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.