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...I just finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo. Not only was it over-the-top melodramatic, it violated nearly every 'article of good writing' that I've learned in the past few years to avoid as if your very life depended upon it.
So what gives? Why is this story considered a 'classic'? Have today's readers/writers simply become more sophisticated? In terms of 19th century France, how would we compare today's novelists to Dumas? He is grouped among the Romanticists of the time, but his work seems (of course taking into account the fact that something must be lost in translation) written for the kind of folks who would, in our time, eat up soap operas and Harlequin Romances while they get chubby on the welfare check. Would he have compared with one of today's Harlequin Romance novelists in the 'hierarchy' of 19th century literature?
I've seen both the films and thought they were better than the book. And the whole time I was reading I kept thinking, 'Man! I could take this and update it and edit out all that crappy simpering stuff and weak characterization and on and on and on and make one heck of a great story!'
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Serialized novels were the Soap Operas of their day, and Dumas was one of the masters. No movie version I've seen of any of his books has ever lived up to the novel; there is just too much in them to even try.
Monte Cristo is my favourite of his books. I loved the characters and while I sympathized with Edmond, I thought he learned as much or more than his victims by the end.
I loved Vampa and the whole story tract through Venice, especially the torture/capital punishment scene.
I first read an abridged verson of Monte Cristo and when I finally got ahold of an unabridged version, I loved it even more. There was so much more depth to the story and the characters.
Dumas had many detractors during his day and granted, his style is not for everyone. But it is hard to argue with his success which has lasted beyond his lifetime.
I haven't heard of anyone trying to re-write or update his works. Unless you count the attempts at movie versions. I found the most recent version of The Count of Monte Cristo, starring James Caviezel, to be rather flat -- lacking in so many respects. It was an okay, dumbed-down version of the story, but it just missed too many of the plot intricacies and created things that didn't stay true to the characters.
But, everyone's tastes and perceptions are different. Dumas did use melodrama at times, but I do love a good swashbuckling tale full of derring-do, intrigue and revenge.
(I think I may have ranted too much, feel free to ignore the ravings of a zealot )
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I KNEW I'd get a rise out of you on this one, Robyn_Hood.
I really LOVED the skeletal frame of the story. How much better can it get? But the layers upon layers of fat and gristle and muscle and clothes on top of that. I felt like that amazing story was lost in the attempts to engage the emotions of the reader--the melodrama.
Maybe I'll have to try that unabridged version. You're the second person who's told me it's better.
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Out of curiousity, whose version did you read?
After reading the unabridged version (which was at least TWO or THREE times longer!), I could hardly believe the two books were supposed to be telling the same story. Now the unabridged version got a little long winded at times (you can tell that Dumas got paid by the word ), but because I had read the abridged version, I knew the tempo would pick up again in a few pages. There were parts that I skimmed or skipped over (just to give myself hope) then I went back and read the back story.
The Count of Monte Cristo, in its entirety, really is a jigsaw puzzle and it amazed me how every little piece fell together, how each character was somehow connected to another.
The problem with abridging a work, is that you have someone - other than the author - trying to decide where the deadwood is and clearing it out. This doesn't always work well.
quote: really LOVED the skeletal frame of the story. How much better can it get?
I said pretty much the same thing. What could posssibly have been removed from the story? Once I read the full version, I realized just how much had been hacked out. Things that had made sense in the abridged version all of a sudden seemed wrong and out of place.
Melodrama is not just what is presented, but they way in which it is presented. Dumas, at least in translation, has a delightful turn of phrase in describing his melodrama.
I haven't checked in on the other thread lately, but there seems to be a strong degree to which the social construction of gender informs one's perception of melodrama. That social construction is different in France, and was certainly very different back at the time Dumas was popular. Also, much melodrama can be forgiven if it is delivered along with some swordfighting and poison.
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One thing that makes classics seem melodramatic and cliche is that they originate a host of imitators. Think about Lord of the Rings for a moment. It comes perilously close to all the heroic fantasy cliches. Or Neuromancer, it's like someone set out to write the expression of everything cyberpunk
The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the earliest entries in the "unjustly imprisoned hero comes back and wreaks terrible vengeance on those that betrayed him". In the modern idiom, the vengeance is usually of a straightforward martial arts sort that plays well on the big screen. And there are usually not so many villains. Exceptions to both rules exist, of course.
Still, most of the "originals" spawned imitations because they were good. I think that, issues of translation and such aside, The Count of Monte Cristo does have that creative spark that can keep you reading.
There is also the issue of narration as an artform. Things have changed. Concepts of literature were and are still under development. There are issues of fashion and style, and of course POV as we understand it is a pretty recent development. Particularly in the period when fictional accounts were only just becoming liberated from the necessity of being convincing as potentially true accounts, the best writers of the time were making a lot of the newbie mistakes that every generation of writers makes anew in their early writing.
Leonardo Da Vinci painted many wonderful works using experimental media that turned out to be totally impermanent. It's a sad truth, native genius doesn't overcome lack of proper training in all cases. Some of the best work of the Renaissance has crumbled to dust simply because the great artists liked to invent their own new methods of preparing surfaces, mixing paints, and mixing tempuras and varnishes.
Sometimes art has trouble surviving the test of time for reasons that have nothing to do with the talent of the artist. And even a great work is going to have flaws. Still, all things considered, I would have to say that the main reason that an unknown new writer would have no chance of getting Dumas' work published today is because there isn't an editor alive who wouldn't immediately spot the obvious plagerism.
quote: I kept thinking, 'Man! I could take this and update it and edit out all that crappy simpering stuff and weak characterization and on and on and on and make one heck of a great story!'
Or has that already been done?
You might try Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination which is an explicit rewrite (or reworking: think Hatrack Rewrite Challenge) of The Count of Monte Cristo. Bester does some strange things when he writes, and sometimes goes over the top with certain devices, but all in all I think this book is a great success. (I liked the original Count too.)
Posts: 932 | Registered: Jul 2001
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