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Regarding Monte Cristo, I am about 300 pages into the approx 1,000 pages. I find the plot quite compelling and have often found it hard to put down to see what happens next. I also constantly look up historical and geographical and literary references, as well as all the words I don't know, so that makes it slow going. But still, 300 pages ain't nothing. I'd have finished most novels at that length.
This whole book is based on the premise that young Dantes', a very competent up-and-coming ship captain to-be gets back-stabbed with a false allegation and ends up going down hard on it, so hard that he ends up imprisoned in the Alcatraz of France. His term of imprisonment was pretty rough but was good reading how he ultimately plans an escape, then improvises another when opportunity arises.
My complaint to this point though is that we're supposed to see Dantes' as a naive and innocent young lad that gets falsely accused of what amounts to treason. But the dude knowingly captained his ship to Corsica and picked up a package from Napolean, who was there in exile, and was then going to deliver the package to an addressee in Paris. The book even mentions that Dantes' MET Napolean. So I say he really wasn't innocent. Napolean was deposed at this point, exiled, and the King was in power. He was essentially engaging in espionage and treason and he had to have known that! Sure, he says it was all to honor the dying wish of the previous captain, but he just had to know that his activities would be highly illegal according to the King actually in power. And so therefore, I say that Dantes' wasn't so innocent after all. Naive, sure. In over his head with that espionage stuff, absolutely. Didn't intend on committing a high crime. But you gotta know what you're getting into! My analogy would be if someone came up to you at the airport and said 'I'm dying but can you please take this package on your flight and deliver it to someone for me? Thanks!' The authorities aren't gonna buy that you didn't know there was a kilo of heroin in that package if/when you get caught with it, ya know?
So I don't have quite the sympathy for Dantes' that Dumas was probably intending. Not that he deserved what he got necessarily.
Currently, I'm at the part where a new character, a rich guy of some description, goes to the island only to find out that a bandit pirate type of legend is based there, and they blindfold him and take him into Dantes' opulent lair, and Dantes' (or shall I say Sinbad the Sailor) gives em a lavish meal and they do hashish. He's just waking up from that stupor now.
Overall, I had no idea Dumas was such a good writer. The prose, the diction, is very proper and precise. Nobody writes like this anymore. And he makes tons of historical references so at one point I started watching all the YouTubes I could about the Napoleonic period and Napolean's exile to Corsica, his return, his defeat at Waterloo, all that. I knew the broad strokes but it got me into the history a lot more. Now my movie list includes a Napolean biopic that I wouldn't have had interest in before, AND there's a big time new Napolean movie coming out soon that I'm now pumped for too, although with modernity I'm sure Napolean will be played by a hispanic woman in the new one. But worth keeping an eye on to be certain!
Another thing, you can tell Dumas (a Frenchman) didn't like the English by the way he clowns on the English when Dantes' is briefly disguised as an Englishman. The French and the Brits really aren't fans of one another and Dumas let's just a bit of that get into his writing which is hilarious.
I would give this 3.5 out of 4 stars so far. It's a helluva long read but it also jumps ahead in time quite a bit, so it's an epic. Faulkner and Hemingway are my two go-to writers along with Dostoevsky and I don't think any of the three spanned such a time period in their works as Dumas does with the Count of Monte Cristo. This thing is an epic.
Helluva recommendation by Mr. Hammersticks!
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