the Funnelwhich

“Les Misérables actually about bread,” says Victor Hugo

After the astonishing revelation from Ray Cadbury Egg that Fahrenheit 451 was actually a treatise on pyrotechnics, many authors like Noah Webster have also stepped forward to claim their original literary intent, most notably Victor Hugo, who claims his seminal work of redemption, justice, and wee French babes with cherub cheeks was actually a recipe for bread-making. “It is clear to any literary dilletante that Jean Valjean and his desire for bread guide and shape the plot like the bundt pan shapes the bundt cake’s sweet, soft caresses of forbidden love,” Hugo said, crying a bit like a big baby.

From then, Hugo says, Valjean enters an epic hallucination caused by his lack of carbohydrates and fiber, key and abundant nutrients in French bread. “That entire redemption and bildungsroman shit? Merely to move the plot along. I thought the readers would look past it! It was satire of the books of my time, with their stupid Romanticism and societal commentary! My books was a book of knowledge, a book of bread and fine wine, meant to instruct and not relate to the crass milieu of my time!” he spat, raising his fists and eyebrows at me, standing upon his heavy, mahogany desk from which he would read and translate The Funnelwhich every Sunday.

These days, Hugo sits quietly at desks when not denouncing his readers online via the Vanilla Café forum where he battles with the forum’s heavyweight contributors including i_heart_jeans and javert4ever. When I mention these names, he scowls and darkly mutters curses against his faceless enemies. “javer4ever continually fails to understand that Javert symbolizes the overkneading of bread, a mistake many novice cooks commit during their first breading session whereas Cosette and Marius represent yeast and baking soda, both crucial to leavening and without which bread cannot find salvation!” Then he crumpled. “I am too old for this. I am to die a lonely death, misunderstood by thousands of people.” “Actually, sir,” I say. “Millions if not a billion people have read your book.” Then, Victor Hugo punched me.

As I sat there rubbing my body, amazed at how the old man could throw a rabbit punch, I realized that even with countless theater adaptations and interpretative dances Victor Hugo—and not his flawed characters in Les Miserables—was the real hero. I wonder if he knew that, but looking at his sad face and his shaking hands writing his shaky memoirs, I think he’d be happier not knowing.