Marginalia: How Victor Hugo handled the revolution, my favorite alien movie

Notes from the margins of my research.

I write journalism imagining the future of democracy, capitalism, and humanity. This is Marginalia, the notes from the margins of my research, a monthly feature for paid subscribers.

This month, I studied Victor Hugo’s political pamphlet Les Châtiments, a screed he wrote against Napoleon after he became a dictator. I also fell in love with a thousand-year-old Japanese text, studied democratic innovations, spoke at an event in San Francisco, and watched three films I loved.

Literature I studied

Les Châtiments, by Victor Hugo

I’ve been struggling to understand how to write during these times, so I wanted to understand how my favorite author wrote during his. Victor Hugo became increasingly radicalized after Napoleon became a dictator. From exile he wrote this book of poetry railing against Napoleon and his followers who happily turned France into a dictatorship. Here are some of my favorite passages: