I gave up. Then tried again. Then gave up again.)

Okay, yes, it does stumble a little, IMO, in the way it drops and then picks up storylines (like from two books ago) without refreshing our memory before dropping it again. There's a lot of "Is that the woman from the first book? Is that the second guy who was trying to kidnap her? Or someone else?" On the one hand, some of that would work better on a re-read, because my memory is part of the problem, but some of it was just careless plotting. I thought we'd see Henry of Navarre on the throne by the end of the third book based on the plot of the first, but we never quite get there. We see him in book 3, and watch him take a city that had been promised as part of his wife's dowry, but that's the end of his participation. Other characters are brought back (like Diana, who is loved by every man who sees her) and are made the main character for a bit, but then we switch again to the king or Chicot or Henry of Navarre so long I forget she's still out there. It's all entertaining, truly, but Dumas leaves lots of loose ends.

However, it's still fun. I read it like it's vacation in a foreign land where you just experience the place without expectations. We get to watch half a dozen stories zigzagging together, flying apart, stumbling forward at their own pace, without knowing which, if any, will have a full conclusion. If Dumas were here I'd give him some notes--e.g., focus the whole thing on Chicot, cuz he's the best character here, and complete his arc, please--but since he's not, alas, I'll just enjoy it as is.

So--flawed, I would dare say, but still compelling. Still awesome.

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A Classical French Romance

Captain Fracasse by Théophile Gautier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'd never heard of this novel or the author before I took a chance on the book, but I'm glad I did (take a chance, I mean). I liked it quite a bit.

Written in a style similar to Sir Walter Scott or Alexandre Dumas, this historical romance tells the story of an impoverished nobleman, the baron de Sigognac, who who walks away from his crumbling chateau to survive as an actor in a troop, hoping he may find some way to improve his family's fortunes. Along the way, he falls in love with a beautiful, sweet young actress named Isabelle. Though she loves him back, she refuses to consider marrying him as her place in society is too low and would compromise the dignity of his position. He accepts her answer but does not give up hope, and he continues to travel and perform with the troop so that he can be near her.

The actors have some success, but the young woman's beauty draws the attention of an unscrupulous nobleman, Vallombreuse, who tries to seduce her. When she rejects him and de Sigognac defends her honor in a duel, injuring Vallombreuse, he instead attempts to have the baron killed. His lackeys fail in numerous attempts, though they eventually succeed in kidnapping the young woman.

The resolution is satisfying and entertaining, which is about all one can hope for in such novels, though the character of Vallombreuse is redeemed a bit too much for my taste. However, the affecting scenes with de Sigognac's loyal cat, dog, and horse, left behind through most of the action and reunited in the end, seemed rather modern, and I liked that touch.

On my scale, I'd say it falls just short of "awesome" but is nicely ensconced in the "very good" range, and I recommend it for those who like Scott or Dumas and would like to read another novel kinda like that set in 1600s France.

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Where I get to the end of the Musketeers' story

The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm sad to finish it, but it was really good.

The third novel--whether broken into 3 parts, as it often is, or 4, as I had it--is mostly good, but has long stretches that are less interesting. A lot of focus on the court and finances and secondary characters that mostly disappear. That's okay, but it's not my favorite. But the last volume is back to the musketeers, and that's the best part.

It's also the sad part.

Aramis, Athos, and Porthos are 60 something, and D'Artagnan is a little younger. They're all still powerful, brilliant (well, not Porthos, I guess), capable, energetic, and honorable (with an asterisk for Athos), but age is about to catch up to them. It is terribly melancholy to see the heroes become old men and reach the end of their careers. Still, it's beautifully done.

Dumas can bewilder me with 17th Century French politics and matters of finance, but nobody writes better action or more amazing dialogue between brilliant men (and a handful of women). Even in translation, even 170 years later, it's still a brisk read.

And even though it's 170 years later, and most people who are going to read it already have, some have not, and the best parts of the story to talk about are spoilers. I'll leave them alone and just say that I enjoyed the novel and found it very touching. And I'm glad to finally understand what "the man in the iron mask" is all about. Now I want to see if I can find some better versions of these stories as movies or series than I've found in the past.

Anyway, recommended. For most folks, it'll take time, especially slow readers like me. But I didn't mind.

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Not a lot of Musketeers in this sequel...

Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is part 2 of 4 in the 3rd book of 3....

I liked this book, as I find all Dumas books to be very breezy and entertaining, but this one was somewhat less fun than others. Although it's a Three Musketeers sequel, D'Artagnan and the others almost don't appear in the novel. Aramis's son Raoul, the Vicomte of Bragelonne, shows up a bit more, but really the story changes to follow the king and his courtiers, especially his brother (Monsieur), his English wife (madame), and some of the women who are their companions and maids of honor. There are intrigues regarding money and taxes and corruption in government, but most of the focus is on who the king is paying attention to.

That's fine. It's not a plot that really appeals to me, but because Dumas creates characters that the reader cares about and wants to see succeed (along with characters one wants to see thrown down) it is still entertaining and not too difficult to read.

I want to return more to Raoul and Porthos and the rest, including the Man in the Iron Mask, and suspect there will be more in part 3 of 4 in the 3rd book of the series... but it'll have to wait until I'm ready for more French court intrigue. For now, this book has to be enough.

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Why I Didn't Like It

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Nothing good happens in this book.

The end.

Okay, I liked the very old hardcover edition I read it out of--so old you can't read the title on the spine.

But damn, Victor. Why you gotta be like that?

Anyway...................

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Loved the Book--But Heed My Warning, Gentle Reader, Lest You Go Astray

The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this first part of the novel and look forward to the rest. That's my review. Ahem.

Except to add: Dumas is always fun to read, IMO, and this sequel to The Three Musketeers is no exception. But a word of warning--it's published in strange ways, and if you try to get hold of the book in it's entirety, you're bound to get it wrong.

Here's why.

As a single book, it is called, The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. If you read it in a single book, it would be a very big book indeed. Other than ebooks, I haven't found it like this.

It is usually broken into three parts (as Wikipedia informs me): The Vicomte of Bragelonne, Louise de la Vallière, and The Man in the Iron Mask. So if you want the WHOLE book, and search for and find The Vicomte of Bragelonne, you may be disappointed to learn that you have only the first 1/3 of the novel.

It is also sometimes split into four parts, which is how I found it. The titles then are like this: The Vicomte of Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, Louise de la Vallière, and The Man in the Iron Mask. In this case, The Vicomte of Bragelonne is just the first 1/4 of the whole novel!

The titles seem rather unimportant--it is the same story, whether in one volume, three volumes, or four.

Between lovely Christmas gifts and my own searching on eBay, I put together all four parts from the same edition, volumes 12-15 of Collier's complete Dumas (or something like that--I could look, but the book is already back on the shelf, several feet away) that are about 110 years old. They're still in good shape and have that wonderful smell for sure...

So there ya go. Be careful out there. Eventually, soon, I intend to read the other three parts and then write an actual review for the whole thing. Until then--stay tuned. Or go about your business. Whatever you like. It's all good. ;)

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