POLICE CAPTAIN: Monseigneur Bishop
we have apprehended this man – a known criminal – outside your gates with a set of silver candlesticks he claims you gave him
what say you?
BISHOP MYRIEL: Yes, he stole them. [to Jean Valjean] You wretched leech, if you wanted silver candlesticks, you should have created them.
POLICE CAPTAIN: Thank you for your time; we’ll be going now.
BISHOP MYRIEL: Just a moment. If we accept the Christ story on face value, I am supposed to believe that a man of virtue sacrificed himself for nonideal men, and that this sacrifice ought to be celebrated. This disgusts me. Religion is a despicable fiction. Let me leave with you; I will tear down this church and replace it with a train depot.
Shortens it right up, eh?
Well, at least it means nobody writes about sewers.
or monasteries (that’s where I jumped ship)
ngl, I really enjoyed that section. Sewers were slightly underwhelming though.
I wrote a masters dissertation on the Parisian sewers and got a distinction, so I must respectfully disagree!
Oh, I thought the sewers were terrifying. If only in a “NO, I DID NOT JUST FOLLOW THIS GUY FOR 1000 PAGES TO WATCH HIM DROWN IN A SEWER DON’T YOU EVEN” kind of way.
Or retells the entire battle of Waterloo, of which exactly one detail is marginally relevant to the story.
(I actually love Les Miserables, btw- you just have to know which sections to skip or skim.)
I adored the chapter titles: “on why you should always arrest the victim of a crime first.”
“of which exactly one detail is marginally relevant to the story” YES and page after page of descriptions of afternoon outings with a gaggle of beautiful people of which exactly one detail is marginally relevant to the story. (I also love Les Miserables and all the Byzantine, insane, florid descriptions of garrets and avenues and, yes, even sewers and monasteries.)
The part that sticks out in my memory was his paragraph-long note telling us that the woman (I’m assuming it was Fantine but it’s been a while) had a dimple above her lip and how wonderful and beautiful and special it made her. Hugo my man, isn’t that a relatively standard feature of the human face?
Hugo had strange ideas about faces. In the paragraphs and paragraphs devoted to how beautiful Enjoras is there’s a note about him having ‘slightly reddened eyelids’ as a pro about his eyes
So… He permanently had a cold? He cried a lot? Red eyelids are not attractive Hugo what are you thinking??
Sammmmmme
The class in which I read Les Mis handled this via the teacher saying, “Okay, for next time, your reading is (exact pages long since forgotten). Yes, we’re skipping like a hundred pages. That’s the battle of Waterloo. It happened. On we go!”
The class in which I read the Iliad did the same thing. We skipped books that consisted mostly of “here are a variety of ways in which men can stab each other” in favor of ones that moved the plot along at least a bit.
Ugh, the Iliad. Dirtbag Achilles. Ugh.
Nah. Needs a 32,969-word speech from Bishop Myriel.
Apparently the John Galt speech would be 82.8 pages long, if in Times New Roman, 12-point, single-spaced and I’m guessing regular margins in a Word doc.
You know, at least the brevity of this version means it automatically would have been a much better basis for the 2012 musical film adaptation…
Not having to ordeal Russell Crowe would make having no Javert worth it.
He’d have been perfect if it weren’t for the having to sing bit.
Look, personally I think we’re missing all that background on the Bishop, you know? Really interesting and relevant to the plot! He met Napoleon once and made a pun!
And we need the inventory of all his household furniture!
And a description of what his sister does every day!
Alternatively, JVJ could lead police to roust Bishop for swindling people and be rewarded with candlesticks which he then uses to buy up an orphanage and use kids to row slave galleys. Too Hollywood Happy Ending perhaps.
If anyone else was wondering, the first commercially viable steam locomotive debuted a good two years before Valjean’s encounter with Myriel, so that’s all right then.
Although Ayn Rand did appreciate the capitalism that Fantine showed by selling her teeth. “If only she’d thought of smelting iron instead,” Rand thought.
Princess Mononoke and Lady Eboshi for the win!
She did like her trains, though.
Well … that took an unexpected turn.
to be fair, Valjean BUILT A FACTORY and BECAME THE MAYOR, he did take the Bishop’s advice about making his own candlesticks to heart
Can we have Ernest Hemingway’s Les Miserables? Set in Havana, natch. Or — ye gods — Flannery O’Conner’s Les Miserables?
So, are the Thenardiers the heroes of this version?
Nope, Cosette and Marius are the Objectivist heroes: as far as I could tell, they absolutely only cared about themselves and I hated them with the power of a thousand suns and this is not personal even twenty years after I read the book, nope, not at all.
THEY ARE THE WORRRRRRST
I can’t imagine Rand approving of a man who gets THAT weepy over handkerchiefs. Also Marius cared about Napoleon and is useless at literally everything.
Thanks for the time-saver.
Have you considered writing condensed versions of Ayn Rand novels in the style of virtually anyone other than Ayn Rand? That would be a great service to the world.
I can’t wait for the musical!
Hm, no Éponine in this version or, presumably, in the musical based upon it. Without “On My Own,” what are brashly talented 17-year-olds gonna sing at all their auditions?
“Let It Go,” of course.
Actually, I take that back. “Burn” from Hamilton.
Those are good choices!
Back in the day, I’m pretty sure that 14-year-old askelade once auditioned for something with “Who Are You Now?” from Funny Girl. I was cast in the largest role in the play… for which there was no solo singing.
I think mine were “What Do I Do Now” from Mame and “Losing My Mind” from Follies, but I busted out with “On My Own” on a regular basis in the shower. Sadly, I didn’t have the opportunity to do many musicals as a kid.
Mine were “All That Jazz” and “16 Going on 17,” which was tough to pull off when I was in my 20s. But I managed. I managed.
BWAHAHA
That is all.
Nothing about selling hair? Please let this be a series!
Mine were "All That Jazz" and "16 Going on 17," which was tough to pull off when I was in my 20s. But I managed. I managed.