Last weekend we went to see a friend's daughter's school play: Les Misérables. Apparently the kids just loooove this show. I read it in high school (or rather, parts of it...it's the only book I was ever assigned where I skipped huge chunks and relied on the Cliff's Notes to keep up) and hated it.
Now, I'm not a big fan of musicals, especially musicals that are supposed to be serious. When I told my sister...ex-high school/community theater person...that I...high school disdainer of all things theatric...was going to see Les Misérables, she just laughed. And laughed. And laughed.
(Actually, the kids did a very good job with the production, and I enjoyed it...because I'm close to twenty years removed from high school. Watching the stage crew kids and the drama kids and the friends-in-the-audience kids brought back such memories. I had some friends in the drama club and the band, so I and a couple of other friend-in-the-audience kids used to crash the cast parties. Inevitably there would be some romantic betrayal, shouted accusations and proclaimations, alliances, clusters of sobbing girls, clusters of boys trying to keep another boy from punching through somebody's parents' rec room wall...and we gate crashers would sit on the sofa drinking their beer saying "These drama kids are so...dramatic." [When I was in high school, the drinking age in DC had just been raised from 18 to 21, but 18-year-olds were grandfathered in. One of the older kids in the class would just go down Connecticut Ave. to a liquor store over the line to buy beer and wine coolers for parties. Times were, as they say, different then. For one thing, it was cool to drink wine coolers.])
Anyway, watching Les Misérables made me realize...I got nothing out of that book. It is known to be one of the great works of western literature, and I could only remember the mere outline of plot. I had no recollection of theme and no impression of emotion. There were other books I read in school that I didn't love...A Death in the Family by James Agee comes to mind...that I re-read later and appreciated a great deal more. It actually took three classes where I had to read The Great Gatsby before I got it.
So I picked up a copy of Les Misérables.
I'm on page 139.
I'm thinking of ordering the Cliff's Notes.
Posted by Nic at March 5, 2005 06:28 PM