It's already Reading Wednesday somewhere

[troisoiseaux]

Read Bohemians of the Latin Quarter by Henri Murger, the 1851 novel in short stories/vignettes that was the basis for the opera La Bohème and, by extension, Jonathan Larson's RENT. Very charming! Interesting to see what made it through the game of telephone of multiple adaptations— for one thing, the candle-based meet-cute of Roger and Mimi in RENT (and, per Wikipedia, Rodolfo and Mimi in Puccini's opera) is actually from Murger's one stand-alone story about a different couple, who did not make it into either adaptation, rather than the original Rodolphe and Mimi? This was also a fun read on its own merit, as a fondly humorous portrait of a particular time and place and subculture; there was a passing joke in the first chapter I found particularly funny - one character asking someone to "com{e} every morning to tell {him} the day of the week and month, the quarter of the moon, the weather it is going to be, and the form of government we are under" - because, yeah, that last part would be an open question in 1840s France!

In Moby Dick updates: SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE. I enjoyed the foray into WHALE LAW in chapters 89-90, including the tangent on WHALE LAW (i.e., the principle of "fast fish vs. loose fish" or, tl;dr, "finders keepers") as a metaphor for colonialism, although since it was the 1850s this metaphor seemed to be on the side of colonialism? (There was a line about how "at last will Mexico be {a colony} to the United States"— oh, Herman, buddy, no.) Anyway! At this point I'm kind of rooting for Stubb to get eaten by a whale.

Comments

[sovay]

Interesting to see what made it through the game of telephone of multiple adaptations— for one thing, the candle-based meet-cute of Roger and Mimi in RENTs (and, per Wikipedia, Rodolfo and Mimi in Puccini's opera) is actually from Murger's one stand-alone story about a different couple, who did not make it into either adaptation, rather than the original Rodolphe and Mimi?

I did not know that!

one character asking someone to "com{e} every morning to tell {him} the day of the week and month, the quarter of the moon, the weather it is going to be, and the form of government we are under" - because, yeah, that last part would be an open question in 1840s France!

Relatable.

[troisoiseaux]

I guess the Puccini opera's Mimi is actually a composite of book!Mimi and another character, Francine— she also gets Francine's death scene, as opposed to book!Mimi, who - ROT13 for spoilers for 174-year-old book? - qvrf nybar orpnhfr bs n zvfpbzzhavpngvba sebz gur ubfcvgny jurer Ebqbycur guvaxf fur'f nyernql qrnq naq fb ur qbrfa'g tb gb ivfvg ure hagvy vg'f gbb yngr??

[sovay]

I guess the Puccini opera's Mimi is actually a composite of book!Mimi and another character, Francine

That's so neat. I am most familiar with this story in its Puccini form, although I did like Aki Kaurismäki's 1992 non-musical film.

[ermingarden]

Out of curiosity, did your property class, like mine, include a foray into WHALE LAW by way of Ghen v. Rich?

[troisoiseaux]

We did not??? We also didn't study R v Dudley and Stephens in crim law, although it was in our textbook.

Interestingly, it looks like this case had a different outcome from the (real? fictional?) British case that Melville discusses in chapter 89:

"These pleadings, and the counter pleadings, being duly heard, the very learned Judge in set terms decided, to wit- That as for the boat, he awarded it to the plaintiffs, because they had merely abandoned it to save their lives; but that with regard to the controverted whale, harpoons, and line, they belonged to the defendants; the whale, because it was a Loose-Fish at the time of the final capture; and the harpoons and line because when the fish made off with them, it (the fish) acquired a property in those articles; and hence anybody who afterwards took the fish had a right to them. Now the defendants afterwards took the fish; ergo, the aforesaid articles were theirs." (x)

[ermingarden]

I think the difference between Ghen v Rich and the situation in Moby Dick is probably because Ghen involved bomb-lance whale hunting, and Wikipedia says bomb-lances weren’t in general use until the late 1850s - though it may also be a British versus American law divergence?

As I recall, when you kill a whale with a bomb-lance, the whale generally sinks and floats back up a couple of days later, so the general industry practice was to label your bomb-lances and then whoever found the whale later would contact the people who’d killed it, who would then pay a finder’s fee. In Ghen, a dude found a whale on a beach and, instead of contacting the people who’d killed it, sold it at auction! The court was like, look, it is Generally Understood in this Industry that killing a whale with a marked bomb-lance is enough to establish possession, and that’s beneficial to society because otherwise whalers would have to be waiting around all the time for whale corpses to resurface. The main takeaway was that the whalers had property rights in the whale because they had done everything in their power to take possession of it, and that the court could take into account the norms of the industry, so I think the calculus in bomb-lance whaling is just very different.

(“Bomb-lance” - what a word!)

[troisoiseaux]

FASCINATING. Yeah, it sounds like a changing industry customs/standards thing.

[ermingarden]

Also, for what it’s worth, while we did do Dudley and Stephens in Crim, we never did the carbolic smoke ball case in Contracts! (I read it on my own, mostly just so I could understand the memes…) Anyway, I don’t think Ghen is a standard case, though it’s a nice complement to Pierson v. Post, which is what we read it with. (Animals! They’re complicated!)

[troisoiseaux]

I don't think we studied the carbolic smoke ball case, either? But of course we did Pierson v. Post.

[lunabee34]

Rooting for the whale is definitely the appropriate takeaway for Moby Dick. LOL

[troisoiseaux]

Right???

[sabotabby]

SQUEEZESQUEEZESQUEEZE

[troisoiseaux]

I was absolutely losing it throughout that whole chapter. "I got too lost in the sauce of squeezing sperm that I started squeezing my coworkers' hands instead and it made me happy :)" oh my god???

[sabotabby]

It's one of the funniest things I've read in any book ever.

[sabotabby]

SQUEEZESQUEEZESQUEEZE

[marginaliana]

"and the form of government we are under" - yikes, too real

[troisoiseaux]

Like, I swear I've made and/or heard someone make the same joke within the past week.

[chestnut_pod]

Whale law was my favorite part too! Whale COMMON law at that!

[troisoiseaux]

This book just feels like Melville is throwing in everything and the kitchen sink, ideas-wise, and I'm enjoying the ride.

[osprey_archer]

Bohemians of the Latin Quarter sounds right up my alley. Which translation did you read?

[troisoiseaux]

I read the free iBooks version, which is the same 1888 translation available on Project Gutenberg.

[osprey_archer]

Thank you!