Do you hear the people sing? (Banger)

[Anonymous No.23381009]

Is the book even half as good as the show?

[Anonymous No.23381366]

>>23381009
The show is like a best of collection of scenes from the book. I have finished the first two volumes but got caught up in other books so I will finish it in time. Far more in depth backstories to everyone in the book.

[Anonymous No.23381381]

>>23381009
The shower is consumerist trash for the lowest common denominator compared to the book. I only respect people who read it inspire of and not because of it

[Anonymous No.23381389]

The book is one of the greatest things you will ever read. It might be one of the longest novels I have ever read but it's also one of the few novels where I could literally sit and read it all day without a break because it was so great

[Anonymous No.23381392]

>>23381381
The show is a boiled down collection of central themes for the average pleb who doesn’t have the capability of reading a 1,400 page book. I don’t hate the musical but it doesn’t compare with the beauty of the full story.

[Anonymous No.23381395]

Ok, I have to ask. Why is this guys work's most famous adaptations things like musicals and video games? Like, the subject matter of The Hunchback, while happily married with pathos, doesn't seem like the type of thing that would lend itself to a Disney animated production, but here we are.

[Anonymous No.23381436]

>>23381009
Like the other anon said, the musical is only a highlight reel of a few events from the book. The book is an absolute kino experience if you read it unabridged, but most get filtered by the 60 pages of the priest at the beginning, and the autistic 50 page Waterloo description in the middle of a very tense point in the story. It's like Moby Dick, you're rewarded for engaging with the author's autism.

[Anonymous No.23381587]

>>23381436
>most get filtered by the 60 pages of the priest at the beginning
Fug that was literally me, I guess I should try again shouldn't I. Meanwhile a 50-page tangent on Waterloo sounds great

[Anonymous No.23382654]

>>23381436
The infamous Waterloo scene was because Hugo was considered a traitor to France for fleeing to the Channel Islands so he wrote that Tl;Dr Waterloo stuff to show he had French nationalism. I read it all and the payoff isn’t very good. It only leads to a comic scene of Thernardier trying to pick the pocket of elderly Pontmercy but being mistaken for a savior. I am really glad I don’t have to read all that shit ever again.

[Anonymous No.23382670]

>>23381587
The chapter which introduces Fantine and Felix Tholomyes is also quite unbearable. Because the scene is set in 1817 the author seeks to get you into the era by listing famous events, actors and politicians from 1817 but they are entirely without any context. It is a giant list of random events which happened in 1817. I remember hating that more than Waterloo.

[Anonymous No.23382715]

>>23381009
Focus on the family is a bit of a meme but their radio dramatization of les miserables is legitimately fantastic. Very One of the best stories ever told adapted into one of the best audio dramas I've ever heard
https://www.last.fm/music/Victor+Hugo/Les+Mis%C3%A9rables+(Focus+on+the+Family+Radio+Theatre)

[Anonymous No.23382718]

>>23382715
Dramatizations and movies are not a substitute for experiencing the actual book thougheverbeit.

[Anonymous No.23382783]

>>23382718
I agree but it's still a fantastic piece of media that's very true to the source

[Anonymous No.23382818]

>>23381009
The book is fucking awful. Baudelaire and Flaubert were correct in that it is inept propaganda that has neither truth nor greatness in its pages. One can drown in its artificial sentimentality and drawn out diatribes. Hugo, who was once a great poet and playwright completely deserving of the praise given to him, debased himself by writing the most sappy of moral fables as to condescend to anyone who would listen about his "moral virtues". The romantic master of Ruy Blas became the prickly hypocrite of Napoleon le Petit. Les Miserables is just the epoch of this transition from artist to propagandist.

[Anonymous No.23382822]

>>23381009
Wagner DESTROYED Hugo in his satire of French culture Eine Kapitulation:

>Wagner portrays Victor Hugo constantly popping up from the sewers of France, an obvious stab at Les Misérables. Hugo exclaims, “I am here, not through the Prussian ranks, but underneath them.” Hugo’s slithering through the bowels of Paris renders him “matter for 120 volumes.” Images of the “Holy guillotine,” and only those in the sewers finding anything to eat, Paris was undergoing a terrible shortage of food at the time. The Chorus of the National Guard sings “Republic! Republic! Republic-blic-blic!” to the strains of the can-can. The total decay and lack of values, the constant babblings of atheists and revolutionaries paint the absurd canvas. Amidst this chaos Wagner brings rats to the stage. When the cry goes up that “The city is starving” the chorus breaks into, “Rats with sauces, sauces with rats! Here, pass them, or hunger will dine off our hats!” Finally the rats metamorphose into Ladies of the French Ballet.