Best Jane Austen adaptation?
I am–and this is embarrassing–finally watching the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. And yes, it does have Colin Firth in a sexy white shirt.
Jane Austen in Vine Street: A guest post by Myretta Robens
Twenty years ago, Colin Firth Jumped Into a Lake
Pride and Prejudice turns twenty this year. Not that Pride and Prejudice, the other one. Colin Firth Darcy Pride and Prejudice. Colin Firth Darcy gazing at Jennifer Ehle Lizzy playing the piano Pride and Prejudice. Colin Firth Darcy wet shirt Pride and Prejudice. That one.
(Apparently Colin Firth has resigned himself to his forever-Darcy status, telling a reporter, “I’m fully aware that if I were to change professions tomorrow, become an astronaut, and be the first man to land on Mars, the headlines in all the newspapers would read, ‘Mr. Darcy Lands On Mars.” Is this another reason to love him, or what?)
Finding Romance in Literary Fiction
I’ve heard it in various forms from many different corners. “Oh, literature is just too depressing.” “The difference between literary fiction and romance? Love stories in lit fic all end uphappily.” Stick around enough message forums and blogs, or simply talk to enough readers and you’ll hear variations on that theme. Then there are the the literary fiction “guidelines” Robin Uncapher wrote for AAR back in 2007, which definitely skewer certain authors and book trends rather aptly. But is all of it really that depressing for a romance reader?
I don’t read literary fiction all the time, but I’ll go on my occasional forays beyond the familiar genre fiction shelving. True, there are beautifully written but also tragic books such as The English Patient or Bel Canto, books full of ponderous words and perhaps an amount of pretension which seems to have an inverse correlation with […]
Read Anything Interesting Lately?
Ever had one of those frustrating weeks where you just don’t get to curl up with a book as much as you’d like to? Yeah, me too. My day job pretty well ate my life last week and had me sitting in traffic all over northern Virginia as I went from appointment to appointment. On the plus side, I did get to catch up on blog reading in between all of the mad dashes and I found some interesting stuff over the past few days.
I like to read Jezebel every now and again because some of their writers do offer useful perspectives on women’s lives and they can be very supportive of women’s choices, history, literature and so on — except when they’re not. My general reaction to reading this article which somehow takes the idea of Jane Austen having both highbrow and lowbrow appeal […]
Deadeye Dick's Last Shot, or All for the Love of Bessie Burton
If you are not a fan of the 1960’s western television show, The Virginian , then this title means nothing to you. As a caregiver for an aging relative, I can almost repeat all the dialogue. One episode opens as a young woman and her mother are traveling out west to visit relatives. On the train, the young woman is reading a dime novel featuring the western hero, Deadeye Dick. When an older man saves her from falling off her horse after tumbleweeds spook him, just like Deadeye Dick saved Bessie Burton, she has her hero. Throughout the episode the mother understands that her daughter’s impressionable age is to blame rather than the dime novels and never forbids her the joy of reading them. While watching the show, I wondered how today’s mothers guide their daughters’ reading choices through the immense choices available.
During […]
The Lover Scorned
Recently, I reread Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March. It’s a book I’ve read with great pleasure before; this time I was particularly struck by the way the relationship between the poet Catullus and society lady Clodia is portrayed. He loves her with all his heart and writes great poems to her and about her; she sometimes admits him as her lover and spends time with him before jilting him again in favor of a rival. The novel leaves no doubt that Clodia is cruel and capricious; however, at this reading, I suddenly felt that I understood her right to jilt him, and her urge to do so. In spite of the undoubted depth of Catullus’ feelings, it is quite clear that Clodia does not feel as deeply for him. Yes, she might have treated him with far less cruelty, as Caesar points out to her, in […]