Exactly! I can't remember the last time I was into a fandom that had this much ongoing discussion all at once. I was (and am) into Avengers too, and spent a while wrapping my head around being part of the current juggernaut fandom, but that was much less meta-filled. Which makes sense; very little lends itself to sprawling meta as much as Les Mis, at least the book! Once we've both finished we should totally pull an Amis and meet up for more meta rambling in person and over beers or something.
And yes! As often as he annoys me with his perfect devoted angels of the house or his unwashed rough masses or whatever, he redeems himself with the little human touches. I've just come to some unexpectedly delightful bits in his treatment of Cosette, of all people. Even when I disagree with his generalizations, I do think that he wants us to take every character in the book on their own terms to at least some degree, and that makes up for a lot. And all his self-contradictions mean that even when he makes characters into symbols, he's willing to undercut that with humanity and to give us other symbol-characters in contradiction, and that makes up for a lot to me too.
(Yes. Oh man. So many things I want more details about, and know I will never get! Including things I haven't yet come to, yes, but which I already know I'm going to want. Dammit, Hugo, the book's already pushing 1500 pages; couldn't you have made it a bit longer with the stuff I want?)
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Date: 2013-03-06 10:54 pm (UTC)And yes! As often as he annoys me with his perfect devoted angels of the house or his unwashed rough masses or whatever, he redeems himself with the little human touches. I've just come to some unexpectedly delightful bits in his treatment of Cosette, of all people. Even when I disagree with his generalizations, I do think that he wants us to take every character in the book on their own terms to at least some degree, and that makes up for a lot. And all his self-contradictions mean that even when he makes characters into symbols, he's willing to undercut that with humanity and to give us other symbol-characters in contradiction, and that makes up for a lot to me too.
(Yes. Oh man. So many things I want more details about, and know I will never get! Including things I haven't yet come to, yes, but which I already know I'm going to want. Dammit, Hugo, the book's already pushing 1500 pages; couldn't you have made it a bit longer with the stuff I want?)