A few month's ago I started reading Three Musketeers again. I had forgotten how relentless and fast moving it is. Moving from one action set piece to the next from beginning to end. It is almost overpowering, literally had to catch my breadth before turning a page.
I had forgotten how it was when I had read it as a kid.
Actually, I listened to a dramatization of The Three Musketeers and I was struck by how _funny_ it is. The 4-way duel at the beginning is hilarious and Aramis' and Porthos' respective romantic escapades give great comic relief to what is otherwise an action packed adventure.
The Count of Monte Cristo is an investment, and the middle third drags, but it's necessary to set up the final third, which is so rewarding for the reader. It's the best tale of revenge and redemption I've ever read.
...I read both of the books recently and it was illuminating to be able to near-instantly explore avenues of insight/criticism of both of the books. Three Musketeers matches fairly closely to Wizard of Oz (vice versa actually), and Monte Cristo raises some really interesting questions if you view "The Count" as basically a fallen angel of divine justice (and the benefits/costs to him via that role).
Since my circle of IRL people who'd recently read both the unabridged books in the last month is infinitesimally small, it was one of my first "arms-length" test cases of "The GPT's" for fitness-for-purpose. I'm still a bit muddy on throwing a bunch of personal data and thoughts to remote servers (or becoming dependent on that interaction pattern), but digging in and analyzing old books was a great kindof gut-check and something I enjoy doing when finishing a book.
I know it's regurgitating a bunch of of reddit comments and academic books/papers (in Dumas's case), but overall- highly recommended!
Is there some part of it that was based on real people?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loranga,_Masarin_och_Dartanjan...
So, he became a priest? (Father Ted [a literary classic] reference)
Galileo had (illegitimate) daughters but was unable to find husbands for them, so their remaining options were to become nuns. One seems to have quite brilliant, but the other a drunk:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo%27s_Daughter
Back in the day the Church was the social safety net of society, so many folks ended up in monasteries as a form of charity for folks that would perhaps otherwise would have no other way to support themselves.
So, I immediately looked it up. There was a real d'Artagnan, he was kind of a big deal, so Dumas wrote some stories based on a fictionalized version of the real d'Artagnan.
Cardinal Mazarin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Mazarin
Athos - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_d%27Athos
Porthos - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_de_Porthau
Aramis - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_d%27Aramitz
Comte de Troisville (D'artagnan's mentor) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comte_de_Troisville
All highly fictionalized and I have had trouble finding information on the real counterparts (aside from the Cardinal). I started learning about that period of history after listening to the D'Artagnan Romances in audiobook form.
The other interesting thing is Gatien de Courtilz de Sanras wrote semi-fictional accounts of D'Artagnan, published 27 years after D'artagnan's death and 144 years before Dumas' The Three Musketeers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatien_de_Courtilz_de_Sandras ).
A hero and a heroic death in a pointless war.
And he was more than a big deal. One of the most powerful people in Europe at the time.
(For those interested, Jerzy Hoffman has produced excellent film adaptations of these books, two while navigating communist censorship, which is why they were filmed in reverse order. In reading order:
- "With Fire and Sword" (1999) [1]
- "The Deluge" (1974) [0] (trailer for the significantly shortened 2014 director's cut [3])
- "The Colonel Wołodyjowski" [2]
In my opinion, and this is widely regarded to be the case, the original 5+ hour "The Deluge" is the best of the three and frankly one of the best movies I've ever watched.)
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqdrKEEt_nc
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCESk2joFo8
Now this impulse to scour and loot humanity of its indigenous cultural sites is turned on the indigenous Europeans, by the same ruling class and their institutional "researchers", "scientists" and "adventurer" apparatchiks that also scoured and looted the reset of the world and stored it in their museums, e.g., Egyptian artifacts.
Is nothing sacred or "holy" anymore? Can nothing survive the self-important narcissism of "scientists" that must impose themselves on everyone against their will? Why are we allowing these types of "scientists" to just plunder and destroy the cultural artifacts and sites simply because they are curious and want to write self-important papers to advance their careers and standing?
It's literally grave robbery, only more pretentious because the "scientists" are creating "collections" in their institutions. This is the very same kind of "scientist" with no respect for humanity that created the scientific classification that created racist supremacism...for science, of course.
How would you feel about "scientists" digging up and grave robbing and filing away the bones of some African, Asian, or South American indigenous? Why should we accept it for European indigenous?
People complain about the fact that, e.g., the British did it for centuries, e.g., all over Egypt and Indian grave and cultural sites, yet people are fine with these people doing it to the European indigenous cultural sites apparently. How about we reject this kind of purging and sanitizing of the earth of indigenous culture everywhere or at least come up with some standard of restoring things once investigated. All these artifacts survived literal millennia, but most of them will not survive the pretentious self-important narcissism of "scientist" grave robbers.
Jack Sparrow and/vs/saves the 3 Musketeers.
It's more that their names were real, but their descriptions and their actions in the books are almost entirely fictional.