Creepy Portraits and Hip Hop Heights

Philip Hamlyn Williams's biography of William Smith Williams, Charlotte Brontë's devotee, is almost finished:

I mark 31 August 2018 as the day I sent off a first draft of my biography of William Smith Williams. (...)
The draft is divided into twelve chapters:
1 Childhood       
2 Apprenticeship   
3 The Hullmandel Years   
4 The House of Smith, Elder & Co 
5 The Brontë Years – Jane Eyre   
6 The Brontë Years – Friendship 
7 The Brontë Years – Art and Tragedy 
8 The Brontë Years – Shirley, The Cornhill Parcels and Education
9 The Brontë Years – Villette, A Cooling Relationship 
10 The Cornhill and Other Authors 
11 The Ruskin Years   
12 Home Life and Legacy 
I now begin my search for a suitable publisher.

Keighley News has info on a new book which features the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

A new book about 100 key historical locations in England features Haworth's Brontë Parsonage Museum.
"Irreplaceable: A History of England in 100 Places", has been written by Philip Wilkinson, a specialist writer on history, architecture and religion.
The locations included in the book were chosen by the public, and then put to expert judges to choose the shortlist. (Miran Rahman)

Pat Barker's Culture Fix in The Times is priceless:

I’m having a fantasy dinner party. I’ll invite these artists and authors...
Initially I was tempted by a literary girls’ night in, but oh dear me, no. Mrs Gaskell is still uncomfortable with the fact that George Eliot is not and never will be Mrs Henry Lewes and so cannot be visited, and much less dined with, by any respectable woman. Charlotte Brontë keeps nervously fingering her wig — so much less beautiful than her own hair. Emily Brontë is saying little and eating less. Mary Shelley has just remarked on the fact that all the women at the table have eyes in their breasts instead of nipples. And Angela Carter, sitting opposite Jane Austen, has just begun a cogent, if expletive-laden account of why she despises middle-class novels about people with private incomes, especially when, as in Mansfield Park, their wealth is based on slave labour. Perhaps watching a box set isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Houstonia reviews the Houston performances of The Moors:

Mildred's Umbrella Theatre Company opens their season with Jen Silverman’s The Moors—a place where it is a little too remote, and things can really do a number on your head. Silverman, a prolific playwright, also writes fiction, so I was excited to see what this play would address. The Brontë sisters? Governesses gone mad? People locked up in attics? Well, yes, and no.
As director Jennifer Decker says about the Brontë family, “This play is not a biography of their lives or a retelling of any of their works, but an absurd celebration of their genius born of isolation and limited experience with romance.” (...)
Silverman—and Decker, through her excellent direction—tap into the tepid expressions of unhappiness found in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and redefines them in terms of unabashed rage. It’s a clever spin, complete with Victorian costumes, repression, frustrated lesbian romance, and a misfit locked up in the attic. Except this time around it’s a man who is banished: Branwell, who also happened to be the Brontë sisters’ only brother. In real life he succumbed to drinking and drugs (and painting creepy portraits of his sisters). In the play, he is maligned for not being “prudent.”
I love the whole concept of being inspired by these artists and their books, and Silverman comes up with a crazy house of characters. Agatha—quite the cold customer played by Amy Warren—is pretty much hated by everybody who meets her and represents the control freakishness of Heathcliff types who turn abusive out on the moors, where no social services intervene. (Doni Wilson)

Creepy portraits?

Bustle complains about the Guardian's coverage of the so-called New Academy literature prize shortlist. One of the nominees is Maryse Condé:

Guadeloupean author Condé is Professor Emerita of French at Columbia University, and has written a number of plays and novels, including the historical fiction I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem and Segu. In 2008, she published Windward Heights, a reworking of Wuthering Heights, set in Guadeloupe. (Kristian Wilson)

Earmilk presents a new pop artist, Fleurt:

Fleurt's "Talk Me Down" is a track that bursts with potential, a modern girl lost in the Brooklyn sad boi band scene. Fleurt, AKA Alessandra Licul, is a Queens native who cites The Brontë Sisters and Marina and The Diamonds as her greatest influences. A life-defining musical theatre phase brought her into the music business, as she gears to release her debut EP, You Up?, this fall. (Cailey Lindberg)

Weekend Australia reviews the novel The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley:

While [Angela] Carter was by no means the first ­author to do so, writing from the margins is a technique that transformed literature. Before her, Jean Rhys’s 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea ­revealed Jane Eyre’s madwoman in the attic as a woman fighting after being victimised by racism and colonialism. Today, the trend ­continues. (Louise Omer)

We are Movie Geeks reviews the film The Little Stranger:

However, anyone expecting either another Room, or even The Others or Jane Eyre, will be disappointed with director Lenny Abrahamson’s The Little Stranger. A moody, brooding historic drama set in 1930s England, the film is filled with foreboding but leaves the viewer in suspense. (Cate Marquis)

Rochester City Newspaper also reviews the film:

A throwback to psychological horror stories like "The Haunting" and "The Innocents" (there's a bit of "Wuthering Heights" in there as well), "The Little Stranger" narrows in on the class politics of the novel. (Adam Lubitow)

And Counterpunch:

The closest relatives to this film are Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Henry James’s “Turn of the Screw”. Indeed, the film evokes many other classic tales including those written by the Brontë sisters and Charles Dickens. (Louis Proyect)

Cleveland.com reports the local performances of The Mystery of Irma Vep by the Chagrin Valley Little Theatre:

The three-act who-done-it is a satirical mash-up of theatrical, literary and film genres such as the novel Wuthering Heights and Alfred Hitchock's movie "Rebecca" along with the French serial "Les Vampires." (Joan Rusek)

The Music.com.au made us laugh with this comment about Eminem:

Mathers always has some relationship dramz – the rapper's tumultuous union with Kim Mathers the hip hop equivalent of Wuthering Heights. 

Now some Back-to-School mentions:
Penguin:

Does September make you nostalgic for your school days? We're celebrating five books that take us back to our days in the classroom, and what they taught us.
Jane EyreCharlotte Brontë
‘Reader, I married him,’ is arguably the most famous line from Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel Jane Eyre. Charlotte’s readers quickly learn, however, that Jane’s story is not one of pure romance. Following Jane from her difficult formative years right through to her marriage with Rochester, students explore the class, gender and religious restrictions Jane faced in 19th century England.

 Sheerluxe:

Why We Still Get That ‘Back To School’ Feeling As Adults (...)
Another reason September feels like a fresh start? When it comes down to it, I’m a real autumn girl. I love the sense of renewal, from the falling leaves to the drop in temperature and transition from summer salads to slow-cooked Sunday roasts. I feel more ‘me’ when I’m swathed in knitwear and can go stomping about in the rain without any of the Wuthering Heights comparisons.

The European Theatre Festival Purgatorije 2018 has awarded the production Orkanske Visove with a special prize. Fos Media (Montenegro) reports:

Prema odluci tročlanog žirija u sastavu Dubravka Drakić, Stefan Koprivica i Ivica Kunčević, „Orkanski visovi“ predstavljaju specifičan teatarski ogled u kojem se jedna naizgled neteatarska literatura transponuje u zanimljiv i uzbudljiv pozorišni čin koji nam nudi mnogo više značenja nego sama literarna premisa.
Kako stoji u njihovom obrazloženju, rediteljski postupak, proizašao iz neobičnog dramaturškog rakursa uslovio je preciznu i upečatljivu glumačku igru koja nas ne ostavlja ravnodušnim.
Jedini roman Emili Bronte koji je, u koprodukciji „Barskog ljetopisa“ i Kraljevskog pozorišta „Zetski dom“, doživio svoju prvu dramatizaciju na Balkanu, smatra se remek-djelom engleske književnosti. Međutim u pitanju je roman koji, za današnje teatarske tokove, previše asocira na ljubavnu melodramu čiji duhovi i ljubavne zavrzlame i osvete pristaju određenoj kategoriji serija, a ne pozorištu. Kako i sam žiri kaže u obrazloženju, ovo nije teatarska literatura. Štaviše, dramatizacija tog romana je nešto na čemu su se širom svijeta spotakli mnogo veći od nas. (Translation)

Türkiye (Turkey) talks about the influence of English novels on Turkish literature:

Yine Charlotte Bronte’nin “Jane Eyre” adlı romanında asli karakter olan kız, toplum kurallarını tanımayan, serbest fikirli biridir. Bu romanda da verilmek istenen konu, kadın cemiyette yer edinirken dinî kurallara uymamalıdır. Bu romanın da bizde bir izdüşümü vardır. Halide Edib’in “Tatarcık” romanına bir bakmak gerekir. Bu romanın kahramanı olan Jale de Türk kızlarına örnek gösterilmiştir. Kitapta zamana göre ince bir “feminizm” gölgesini görmemek mümkün değildir. (Dr. Osman Kemal Kayra) (Translation)

The Neue Bürcher Zeitung (Switzerland) publishes a very interesting article about Balthus. Why his work is highly disturbing and why it should not be hidden or censored. All with Cathy's Toilette in mind:

Nach ein paar Landschaften und Pariser Stadtansichten war da 1933 plötzlich dieses enigmatische Bild mit dem Titel «La toilette de Cathy» – ein Paukenschlag, mit dem Balthus in seiner ersten Einzelausstellung die Bühne der Kunst betrat. Das Gemälde zeigt ein junges Mädchen, nur mit einem vorne offenen Morgenrock bekleidet; eine Haushälterin kämmt ihm das Haar; daneben sitzt auf einem Stuhl, mit abgewandter Miene, ein junger Mann.
Das Geheimnis verbirgt sich im Titel – «La toilette de Cathy» –, und dieser gibt doch alles preis: Der Jüngling trägt die Züge von Balthus, während die Erscheinung des Mädchens an Balthus' erste Ehefrau Antoinette de Watteville, Tochter eines Obersten aus Bern, erinnert. Gleichwohl ist Balthus hier niemand anderes als Heathcliff, die Jugendliche ist Catherine Earnshaw, und die Zofe ist Ellen Dean, genannt Nelly, jene prominente Erzählstimme eines der gewaltigsten Liebesromane der Weltliteratur: «Wuthering Heights» von Emily Brontë.
Dieses frühe Werk, das jetzt zusammen mit rund vierzig weiteren Gemälden von Balthus in der Fondation Beyeler in Riehen zu sehen ist, kommt einem Bekenntnis des Künstlers gleich. Auf ihm sehen wir die verdichtete Schlüsselszene des Romans. Catherine eröffnet Nelly ein Geheimnis, ihre Liebe zu Heathcliff, die so tief ist, dass sie einer anderen Welt anzugehören scheint. Dem Waisenknaben, der die beiden belauscht, kommt nur derjenige Part zu Gehör, bei dem Cathy bekundet, ihn – nach den Gesetzen der Erwachsenenwelt – zu heiraten, wäre für sie eine Erniedrigung. Darauf stiehlt er sich davon, und Cathys entscheidenden Satz: «Ich bin Heathcliff», hört er nicht. (...)
Sind all diese Kinder, die wir hier sehen, nicht die Romanhelden von «Wuthering Heights»? Sind das nicht Catherine und Heathcliff an einem jener Nachmittage, an welchen sie sich heimlich für ein paar «der Katastrophe der verstreichenden Zeit entrissene Augenblicke» (Balthus) zusammenfanden? Ist das nicht abermals Cathy am Boden kauernd beim Lesen im Salon der Lintons, das schlafende Mädchen auf dem Sofa Lintons Schwester Isabella? Und ist nicht auch dies niemand anderes als Catherine: während jener öden Stunden ausserhalb der Zeit, in welchen sie, getrennt von Heathcliff, sich mit Kartenlegen («La patience») beschäftigt oder verwirrt von den eigenen Gefühlen einnickt und im Schlaf von dunklen Träumen davongetragen wird («La jeune fille endormie»)? Wir können es erahnen, aber wissen nur, dass Kinder von Bekannten für den Künstler posierten. (...)
Heute sieht man beim Namen Balthus rot, oder eben nur noch weisse Unterwäsche. Das Bauchgefühl indes hat recht: Balthus' Bilder sind eine Bedrohung. Genauso wie Emily Brontës Roman. Letzteren muss niemand lesen, wer sich nicht davon ergreifen lassen will. Balthus' Bilder aber sollten nicht aus öffentlichen Museen verschwinden müssen, nur weil sie uns unsere Angst vor menschlichen Leidenschaften und seelischen Abgründen vor Augen halten. (Philipp Meier) (Translation)

Sinembargo (México) lists recent films and documentaries about writers like To Walk Invisible:

Charlotte, Emily y Anne Brontë llevan una vida llena de adversidad y con pocas oportunidades. Comparten la difícil tarea de mantener a su padre Patrick y su problemático y alcohólico hermano Branwell. Sin embargo, lograrán superar sus obstáculos escribiendo y publicando sus novelas, que se convertirían en algunas de las más grandes en el idioma inglés como Jane Eyre y Cumbres borrascosas. (Mónica Maristain) (Translation)

Smoda in El País (Spain) talks about Stella McCartney:

Un trozo del paisaje de su infancia –envuelto en el halo nostálgico de Cumbres borrascosas– está también en la nueva tienda de Old Bond Street, en Londres, en la que ha instalado enormes rocas cubiertas de musgo traídas desde Escocia. (Noelia Collado) (Translation)

Leonardo da Vinci sings with Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights tunes in the comedy show Total Eclipse of the Heart by Harriet Braine, seen at the Lund Comedy Festival and reviewed on the Swedish press.

Le Curious Mug reviews Jane Eyre.