Read Susan Sontag reading Gide reading Wuthering Heights

The New Yorker reviews the newly-published Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 of Susan Sontag, edited by David Rieff. Susan Sontag apparently commented on André Gide's comment on Wuthering Heights:

Gide’s puritanism spoke to the cloistered, brilliant girl’s overvaluation of self-laceration as intellectual honesty. So, too, did his unapologetic reports of his responses to literature—of sobbing on a park bench after reading about Catherine and Heathcliff’s last meeting. (Darryl Pinckney)

The response after seeing the same scene on screen might or might not be different. We will soon find out how it's depicted in the latest adaptation, which is mentioned by the Independent (Ireland):

And both the BBC and ITV are increasingly looking to the costume dramas that always pull in the viewers with classics like Wuthering Heights and A Passage to India getting new drama treatments.

Broadway World, on the other hand, looks back to a previous adaptation in an article about Matthew Macfadyen, who played Hareton in the 1998 adaptation of the novel.

By now, Emily Brontë may have been used to seeing the novel she wrote on the screen, but we are pretty sure she'd still be as surprised as we are by the use of her novel and writings in the sports columns concerning two very traditional sports on each side of the pond. The San Francisco Chronicle about American football:

Bleak? The Coliseum on Sunday made the godforsaken moors of "Wuthering Heights" look like the Las Vegas strip. What a picture. (Scott Ostler)

And Cricket Web, which reviews a biography of Yorkshire Cricket player Bob Appleyard by Stephen Chalke and Derek Hodgson called... No Coward Soul. Of course they need to clarify where the title comes from:

For those who are wondering the title of the book comes from a poem written by Emily Bronte shortly before her death from tuberculosis in 1848 at the age of 30. (Martin J Chandler)

The Reporter, inspired by Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, remarks what other news sites have already commented on: that crushes on fictional characters are not such a new thing.

Dear Shell-shocked: Yes, seriously?! And didn't you read Jane Austen or Emily Brontë? Mothers may forget (and boys will never relate), but obsessing over "hot guys" is primal and ancient, hard-wired over thousands of years when marrying was a girl's most important decision, both to determine her own fate, and to ensure the genetic success of her offspring. The popularity of "Twilight," today's teen heartthrob book, (it's no "Pride & Prejudice" or "Wuthering Heights" -- you will be in a coma by the fourth book), should assure you this behavior is normal.

Neither is fan fiction such a new thing, according to The National (Abu Dhabi).

In truth, fanfiction is probably less of an innovation than it might at first sound. Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea – imagining the life of the first Mrs Rochester – stands in the same relation to Jane Eyre as any extended work of fan fiction does to its original. The only differences are that it was published by a professional writer for profit – so has a wider readership and a longer life. (Sam Leith)

According to Booktrade, Fanny Blake, books' editor of Woman & Home, has been appointed a judge for choosing the Romantic Novel of the Year 2009. She says,

"Love is central to all our lives," Fanny says, "yet romantic literature is often dismissed as secondary to great fiction despite the fact that most classic literature we love features romance in all its guises, from Jane Eyre through Howard's End to Atonement. Well-crafted romantic fiction is eternally relevant and I'm excited to be a judge for this prize that draws attention to the best of the best."

We agree to a certain extent, but it should be borne in mind that those novels also contain other serious matters, they are not mere love stories.

Brontës.nl provides us with further information on the Muziektheatergroep Totaal at the Theater de Lieve Vrouw in Amersfoort, Netherlands production of Jane Eyre. Here's the Google translation of the post, but the digest would be that Jane Eyre will be played by Menalda Bavinck and the musical will be on stage from October 2009 to February 2010. If you are interested in reading more about it in Dutch, you can read these pages scanned by the theatre company from the magazine Vathorst.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Weirdo, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights