It's off to the Brit Lib I go...
I’ve nearly finished Wise Children by Angela Carter, which is just brilliant, and now I see why people love her so much (even though the Carter-vogue was in its heyday in the late 80’s I think, you can still feel the love amongst the literary). I’m so terrible at book reviews though, I can’t condense plots in to a succinct paragraph or sum up the key elements of a book. Or at least not well. The nearest I can say is that it’s funny, and yes wise, and the Shakespearean element is handled so well (sets of twins, fathers and daughters and switching/confused identities and bawdiness), and I’m enjoying it immensely. I’m pondering heavily on which book to go to next…I think it’ll have to be My Name is Red, because I’ve wanted to read it for so long. My favourite word (yes I have one) is hiraeth which is Welsh and has no direct English translation. It means yearning or longing for home but also contains elements of both yearning for a spiritual home, and yearning specifically for Wales. And from reading up on Orhan Pamuk I learnt that there is also a word akin to that in Turkish- hüzün, a sort of Turkish melancholy, intimately bound up in its surroundings. And I am fascinated by these sorts of words, we’re so used to the universality of English, and I think we all hold the belief, mostly subconciously, that English is the best medium for communication. Then you come across words that have no direct translation, yet touch on some key experience, something that you feel some kinship with, and it’s fascinating to discover both the limits of your own language and of these linguistic and psychogeographical ties with place (there is such a thing as psychogeography, which is wonderfully fascinating) . I know I experience moments that I clumsily call London lifts- when I’m walking in London, and I become aware of my surroundings, of the beautiful architcture or a garden square, and the sense of history which steeps the whole city, and my spirits just lift.
And oh dear. Infuriatingly, they are making a Dark Is Rising film and I only just found out! And apparently, they are really messing it up. I loved that book (and the whole quintet that it belonged to) rather passionately as a kid, and it makes me squirm to think that the first view anyone will see of it will be a skewed, crappy one. I don’t know if they will film all five books or just the Dark is Rising, I have a feeling they just scouted around for another fantasy series that will spawn a nice film franchise.
I also adored the protagonist Will (dark, quiet and vulnerable/flawed appear to be the prototype of my literary loves see). Of course I was eight then, and he was eleven. But I did hope for the two seconds while IMDB loaded that they’d keep things to the book- and they haven’t. The family are American. Ouch. Only redeeming factor- Christopher Eccleston is going to be the Rider, and that is a brilliant piece of casting, so I’ll probably go to see it because of him (as much as I like David Tennant, he was the better Doctor too). But other than that it sounds really awful. Sigh. Why must they ruin the things I love? It happened with Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea novels too (the worst adaptation I’ve ever seen in my life, and if anyone caught it on tv around the holidays last year, the books are completely different, complex and beautifully written, and well worth reading). They (nothing like a nebulous They ) had better keep their hands off anything by Diana Wynne Jones (even *Miyazaki* couldn't get it right there)…
I also have a dissertation proposal and a presentation to write this week, both due for Thursday. Sigh. Too much work and not enough time, so I'd better shove off to the library.