Les Misérables – Arthur Hofn

Putting The Misery Into Tragedy

As my last blog was a bizarre shout at the planet to both slow down and get better I thought I would need to make the next one more upbeat… So I’m going to tell you about two of the most depressing books I’ve read. Be warned there are SPOILERS coming, I’ll try and keep them at a minimum but when blogging about a book’s tone you may need to refer to the end… just saying. If you want to know no more turn back now… otherwise “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

To be honest I’m not a misery and of course it’s not true that drama is tragedy; but try telling a compelling story where bad things don’t happen. It is so much harder to write anything with soul and heart that is upbeat. I don’t mean it’s impossible, I’m sure I’ll blog about my favourite upbeat books later (there is no real plan to what I do here), but it’s just harder. I guess this is why most people at the start of their writing experience, when charged with writing a story, go for tragedy over comedy.

Again I’m not saying that I think any less of the two books which follow, in fact they are both top quality writing, that’s not just my opinion, both writers have highly prodigious awards to prove it. My point is, although tragedy and depressive things aren’t necessary for a good story, we are kind of drawn to them and done well they will effect your soul.

I’ve waxed lyrical about my love for Les Misérables elsewhere (the book; I’ve not, and refuse to, access any other format of the story at this point), and my goodness it deserves the title. That nice lady with nice hair and teeth! But even then I wasn’t rendered stunned reading that as I was by the time I’d got to end of The Grapes Of Wrath.

Taking it’s name from the book of Revelation, John Steinbeck’s novel about a family trying to survive in the American Depression is what made me love this author. It was the second of his books I’d read and I am now on a mission to read them all, but sparingly. I really can’t say too much as the concept of what happens as we follow the Joads is the whole point of the plot and you really need to discover that as you read it. The Joads are a family who move from their farm in Oklahoma, which is no longer viable for them to survive, to California as they believe a better life awaits them. The book follows their journey, incorporating others who are doing the same. It’s not just them, these events happen to most of the characters. The fact is it’s not just a story. Whilst the events are fiction real people, real human beings like you and me, were making this journey as the book was being written in the 1930s and very similar challenges to the ones the Joads were facing were the life experiences of many many people who were around at the time of publication. When you know that it takes on a far more bitter taste.

So why read it? Why put yourself through the harrowing events? I could state it’s about greed and and how it’s a scream at the injustice happening back then which is still happening today, but we all know about that at this point, we’re not going to learn anything new. Instead the book is a master class in how to write tragedy to a very high standard, to invoke pathos without going too far. It’s human, it’s real, it’s gritty without needing any of those terms in the way that films bandy them about to make them look like they have depth. I said writing tragedy is easier, but to do it on this level is a gold standard I’ll try and aim for, but will fail at each time..

“I seen fellas like you before. You ain’t askin’ nothin’; you’re jus’ singin’ a kinda song. ‘What we comin’ to?’ You don’ wanta know. Country’s movin’ aroun’, goin’ places. They’s folks dyin’ all aroun’. Maybe you’ll die pretty soon, but you won’t know nothin’. I seen too many fellas like you. You don’t want to know nothin’. Just sing yourself to sleep with a song—‘What we comin’ to?”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

The other reason you should read it is because it’s a great book. Ok when I finished it, pushing on through the last pages to see how it ends, desperate to know, I did actually go into a decline for a few days after. The images at the end, the implications, the meaning of it all ghosted me for a good while after. I couldn’t get them out of my head which no other book has done. I still say this is one of the best books I’ve read just because of what it did to me.

The other book I want to recommend is A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. Set in India in the 1970s and 1980s this is the story of a small group of people who, through events, form a community just to be able to continue to exist. Everything is against these people. They each have a story of their own and they are constantly fighting their own worst outcomes. Then they find each other. It doesn’t matter how the book ends, I don’t need to refer to anything in the second half of the book, to say it’s grim. This could very well pick up and work out well, it could not or it could be somewhere in the middle, discover that yourself, but as you reflect on what pushed the characters to get into the plot, to become part of the community in the first place, even that is enough to make anyone lose hope in any kind of reliability of the stability of their own life. Then you have the stories of the fringe characters… I will say no more, read the book, then we’ll talk.

I read this novel on a short break to the paradise of Placencia in Belize. Whilst I was sat on the beach looking out at the glorious Caribbean Sea I was slowly sinking into despondency… yeah I should have chosen another book to take with me. As the bars were alive with music and fun I was sat weeping into my cocktails and hot wings… well not quite.

“But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated – not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

I did really enjoy reading the book though. When I say that it feels like I’m taking pleasure in other’s misfortune, even if they are fictional. Don’t judge me you’ve done the same. I guess being inside the mind of people who aren’t real but are feeling things we’ve felt and thinking things we’ve thought somehow helps us process we’re normal? Or at least that there is someone out there who understands.

Tragedy done well can do more than change a reader’s emotions, it can make them think without preaching, this is a skill I wish I had. Upbeat books are harder to write than misery… but writing quality misery is a skill that should be prized because life is neither totally comedy nor tragedy and it won’t ring true unless it’s done well.

Buy The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Buy A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

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Something to do as we have more time.

If you ask Google how long the average novel is, you get so many different lengths and ideas you could make a book out of them. There does seem to be agreement that generally they are somewhere between 80,000-100,000 words. How that transfers to page count is hard as it depends of size of text, number of chapters and format. But again a cursory search on Google seems to indicate somewhere between 200 – 300 is about average for a novel. None of this is law. It also depends on the type of story and who the audience will be, basically do what seems right for the tale you want to tell.

Having said that there are some whoppers out there. I mean books that you look at on the shelf and think “If I start to invest in this it had better be good,” or “That’s going to take a lot of time,” no matter what our reading speed. Both of these statements are true along with, “If I finish that it’ll look great on the shelf and I can feel a bit smug”.

For a writer to produce something of vast length they need to be incredibly confident, as with all books really but here even more so. To ask your readers to stick with you for that long is a big ask; sometimes it pays off, sometimes it really doesn’t.

All things being equal, it does always come down to opinion. Something I really love might not appeal to others and vice versa. Having said that, seeing as we all seem to have a bit more time on our hands as more and more restrictions are imposed worldwide due to the coronavirus, So, in this Part and in the next one, I’ve suggested some really long reads which I have enjoyed and that you might want to have a go at. Am I doing this to be helpful or just to show off I’ve read them?… Yes, you’re probably right.

Both my authors I’m going to list for recommendations are in the “classic” genre. They’ve been around for years and I really think they are worth reading. Let’s start with the brilliant Victor Hugo.

It’s hard to say how many pages long Les Misérables is, it depends on the edition and the language. The Penguin Classics in English is 1,232 pages. (You can get an abridged version, but what’s the point?) The book is set out as explained by its Wikipedia page:

“The novel is divided into five volumes, each volume divided into several books, and subdivided into chapters, for a total of 48 books and 365 chapters.”

Regardless of the language and the edition and format, it’s a long read! I have a version spilt into two volumes and that made the thing easier to hold if anything, and not so intimidating to start.

Someone demonstrating how it can be likened to a brick

Frankly I love it. I really enjoyed every page. I’d not seen the musical or any adaption, so it was all new to me and I think that is the best way of attempting this (if you have seen them it’s still recommended). I really had no idea what the story was before I picked it up so Jean Valjean’s uncertain future became mine.

Let’s make one thing clear – to be that length the writing is intricate, but you soon get used to it. At the start there is a very lengthy account of the life of Bishop Myriel. For those of you who know the story he’s actually an almost incidental character and this is the first stumbling block for many who just want to get to the action. It takes up a lot of pages and meticulously catalogues his life and ways. I can see why this would be irritating; but for me I didn’t know this so just went with it and enjoyed it as a result. Later there are other very long histories and accounts that aren’t really necessary to the plot (the history of an old convent somewhere towards the middle for example), but by this point the reader is aware what is happening and if they’ve stuck with it this long they’re obviously enjoying it.

The book does build momentum and I genuinely didn’t know what would happen as it (despite length and side-tracks) eventually speeds on towards the conclusion. I was gripped. I really love this book and I still haven’t, and now won’t, see an adaption as I think it misses the point. Les Misérables is a book that you need to commit to reading to get the full enjoyment.

Just as an addition although shorter, sometime after I finished Les Misérables I read The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Again I’d not seen any adaption of it but went into it blind. Once more I fell in love with it. The attention to detail is still there but not as intricate or overwhelming, however it gives fascinating histories of various parts of Paris as well and other interesting information as the plot goes on. Just like Les Misérables it manages to keep momentum and again I was engrossed by the time I got towards the end. I stayed up until 4am to finish it, I just needed to know what happened.

If you’ve seen an adaption, especially Disney’s, expect something totally different. Darker in tone and grim in plot, this still is a read will worth undertaking.

Buy Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Buy The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo