Tormented by dead French people

"LES MISERABLES" LOCATIONS IN PARIS: AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE

BY KATIE BARNES

AVAILABLE NOW ON AMAZON

“Among many other things, “Les Misérables” is Victor Hugo's love letter to the Paris of his youth... His descriptions of its streets and buildings, and the routes the characters take, are almost forensically detailed and accurate.”

If you have ever wanted to know more about the locations in Paris where Victor Hugo says that Valjean, Javert and the other characters walked, this will be for you. Using contemporary and modern maps, photographs, engravings and paintings, this book gives detailed written and illustrated histories for 35 locations connected with the novel, the musical and the life of Victor Hugo, including the sites of the Barricade, the Rue Plumet, the quay where Javert commits suicide, the Cafe Musain, the church where Marius and Cosette are married, the street where Valjean dies, the street where Hugo was nearly killed on the night of the barricades, the Pantheon where he is buried, the place on the river bank where Valjean and Marius emerge from the sewers, and many more. And if you visit Paris in person, the book includes information on travel to each location by Metro, bus and bicycle, together with two suggested walking tours on the Right and Left Banks.

All profits are donated to Acting For Others, which provides financial and emotional support to all those working in theatrical professions, through its network of 14 member charities. I will receive no financial benefit whatsoever.

It's available as a Kindle download for £5.99/$7.99; as a paperback with colour illustrations for £21.50/$28.98; and as a paperback with illustrations in black & white for £12.50/$16.79. 

If you like it, please leave a rating and review on Amazon: if I get more than 10 positive reviews and ratings, Amazon will do more to help me publicise it, which would hopefully mean more sales and more funds raised for Acting for Others. 

These are the links to all three editions on Amazon:

Black & white edition:https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0H2WCQTHM

Colour edition: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0H2WCNZRZ

Kindle edition: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0H4DWJ8LP

i humbly present: a digital download of every article in the times of london about the 1832 june uprising, from the 5th (the announcement of general lamarque’s death and upcoming funeral) to the 20th (accounts of the first trials of alleged conspirators and participants in the uprising).

DOWNLOAD HERE (pdf, 64 pages, 24 mb)

below the cut, i’ve put together some important contextual information: how the times gathered news on foreign events, what other events you’ll see mentioned, and the general editorial bias of the paper. 

i’ve also made a little summary of each day’s coverage, so that if you’re overwhelmed by the full package, you can focus on the bits that interest you.

anyway, i hope you guys enjoy it/find it helpful!

the 40th anniversary album of les mis pre-order is out, and on this, jordan shaw (the black actor playing enjolras) has been replaced with a white actor. the entire thing is directly recorded from the stage 40th show, and yet they've cut out jordan and replaced him with james gish. ONLY jordans songs have been changed!! no shade to james because he's also extremely talented but hes not jordan? he didn't play enjolras in the 40th? and the fact that only jordans songs have been changed makes this just UGH. this is terrible and we need to do something about it

i am also not the type of person to say "we need to do something about this" and stay silent, so do something! I sure as hell am!!! make a fuss about this!! post about it and yell about it and find the "contact us" page on the distributor form, and if you're feeling kind, shoot jordan a kind word on insta at jordanshawuk. this is bullshit and something needs to be done.

/(volume.book.chapter) I.i.1 - 851st word, I.i.8 - 235th and 236th word, I.i.14 - 23rd word, I.i.7 - 252nd word, I.i.12 - 318th word/

/I.ii.6 - 256th word, I.ii.3 - 959th and 960th word, I.ii.9 - 200th word, I.ii.4 - 131st word, I.ii.5 - 142nd word/

/I.iii.3 - 525th word, I.iii.9 - 74th a 75th word, I.iv.3 - 773rd word, I.iv.1 - 621st word, I.iv.1 - 32nd word, II.iii.5 - 350th word, II.iii.7 - 27th word/

/II.iv.1 - 370th word, II.iv.5 - 442nd and 443rd word, II.iv.4 - 239th word, II.iv.1 - 1483rd word, II.v.8 - 320th word/

/II.vi.2 - 276th word, II.viii.4 - 115th and 116th word, II.viii.4 - 142nd word, I.ii.7 - 1096th and 1097th word/

I AM SO FUCKING GLAD YOU ASKED!!!

Introducing Gender Valgender: the non binary Les Misérables manifesto

There’s a lot to unpack here but from early on it the book it’s established that Valjean doesn’t seem to fit neatly into the world of men or women:

“Men had only touched him to bruise him. Every contact with them had been a blow. Never, since his infancy, since the days of his mother and of his sister, had he ever encountered a friendly word and a kindly glance.” (LM 1.2.7)

Right off the bat, Hugo establishes the trauma Valjean faced at the hands of men in the all male environment of Toulon has left him wary of them. He also establishes the small kindnesses Valjean revived came from women. In M-sur-M, as mayor, he avoids the company of both respectable men and women alike. Later in the book he ends up in the all female environment of the convent. The nuns are compared specifically to prisoners of Toulon except they are there voluntarily (please don’t make me reread the convent digression to find the quote). Yet Valjean is also othered there as he is still a “man” and has to wear a bell to warn the nuns and schoolgirls away from him. His perceived masculinity is a source of fear.

Once he and Cosette leave the convent, they seem to briefly find a place together where they both fit. But Cosette is growing up, and growing into a bourgeois young woman. Then we see another dimension to Valjean’s gender issues, the idea that he cannot fit into a heterosexual nuclear family:

“As one family! No. I belong to no family. I do not belong to yours. I do not belong to any family of men. In houses where people are among themselves, I am superfluous. There are families, but there is nothing of the sort for me.” (LM 5.7.1, Hapgood)

Of course we all know how this ends, Valjean isolates himself and ends up dying without being a part of this nuclear family that he seems to both fear and revere.

Through his relationship with Cosette, Hugo explores a more feminine approach to Valjean’s character:

When she meditated in the evening, before falling asleep, as she had not a very clear idea that she was Jean Valjean’s daughter, and that he was her father, she fancied that the soul of her mother had passed into that good man and had come to dwell near her. When he was seated, she leaned her cheek against his white hair, and dropped a silent tear, saying to herself: “Perhaps this man is my mother.” (4.3.4)

Hugo is very culturally Catholic and this shines through in his veneration of mothers, first Fantine and then Valjean who seems to carry Fantine's spirit. Since Cosette has no family, Valjean is both her mother and father and in return she is his entire world, his daughter but also his mother, sister and whatever else (4.15.1). Hence the massive fall out when she gets married and he cannot follow her into her new life.

But as previously discussed, there is masculinity in Valjean's character. He possesses this enormous strength that hes almost afraid to use because of the ways it has hurt him in the past (see his hesitance to lift the cart off Fauchlevent because he’s worried Javert will recognise him as a convict). Throughout the book he uses this strength but without the associated violence (hoisting Cosette into the convent, burning himself to escape the Gorbeau robbery, shooting at the hats of the National Guard at the barricade as not to injure/kill anyone). Hopefully we're all woke enough here to know that being both gentle and strong doesn't make you less of a man but its interesting how this different characteristics with different traditional connotations combine in Valjean.

Jean Valjean had never loved anything; for twenty-five years he had been alone in the world. He had never been father, lover, husband, friend. In the prison he had been vicious, gloomy, chaste, ignorant, and shy. The heart of that ex-convict was full of virginity. His sister and his sister’s children had left him only a vague and far-off memory which had finally almost completely vanished; he had made every effort to find them, and not having been able to find them, he had forgotten them. Human nature is made thus; the other tender emotions of his youth, if he had ever had any, had fallen into an abyss.

When he saw Cosette, when he had taken possession of her, carried her off, and delivered her, he felt his heart moved within him.

All the passion and affection within him awoke, and rushed towards that child. He approached the bed, where she lay sleeping, and trembled with joy. He suffered all the pangs of a mother, and he knew not what it meant; for that great and singular movement of a heart which begins to love is a very obscure and a very sweet thing.

And then there’s also the way that— between Fantine’s death and picking up Cosette, Jean Valjean spends 9 months in prison. It’s literally symbolic Mpreg.

This is exactly how that scene went right??

grennell, the president of the kennedy center said, “Any performer who isn’t professional enough to perform for patrons of all backgrounds, regardless of political affiliation, won’t be welcomed. In fact, we think it would be important to out those vapid and intolerant artists to ensure producers know who they shouldn’t hire - and that the public knows which shows have political litmus tests to sit in the audience. The Kennedy Center wants to be a place where people of all political stripes sit next to each other and never ask who someone voted for but instead enjoys a performance together.”

and, i want to point out, that acting in Les Miserables is a job, not a life commitment or a political statement.

I stand by what I said: every single person involved in putting on the Les Miserables Kennedy center performance was either a spineless coward or a Trump supporter, and they should ALL be utterly ashamed of themselves. They're an insult to the novel's legacy. I'm shocked people are defending it. I used to sometimes wonder whether Victor Hugo's actions-- speaking up against Napoleon III's attacks on democracy-- were genuinely that important. After all, it's not like Hugo literally shot Napoleon III in battle or raised barricades against him with his own two hands-- he just used his platform to publicly criticize Napoleon III's attacks on democracy, knowing that he was doing it at a great personal risk. And he was right about the risks-- publicly speaking against Napoleon III did radically change Hugo's life, it did radically alter the course of his career, he did lose a lot of the power he used to have, and he was forced into exile away from everything he knew.

And Les Miserables was the product of that sacrifice. it is the novel he wrote from exile, and it is thematically about his exile. It is a novel that was written as a defense of the principles of a democratic republic, and as an encouragement for people to speak truth to power and stand against tyrants even when it came at great personal risk. But like... I'm honestly starting to respect Hugo's sacrifice a lot more now that multiple people have reached out to me claiming that it's ridiculous to ask that people starring in a musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel accept any level of personal discomfort to stand up to a modern dictator. I'm obsessed with the idea that Les Miserables shouldn't have to mean anything-- that these performers can cosplay as revolutionaries Risking it All to stand Up to Powerful People, while also being spineless cowards claiming they can't accept any personal discomfort/risk whatsoever to stand up to an actual modern dictator. Even when- again!-- they are starring in a story that is literally the product of Hugo's personal sacrifice standing up against Napoleon III! No, I wouldn't care as much if it were some piece of hollow corporate trash like "Back to the Future the musical" or some other garbage. I wouldn't' even care as much if it were another hollow "stick it to the man musical" like Wicked, where all the revolution theming is just hollow window dressing. I do care when it's Les Miserables, because the original novel was written by a man who WAS willing to make that personal sacrifice, and wrote the novel ABOUT that sacrifice. I care that now these people are making their living off of Victor Hugo's legacy-- but start crying about how "they're just poor smol beans who can't do anything uwu" when asked to make even a fraction of the sacrifice that he did, the sacrifice that Les Miserables is about, the sacrifice it exists to encourage. Thousands of people were out on the street demonstrating this weekend to send a message to Donald Trump-- and when this group of artists had a direct line to make a statement to him, the thing thousands of people are out on the streets trying to get, they cowered in fear and refused. Instead they sang to make him feel good, like he was the Hero of the musical--something he already believes-- all while playing pretend as brave revolutionaries making big risks. A democratic lawmaker was shot to death this weekend, but asking a performer to care about the meaning of the art they're profiting off of is "too big of a sacrifice." give me a break. Despite everything, I do think art means something. I think art is more than "a job," I think art is more than a hollow corporate product and vehicle for profit. Les Miserables means something, and it's important that it means something.

But that means it's also important to call out the shocking hypocrisy of what the story has been warped into. The novel does have meaning and even the musical does have meaning-- and that's why I am so outraged that people are dismissing that meaning as irrelevant. It's like Orwell's description of art in dystopia as being a simply "a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces."

Honestly, if the actors wanted to sing songs about how it's ridiculous to ask them to take any personal risks or sacrifices to speak truth to power.... they shouldn't be in Les Miserables. Instead they should just get onstage and sing this song from The Sound of Music about compromising with Nazis for three hours:

It's even more spineless when that's taken into consideration because by not standing with them they ensured that a) the show went ahead despite the efforts of those who boycotted and b) those who boycotted are now far more at risk of being singled out because of it. Trump himself said that he was 'unfazed' by those who boycotted because the show went ahead anyway - this would not have been the case had everyone chosen not to participate. By going ahead with the show, those who performed spat on the sacrifice of those who didn't.

“Give to this dog son of a wolf a human face, and the result will be Javert.”