A Brontë Cap

Via eBooknewser we have noticed that Dan Clowes's latest New Yorker cover (December 5th) which ironises on the future of bookshops after the eReaders expansion features a Brontë reference. Enlarge the picture and look at the blue cap.
Picture source: Dan Clowes.

Los Angeles Times discusses living in L.A. after the wind storm:

I have been without light and heat and hot tap water for 36 hours now -– and it feels like 36 years.
I’m trying to be philosophical and regard this as a kind of time-travel, that I’m living like Jane Austen, or the Brontë Sisters. (...)
To Misses Austen and Brontë, I doff my mobcap to you. Like the 19^th century equivalent of Ginger Rogers, doing everything Fred Astaire did but backwards and in high heels, you did surpassing well. (Patt Morrison)

If you have been reading Abigail's Atelier blog you will know how her story was manipulated and her efforts to put it right with partial success: The Telegraph agreed to delete the article, no such luck with the other tabloids. Lucy Mangan in The Guardian is not aware of all this and posts her two cents about it:

If you're going to do a thing, do it properly. That's always been my motto (and the reason I don't do things). That is the why – although my first instinct whenever I receive an invitation to a fancy dress party is to set fire to it and to the people who sent it (and ideally their guests, and all their pets) – some of the people for whom I reserve my greatest admiration and awe are those such as L.M.C. of K., West Yorkshire.
Not just because she is from Yorkshire – though obviously the people who manage to survive there are to be congratulated. I always imagine them clinging to weather-beaten rocks on bleakly battered moorland, less like people, more like particularly hardy lichens. No, it's because she is three years and £4,000 into full-time dressing and doing-that-centre-parted-drapey-thing-with-her-hair like her heroine Charlotte Brontë.

L.M.C.  has replied to the article both in the comments section and on her blog. As much as we think that much of what has been published these days only reflects the poor state of journalism in the UK, we sincerely think that's not the case with this particular column.

The Arts Desk interviews the director Peter Kosminsky, who is very sincere about his job as director of Wuthering Heigths 1992.

It wasn’t successful for a number of reasons but the main one was I did a really bad job. It was only the second drama I had ever made. I am afraid I let ambition overtake my good common sense. A number of people warned me that I was getting into bad company, but I think the major mistake I made was technical. I just didn’t do a very good job as a director. I learnt a great deal from it - the craft level of people working on those big films is somewhat higher than we’re used to in television. But it set me back professionally a long way and took quite a long time to come back from it.
How?
In my industry you are very much as good as your last film. People have very short memories and they forgot about Shoot to Kill and they remembered Wuthering Heights, which was not a good film. It was also a bizarre film for me to make given my track record of documentaries. So the movie world was closed off to me and it was difficult to come back to television and try to remember what I personally was trying to achieve professionally.
I suppose the other factor is that my own morale and self-confidence really took a knock. I had worked in documentaries for 10 years with a certain amount of success and I’d ignored advice and believed that I could pull off this big movie. Everyone from my agent to friends to people in the industry advised me not to pick that particular film. I was arrogant and burdened with an overweening ambition. I was romanced by Paramount Pictures and I grew up as a film buff - maybe I should say film bore - movies were the thing I loved most, and here I was being driven in a limo through the famous gates of Paramount Pictures in Melrose Avenue. It would be extraordinary if someone’s head wasn’t turned. I was being offered the opportunity to do the full story of Wuthering Heights, not just half the story. But common sense should have told me first of all that some of the promises that were being made to me would not be kept. Secondly that I should have asked myself, “Are you really ready for this?” I was in my early thirties.
Could you tell you were getting it wrong?
Yes. That was the tragedy of it. Wuthering Heights is a classic example of the dangers of hubris. I’d done a series of quite successful documentaries. Let’s just say I was joyfully lacking humility, to put it politely. And I’m not seeking in any way to lay off the blame for what was not a good film in any way, but I had less artistic control on that film that on anything I’ve made before or since. Right down to the casting of the female lead, which was not my casting.
I just need to tell you that had it been up to me this film would never have been commissioned
You were given Ms Binoche?
Well, I had a different casting. I was given that casting and I knew that the British public that British public would always struggle to accept a French actress playing Cathy Earnshaw. And I should have walked away. But I was brought up not to be a quitter.
Paramount were probably not thinking about the British public.
No. I don’t know what they were thinking. On the second day of filming I received a phone call from John Goldwyn who had just taken over as the head of production at Paramount and was the grandson of the man who had made the original Wuthering Heights, and this was on the second day of shooting, we were up on location in Yorkshire, and he said, “I just need to tell you that had it been up to me this film would never have been commissioned. And you can have your $10 million but not a cent more.” And that was a promise that he stuck to when we got into difficulty later. So the studio was hardly four-square behind us.
So at the end of that experience which was bruising for me and for members of the cast – I had none of my own heads of department, I didn’t have a lot of artistic freedom on that show – I was thinking of calling it a day. Had I not been contractually obligated by Yorkshire Television to make The Life and Death of Philip Knight I think I would have walked away and gone back to documentaries or just left the industry all together. (Jasper Rees)

Not the first time that he has said something similar. Reviewing the film, Okinawa Assault agrees with him.

The Rutland & Stamford Mercury carries the story of the alleged Emily Brontë portrait which will be auctioned next December 15:

Auctioneer Jonathan Humbert said the attribution confirms that the portrait is earlier than previously thought.
"After much research, we are confident this portrait, recently discovered, is of Emily Brontë.
"So many factors support this contention and as such, this represents a very important study of one English literature's most perennial figures."
The oil on panel painting is set to go on sale at JP Humbert Auctioneers in Towcester, Northants, on Thursday December 15 at a provisional estimate of £10,000-£15,000.

The Times interviews Robert Chote, head of the Office for Budget Responsibility:

Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre? Wuthering Heights  (Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson)

The Times also has an article on Hebden Bridge, which

makes a good base from which to explore the area. Haworth, with all-things Brontë, is eight miles north and you could combine a trip there with a steam-train ride on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. . . (Will Hide)

USA Today reviews Jennifer Cutting’s Ocean Orchestra album Song of Solstice, which includes a version of Fall Leaves Fall by Emily Brontë:

There are several pieces from French traditions, and a high spirited evocation of Celtic winter legends of rejuvenation in The Green Man. Though they are very different in music and tone, the ideas in The Green Man resonate with Fall Leaves Fall, a celebration of autumn and winter changes created when Cutting set to music a poem by Emily Brontë. (Kerry Dexter)

The Wall Street Journal reviews Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James:

In the space of 50 pages, Ms. James has taken the reader away from Austen's civilized England and into the murky environs of a tale by Charlotte Brontë or Wilkie Collins. (Tom Nolan)

The Deccan Herald remembers a child reading anecdote:

I could have a new bike if I read 10 classic novels and wrote reports on them. I was a malleable kid with no negotiating power, so we went to the library and made a list.
We chose Jane Eyre, Tom Sawyer, Wuthering Heights, The Scarlet Letter and The Sword in the Stone. (Maile Meloy)

Sassarie Notizie (Italy) talks about a film classic like Casablanca and says:

E poi come non ricordare la scena sulla pista dell'aeroporto con la nebbia che fa poco Marocco, ma diamine, che importa. Sembra di stare tra le brughiere di Charlotte Brontë, perché mai nessun altra sequenza è più maledettamente romantica di questa. (Translation)

Paperblog interviews the author Rhiannon Frater

Quali sono gli scrittori a cui ti sei "ispirata" o che in qualche modo ti hanno "formato"?
Quando ero giovane, non ho mai letto storie dell'orrore. Così i miei autori preferiti erano Laura Ingalls Wilder e Agatha Christie. Crescendo, ho iniziato ad amare le sorelle Brontë e Bram Stoker. (Stefi) (Translation)

MCETv (France) reviews the album Bretonne by Nolwenn Leroy:

Amazing Grace et Scarborough Fair nous font voyager dans les contrées Irlandaises et anglaises, comme si les landes inondées de bruyère des Hauts de Hurlevent nous entouraient soudainement…  (Lauren Clerc) (Translation)

SDPNoticias (México) talks with the writer Esther Hernández:

Comentó que entre sus escritores favoritos están Charles Dickens, de quien leyó todas sus obras antes de los 12 años; Jaime Sabines, Enriqueta Ochoa, Shakespeare, las hermanas Brontë, Juan Villoro y el guatemalteco Rodrigo Rey Rosa, entre otros. (Translation)

La Rioja (Spain) mistakes Wuthering Heights for Rebecca(?):

No le pedimos un desnudo integral, pero sí un vestido menos riguroso que el del ama de llaves inglesa de 'Cumbres Borrascosas'. (Ignacio Marco-Gardoqui) (Translation)

Frankfurter Allgemaine (Germany) has visited Brontë country:

Das Manuskript, das vor Emily Brontë auf dem Schreibtisch lag, trug den Titel „Wuthering Heights“, „Sturmhöhe“, ein Klassiker der viktorianischen Literatur. Um ungleiche Liebende geht es, um die behütete Catherine und den Waisenjungen Heathcliff. Erst nach ihrem Tod würden sie auf dem Dorffriedhof vereint sein, dessen Moorerde die Leichen mumiengleich erhält. Es geht auch um einen Bruder, der sich zu Tode säuft, um Frauen, die an Tuberkulose sterben. Was eine junge Pfarrerstochter zu einem derart düsteren Werk treibt, begreift man erst, wenn man sieht, was sie sah: die steinerne Gräbermasse vor dem Fenster, dazu das Dorf Haworth, die Apotheke, die die Kranken und wahrscheinlich auch Emilys schwer trunksüchtigen Bruder Branwell mit dem Schmerzmittel Laudanum versorgte. Auch das Pfarrhaus gibt es noch, es ist nun ein Museum, und darin steht noch immer Emilys Schreibtisch vor dem Fenster. Die Armut der Menschen in den winzigen, dunklen Häusern, die in diesem Teil des Landes häufig als Weber arbeiteten, die Krankheiten, die Toten muss man sich dazudenken. Schwer fällt das nicht, wenn der Himmel regenschwer über dem Land hängt und die Kalksteinmauern dunkel glänzen vor Nässe. (Andrea Diener) (Translation)

Sarah Ferguson in Niagara Advance loved Jane Eyre 2011 and dizisine reviews it briefly in Turkish; a high school student reviews Jane by April Lindner in The Missourian; [[ gaboLandia*!! ]] posts in Spanish about Jane Eyre while never-a-day-without-a-line does a character analysis of Jane Eyre. What to Check Out Next… reviews Jude Morgan's Charlotte and Emily (aka The Taste of Sorrow). Hub Pages has an article on How to write a novel: tips from Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens and William Thackeray.