That Mr. Darcy!
Just got back from a business trip in Virginia to take a course on how to torture your direct reports by making them set SMART goals. It was actually a great course (look out, Cindy!), but I can’t abide spending an entire day locked in a conference facility only to go to dinner at a chain restaurant and stay at a chain hotel near a concrete airport, so I opted to take the Metro to Old Town Alexandria each night, surrounding myself with gas lights, cobble stone streets, Federalist homes, blooming trees laden with moss, and the scent of English boxwood everywhere.
It poured for three days straight, but I walked for two hours a day, happy under a giant umbrella and although I was too wound up to sleep, I’ve never been more at ease in my insomnia than in that Kimpton bed at the Morrison House Hotel.
Plus I had a great book. The Confession of Fitzwilliam Darcy by Mary Street.
As a rule, I’ve learned to avoid sequels, prequels, other character’s point-of-view remakes of classics. They are generally poorly written, plot-driven nightmares that foul the reader’s brain and sully the original work.
Scarlett is one such example. And I’ve learned to absolutely avoid all – and there are way too many – renditions of Pride and Prejudice. Even the latest movie version with Keira Knightley was a disaster. Why mess with the Colin Firth one (which I enjoyed even more than the original BBC rendition with David Rintoul, mainly because it was just a little less bookish)?
Speaking of botches, did any one see Masterpiece’s A Room With a View last Sunday night? I couldn’t sit through five minutes. How can one top the Helena Bonham Carter, Julian Sands, Daniel Day Lewis, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott version (not to mention the glorious soundtrack)? It just isn’t possible.
Then, again, there are some re-knits of classics that are done very well. The movie update of Emma in the form of Clueless is a perfect modern translation of the original.
Alice Hoffman's version of Wuthering Heights captures the themes, mood and basic plot of Bronte's classic but is all Hoffman, rife with dark magic and beauty. Even the title, Here on Earth, pays homage to Cathy's dream of Heaven but clearly stakes its independence from the classic. And H, The Return to Wuthering Heights, is a well-written tale from Heathcliff’s point of view about the three years in which he spent away from the moors.
Then there’s The Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Jane Eyre featuring Bertha Mason’s point-of-view and deftly capturing her descent into madness while stirring the reader’s pity for both Rochester and the mad woman that she becomes.
But I have no interest in reading Rhett Butler’s People. Mitchell destroyed her sequel and clearly wanted no sequels, spin-offs, or other such nonsense. I learned my lesson from Scarlett and the other spin-off, And the Wind Done Gone, which was so far removed from the original that it was insulting (or laughable, if you tend toward humorous worldview). I’m not sure what if the author’s intent was to parody the classic or to make a social statement about the evils of slavery and Mitchells’s view of the Old South through rose-colored glasses, but it didn’t work. She would have done better to write a non-fiction critique or better yet, an original novel to de-romanticize the past.
Back to Pride and Prejudice. Never again, I once swore, would I read another Pride sequel. The last two I’d attempted gave me nightmares and it took many re-readings of the original to wash the taint from my mind.
Yet something about Street’s book tempted me. Couldn’t get its review out of my head. Hard earned money spent, it was with great trepidation that I opened that book on the plane. I finished it in a day and closed it, well-satisfied with the experience and light of heart as a result.
I still won’t read any other Pride and Prejudice embroidery, but I will re-read Confessions. The author succeeds because she does not digress from Austen’s intent. In fact, she uses direct quotes of dialogue from the original, then works Mr. Darcy’s point of view around Austen’s words so that the reader is always rooted in Jane’s world.
For a lesser author, this would be plagiarism, but Street knows what she is about, almost as if Jane whispered the book to her as she typed. It is a pleasure to watch Darcy fall in love with Elizabeth and more importantly, grow as an individual, and the read is riveting and wholesome, much like the original.
On the Nightstand: Reading J.D. Robb’s Strangers in Death to be followed by a re-read of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (just watched the outstanding BBC miniseries and am anxious to revisit this darker pride and prejudice tale)
On the iPod: Lots of Pearl Jam in anticipation of their June concert in Mansfield.
Recently viewed: Walk Hard, the Dewey Cox Story. I’m pretty sure I lost a few brain cells watching that one, but Eddie Vedder was in it so that’s my excuse for wasting two hours of life.
It poured for three days straight, but I walked for two hours a day, happy under a giant umbrella and although I was too wound up to sleep, I’ve never been more at ease in my insomnia than in that Kimpton bed at the Morrison House Hotel.
Plus I had a great book. The Confession of Fitzwilliam Darcy by Mary Street.
As a rule, I’ve learned to avoid sequels, prequels, other character’s point-of-view remakes of classics. They are generally poorly written, plot-driven nightmares that foul the reader’s brain and sully the original work.
Scarlett is one such example. And I’ve learned to absolutely avoid all – and there are way too many – renditions of Pride and Prejudice. Even the latest movie version with Keira Knightley was a disaster. Why mess with the Colin Firth one (which I enjoyed even more than the original BBC rendition with David Rintoul, mainly because it was just a little less bookish)?
Speaking of botches, did any one see Masterpiece’s A Room With a View last Sunday night? I couldn’t sit through five minutes. How can one top the Helena Bonham Carter, Julian Sands, Daniel Day Lewis, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott version (not to mention the glorious soundtrack)? It just isn’t possible.
Then, again, there are some re-knits of classics that are done very well. The movie update of Emma in the form of Clueless is a perfect modern translation of the original.
Alice Hoffman's version of Wuthering Heights captures the themes, mood and basic plot of Bronte's classic but is all Hoffman, rife with dark magic and beauty. Even the title, Here on Earth, pays homage to Cathy's dream of Heaven but clearly stakes its independence from the classic. And H, The Return to Wuthering Heights, is a well-written tale from Heathcliff’s point of view about the three years in which he spent away from the moors.
Then there’s The Wide Sargasso Sea, a prequel to Jane Eyre featuring Bertha Mason’s point-of-view and deftly capturing her descent into madness while stirring the reader’s pity for both Rochester and the mad woman that she becomes.
But I have no interest in reading Rhett Butler’s People. Mitchell destroyed her sequel and clearly wanted no sequels, spin-offs, or other such nonsense. I learned my lesson from Scarlett and the other spin-off, And the Wind Done Gone, which was so far removed from the original that it was insulting (or laughable, if you tend toward humorous worldview). I’m not sure what if the author’s intent was to parody the classic or to make a social statement about the evils of slavery and Mitchells’s view of the Old South through rose-colored glasses, but it didn’t work. She would have done better to write a non-fiction critique or better yet, an original novel to de-romanticize the past.
Back to Pride and Prejudice. Never again, I once swore, would I read another Pride sequel. The last two I’d attempted gave me nightmares and it took many re-readings of the original to wash the taint from my mind.
Yet something about Street’s book tempted me. Couldn’t get its review out of my head. Hard earned money spent, it was with great trepidation that I opened that book on the plane. I finished it in a day and closed it, well-satisfied with the experience and light of heart as a result.
I still won’t read any other Pride and Prejudice embroidery, but I will re-read Confessions. The author succeeds because she does not digress from Austen’s intent. In fact, she uses direct quotes of dialogue from the original, then works Mr. Darcy’s point of view around Austen’s words so that the reader is always rooted in Jane’s world.
For a lesser author, this would be plagiarism, but Street knows what she is about, almost as if Jane whispered the book to her as she typed. It is a pleasure to watch Darcy fall in love with Elizabeth and more importantly, grow as an individual, and the read is riveting and wholesome, much like the original.
On the Nightstand: Reading J.D. Robb’s Strangers in Death to be followed by a re-read of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (just watched the outstanding BBC miniseries and am anxious to revisit this darker pride and prejudice tale)
On the iPod: Lots of Pearl Jam in anticipation of their June concert in Mansfield.
Recently viewed: Walk Hard, the Dewey Cox Story. I’m pretty sure I lost a few brain cells watching that one, but Eddie Vedder was in it so that’s my excuse for wasting two hours of life.
posted by Dina Keratsis at
1:09 PM
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