Talks and talk shows

The Liverpool Daily Post has an article on author Colin Dexter. Apart from his Inspector Morse novels, Mr Dexter also gives talks from time to time.

“And when you are in one part of the country you are often asked that, while you are there, could you do this other thing?” Hence his visit to Crosby with Gabriel Wolf, the veteran actor, with whom he often works. [...]
His Crosby visit will find Dexter talking about other writers like Dickens, Charlotte Bronte and Thomas Hardy with Wolf reading the extracts. (Philip Key)

Here are the date and venue details:

Crosby Civic Hall: Wednesday, October 10, at 8pm (box office 01704 540011).

The Philadelphia Enquirer looks at the eternal question of classic novels - Jane Eyre among them - being compulsory reads at school.

Here are some of the books read by Cherry Hill High School West principal Joseph Meloche, with selected comments. [...]
12th grade
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte: "It's a hard one for the kids, but we ask them to read it as seniors, and at the level, it's appropriate." (Kristen Graham)

An exhibition on Paula Rego's art has just opened today at the Spanish museum Reina Sofía (Madrid). According to Revista de Arte - Logopress (and the museum's own website) the exhibition will include works from her Jane Eyre series.

Jonna Gjevre posts a review of Alan Stanford’s adaptation of Jane Eyre, currently on stage at the Guthrie Theatre:

I’m trying to remember the last time I was so deeply moved by a live performance, and I’m not able to come up with anything. Jane Eyre was just stunning.
Having loved Jane Eyre for thirty years (and having written a chapter of my doctoral dissertation on the novel), I was initially a little skeptical about the idea of a three-hour dramatic adaptation. Things that work well on paper don’t always translate well to the stage. And Jane Eyre presents a number of dramatic challenges. First of all, the novel is bleak. The themes are abuse, religious coercion, and a brutal, almost unrelenting loneliness. Besides that, Jane Eyre owes much of its force to Jane’s reflective and imaginative narration–a narrative style that can’t easily be embedded into stage dialogue. And finally, the novel’s love story mostly takes place in the heroine’s head, conveyed through interior monologue, and Rochester’s bullying behavior and gruff language aren’t (on the surface) very love-worthy.
But the Guthrie’s production handled all those obstacles wonderfully. Jane (sensitively portrayed by Stacia Rice) and Rochester (Sean Haberle) have great, funny chemistry. I never expected that Jane Eyre could be funny!
Even better: through the technique of creating an older Jane who comments on the action (like a Greek chorus) and interacts with the younger Jane, Bronte’s beautiful narrative style was able to be preserved. This strategy enabled the performers to showcase some of my favorite passages from the novel–like the sad scene where Jane tells herself to paint a faithful self-portrait and one of her beautiful rival and to place them side-by-side whenever she’s tempted to imagine herself worthy of Rochester.
Yes, the production was bleak. Dark sets, gray colors, restrictive costumes, and lots of repressed emotion. But these elements only made the happy ending all the more cathartic when it finally came. Jane’s crushing loneliness has ended, and she is at last in the arms of a man who knows what it is to suffer and who loves only her.
“Reader,” says the older Jane (just as half of the audience begins to weep), “I married him.”

Marcinism posts about deconstructing Jane Eyre:

For example, deconstructive reading of Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte would indicate that while Jane assumes the activities of the traditional woman in opposition to the male characters in the novel, that her ultimate will and power identifies her as strong and not weak. The hierarchies are then upset and begin to unravel. It is important to note however, that the deconstruction of binary oppositions is not a task to endure by the reader or critic, yet the oppositions deconstruct from within the text.

Hmmmm... deconstruction - not our cup of tea.

But to finish on a funnier note. Well, two notes, actually:

The first comes from Ass over teakettle. A hilarious rendition of Wuthering Heights goes to a talk show:

Cathy and Heathcliff and the rest of the Wuthering Heights clan would be the best, though. Of course they would show up on the trashiest show possible. Ricki Lake? Maury Povich? Jerry Springer? I don't know what the latest trainwreck show is, but they'd be on it.
shimmer shimmer dream sequence shimmer shimmer
First Edgar would come on, all downtrodden, wearing khaki pants and a French blue shirt, talking about how he loves his wife, but he just doesn't understand her. And (his voice drops with shame) he thinks she might be cheating on him.
"MIGHT BE? Hell fucking yeah I'm cheating on you," Cathy bellows as she enters. She wears a white wife beater over a black bra, and lowrider jeans that showcase the top of her thong and the tramp-stamp tattoo on her lower back that reads HEATHCLIFF.
Heathcliff trails behind her, wearing black, smirking.
Edgar rises to kiss Cathy on the cheek as she evades him to the hoots of the audience. As C & H sit, Isabella comes trailing in wearing mom jeans and a sweatshirt. When she cannot find a chair to sit next to Heathcliff she plops down next to Edgar and begins snivelling into a tissue pulled from her sleeve.
"What are you crying about? You couldn't keep your man, and someone else done got him," Cathy says. "I mean, my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath--a source of little visible delight, but necessary. He's always, always in my mind--not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So step off, biznatch!"
Edgar borrows a Kleenex from Isabella. Heathcliff snickers and gets a pinch of Skoal. The audience hoots and barks.
shimmer shimmer dream sequence shimmer shimmer

Fantastic. But the following, from Tales from the "Liberry", is not less so. What's more, this is real!

SETTING: My "liberry" as a female patron approaches the circ-desk from the direction of our nonfiction section.
PATRON— Hi. I'm looking for Jane Eyre.
ME— Ah. That will be over in our fiction section, under Brontë.
PATRON— No, I need the biography of her. About her life.
(Pause)
ME— Um... (Pauses again to consider how best to politely break the news to her. Realizes there is no good way. Proceeds...) Jane Eyre is a fictional character in a book written by Charlotte Brontë.
PATRON— (Long pause) Oh. (Long pause) I must have misunderstood.

Categories: Alert, Art-Exhibitions, Humour, Jane Eyre, Scholar, Talks, Theatre, Wuthering Heights