Les Mis

So a month ago, as a testament to the completely ridiculous amount of free time PCVs tend to enjoy, I decided to pick up and actually read Victor Hugo's beast of a novel, Les Miserables. At 1463 pages and nearly a kilo in mass, this copy boasted the honor of being the "only completely unabridged paperback ever published." As I would soon find out, there was probably a legitimate reason why Signet Classics was the only publisher willing to unleash this thing as originally written. My guess is they were really desperate for some superlative to put on the cover.

Never in my life did I think I would read 500 pages of any book, only to realize there were nearly another 1000 yet unread.

As it turns out, when faced with such an absurd truth the first sentence that came to mind was" wtf?" Once I found myself cheering on as the 1 year- old who lives upstairs, thinking the illustration of Cosette on the cover was an evil spirit, repeatedly beat the thing with his fist. At least a few times, while in the midst of a 60 page tangent, I thought to myself "Am I one of the miserable?" Yes, yes I am. Since there cannot be more than 15-20 people alive today who have read this thing cover to cover, I have surely gained the credentials to join one of those bands of sufferers who wander the seas in a tanker, chain-smoking and pounding whiskey, detailing the miseries of their lives and asking aloud "Why the hell did I do that?" Or is that just a Simpsons episode?"

Anyway, I did some research into the matter and discovered that, despite its total lack of pictures, maps, bar graphs or hardcore sex scenes, Hugo's work is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Instead of employing these wonderful devices, Hugo prefers to "describe" the setting, gratuitously using words where a simple diagram could save the reader a good half an hour. In my humble opinion, Hugo could have at least included a quick zombie invasion to test Enjolras' men before facing off against the Royal Army. Seriously though, zombies fix everything. I guarantee more people would read this book if instead of throwing himself into the river, Javert were to be killed off by a brain-hungry mob of the un-dead moments after they burst through the wall of his apartment...and then threw the body in the river. At the very least it would spice up the on-stage musical version.

Despite these faults, and the fact that it probably took a whole tree to produce this single copy, Hugo manages to rip off some pretty stellar insults, all of which were highly appreciated by this reader. On page 136 Hugo lets a good one fly through the minor character Tholomyes who barbs at the even more minor Zephine, "Yours is like a beautiful face, upon which someone has sat down by mistake." Boom roasted. Over two hundred pages later, on 378, Hugo describes the Thenardiess with the following sentence: "Apart from the novels she had read, which at times produced odd glimpses of the affected lady under the ogress, it would never have occurred to anyone to say: That's a woman." Burn! Hugo lays into this bitch dozens more times throughout the book, but this is easily my favorite as it essentially calls her a monstrous humanoid creature who still reads shitty chick books. Picture Ms. Tucker reading the Sisterhood of Traveling Pants series.

Check this next quote out (966), "he had made great improvements in the business of the lead strippers who plunder roofing and skin eave gutters by the process called 'the double fat.'" Now I have no idea whats going on in this sentence but it sounds completely fucking disgusting and totally worthy of a thorough analysis on urban dictionary. Just like this one (1090), "There is one reality alone: to drink. Whatever may be your opinion, whether you're for the lean cock, like the Canton of Uri, or for the fat cock, like the Canton of Glaris, it hardly matters, drink." Just plain filthy. And I don't want to hear about any alternate meanings for the word "cock." What I learned from this passage is that Swiss people like to get hammered and chug beef in a very liberal and open environment where one is not judged by the whatever the girth of choice might be. That, ladies and gentlemen, is true freedom.

love, peace and chicken grease.