labingi

Just before the record heat struck, my family and I spent a few days in Paris so that I could attend and present at a lovely conference on the Legacy of Ursula Le Guin in the Anthropocene. The conference was wonderful! A diverse group of fascinating folks with a range of insights and experience with Le Guin’s work. I may write about it more, but for now, I want to write about my glancing experience of Paris.

Being at the conference, I didn’t see much—less than my family, who did more of the tourist things. My experience consisted mainly of the trek—about 30 minutes by foot—from the apartment we rented at Les Patios de Marais [?], just over the Seine, to Saint-Michel, where the university stuff congregates. (Passed close to Notre Dame and can report it looks superficially less damaged than I had thought it was.)

Now, the Les Mis fan in me could not be more pleased at being largely situated in Saint-Michel. It meant a great deal to me to imagine that I was walking the same streets and even sitting in a building that the ABC (or their real-world counterparts) might have frequented in their studies. The stone stairway to the classrooms is so old that centuries of feet have worn depressions in the stairs. College changes but doesn’t change. The lecture hall they held the conference in had execrable acoustics, tiny wooden benches, and intricate, almost stained-glass windows. And it struck me more than once sitting there how there was a time when women would not have been allowed in, much less allowed to present our papers. Times change. Attending a lecture is still attending a lecture.




Out on the sidewalks, I felt both completely overwhelmed and beautifully anonymous. Walking the streets of downtown Paris is a cross between a dance and an obstacle course. People weave in and out around each other constantly, never looking at each other or acknolwedging each other, except by the bare fact of their adjustments to avoid collision. There doesn’t appear to be any fixed rule, like “walk on the right,” and perhaps this is due to the internationality of the city? Too many people are perpetually strangers for specific codes to pertain? This is one of the cosmopolitan and diverse spaces I’ve ever been in. The streets team with people of all ages, races, socioeconomic levels. I have rarely felt so completely inconspicuous—something I somehow did not expect for being an American in a foreign country I really know very little about. This all contributed to my feeling quite safe, safe in the sheer crowd of the anonymous everyone minding their own business. (It also helps that the city is not especially poor. There are homeless people, and more at the outskirts of town, but far fewer than we see daily on the streets of downtown Portland here in the US. The overall population looks healthier too: almost no one was obviously dirty; I saw one person missing a leg, a much smaller proportion of people with missing limbs than I see at home. Uh, vive l’Amérique?) I would not have been comfortable going out alone at night, but in general, I felt perfectly secure on my daily conference walk.

The city, of course, is old to my West Coast American eyes. I live in a city where few buildings are much more than a hundred years old. There I was surrounded by edifaces many of which are from the 18th century or earlier, curiously mixed up and repurposed with modern buildings or remodelings: very sand-colored and ornate. And the sidewalks of the side-streets are bizarrely narrow to my eyes. One person can fit on them. Any time people pass each other or walk in groups, someone in is in the street. Thankfully, those side-streets are quite low traffic. They seem mainly the purview of delivery vehicles and motorcycles—so many motorcycles, which makes sense in the general traffic snarl. Not for the world would I attempt to drive in Paris. The traffic reminds me a great deal of Port-au-Prince, Haiti (with fewer potholes).

I don’t remember it as being loud. It wasn’t quiet: cars roarded past on the main roads and honked rather more than they do in the US, less than in Haiti. But the people were quiet, often chatting on their phones but in quite low, conversational voices. On the whole it felt chaotically well ordered—and exhausting, every time I set foot in the street. Nowhere to stop, nowhere to rest, even the parks teeming with people. I am not a city person.

The Passion and the Blood: A Comparison
(Les Misérables through a lens of Trigun)

(big spoilers for both)

In Les Misérables, the musical, the Bishop and Marius, for a time, sing the same melody, the Bishop singing early on about his hopes for Valjean's redemption and Marius, near the play's end, lamenting the deaths of all his friends on the barricade. What's the connection between these songs? Why the thematic echo?

Both songs discuss sacrifice for a noble cause. The Bishop invokes the death of Christ and other martyrs as an illustration of the tenacity of Christian commitment to redemption:

By the witness of the martyrs,
By the passion and the blood,
God has raised you out of darkness.
I have bought your soul for God.

Such great sacrifices in the name of love and kindness must, he suggests, inspire us to like acts of goodness, such as forgiving a thief by giving him the silver he stole, plus candlesticks, and inviting him to use it to start a new chapter in his life.( Read more... )

The verdict: fantastic! This is the Les Mis recording I waited twenty years to hear, and it did not disappoint. There is some urban legend that this version is no longer (legally) available, but that’s bull: it’s available at a very reasonable price on iTunes. In a nutshell, the cast is superb and the songs mostly excellent; I only wish the recording were more comprehensive. (Spoilers follow.)


The Editing:

The selection of songs is similar to the London recording’s. The focus is on set numbers with relatively few connecting parts. As in the London recording, this serves 1815 and 1823 better than 1832. Since most of the barricade drama does not break down into individual songs, much of the barricade story is missing. The exceptions are the set songs: (“Un peu de sang qui pleure”/“A Little Fall of Rain,” “Souviens-toi des jours passés,”/“Drink with Me,” and “Comme un homme,”/“Bring Him Home”), which all take place in between moments of military action and, thus, bypass the fall of the barricade arc. If you’re listening to the recording to get the full arc of the story, this is the biggest impediment. Another shame is the omission of much of Gavroche’s part. Lesser gaps, but still unfortunate are Valjean’s difficulties as a paroled convict, Fantine’s arrest, and the Valjean-Javert interchanges surrounding “Comment faire?”/“Who Am I?” (Not missed–by me–is some of the Thénardiers scheming at the wedding.)

The good news is that many of these omissions are parts the original French cast recording of 1980 included: Fantine’s arrest, more of the barricade, much more Gavroche. So with the two together, there’s comparatively good French coverage of the full play in a recorded format (though ironically not as good as we have in English).


Read the rest at The Geek Girl Project

On Slashing Enjolras

I keep updating this on AO3, so let me just direct you there.

Fandom: Les Misérables
Title: "Bricklaying"
Characters: Enjolras, Grantaire
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Awkwardness and alcoholism.
Summary: An embarrassing situation leads to a serious conversation--with a side of Lamarck (not Lamarque).
A/N: Inspired by Ao3, I set myself the challenge of slashing Enjolras and Grantaire. But Enjolras resisted, and I failed. Ce n'est pas possible. So this started out as a sex fic and ended up being about alcoholism instead--sorry. Honestly, I feel a bit guilty about ficcing Les Mis. It's not something I ever imagined doing in the first 25 years of my acquaintance with the story, and I confess it feels both trivializing to the original and like an excellent way of showcasing one's own literary inadequacies. But darn if it's not kind of fun. For sixish.

( Bricklaying )