Tuesday, August 02, 2005
IT'S ME AGAIN: Benign neglect? Never heard of it...
JUST FINISHED...well, a few things...so let's knock them out in short form.
Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles. When you're a book person, even a flaky one like me, you usually end up with a library fixation. Matthew Battles, who works at Harvard's Houghton Library, ended up doing something useful with his by tracing the history of the library through the centuries. In the process, we find some interesting things about the guardians of knowledge and the ways they try to steer the course of things. The chapter on Nazi librarians is especially fascinating.
Pride and Predjudice by Jane Austen. Strictly genteel, but cheerful. Cut me some slack, it's been a few months since I put it down and I wasn't taking notes at the time. I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say later once I get the pumped primed.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. A woman of principle who falls in love with a jerk? What is this, English lit or a Lifetime movie? Well, no, since your average TV movie isn't this well-written.
An interesting sidebar to the book is this 1848 review which talks about "Jane Eyre fever" sweeping the New England states a few months previous (hey! does that make it a summer blockbuster?) and how "that portion of ‘Young America’ known as ladies’ men began to swagger and swear in the presence of the gentler sex, and to allude darkly to events in their lives which excused impudence and profanity." The more things change...
Oh yeah, our man in 1848 also thought that no woman could've written anything that coarse by herself. *snicker*
A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. The most recent one I put down, so it burns the most ink...um, electrons. It makes my task a lot easier that a few hours after I finished this book, TCM ran the Bing Crosby version. It was pleasant enough, but served to point out that watching any of the film versions won't spoil the experience of reading the book in the slightest, since Hollywood uses so little of it.
The most noticeable departure from the text is when Bing's easygoing version of Twain's timelost Yankee asks for nothing more than an out-of-the-way blacksmith's shop. Once the book's Hank Morgan gets his bearings, he positions himself as King Arthur's right hand man and not only begins a series of modernizations in motion which will put Camelot "on the American plan", but sets out to gradually destroy the system of nobility
Another point to ponder was that the movie presented (as the trailer puts it) "King Arthur's round table in all its glory", which isn't Twain in any way, shape, or form. If anything, Twain was trying to cut the legs out from under what he called "the Sir Walter disease", a strain of 19th century medievalism spearheaded by Sir Walter Scott and Tennyson. To this end, Twain's Yankee discovers a petty nobility which acts in unconscious cruelty against the peasantry, the church doing the same in a somewhat more conscious consolidation of power (anti-Catholic sentiment runs throughout, just as it did in the country at the time). On top of that, we get bad hygene, rampant (implied) profanity, superstition, and blood, blood, blood. Not the type of thing that makes a Technicolor musical...not in 1949, anyway.
So what we're left with is alternately cheeky and gravedigger grim (as always, he's never afraid to pull the rug out from under you to make a point) with a finale that will linger with you for awhile, especially if you think you know what to expect.
JUST FINISHED...well, a few things...so let's knock them out in short form.
Library: An Unquiet History by Matthew Battles. When you're a book person, even a flaky one like me, you usually end up with a library fixation. Matthew Battles, who works at Harvard's Houghton Library, ended up doing something useful with his by tracing the history of the library through the centuries. In the process, we find some interesting things about the guardians of knowledge and the ways they try to steer the course of things. The chapter on Nazi librarians is especially fascinating.
Pride and Predjudice by Jane Austen. Strictly genteel, but cheerful. Cut me some slack, it's been a few months since I put it down and I wasn't taking notes at the time. I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say later once I get the pumped primed.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. A woman of principle who falls in love with a jerk? What is this, English lit or a Lifetime movie? Well, no, since your average TV movie isn't this well-written.
An interesting sidebar to the book is this 1848 review which talks about "Jane Eyre fever" sweeping the New England states a few months previous (hey! does that make it a summer blockbuster?) and how "that portion of ‘Young America’ known as ladies’ men began to swagger and swear in the presence of the gentler sex, and to allude darkly to events in their lives which excused impudence and profanity." The more things change...
Oh yeah, our man in 1848 also thought that no woman could've written anything that coarse by herself. *snicker*
A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain. The most recent one I put down, so it burns the most ink...um, electrons. It makes my task a lot easier that a few hours after I finished this book, TCM ran the Bing Crosby version. It was pleasant enough, but served to point out that watching any of the film versions won't spoil the experience of reading the book in the slightest, since Hollywood uses so little of it.
The most noticeable departure from the text is when Bing's easygoing version of Twain's timelost Yankee asks for nothing more than an out-of-the-way blacksmith's shop. Once the book's Hank Morgan gets his bearings, he positions himself as King Arthur's right hand man and not only begins a series of modernizations in motion which will put Camelot "on the American plan", but sets out to gradually destroy the system of nobility
Another point to ponder was that the movie presented (as the trailer puts it) "King Arthur's round table in all its glory", which isn't Twain in any way, shape, or form. If anything, Twain was trying to cut the legs out from under what he called "the Sir Walter disease", a strain of 19th century medievalism spearheaded by Sir Walter Scott and Tennyson. To this end, Twain's Yankee discovers a petty nobility which acts in unconscious cruelty against the peasantry, the church doing the same in a somewhat more conscious consolidation of power (anti-Catholic sentiment runs throughout, just as it did in the country at the time). On top of that, we get bad hygene, rampant (implied) profanity, superstition, and blood, blood, blood. Not the type of thing that makes a Technicolor musical...not in 1949, anyway.
So what we're left with is alternately cheeky and gravedigger grim (as always, he's never afraid to pull the rug out from under you to make a point) with a finale that will linger with you for awhile, especially if you think you know what to expect.
|| Eric 5:45 PM#
