The Count of Monte Cristo
A classic is a book that never becomes outdated, capturing one generation of readers after another, although often in quite different ways. Alexandre Dumas (1802-70) was the author of at least two all-time classics as part of an Oeuvres complètes that would fill 277 volumes. A certified graphomaniac, he would write for 14 hours at a stretch, for weeks at a time. Part of Dumas’s motivation was that he was paid by the word for serialisations. The more he wrote, the more he earned, although he would spend it just as quickly on his gourmandising and his mistresses.
Dumas’s two greatest novels, The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo were written at the same time, both being published in 1844 – a literary achievement that may never be equalled for sheer volume of words and popular success. Umberto Eco, in his essay, ‘The Cult of the Imperfect’, argued that “The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the most exciting novels ever written and on the other hand is one of the most badly written novels of all time and in any literature.”
The ‘badness’ of the writing springs from Dumas’s need to keep repeating himself for readers of the serialisation, and from the reckless speed of his output. The plot is full of holes, the prose laden with cliches and redundancies, but when Eco tried to edit out these infelicities for an Italian translation, he found that something important was lost. The sheer bulk of detail, the repetitions and “stylistic excesses” stood revealed as part of the book’s narrative machinery, and ultimately its charm. Dumas may be a shambolic author but he knew how to cast a spell on his readers. He had the knack of writing pot-boilers that have survived as great works of literature.