One day many years ago my husband, Eric, came home to find
me sobbing on the sofa. His first
reaction was to ask if the kids were okay.
I nodded through my tears; it was all I could do. Nearly frantic, he demanded that I tell him
what was wrong. “Flint died!” I blurted.
“Who the hell is Flint?” Eric was so confused.
I didn’t have the energy to explain in detail, so I just
told him that Flint was a character in the book I was reading.
I nearly had to peal the poor man off the ceiling.
As I wiped away my tears, he ranted on and on and on about
how reading was stupid and a waste of time.
We fought about it for a while.
His position was that the only reading material necessary was Archie
comics while I championed reading in general and Dragon Lance (the series in
which Flint met his unfortunate and untimely demise) in particular. That a story could move someone to such
genuine emotion was to be applauded I argued.
“Don’t knock it ‘til you tried it,” I challenged.
Apparently he had. At
some point in his early adulthood he had read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.
Well, no wonder he quit reading, I thought. And I
was right. Les Miserables was the reason
he had turned his back on reading, but not for the reasons I had imagined. Though he was extremely reluctant to admit
it, the story had moved him to tears and so he decided that reading was a waste
of time. (Men!)
I have yet to actually get through the entire book. I’ve started it a couple of times, but I
struggle with the writing style and always give up. I have managed to glean a basic understanding
of the story over the years, and have resigned myself to never actually getting
all the way through it. At least not in
print.
Thanks, though, to the magic of video, I have finally
completed the story from start to finish.
And I was impressed.
I had a bit of a hard time imagining Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean
and Russell Crowe as Javert, but like Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes (and
I had the same reservations) they pretty much nailed it. It was all quite spectacular.
And now I wonder what Eric would have thought. He loved movies. Would seeing this life changing story brought
to life on the big screen have met his approval? I suspect not. I think he would have condemned it and refused
to watch it – for fear of having those print-induced emotions dislodged from
the deepest recesses to bubble up to the surface once again.
Oh, my strange, dear husband! I wish you were here to prove me right. You would be in awe of Netflix… of streaming
video in general, I think. (In spite of
being as terrified of the Internet as you were.)
Anyway, I am glad that I finally got to watch Les
Miserables.
And, yes, I was moved to some genuine emotion by it.
