Book Meme, Day 12

[selenak]

12. I pretend to have read it.

War and Peace, occassionally. I'm shamefully ignorant (in the sense of actually having read the books, as opposed to general cultural osmosis) of the Russian classics anyway, and for some reason, I never got around to War and Peace. I did see both the Hollywood and the more recent tv series version, but it's definitely on my "must read before I die" list.





1. Favorite book from childhood
2. Best Bargain
3. One with a blue cover.
4. Least favorite book by favorite author
5. Doesn't belong to me.
6. The one I always give as a gift.
7. Forgot I owned it.
8. Have more than one copy.
9. Film or tv tie-in.
10. Reminds me of someone I love.
11. Second hand bookshop gem.

13. Makes me laugh.
14. An old favorite.
15. Favorite fictional father.
16. Can't believe more people haven't read.
17. Future classic.
18. Bought on a recommendation.
19. Still can't stop talking about it.
20. Favorite cover.
21. Summer read.
22. Out of print.
23. Made to read at school.
24. Hooked me into reading.
25. Never finished it.
26. Should have sold more copies.
27. Want to be one of the characters.
28. Bought at my fave independent bookshop.
29. The one I have reread most often.
30. Would save if my house burned down.

Comments

[kore]

And hey, they're buried next to each other (and with Alexandre Dumas, which is very fitting since he and Hugo were the French Romantics) in the Pantheon.

Aww! What midnight conversations they could have.

Isn't it great? I think of it often when I look at my shelves (which are organized by size and "how much can I cram in this space," so there are lots of odd juxtapositions).

[selenak]

I bet the first thing Dumas wants to know is whether Zola was murdered or not, and to construct a mighty revenge plot if he was. Hugo is torn. Zola is zen until finding out that bastard Henri Rochefort claimed Zola had discovered Dreyfus was guilty after all and committed suicide. Then Zola gives Dumas permission to construct as grandiose a revenge plot as he can come up with.

[kore]

Zola is zen until finding out that bastard Henri Rochefort claimed Zola had discovered Dreyfus was guilty after all and committed suicide.

Wait WTF??? D:

Then Zola gives Dumas permission to construct as grandiose a revenge plot as he can come up with.

THAT WOULD BE EPIC.

[selenak]

To quote wiki about Zola's death:

"Zola died on 29 September 1902 of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by an improperly ventilated chimney.[13] His funeral on 5 October was attended by thousands. Alfred Dreyfus initially had promised not to attend the funeral but was given permission by Mme Zola and attended.[14][15]

His enemies were blamed for his death because of previous attempts on his life, but nothing could be proved at the time. Expressions of sympathy arrived from everywhere in France; for a week the vestibule of his house was crowded with notable writers, scientists, artists, and politicians who came to inscribe their names in the registers.[citation needed] On the other hand, Zola's enemies used the opportunity to celebrate in malicious glee.[16] Writing in L'Intransigeant, Henri Rochefort claimed Zola had committed suicide, having discovered Dreyfus to be guilty.

Zola was initially buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris, but on 4 June 1908, just five years and nine months after his death, his remains were relocated to the Panthéon, where he shares a crypt with Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.[17] The ceremony was disrupted by an assassination attempt by Louis-Anthelme Grégori, a disgruntled journalist and admirer of Edouard Drumont, on Alfred Dreyfus, who was wounded in the arm by the gunshot. Grégori was acquitted by the Parisian court which accepted his defense that he had not meant to kill Dreyfus, meaning merely to graze him.

In 1953, an investigation ("Zola a-t-il été assassiné?") published by the journalist Jean Borel in the newspaper Libération raises the idea that Zola's death might have been a murder rather than an accident.[18] It is based on the revelation of the Norman pharmacist Pierre Hacquin, who was told by the chimney sweeper Henri Buronfosse that the latter intentionally blocked the chimney of Zola's apartment in Paris ("Hacquin, je vais vous dire comment Zola est mort. [...] Zola a été asphyxié volontairement. C'est nous qui avons bouché la cheminée de son appartement.")."

Clearly, if ever something called for a Dumas plot...

[kore]

WOW

Also, I was just reading a new book on Wilde which said that after conversations with Esterhazy? that Carlos Blacker dropped a vital clue to Wilde who told Zola, altho apparently it's still murky what actually happened (and Google tells me scholars have been going on about this new wrinkle since at least 2010). I had totally forgotten Wilde arrived in Paris right as Zola's trial was raging.

Also now I want this: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199660827.001.0001/acprof-9780199660827

[selenak]

*googles*

Good lord. I must say Wilde doesn't come out of this looking very well, according to this review. Siding with Esterhazy and the Anti-Dreyfus-Crowd?

[kore]

Yeah, the new book (Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years) quotes him as going on about how he and Esterhazy were both criminals and being epigrammatic about innocence and so on. Gah. But, it also suggests, on the basis of his contemporary letters to Blacker and Constance Wilde, that Wilde promised to tell Blacker what Esterhazy had said at dinner, and that he was probably drunk when he told Strong about Blacker's information from Panizzardi about the exculpatory evidence. And this author also points out that Chris Healy, who was "a Dreyfusard," was with Strong and Wilde and took the news to Zola and later said Wilde "suggested the clue which enabled Zola to successfully defend Dreyfus," and another friend of Zola's probably wrote the article which appeared in the French press days before Strong's article. And Blacker came at once when Wilde got news Constance was dead, and helped him very generously with money. -- Not that any of that excuses Wilde's behaviour or things he said, but it does suggest the situation is a little more complex. At the very least if Wilde hadn't told the secret to Strong and Healy, Lettre d’un Diplomate might never even have been written, which makes me kind of dizzy.

[kore]

But it certainly is very disappointing on Wilde's part, yeah. I think it was one of those times when his aesthetics got the better of his ethics and he tossed off stuff like 'to be innocent requires no imagination' or whatever, plus he was thinking of himself as a criminal too. Plus there was a v weird anti-Dreyfus anglophobia in France at the time? WTF.

Poor Carlos, he was the best man at Wilde's wedding and I just read in a book review how he requested his ashes be put in the tomb next to Wilde's, altho it was put much more affectingly than that and of course now I can't find it. (Altho then his son Carlos Paton Blacker was a eugenicist? DD: But his granddaughter was a 'Blakean' batik atist! https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/thetis-blacker-434360.html)