CBR III 2: Papillon - Henri Charriere

I'm gonna tell you something: Henri Charriere has got some balls (or ovaries for the feminists). It's likely that you've already heard of Papillon, a Frenchman who was falsely convicted of murder at 25 and sentenced to hard labor for life in the Iles de Salut, a trio of islands located off the coast of French Guiana. He famously escaped the brutal treatment that prisoners received in the bagnes, and oh boy did he escape them. He more or less successfully escaped twice, and many more times, his carefully thought-out preparations were foiled at the last minute.

We meet Papi at his 1931 trial, being menaced by the prosecutor, Pradel, ineffectually comforted by his lawyer, Hubert, and ultimately judged and sentenced to life by 12 "cheeseheads." (Hands up, who else would see a movie called 12 Angry Cheeseheads?) He is sent to a temporary prison to await his trip to the islands, where he meets up with Dega, a Marseilles man who gives him the invaluable advice to get a plan. A plan is a small metal tube that you keep far up your anus in order to safeguard your money. I quickly accepted this as standard and not at all gross compared to all the other horrors that the bagnards have to suffer through. I don't want to spoil it for you, but copious amounts of pus and hair shirts are involved.

From the instant he's locked up, Papillon is looking for a way out. For years, Henri's motivation for escaping, besides simply being free, is to return to France and get revenge on the people involved in his wrongful conviction. On his first successful-ish cavale, he and two fellow bagnards, Clousiot and Maturette, make it all the way to Rio Hacho, in Colombia, before they are recaptured and locked up in a local jail to await their return to the bagne. Papillon escapes from there, too, and actually creates a life for himself with the Guajira indians, but he refuses to stay there forever because he still wants to kill some prosecutors/policemen. This ends up being a less than ideal idea because he is eventually turned in by a nun.

Years later, after two sentences in Reclusion (bagne solitary), after a friend is murdered, after a failed prisoner revolt, after gaining the trust of wardens, doctors, and their wives, after a stint in the insane asylum, and after many re-inserting of plans, Papillon is able to get himself transferred to Devil's Island. You know, the island from which nobody had ever successfully escaped. This is where he plans and begins his final, successful cavale, which takes him to Venezuela. He becomes so enamored of the caring way that the Irapa villagers they first meet take care of him and his fellow escaped/liberated cons, that he makes Venezuela his home country.

What most struck me about Papillon's quest is the staggering number of people who want to help him. There are the other bagnards, yes, which in itself is an achievement, because any escape tightens the screws on everyone left behind. There are also people in other countries who know he is an escaped convict and house him, feed him, give him advice on the best routes to take. There are British naval officers who encounter him on the seas and throw him cigarettes, food, even a person to help guide his ship. There are wardens who give him his pick of jobs on the islands, only asking him to escape after they are no longer warden. And none of this has anything to do with believing he is innocent. People help him thinking that he committed the murder for which he was incarcerated.

Can you imagine if a man escaped from French prison today, APB's put out on him, his picture splashed all over the news, and he washed up on the shore of some unknown country? I can't think he would accepted unquestionably, hidden from the cops, anything like that. I know I sure as hell would turn him in, I don't care how loudly he proclaimed his innocence.

Papillon is a great story about overcoming an unjust system, and is a thrilling escape story. Many thrilling escape stories, in fact. I even started tearing up at the end, I was so happy for Papillon. I can't speak to the movie version, but I highly recommend the book. As long as you're not squeamish.

Below is a highly unhelpful picture of a map that was quite helpful to me in terms of seeing where Papillon's escapes took him.

Explanations

Cannonball Read started with the goal of 100 books in a year. I managed to read 53, but only review 25 or so. The next year, the goal became 52 books in a year, so even though I had sworn off reading and reading challenges, I figured, "hell yeah! If I did it one year, I can totally do it again. And this time it will count as winning, instead of being a 50% F." I almost got there with the reading, but still only reviewed half of them, most in a frantic rush in the last week. I once again swore off reading and reading challenges. And THEN, the stupid challenge was opened up to do-it-yourself goals, AND we got to start early if we wanted, so once again they puuull me back in. And that is why I posted a review a little while ago, only five weeks (and three months) behind schedule.

Calendar year 2011.
Goal: 26 books.
Goal: don't keep avoiding longer books because they will keep my total low (hence the 26 book goal, and the fact that I read Vanity Fair for my first book).
Goal: 26 reviews.
Finished: 12 books.
Finished: 1 review. (I have reasons! My sister got married! Work schedule! My Droid always wants me to play with it!)

But for realsies, I want to focus more on quality than quantity this time around, because I've had books sitting unread on my shelves for years because they would take more than a week to finish. No more! I mean it this time!

CBR III 1: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

Wow. Hunter S. Thompson did a lot of drugs. I realize I'm not breaking any new ground here in terms of reviewerly insight, considering the only thing most people know of him is "he did a LOT of drugs," but really. I'm surprised he's still alive. (Is he still alive? If not, I amend my statement to being surprised that he didn't die in the opening pages of this book.) I mean, mescaline, adrenochrome*, ether, hash, speed, uppers, downers, anonymous colored pills, bottles of liquor swallowed whole to cap off all of the other insane amounts of drugs consumed.

And all of this from a doctor of journalism! I expected more respectability from a writer. (That is a lie.)

Thank god he's actually a talented writer, because if he wasn't, his drug-addled "reporting" on a motorcycle race in Las Vegas and then an anti-drug national cop conference by the side of his (completely un-)trusty Samoan attorney could have easily turned into an unreadable mess. It kind of is a mess as it is, but a glorious one. Consider that one chapter is prefaced by an editor's note explaining that what follows was transcribed directly from his tape recordings, because his notes were an illegible, stained mess, and Hunter himself was unreachable for weeks at the only phone number they had (for a state trooper's outpost). Aside from that, though...

Thompson and the Samoan race around Vegas from expensed hotel room to expensed hotel room, in various expensed cars, that they thoroughly wreck (hotel room and car alike), crashing into any and all situations with an uncontrollable desire to 1) be really fucked up on drugs, 2) fuck with people, and 3) generally cause a ruckus.

​They begin on the road, in a bright-red convertible, stopping first to pop open the Trunk O' Drugs, then to switch driving duties, since Thompson is being attacked by bats in the middle of the day in the middle of the desert, and finally to pick up and terrify a young hitchhiker. He quickly can't handle their violent threats (the Samoan) and creepy, insinuating closeness (HST), and flees.

​They proceed to frighten and alienate: the check-in clerk, the hotel bartender, the hotel bar patrons (Hunter has a bad case of the "seeing giant lizard monsters attacking him"), the other reporters covering the motorcycle race, etc. They accomplish very little in the way of journalism, but a lot in the way of testing the limits of the human bodies. By the time the race is over and they're set to go back to L.A., Hunter is holding his breath that he'll make it just long enough to get the hell out of Vegas without being locked up for the multitudinous crimes and degeneracies they committed. Doesn't want to push his luck, you see?

​When he gets a call from the Samoan, therefore, that they have another assignment in the city, and that the assignment is covering a national drug-fighting gathering of law enforcement officers, well... He definitely does not want to push his luck that much. The lure of the delicious irony and opportunity for more expensed hotel room- and car-wrecking is too strong, though, and I'm glad, because reading about these two whacked-out, understandably paranoid druggies in wrecked clothing trying to be inconspicuous amid seas of straight-laced cops from the Midwest is delightful.

Somehow they manage to stay out of the slammer (yes, I used the word "slammer"), despite causing many a scene. They stumble out of a lecture, they force a carful of cops into drag-racing/shit-talking, they take the scenic route to the airport through a chainlink fence and straight onto the tarmac, they corrupt an innocent art student with drugs and sex and then abandon her (that was mainly the Samoan, but HST was the one who suggested pimping her out for drug money). They even physically attack and threaten a maid who walks in on the Samoan "polishing his shoes" (vomiting in them in the closet), and manage to turn it around so that she walks away happily sworn to secrecy, believing they're cops who will pay her to narc on the hotel goings-on.

Thompson is a great observer, and his voice is hilarious and full of energy. The situations he describes are hard to take at face value, but when they're coming from the guy who invented gonzo journalism, you never know.

​*Fun fact: I first learned about the existence of adrenochrome (taken from the adrenal gland of a living person-REALLY fucks you up) from this book, and in the very next book I picked up, it was mentioned in the first ten pages. Granted, the very next book I picked up was The Doors of Perception, but it's still pretty cool. To me.

​(Any typos, please excuse me. I'm writing this on my new phone, and while swyping is amazing and made even my hard-to-impress father use the phrase "way cool," writing anything longer than a text on any phone is still somewhat a chore. As is transferring it from google docs to blogaway.)

​(Also, I don't have the book with me right now, so if you notice a small detail that I got wrong, please email me so I can ignore you and possibly fix it without saying anything in a month.)