cahn

I'm way behind on posting, yes. I am trying to get caught up, finally. On the other hand, I haven't been reading any dystopias lately, yay!

5/5. Reread. This book is... kind of as if Alexandre Dumas had written a fictionalized history of his own life. Only better. Much better. It is crammed to the brim with lots of random tidbits and anecdotes and witticisms to do with France/French society in general and Dumas in particular. It is hilarious and sweet and very fun to read. There is a plot holding it together which is quite interesting, but it's only extremely tenuously about the plot at all. It's about, well, Dumas, as a bigger-than-life character. In the context of France at the time, which is its own bigger-than-life character. (Both Dumas and France come across as the sort of person who would be quite fascinating in real life to talk to at a party, but maybe would not be my first choice for a friend. A similar vibe, now I think of it, to Richard Feynman in Surely You're Joking. And Endore knows exactly what he is doing -- for all his protestations that we shouldn't blame Dumas for being a terrible father and lover, he's basically doing exactly that, but keeping the reader laughing and fascinated the entire time.)

It's a bawdy book. Like Dumas the man and Dumas the author. Nothing explicit -- again like Dumas' novels -- but boy, I think I missed about fifteen million double entendres when I read this in high school. (I also think it's hilarious that my French teacher gave me this to read. She was pretty awesome, though -- she also gave me the Angelique books to read "because they have some good description of Henry XIV's court," with the proviso that maybe I should not flaunt the Harlequin-esque decolletages on the covers in front of my parents. Heh.)

It's a novel, not a work of nonfiction. There's a really cool afterword where Endore talks about his approach, and how he feels that making up stuff out of whole cloth (which he totally does, and he gives examples -- and the underlying plot is, he is unashamed to say, total fabrication) is more true to the underlying truth of Dumas pere et fils. And... I rather agree. Endore also gives references to real biographies of Dumas in case you're interested in the historical truth.

It's the sort of book that I reread a couple of pages at a time, the better to savor it and make it last as long as possible. It's a total crime this is out of print. There's a, possibly bootleg, online version available, which is chock-full of typos, if you don't mind the risk of coming out thinking that the book is talking about someone named "Alexandra."