Just finished all 1500-odd unabridged pages of Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables." He was clearly a fan of the French Revolution; in fact, so long were Hugo's historical digressions as he rhapsodized on anything and everything even remotely connected to the French Revolution and the forward progress of mankind into the light that I often found myself having to switch modes, from novel reading to extended-essay reading, while I waited for Hugo to reward me with the suspenseful, page-turning parts of the narrative. A friend of mine recently proffered the theory (which I'm still out with the jury on) that most novels are in fact "boring," or at least that most of each novel is boring, for the novelist must necessarily right boring description in order to immerse the reader into this new world and thus make the action parts have more impact; "Les Miserables" might just be exhibit A for that one.
Nonetheless, all reading-theory aside, the accumulative impact of "Les Mis" is powerful and haunting, and oh, oh to have a conscience like unto Jean Valjean...
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