What do you think of The Three Musketeers by Dumas? Is it worth reading? Is it interesting? Or is it an overrated relic?
I read a lot. I am not daunted by long books or classics. I loved Les Miserables. I found Don Quixote, on the other hand, incredibly boring and stopped reading after 500 pages, even though it was the highly regarded new translation by Edith Grossman.
And if you liked The Three Musketeers, is there an particular translation you would recommend?
It’s a brilliant book, and I would recommend it wholeheartedly. I read a Penguin version… seemed fine.
It’s a great story, and I seem to recall hearing that it was written as a serial for a newspaper, so there’s lots of cliffhangers and excitement.
When you’re done reading it, you should check out the two 70’s (The 3 and 4 Musketeers) movies starring Michael York, Raquel Welch, Charleton Heston, Oliver Reed and Christopher Lee (to name a few). They do great justice to the book.
I love Dumas! He really goes in for the swashbuckling dramatics – it’s a lot of fun to read and really keeps you interested. You just might want to write down names of characters as you go so you don’t lose track, because if I remember correctly, he tends to switch how he refers to characters often, sometimes using last names only, or first names only, or by nicknames or by disguise names or what have you.
When you’re done reading it, I recommend The Count of Monte Cristo and the “new” The Knight of Maison-Rouge next.
I don’t know which translation I read or what is best, although do stay away from those annoying abridged versions.
My opinion of The Three Musketeers?
I find that it’s fluffy, not stuffy.
I love the whole arc from the Three Musketeers through Twenty Years After and The Viscomte de Bragelonne to The Man in the Iron Mask. Dumas takes his characters from youthful zeal and a brotherhood in arms, through adventure, tragedy, and politics, to a heartbreaking ending in the Man in the Iron Mask, with musketeer set agains musketeer in the affairs of the French royalty. I think that although I loved the Three Musketeers on its own, the sentimentalist in me was most moved by the entire series taken from that glorious golden beginning to the muted end.
I love it! It’s one of my comfort books, nothing is better than a little visit with the Three Musketeers who are actually four people and not really musketeers because they were disbanded.
Personally, the first chapter didn’t wow me right off the bat. But read on, and let yourself go with the completely unlikely plot twists, the flowery dialogue, and bizarre coincidence on top of bizarre coincidence. Once you get sucked in, it’s an amazing story.
Yes, but is it big on chocolate but not on fat?
I enjoyed it a great deal.
Go for it. They’re great books, entertaining and easy to read, but of exceedingly high quality. Dumas is sort of like the French Charles Dickens: he was writing for the common man, not the scholars, and so he has plenty of action, comedy, and sex, and all in a fairly straight forward, accesible manner. A little over-verbose, because it was originally a serial, not a novel, and so he tends to repeat things in case someone missed a week or came into the series late.
I also second the Michael York musketeer movies. Surprisingly faithful, and now available in a two-disc set on DVD.
I know I’ve read it, but I honestly don’t remember much about it. Which I guess is as good an answer as any.
A great book. Dumas is a gifted writer. While we are talking about musketeers films the one I prefer is Disney version (wiht Tim Curry, Sutherland, Sheen, etc) it is not faithfull to the book, eventhough that that movie, as most american films have characters that are either good or evil… Richelieu is more complex in the book, but it was great.
I did find that the translation mattered a lot. If you aren’t laughing fairly soon, try a different version.
Maybe I don’t have enough of a sense of humor. When I read it a few years back, I found myself wishing that I had read it at about age 10, when I could appreciate the swaggering and swashbuclking more. I couldn’t help thinking that these guys were acting like spoiled four-year-olds and should grow up already.
It’s a lot of fun. It’s got adventure, a young underdog, interesting love stories, mysterious pasts, and, in my opinion, one of the most evil bitches in literature.
I would also recommend the original “Adventures of Robin Hood”, by Howard Pyle. Fun reading for a rainy day.
I adored The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Three Musketeers is high on my list of books to read next. I’m actually a little ashamed that I haven’t read the granddaddy of swashbuckling adventures yet.
If you like Victor Hugo, you’ll probably like Dumas as well. He’s wordy, but not difficult. BTW, have you read The Hunchback of Notre Dame yet? That’s another great adventure.
Well, I liked Bobby, Cubby and Cheryl, but I was never too fond of Annette.
Reporting back with my experience of The Three Musketeers thus far.
It’s teriffic.
As I was reading the second chapter I came to this sentance, and realized I was in the hands of a good writer. Dumas describes how a nervous and self-conscious d’Artagnan must make his way through a courtyard filled with rowdy fighting Musketeers, then pass by more of them who were dueling on the stairs. Finally, d’Artagnan must wait for an audience with the Captain of the Musketeers, and he stands among a group of Musketeers who were discussing the politics between the King and the Cardinal.
*On the first landing they were no longer fighting, but amused themselves with stories about women, and in the antechamber with stories about the court. On the landing, d’Artagnan blushed; in the antechamber, he trembled. *
Timely thread: I’m reading it now, and am close to the ending. It’s fantastically good, and very funny, although the humor is oblique: you have to ralize that the narrator is unreliable, and that he mockingly refers to characters and objects by the lies that the characters have told themselves.
I agree with dangermom that the characters are acting like spoiled four-year-olds in a sense: they do some pretty horribly selfish things. That realization doesn’t keep me from enjoying it; indeed, the author seems to realize it himself, in his constant references to how the manners of the times were different from the manners of today. I think there’s a great deal of social satire in it, and I only wish I knew more about French history so I could appreciate it more fully.
Tremendous book!
Daniel
I enjoy Dumas quite a bit, but his heros in the Three Musketeers are pretty much jerks to modern eyes. Brave, no question. Loyal to their friends. But pretty much jerks. A long time ago, I started a thread called “Sympathy for Milady” (which garnered little attention, not that I’m bitter) in which I discussed why I couldn’t understand why the character of Milady was treated as evil incarnate when in reality, she didn’t do anything that the Musketeers themselves didn’t also do.
True, Milady attempts to poison our heros, but this is after D’Artagnan effectively rapes her by pretending to be her lover DeWinter. So I can’t hardly blame her. She also murders Madame Bonacieux which is pretty inexcusable, but let’s face it, our heros spend most of their spare time running people through for little or no reason.
Over the course of the book, Milady plots against the Queen for the Cardinal, but that hardly makes her evil. (History does not support Dumas’ view that the Cardinal was a bad guy.) She did marry Athos without telling him of her sordid past which might merit a Reno divorce, but hardly merits hanging her from a tree.