What one reviewer said about Les Miserables (Modern Library Series) by Victor Hugo, Charles E. Wilbur, Charles E. Wilbur:
I have read and reread this book at least 5 times. And then I read it a couple of more times in French and façile à lire (easy-to-read) French. To add to my compulsion-my mother classified it thus-I saw the musical twice and bought both the English and French versions of the musical's music.
I read that during the war-I forget which war-French soldiers went into battle with a copy of Les Misérables under their arm. The story of the heroism of the main character, Jean Valjean, was an inspiration to the lowly foot soldier. The story of Victor Hugo, the author, must have been an inspiration as well. Like Balzac, Hugo was active in politics. When he died the whole country went into morning and he bodied laid in state.
This novel absolutely takes my breath away as it moves from one scene to the next. It's appeal to the emotions under a less skilled novelist might have seemed corny and contrived. But with Victor Hugo it comes off as genuine and heartfelt.
How many obscure characters from this novel can you name? How about Fauchelevent. Remember him? Jean Valjean saved his life when he lifted the heavy cart that had fallen on him. Later Fauchelevent is able to repay the favor by hiding Jean Valjean and Cosette in a cloister where the gendarmes and policeman Javert cannot enter.
The musical and the various movies made about this novel cannot possibly cover that incident and the host of other little events that happen in the novel and that warm the heart. The musical and all the movies I have seen-two English and one French-skip, for example, the whole battle of Waterloo. Here is where we first meet the lowly criminal Thernadier who is robbing dead soldiers of their belonging.
I have often wondered why the great critics-Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, and Harold Wilson-have not mentioned this book as one of the greatest books of all time: part of the so-called Western Canon. They don't disparage it. They just don't mention it. Maybe it's theme is too simple or it's ironies too few. Perhaps they dismiss it as ordinary entertainment not worthy of the moniker "classic".
In my mind this novel deserves such accolades as does Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". (By the way, it peeves me that Walt Disney does not given proper, prominent credit to the authors of "The Little Mermaid" (Hans Christain Anderson) and other films. My kids used to think that Walt Disney wrote Snow White, Aladin, and others. It's almost as annoying as that Barney television show which uses the melody of famous tunes and adds their own words without credit to the original authors.)
Finally, I recommend the latest French film "Les Misérables". It retells Victor Hugo's tale against the setting of World War II and is consequently something new. Even the latest English film with Liam Neeson was a dissapointment-it told the tale exactly per the novel. But the novel was too familiar to me so I found myself predicting each scene before it happened. Liam Neeson needs to make another great film like "Schindler's List" before the horrible latest Star Wars film ruins his career.
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