Saturday, January 21, 2006
STAY OFF THE MOORS: In honor of my current reading project, I'd like to tell you my inspiration for pulling Wuthering Heights off the shelf. It started a few months ago when I was nosing around Barnes and Noble just out of idle curiousity, when I stumbled across a movie tie-in book for a movie I didn't remember.
I picked up the book, a tag-along for a forgotten MTV TV movie, which explains everything. It also explains why the book was still there, since I'm not entirely convinced that the current MTV demographic is high on reading. I looked at the cover, then I looked at the title. Then I looked at the cover and the title. I caught myself dribbling on my collar, a sure sign that my mind had been blown. I gave a quick read to the "introduction by the filmmakers", barely a page about what a bitchin' experience the movie was. After dealing with all that marketing, I was expecting to find a rewrite to conform to the oh-so-cheesy update that I was told to expect for the film. So when I hit the first page of the book proper, and it started with the date "1801," just like every other copy of the book, I chuckled to myself. Da kidz aren't gonna like this one bit. They're going to buy the book,be blindsided by the very first word ("'1801'?...you told us no dates!") and in the space of five minutes develop a blinding headache when they realize they'd wandered into a Bronte-an verbal thicket. If they picked up the B&N edition, at least they'd know what to expect...just look at the cover! It's not just sullen in that pouty, high school, Calvin Klein ad-approved way, dear friends, but with genuine foreboding...a supernatural force getting ready to pull anyone who objects to the bottom of the bay. In other words, truth in advertising.
Are all teenagers going to react that way? Of course not, but the ones that buy the book because of what they saw in the MTV movie (and the guy who wrote all those Meatloaf songs their dad listened to in the 1970s) might, and they'll get what they deserve. So my motive is as ice-cold as Heathcliff himself: to read the book so I'll be in a better position to bludgeon the film when (or if) I scrape up the nerve to rent it.
Somehow this all reminds me of a book I ran across in an antique store, which was a special edition of Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities. This late 30s edition promised that by removing the superfulous passages and retaining the main incidents of the plot, they had produced a comfortable experience for modern readers while retaining the flavor of Dickens. And what were these "surperfluous passages"? I found one on the very first page...something about the best of times, the worst of times. I guess they figured nobody would miss it.
I picked up the book, a tag-along for a forgotten MTV TV movie, which explains everything. It also explains why the book was still there, since I'm not entirely convinced that the current MTV demographic is high on reading. I looked at the cover, then I looked at the title. Then I looked at the cover and the title. I caught myself dribbling on my collar, a sure sign that my mind had been blown. I gave a quick read to the "introduction by the filmmakers", barely a page about what a bitchin' experience the movie was. After dealing with all that marketing, I was expecting to find a rewrite to conform to the oh-so-cheesy update that I was told to expect for the film. So when I hit the first page of the book proper, and it started with the date "1801," just like every other copy of the book, I chuckled to myself. Da kidz aren't gonna like this one bit. They're going to buy the book,be blindsided by the very first word ("'1801'?...you told us no dates!") and in the space of five minutes develop a blinding headache when they realize they'd wandered into a Bronte-an verbal thicket. If they picked up the B&N edition, at least they'd know what to expect...just look at the cover! It's not just sullen in that pouty, high school, Calvin Klein ad-approved way, dear friends, but with genuine foreboding...a supernatural force getting ready to pull anyone who objects to the bottom of the bay. In other words, truth in advertising.
Are all teenagers going to react that way? Of course not, but the ones that buy the book because of what they saw in the MTV movie (and the guy who wrote all those Meatloaf songs their dad listened to in the 1970s) might, and they'll get what they deserve. So my motive is as ice-cold as Heathcliff himself: to read the book so I'll be in a better position to bludgeon the film when (or if) I scrape up the nerve to rent it.
Somehow this all reminds me of a book I ran across in an antique store, which was a special edition of Charles Dickens' Tale of Two Cities. This late 30s edition promised that by removing the superfulous passages and retaining the main incidents of the plot, they had produced a comfortable experience for modern readers while retaining the flavor of Dickens. And what were these "surperfluous passages"? I found one on the very first page...something about the best of times, the worst of times. I guess they figured nobody would miss it.
|| Eric 8:35 PM#
