By the way, The Times confirms that Brontëites can be found even in Darfur.Jacket Copy: In "Zeroville," your most recent novel, movies shape the way the main character perceives the world. Are there any books that do the same for you?
Steve Erickson: I'm not sure there's a difference between books that affected the way I see the world and books that influenced me as a writer. The first books I remember having an impact on me when I was a kid were L. Frank Baum's "Oz" books, which were much stranger than the movie, at once rather whimsical and really dark. Later Faulkner's novels made sense to me for the way time was never literal, the way it seemed hot-wired to memory rather than experience, and Henry Miller's early work was revelatory for the way it so willfully assaulted all the formalist notions about literature that get taught in English classes. There was something very punk about Miller's juxtaposition of the transcendent with the primal, the sky with the gutter. When I was 25, during one scorching summer when I was house-sitting for a buddy, I read Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights." Dostoevsky is considered the first "modern" writer, but I vote to Emily -- one of the most subversive novels ever made, with a sexually obsessed main character whose object of desire is a dead woman, an utterly unreliable narrator, a structure built on a psychological interior that shifts like a house with moving walls. I had fever dreams that whole month. Gabriel Garcia Marquez influenced me for the way he applied Faulkner to his own landscape. All of these books, I think, were most influential in that, as far-flung as they were, there was something in them I instinctively recognized, something about them that confirmed what I already knew about the world but didn't know I knew. (Carolyn Kellogg).
When Daphne du Maurier died in 1989, she left instructions that her diaries were not to be read for 50 years. Faced with this embargo, Justine Picardie has taken the unusual step of imagining three eventful years in the writer's life. The book opens in 1957 with du Maurier uncovering her husband's affair and ends in 1960 when her mother died. Amid these difficulties, she was writing her biography of Branwell Brontë, aided by Branwell enthusiast J Alexander Symington. Picardie widens her focus by alternating characters every few chapters, switching between the imagined thoughts of du Maurier, Symington and a PhD student researching a thesis on Branwell. All are seeking to elevate Branwell's literary status to that of his sisters.English composer Tristram Cary died last April 24th as it is reported in several newspapers (check The Telegraph for instance). He is connected to the Brontës through the soundtrack for the six-part 1963 BBC adaptation of Jane Eyre.
As a biographer, Picardie is impressive; her book is well researched and grounded in letters and interviews. But does it work as a novel? Her prose lacks sparkle and her only completely fictional creation, the PhD student, is whiny and unsympathetic. Most grating of all are the fantasy thoughts of du Maurier and Symington, when the reader craves dialogue and description. As Picardie's PhD student observes with regard to Brontë biographies: 'It's the literary equivalent of catching butterflies, and then killing them, in order to pin them down and display them in a box.' (Katie Toms)
New Century Club will host its annual Guest Tea at 1 p.m. Thursday in the parlor of First Presbyterian Church.
Lisa Harbison will review “The Shaggy Muses: the Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Brown, Edith Wharton and Emily Bronte” by Maureen Adams. (Muskogee Phoenix)
Infobae and La Nación publish reminders of the performances of Roberto Pieri's adaptation of Wuthering Heights in Buenos Aires: Cumbres Borrascosas. More information in these previous posts.
We also report last Friday's talk given by Janet Stobbs at the Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera in Elx, Spain, with the title "La loca del desván" (The madwoman of the attic) as published on És Elx.
On the blogosphere: Emily Brontë's poem Last Words in Portuguese (translated by Renata Cordeiro), Mitt liv med Lord Peter og Mr Darcy reviews Jane Eyre in Norwegian.
In 2003, me, Renata Cordeiro, and Eliane Alambert translated Wuthering Heights into portuguese as O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes. The best translation in Brazil.
ReplyDelete