2025-04-10
FOREIGN LITERATURE
|
Jean de Florette
by Marcel Pagnol
Publisher Note:
TLD : I'm excluding a description of this two-book series because for any who might want to read it, I don't want to spoil the experience for you. Just know that I would recommend it and I would recommend you go in blind.
Troy Note:
Whenever I hear of a storied film that I haven't seen, before watching I always check to see the work emanated from a book, and if so, will read the book. This was the case here. I saw that Criterion Films were about to do a release of a film based on these two books, which put them on my radar.
If I told you I had a great book for you. You would rightly ask what it was about. I would tell you it is about two men who wanted to farm the same plot land. One wanted to grow carnations and the other wanted to breed rabbits. Would you want to spend twenty hours of your life reading that book? What if I told you one of the men was a hunchback? How about now?
While reading this, I expressed surprise to people on multiple occassions that I was reading a book that I can't believe I haven't given up on it given how little had happened. When people asked me to clarify I would describe the story thus far and they would all respond similarly, saying it sounds stupendous and they might read it. Perhaps this work mirrors good design in that when something is expertly done, you don't even notice how delightful it is until you later reflect on the experience.
Regardless. I did finish the first book but am forcing myself to hold off on reading the related sequel just to let it sit for a minute. That said, I find waiting is a bit harder than I expected it to be. It seems monsieur Pagnol presently has an unexplainable grasp upon my attention.
Passage(s) of Note:
Pique-Bouffigue was Marius Camoins, but for thirty years he had been called Pique-Bouffigue (TLD EDIT: "prick blister" in French), because when he got out of the army he had taught the people of the village how to take care of blisters with an ordinary needle and a little piece of thread.
Since he had never been seen to work in living memory, it was astonishing that he knew exactly how to heal an injury due to work.
He explained that in order to escape a twenty-four-hour military march he had placed a trouser button in his shoe, under his heel, the evening before, and had thus procured a very fine blister; but a medical orderly, with this technique of needle and thread, had unfortunatley put him on his feet in time for the next day's march.
Blisters were a professional malady among these peasants, whose main job was to lengthen the handles of their pickaxes. The remedy brought by the foremost idler of the village had been a great success, and its bearer merited not only great regard, but also his glorious surname.
"I don't know what he eats, but anyway he's still drinking wine and he's as thin as a praying mantis and he digs like a convict."
Jean Cadoret's ideas were fanciful, but he devoted indomitable energy to them, and detailed attention. The force and the endurance of his dreams were sometimes maniacal.
His handbook on roofing and plumbing lay on the ridge of the roof. With trowel in hand, feet bare, and an eye half-closed by wasp-stings, he was fixing the old tiles.
From time to time he leaned over the edge of the gutter and let down a jam jar on a string for his daughter to fill with mortar.
Despite the ridiculous inadequancy of these means, he had already put more than half the tiles in place, and was glorying in his work like everyone who discovers the interest and pleasure of working with his hands.
|
