Wuthering Wildfells ~ BrontëBlog

Saturday, August 07, 2010

Wuthering Wildfells

Saturday, August 07, 2010 4:01 pm by M. in Audio-Radio, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Sequels and Retellings, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights No comments

The Guardian reviews the CSA audiobook Brontë Collection with a Haworth blunder, imaginatively renamed... Hawarth.

The Brontë Collection, read by Carole Boyd, David Rintoul and Hannah Gordon (10hrs abridged, CSA Word, £22.99)
Can you realistically take a fast train through Brontë country with a halt at Hawarth [sic!]and say you've read Jane Eyre, Villette, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall? The answer, surprisingly, is yes, with enough bleak, wind-battered moorland and desolate wuthering wildfells in the last two books to make you feel you've had your money's worth. The Jane Austen and Evelyn Waugh collections left me underwhelmed, but I'd heartily recommend Brontë for the beach. (Sue Arnold)

Galleycat talks about the release of The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell. The Bell pseudonym has something to do with the Brontës:

Author Joshua Gaylord recently released his zombie novel, The Reapers Are The Angels, under the pseudonym Alden Bell. An event to promote the book was held at a New York City Barnes & Noble on August 4th. After reading from the book, he fielded questions from the audience.
When asked about how "Alden Bell" came about, he answered that "Alden" is a family name because his male line has always carried the name "Alden" since the lifetime of his Mayflower ancestor. "Bell" is an homage to the Brontë sisters who each used "Bell" as the surname for their male pseudonyms. He added: "So, it's like I'm the fourth Brontë sister." (Maryann Yin)

The review of Banana Republican. From the Buchanan File by Eric Rauchway, a spin-off of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby in the New York Times provides the opportunity to talk about what the reviewer calls

The Further Adventures of Somebody Else’s Fictional Character is not an original concept. (...) Jean Rhys took a more serious approach in her novel “Wide Sargasso Sea,” where she revisits “Jane Eyre” and gives Rochester’s mad first wife a chance to speak for herself. (Joe Queenan)

Another review with an indirect Brontë mention is The Guardian's of Room by Emma Donoghue:

Completely missing from the prose is any sense of panic, disorientation, depression, the nameless terror conjured up by a string of associations "like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children's brains" described in Jane Eyre. Donoghue's reader is asked to believe that Jack is, as his mother says at one point, "OK. More or less." Although I was impressed by her book, I couldn't. (Susanna Rustin)

The Standard-Times interviews author Sarah Blake:

Lauren [Daley]: Who are your influences?
Sarah: Definitely the Brontës and Virginia Wolfe [sic]; those are the main three. They were the ones who made me want to write.

We suppose Anne is left out of the picture, then.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer has an article about Errol Flynn and Merle Oberon, Cathy in Wuthering Heights 1939:

Oberon was noted for her exotic looks and is best remembered alongside the youthful Laurence Olivier in “Wuthering Heights.” The duo is considered one of cinema’s most romantic pairs, although it is said that the two hated each other during the shooting of the film—their onscreen chemistry didn’t exist after “Cut!” was called.
Oberon exhibited wrathful strains of the Tasmanian devil when rubbed the wrong way. The future Sir Olivier obviously did. He referred to his costar as “pockmarked.” Ironically, “Wuthering Heights” is considered one of the most romantic products of the Golden Age of Hollywood. (Behn Cervantes)

Zero Hora (Brazil) includes a profile of Terry Eagleton. Its Marxist readings of the Brontës cannot be missed:

Mas é em textos como Heathcliff and the Great Hunger, publicado em 1996, pela editora Verso, que Eagleton busca na própria literatura inglesa a matéria prima para construir um livro e uma narrativa primorosos. Partindo de um estudo do clássico O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes, de Emily Brontë, publicado em 1847, Eagleton sai da Yorkshire novecentista analisada por essa irmã para chegar à faminta Irlanda da mesma época, a da Grande Fome, ou Grande Crise das Batatas, como também é conhecida; tempo de uma emigração maciça de irlandeses, principalmente rumo aos EUA.
Segundo Eagleton, Wuthering Heights pode muito bem ser analisado como uma metáfora da sociedade rural inglesa dos Oitocentos, tão brutal, selvagem e faminta quanto sua vizinha menos pretensiosa, a Irlanda, cuja pobreza é bem mais conhecida, revelada e com certeza, menos sedutora. (Joana Bosak de Figueiredo) (Microsoft translation)

O Norte de Minas (Brazil) links Montes Claros and Wuthering Heights:

Essas lembranças vêm, juntamente com a chegada do mês de agosto. O mês de agosto, em Montes Claros, era especial. Sopravam bons ventos. Não ventos como os do livro ‘O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes’, da escritora e poetisa (melhor poeta) britânica, Emily Jane Brontë, que o escreveu sob o pseudônimo masculino Ellis Bell. (Alberto Sena) (Microsoft translation)

El País (Spain) reviews Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, quoting some of its Brontë jokes:

Allí están parodiados historias, ambientes, paisajes y personajes de Thomas Hardy, Mary Webb, Sheila Kaye-Smith, las hermanas Brontë o Jane Austen (las hermanas Brontë y Austen admiradas por Stella Gibbons). (...) Mybug es un escritor obsesionado con el sexo, y convierte un paseo por el campo en una acción libidinosa: una charca es un ombligo, los pedúnculos de las ramas del abedul son símbolos fálicos, y las semillas, ¡ah!, las semillas. Mybug también está empeñado en demostrar que las Brontë no fueron más que unas borrachas y que el autor de Jane Eyre o Cumbres borrascosas es su hermano Branwell. (María José Obiol) (Microsoft translation)

Also in El País, there's an interview with the director M. Night Shyamalan, who compares himself to other misunderstood artists:

Y lo dice con semblante serio mientras cita a Alfred Hitchcock o a la escritora Emily Brontë como ejemplos de artistas que contaron con un limitado respeto por parte de sus coetáneos. (Jordi Minguell) (Microsoft translation)

La Nación (Argentina) has a curious way of talking about the Alex Katz exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery:

Para cualquier mujer medianamente adicta al secador de pelo (y a las novelas de las hermanas Brontë), la humedad de esta ciudad hace que, ocasionalmente, sea inevitable mirarse al espejo y ver reflejada allí una cabeza digna de la señora Rochester, la esposa demente que el prometido de Jane Eyre mantenía oculta en el altillo y máxima imagen del horror cuando se lucha por un peinado prolijo.
Pero si justo se está en un día "señora Rochester", es de evitar un encuentro con Alex Katz. Katz tiene la teoría de que los norteamericanos, como él, saben mucho de lo que inmediatamente tienen que saber de una persona a través de su ropa y su pelo, a diferencia de los ingleses, que se basan en el acento, o de los franceses, que, según los medios británicos, determinan clase según la forma de estructurar las frases. (Juana Libedinsky) (Microsoft translation)

Cubaencuentro reviews a new edition of Lydia Cabrera's Cuentos Negros de Cuba and quotes an old review by Alejo Carpentier where he said:

“Lo raro es hallar en nuestro continente una escritora ávida de explorar nuestras cosas en profundidad, esquivando aspectos superficiales para fijar hombres y mitos de nuestras tierras con esa finísima inteligencia femenina (…) El tipo de escritora a lo Selma Lagerlöf, a lo Emily Bronte, es casi desconocido en América” (Carlos Espinosa Domínguez) (Microsoft translation)

Isabelle Huppert's role as Anne Brontë in André Téchiné's Les Soeurs Brontë (1977) has left its mark on her life. Look at this interview from De Standaard (Belgium):

Maar de verbeelding is ontzettend krachtig: denk maar aan de zusters Bronte, die hun huis niet uitkwamen, maar romans volschreven over werelden die ze niet kenden. Ik vergelijk me nu niet met de zusters Bronte. (lacht) Maar ja, ik put het meeste uit mijn verbeelding.' (Inge Schelstraete) (Microsoft translation)