en francais

There was a time in my life when I read the classics, and I still do when I have the time, which happens to be, like, never. But. Anyway. My seventh grade French teacher, Miss Cartmill, made us read Alexander Dumas’ The Count Of Monte Cristo—or, Le Compte De Monte Cristo, as we were required to call it. We read it en francais, which leads me to believe that it must’ve been some extremely abridged version of the real work. Otherwise, how could we possibly have navigated its depths? I mean not only did we suck at French, we were stupid seventh graders. But read it we did. I vividly remember Miss Cartmill saying the female lead’s name, Mercedes, over and over—“Merrre-saaaayd-es,” we had to repeat after her to get with the proper French pronunciation. To this day, I can’t think of that book without thinking of this.

We also read a French version of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, and my parents took me to see the play once in Toronto, where I promptly fell asleep.

Recently, though, I stumbled upon modern movie adaptations of both stories—Goeffry Rush, Liam Neeson, Uma Thurman, etc etc. And you know? They were both tremendous. You can't really fuck up such great adventure stories. They’ve got everything—betrayal, murder, scandal, redemption, love, and triumph of the spirit. Classic human shit, ya know?