Novel Eye

Dorian Gray and Sybil Vane would not have had a happy marriage. Tess should have killed Angel. Romeo and Juliet would have grown to hate each other. Doctor Bovary deserved better. Feel free to add some.

Miss Conduct (a columnist in the Boston Globe magazine) was addressing the question of socializing at parties such as alumni brunches. She said that people "...shuffle the music on our iPods rather than tuning in to a radio station to hear something different. We shop online to avoid contact with sales staff and other customers. We learn about current events from radio...blogs, and magazines that reinforce our existing political beliefs. We customize our existence, choosing the comfort of the known over the shock of the new." Hmmm... Quite by chance in that limbo after "24" when I was deciding if I wanted to go to bed, read, blog, write, or just continue watching TV, I caught part of a Fraiser I'd never seen (I was never a regular viewer of Fraiser so I wasn't surprised) with Elvis Costello, Felicity Huffman and John (Ah'm too saixy for H'America as my husband and I call him in Scottish burr) Hannah. Well I had to find out what that was about. ^_- Tu...

Driving into work today and observing the weather, Thought, Ethan Frome's is the worst suicide attempt ever.

A few posts back for "Mara and Dann" I mentioned that Madame Bovary makes it to the end of the world and I was sad about that since I think it's a terrible novel, then I realized I shouldn't make that statement since I haven't actually read the book--I believe in as much as one is able, one shouldn't criticize things one has not investigated, within reason. I don't need to see child porn or commit murder to know it's wrong, but in the case of art one should give oneself at least one to five minutes of contemplation before turning it off or shutting the book. So I read Madame Bovary this week. It's a beautifully written novel (well, the translation is--I wasn't brave enough to read it in French, and it would take the next two years). I suspect the original is beautiful as well, full of delicate descriptions of clothing and furnishings (he seemed quite fascinated by hats for instance). I enjoyed the contrast between French novels and British nov...

Once there was a fantastic literary newsletter loosely affiliated with a book store here in Boston and one of it's features was the First Line Quiz. You didn't win anything but acclaim and a listing, but it was still fun. The internet of course made it easy to win if you wanted to win like that but I didn't. When I guessed as I did twice I was thrilled with myself. The lines I won on were from "1984" and "Canticle for Leibowitz." It made me realize I have a great fondness for (and collection of) Dystopian literature, specifically as in the case of Canticle post-apocalyptic. Where are we going, what will it be like, what will be similar to now, what will they think of us? Mara and Dann is by the great Doris Lessing. Lessing has enough cache for the literary snobs to try and ignore the sci-fi elements of her stories by pointing out that they are social commentary disguised as sci-fi. Well, duh. All good literature is social commentary of some kind. They d...