Les Miserables, version brick, Installment 2: Volume 2, Book 7

[elsane]

Alternate post title: well, that made for an argumentative plane ride.

I have actually been hugely enjoying the infamous digressions, after setting aside a certain allowance for the rolling of eyes. One of the side benefits of reading La Brique electronically is that I feel blissfully at liberty to scribble mad quantities of notes and arguments in the margins. Well, the last couple of chapters I have stopped to comment on every paragraph, because these are the chapters where Hugo decides to go into great detail about how atheism destroys society.

For now I have to go be productive and stuff, so I leave you with two thoughts.

• Dear Hugo,
  
  Your "proof" of the existence of a divine essence is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the mathematical concept of infinity.
  
  Very nettled love,
  -me.
  
  
• "To place the infinity here below in contact, by the medium of thought, with the infinity on high, is called praying." (Vol II, Bk 7, Ch V.)
  
  Not so, sir! It’s called science.
  

(General book logging as well as a post on Waterloo: coming when things calm down a bit I swear no really)

Comments

[genarti]

Oh my god, yes, you have just summed it up excellently. I have a lot of story kryptonites, but characters who are avatars and also people, and who are then put in situations where their humanity shows without diminishing their embodied symbolism, is hugely appealing for me. So, uh, I love a large percentage of the cast of this book.

And yes about skipping the synthesis. I hadn't put that into words, but you're totally right. Hugo's fundamental message about every single philosophical issue he raises is "BUT GUYS IT'S MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT--" and another messy contradictory ramble on the heels of the previous. I respect that, and agree with it, much more than any sort of moral of absolutes. (And his symbol characters aren't named, like, M. Virtue and Mme. Busybody, which I am grateful for.)

Oh, the folk etymologies. I don't know much about French etymology at any level more advanced than "this clearly comes from the Latin I learned in high school," but I am not remotely surprised about the dubious veracity of any given example.

(Oh my god, are they? I mean, of course they are. But WHY, universe? I want 1830, I want 1831, I want Valjean and Fauchelevant and Cosette in the convent, I want Javert The Police Procedural. I guess that's what we have fanfic for, and you're right that hypothetical Les Mis profic would probably just be published badfic.)

>:D EXCELLENT. I have been pretty much devouring it, as much as real life allows -- I've just hit the part of the barricades where Hugo stops digressing about insurrections and stuff starts happening -- so I expect to be at your disposal whenever you like, schedules willing!