Dickens to Eliot in No Particular Order

[radfrac_archive_full]

A recent (but prolonged) ambition met: I have finished Daniel Deronda, albeit with some vigorous skimming (so fallen am I). I was going to go right on to Silas Marner, but I think I need an interval of some other, probably later and more minimalist, century's prose. Prosewise I feel as thought I have eaten a number of ropes coated with molasses.

Eliot is a bit of a paradox for me so far. Her characters are fantastically vivid in my mind, and live on there in retrospect. Casaubon, Dorothea, Ladislaw, Lydgate, Rosamond; and now Daniel, Gwendolen, Mirah, Ezra/Mordecai, Grandcourt. Reading the book that puts them there, though. It's not that I don't enjoy it. It just seems like a dauntingly elaborate spoon for the very good soup.

*Clearly Daniel should not have married either Gwendolen or Mirah. He and Ezra are madly in love.

Anyway, now I am reading The World Without Us.


Some random and elaborate day-off activity on my part.

Reading List from the Lost Course

I notice, first off, that it is in fact Bronte to Eliot. Don't know why Dickens should get the billing.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS
New Book Price: $15.50
Used Book Price: $11.25

I only just re-read this, partly on the Palm and partly in a (I think) Ridgeview edition with intriguing but (in my opinion) insufficiently supported theory attached. Then I watched a thoroughly inadequate film version with a Fiennes and Juliette Binoche. I feel I have dealt adequately with this for the year. I might be willing to re-read some of Anne Bronte, who was my favorite to begin with, back in the basement bedroom of high school.

HARD TIMES
New Book Price: $13.95
Used Book Price: $10.50

Have not read this. Have you? What feeling do you have about it? Should I substitute some other Dickens?

CRANFORD/COUSIN PHILLIS
New Book Price: $18.00
Used Book Price: $13.50

Somewhat excited about the idea of this. In the distant past I read Mary Barton and the biography of Charlotte Bronte.

WOMAN IN WHITE
New Book Price: $8.95
Used Book Price: $6.75

This I contemplate with some dread. Though at least it's not The Moonstone.

SILAS MARNER-W/NEW CHRONOLOGY
New Book Price: $8.25
Used Book Price: $6.25

If kept to the end of the course, fine.

Tuesday leirdal came over to receive the two Women's Press books I scored on the dog trip. They are not scifi, so I pass them on to her. Only the grey gradient for me. Zebras and sundries go to her. We must learn to contain our obsessions, lest they fall on us from a great height and we are not found for weeks.

"I'll feed you," I said, "But I have nothing in the house." Except, it turns out, fresh tomatoes and prosciutto from Ottavio. With fresh sage on pasta. And hunks of bakery bread on the side.

Just at the end we talked about the thing I'd like to write about here, but am worried I can't get right -- the change in how I feel about death and endurance.

All insights apart, I find I can still be made intermittently miserable by a sore tooth (to be examined on Monday). But that is the difference between insight and practise. Once you know, you still have to do, and that takes as much effort as before.

{rf}

Comments

[stitchinmyside.livejournal.com]

I've read Silas Marner four times. Each time, I read it, enjoy it, and then promptly forget the ENTIRE book. I don't even remember who the protagonist is or even broad themes or major plot points. Every time.

[radiantfracture]

I can't get over your reading anything by Eliot more than once.

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[penelopesque.livejournal.com]

Mill on the Floss was one of my favorite books in junior high.
(There was also a wonderful Masterpiece Theatre version.)
And while I remember it vividly, I have never ever been able to get through it again.