Wizards and iPods

The Scotsman has a lengthy article on Gregory Maguire, whose book, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, has sold two million copies since it was published in the US in 1995. Composer Stephen Schwartz turned it into a show which has won 15 awards and become the highest-grossing Broadway musical of all time. Wicked has become a phenomenon, and it's arriving in the UK: the book was published here earlier this year, and tickets are already selling fast for the musical which opens at the Apollo Victoria in September.

This is what we liked:

"He [his father] was very strict, and somewhat unpleasant, I think mostly because of the death of his beloved first wife. He was determined that nobody else would die on his watch. But he did bring home scrap paper from the newspaper, and all of us wrote stories and made family newspapers. I liken us now to a mid-century American Brontë family, we all created constantly, non-stop, a factory of stories and poems and musicals and skits."

It does sound quite Brontëish!

And then Tracy Press shows us - not Heathcliff in a swimming pool - but an image just as original: Heathcliff with an iPod:

When, if ever, did they take their iPods out of their ears? Who did it first? Did their eyes meet? Did they ever talk? Was it all they could handle to experience four out of five senses on the first date? Will they go iPod-less next time?
In the meantime I’m going to spend some time wondering about the iconic characters in Wuthering Heights. If iPods were part of their furtive meetings, would the world-famous passion of that story have been worth writing about?

We're glad to see we are not alone wondering about these people who walk side by side and appear to be conversing quite calmly with their earphones connected to their iPod are stuck to their ears. What's that all about? Classic literature would have missed out on a lot if there had been iPods back then - a lot of it relies on eavesdropping and listening to things and hearing things. For one - and jumping into another Brontë novel - Jane would have never saved Mr Rochester from burning in his bed. Hmph.

Categories: Wuthering_Heights, In_the_News