I’m smirking at the idea of a Moldbuggian story of the uprising of 1832. Revolutionists Get What They Deserve or some-such. :)
Yes, in addition to the musical!Javert quote I included, I was going to include “Crush those little schoolboys!”—but tried searching it and found I was misremembering a different line.
But I don’t think that story has room for the complex characters of Hugo’s story, narratively speaking. There’s no room at all for Valjean, and Javert becomes simply the protagonist to the evil antagonist Enjolras.
You are certainly right that Javert is a more complex and tragic character than a pure Inflexible Authoritarian Law archetype. I could shift a bit my statement and say that the bare essence of Javert is that archetype, and that Hugo gives him that depth because of the direction he wants to take the story and the ideology it embodies.
From Moldbug’s viewpoint LesMiz might be described as an Universalist tract that stacks the deck by showing Valjean as saintlike instead of naive, and setting up Javert’s character and storyline to end in a forced alternative between conversion and suicide, rather than the triumph he “deserves”. (Like Chick tracts, or to pick examples with more quality Chesterton’s and Lewis’ fictions, stack the deck against the skeptic.) But I agree that such a description by Moldbug would be too “reductionist’ (to Moldbug’s own ideology) and unfair to the literary qualities of the work.
Moldbug is not beyond commenting recent events or culture, we may yet hear his take on at least the movie if not the book itself. Also I’ll do a search if he perhaps hasn’t already mentioned the book in a offhanded fashion.
Yes, in addition to the musical!Javert quote I included, I was going to include “Crush those little schoolboys!”—but tried searching it and found I was misremembering a different line.
You are certainly right that Javert is a more complex and tragic character than a pure Inflexible Authoritarian Law archetype. I could shift a bit my statement and say that the bare essence of Javert is that archetype, and that Hugo gives him that depth because of the direction he wants to take the story and the ideology it embodies.
From Moldbug’s viewpoint LesMiz might be described as an Universalist tract that stacks the deck by showing Valjean as saintlike instead of naive, and setting up Javert’s character and storyline to end in a forced alternative between conversion and suicide, rather than the triumph he “deserves”. (Like Chick tracts, or to pick examples with more quality Chesterton’s and Lewis’ fictions, stack the deck against the skeptic.) But I agree that such a description by Moldbug would be too “reductionist’ (to Moldbug’s own ideology) and unfair to the literary qualities of the work.
Moldbug is not beyond commenting recent events or culture, we may yet hear his take on at least the movie if not the book itself. Also I’ll do a search if he perhaps hasn’t already mentioned the book in a offhanded fashion.