Telepathic orphans

Let's start this post with one more example of bookish influence behind the music. The Johns Hopkins Magazine features an article on music duo Matmos and the following crops up:

Daniel is in charge of whatever comes next. He tends to be the conceptual half of the pair, and his concept for the next CD began with a work of scholarship, Nicholas Royle's Telepathy and Literature. Royle sees something telepathic in the relationships between certain literary figures, like Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Daniel took to the idea: "After 16 years of making music with Martin, I thought telepathy seemed like a fruitful trope for how improvisers sense where all the people in the room are going. That's a kind of telepathy too." (Dale Keiger)

There's an even stronger telepathic connection between Mr Rochester and Jane Eyre, we think.

On a completely different note, Daniel Radcliffe is asked by The Daily Beast about orphans in literature:

There is a whole genre of literature that centers on the orphaned. Your first role at nine was David Copperfield. There’s Oliver Twist. Jane Eyre. Faulkner’s Light in August. Almost every superhero. What’s your theory as to why the genre is so enduring since Harry is perhaps the most famous orphan in all of literature?
I suppose it’s because we love the underdog. I saw James Carville talking on television and he said a fantastic thing. It was during the last days of John McCain’s campaign. I got hooked on political coverage during the campaign. I love that Joe Scarborough chap. Do you watch Morning Joe? I quite like him. What is it he says? “American by luck. Southern by the grace of God.” That’s great phrase-making.
But back to Carville and orphans. He said that McCain should come out as the underdog. He said Americans love an underdog, but they hate a loser. And for an orphan, from the earliest, most basic, most primitive part of your life, things have gone against you. Everything we know about how people work and are successful, in the conventional sense, starts with family. So the notion is for that to be taken out of the picture one has to work doubly hard to achieve things. It is odd that almost every role I’ve played has been a kid who comes from a screwed-up family background because I have had such the opposite of that. (Kevin Sessums)

On the blogosphere, The Elegant Extracts Blog continues to tease about Austen and the Brontës. And Violet Crush reviews Jane Eyre.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights