The Guardian blog wondered if Brown was not thinking of the book but rather, as those who voted for Wuthering Heights in a Good Read poll, were "actually thinking of the 1939 film adaptation, with Laurence Olivier playing Heathcliff in best matinee idol style... The closest this Heathcliff ever got to violence was squeezing Merle Oberon, playing opposite him as Cathy, just a wee bit tightly to his manly chest.
Surely this must be the Heathcliff ... The Heathcliff who returns halfway through the book is even nastier than before, intent on wreaking revenge on absolutely everyone who previously crossed him, more Arnold Schwarzenegger than Laurence Olivier. Perhaps it's just too much to ask that a politician should pay attention to anything between hard covers. (Colin Steele)
The Spoof! also begins this satirical piece alluding to it:
Gordon Brown today told us that an apparition of former British Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan, apparently appeared in his bedroom last night, like some sort of Wuthering Heights Heathcliff ghost coming back from the moor. (Clifford Rutley)The St. Catherine's Standard reviews Ann-Marie MacDonald's Belle Moral: A Natural History, a theatre piece presented at the Shaw Festival Theatre 2008 (Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada):
Belle Moral is a take on the madwoman in the attic Gothic-type of story. Think Jane Eyre. The MacIsaac children -- Pearl (Fiona Byrne) and Victor (Jeff Meadows) -- have gathered to hear their late father's will read. Pearl lives at Belle Moral with her aunt Flora (Donna Belleville), along with the help, created as comedic devices played to perfection by Bernard Behrens (Young Farleigh) and Happer. (Lori Littleton)
Several newspapers publish a press release from Associated Press about the upcoming Broadway debut of Jill Santoriello's A Tale of Two Cities musical. Apparently the composer's first idea was not Charles Dickens:
She was first drawn to "Wuthering Heights" as a subject to musicalize but found the story too depressing.(Michael Kuchwara)
Well, Dickens is not precisely the life and soul of the party neither.
The Brontë Parsonage Blog posts about a recent meeting in Amsterdam of Maddalena De Leo (member of the Brontë Society- Sezione Italiana) and some members of the Brussels Brontë Group:
When we sat down in the small breakfast room of the hotel and after having bravely defied the hotel receptionist’s fury, calming him down by buying some drinks, I started by asking Veronica [Metz, from the group Anois (more information here)] about her musical work on Emily’s poems and about her inspiration for it. She told us that all was due to her visit to Haworth Parsonage some years ago and to the magnificent view of the moors behind it. She kindly handed each of us a CD-demo of her Emily Brontë and the conversation so started was followed by questions and answers dealing with the organization of our two sections, on our meetings, the blogs, the web and the magazines edited by each section.Oxford Reader describes in detail the recent talk by Justine Picardie and Lynne Atwell at Dartington Hall. Frances Wilson's talk about her recently published biography of Dorothy Wordsworth is also discussed. As the readers of BrontëBlog will remember, the book has several Wuthering Heights references.
After a short break with the Anois music filling the air and a really friendly atmosphere among members - all chatting as old friends both in Dutch and English - I gave Helen an Italian ceramic plate commemorative of the event and we all drank a toast with the champagne I brought from Italy for the occasion. I then read my lecture ‘The Brontës and the Sea’, a topic I chose for our being in Amsterdam, thanking all for their presence there. (Maddalena De Leo)
When will the Heathcliffgate end? It's silly. It's been weeks now. It's an absurd comparison.
ReplyDeleteIt goes on and on and on..
ReplyDelete