I've been reading Stendhal's The Red and the Black (1830). It took me awhile to finish, because it's long and often boring, but I finally turned the last page yesterday. I had an off ramp: around the half way point, our dog got hold of my original copy and ate it like middle school homework. Under the impression that anything you don't enjoy is good for you, I went to the library, checked it out, and have now read the last couple hundred pages or so.
In defense of Stendhal, I've come to believe that the tedium is to a degree intentional.
The plot involves a young plebe from the provinces who, on account of intellectual ability discovered by his priest, gets a job tutoring the kids of a rich Frenchman of high society. Julien Sorel—that's the plebe's name—soon starts a love affair with his employer's wife, the mother of the children he's tutoring. When this comes to light, he's sent off to a seminary, and, after an interlude, his sponsor at the seminary arranges for him to become the personal secretary of another elevated noble. Julien is soon screwing his new boss's daughter. Eventually mistress number one is reinserted into the plot, there is a love triangle, complications, a crime, and Julien is guillotined.
Sounds entertaining and racy, but I've condensed the events of 500 pages into a single paragraph, and the "sex scenes" do not really qualify by contemporary standards. One of Stendhal's intentions is to satirize the church and the upper crust of French society. One of his methods is to subject the reader to the endless tedium of the lives of these people. I don't remember the point being made explicit, but Julien's sexual successes should be attributed mainly to the boredom of his mistresses. The novel's atmospherics are stultifying. People are rich and their profit on it is, they have to listen to each other talk (and so does the reader, for interminable stretches). The young men get good at riding horses, however.
There's barely an ounce of pity. Julien is implicitly condemned for wanting to rise in the world he discovers when, instead, he should be as repulsed as his creator. Of course the priests are corrupt and on the make, too. A different author might have favorably contrasted Julien's humble family background with the wasteland of the rich into which he's "promoted." But when in prison, waiting to be executed, he's visited by his father, who's angling for money.
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