Anne wasn't 'feminine-tosh' either

The Naipaul controversy is not forgotten yet. The Globe and Mail comments on it:

Not that Jane Austen is the only relevant candidate. Sappho, Murasaki Shikibu, Madame de La Fayette, George Eliot, two of the Brontës, Simone Weil, Alice Munro ... many great women authors refute V.S. Naipaul’s “feminine-tosh” thesis.

What we regret is that very specific 'two of the Brontës'. We suppose Anne has been left out when her novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall clearly serves to refute Naipaul's 'theory'.

The News International  (Pakistan) mourns

the disappearance of the reading habit from his students. “It is pathetic. It is so sad. I am surprised to see how the reading habit has faded away from the lives of students. I was an intermediate student 15 years ago and I vividly remember how students in our college read books. We would read Dickens, Thackeray, Brontës, Jane Austen, Pope and Dryden and many others. Then we used to discuss the characters, the message and the fine points of those books. It was so refreshing and we enjoyed it immensely. Alas! It is all past now. Our library is there, the books are there but there are only a few students to borrow them. They are more interested in notes and obtaining marks. This is, in my opinion, the death of intellectual pursuit that has given pleasure to countless booklovers for centuries.” (Perwez Abdullah)

The Sacramento Bee takes a look at several songs by U2:

"New Year's Day": A tale of lovers riven by outside forces, this song is genuinely epic, its sound encapsulating Ireland, the British Isles, heather, Heathcliff and New Year's Day hangovers. (Carla Meyer)

Sounds like an awful lot of things to be encapsulated in just one song.

The Formby Times and SouthPort Visiter alert local Brontëites to the fact that LipService and their Withering Looks will be on stage at Edge Hill University’s Rose Theatre on Thursday, June 9.

An alert from Bloomington, IL:

A Midsummer Knight’s Classics Book Club; 6:30 p.m., Bloomington Public Library patio; “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë. Enter a July 11 drawing for two tickets to the Illinois Shakespeare Festival with two dinners at the festival from Kelly’s Bakery & Cafe. (The Pantagraph)

The Brontë Parsonage Blog posts about Ian Dewhirst's talk on Saturday. Peachy Reviews gives a 6/10 to Villette while Spoiled Monsters and In Print post about Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights respectively.

Categories: Books, Talks, Theatre, Wuthering Heights