Melinda

One of those very few novels that manages to actualize a vision so tremendous in scope and complexity. At once an examination of the nature and mechanisms of suffering; a portrait of humanity's major psychological archetypes; occasionally a 25-page eminently verbose political history of the Parisian sewer system; and always a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Jean Valjean is you and me and everyone who has ever lived, everyone who thinks and feels and loves and tries to make something of themselves in the world they wake up in. We encounter so much meaning in our lives and have so little time with which to contemplate it.

an achievement of world literature that places Hugo squarely alongside the likes of Shakespeare/Cervantes/Tolstoy and probably my top 3 favorites ever. kind of evil that the musical has eclipsed the book in cultural ubiquity but also not because it's so important that it at least be Somewhere even if that Somewhere must include anne hathaway

just terrible the way the culture seems determined to impose upon the brothers karamazov (and the “Russian life novel” more broadly) a framework of sterile intellectualism when they are so transcendently emotional. perfect read for whenever you are lowkey on a ledge. wish I didn't have the P&v translation but life is nawt perfect...

some quotes that came out of the YASS MACHINE:

“With one reservation: I have a childlike conviction that the sufferings will be healed and smoothed over, that the whole offensive comedy of human contradictions will disappear like a pitiful mirage, a vile concoction of man's Euclidean mind, feeble and puny as an atom, and that ultimately, at the world's finale, in the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and be revealed something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, to allay all indignation, to redeem all human villainy, all bloodshed; it will suffice not only to make forgiveness possible, but also to justify everything that has happened with men—let this, let all of this come true and be revealed, but I do not accept it and do not want to accept it!”

“I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, ‘I exist.' In thousands of agonies—I exist. I'm tormented on the rack—but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar—I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.” (stole this from the Avsey translation I fear)

“There is still an awful lot of centripetal force on our planet, Alyosha. I want to live, and I do live, even if it be against logic. Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one's heart, out of old habit.”

“Gentlemen,” I cried suddenly from the bottom of my heart, “look at the divine gifts around us: the clear sky, the fresh air, the tender grass, the birds, nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, we alone, are godless and foolish, and do not understand that life is paradise, for we need only wish to understand, and it will come at once in all its beauty, and we shall embrace each other and weep...”

“Fathers and teachers, I ask myself: ‘What is hell?' And I answer thus: ‘The suffering of being no longer able to love.' Once in infinite existence, measured neither by time nor by space, a certain spiritual being, through his appearance on earth, was granted the ability to say to himself: ‘I am and I love.'”

“And man has, indeed, invented God. And the strange thing, the wonder would not be that God really exists, the wonder is that such a notion—the notion of the necessity of God—could creep into the head of such a wild and wicked animal as man—so holy, so moving, so wise a notion, which does man such great honor.”

really does not have either the epistemological or moral complexity of the other giants in gothic literature but this book is susceptible to an interpretation so disconcertingly anachronistically feminist that it seems almost more relevant to 1970s social politics than 1870s. Like I would not have been all that startled if Carmilla pulled out a Pussy Power enamel pin but maybe that is why Le Fanu is the author and I am writing a goodreads review

I know the artlessness is intentional and that it still stands to gain something from presenting itself as a novel, but I can't shake the feeling that a fully-actualized work would be able to submit a stronger case for why it's not a longform article. Develops complexity by spurning generic expectations and yet chooses not to engage with the features of fiction-writing with real dynamic potential, that lend real novels legitimacy and reward close analysis. Definitely a book that is much more Important than it is Good