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Friday, March 06, 2015

Lovely words by Kazuo Ishiguro in The New York Times.
Who is your favorite novelist of all time? Charlotte Brontë’s recently edged out Dostoyevsky. As I reread in maturity, I’m less patient with Dostoyevsky’s sentimentality, and those long improvised meanderings that should have been edited out. But his take on insanity is so wide-ranging and profound, one begins to suspect it’s a universal condition. As for Brontë, well, I owe my career, and a lot else besides, to “Jane Eyre” and “Villette.”
The Wesleyan Argus discusses the Brontë influences in Caryl Phillips's novel The Lost Child.
The Lost Child,” features two plots united through the theme of family ties.
One narrative is set in Emily Brontë’s England and follows the early life of her famous antihero Heathcliff, from “Wuthering Heights,” while a more contemporary plot line set in the 1950s through the 1970s follows a young woman named Monica who experiences a falling out with her parents and is subsequently faced with the difficulty of raising a family in the north of England. (Tom Fischer)
Charisma News discusses the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon.
However, sex in books is not new, nor is the classic bad boy stereotype. But for centuries, books have been written about these abusive men—think of Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights—and the women they seek to dominate.
A fictional Wuthering Heights enthusiast is to be found in the play Bridlington by Peter Hamilton. This is how London Theatre sums up the plot.
This gritty comedy follows a doomed affair in a psychiatric hospital and shows both the therapeutic and destructive power of literature thorough one patient’s infatuation with the novel 'Wuthering Heights'.
"Long-term psychiatric patient Ruth has read Wuthering Heights forty-nine times and is the star of the Therapy Unit’s poetry workshop. As she nurses her teddy-bear, Heathcliffe, in a psychiatric hospital in York, she recalls her former life in a ward in Bridlington, and her doomed affair with Bernard Whittaker, a thirty-seven year-old fellow patient from Leeds. Ten, (or is it twenty?) years earlier, Bernard is obsessed with anti-submarine warfare in WW1 and hallucinates that he is being visited by a young German submariner called Wulf, who keeps trying to persuade him to join him on his U-boat. Bernard is very tempted but is constantly drawn back by his deep attachment to the hospital cuisine." (Dom O'Hanlon)
Metro reports that Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights is number 5 of  the UK's favourite number ones from the 1970s. The Telegraph and Argus has posted an old photograph showing 'a number of local premises catering for visitors to Brontëland'.

Yesterday was World Book Day and Haworth was one of the five literary breaks suggested by The Independent.
On the moors
The village of Haworth in West Yorkshire was where the Brontë sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne – grew up. The parsonage that served as the family home is now the Brontë Parsonage Museum (01535 642323; bronte.org.uk; £7.50), which contains the world's largest collection of Brontë manuscripts, letters, early editions and more.
To get a feel for the landscapes that inspired the sisters, talk a walk from the town out to Brontë Waterfall, and continue to Top Withens, the deserted farmhouse on which the Earnshaw home in Wuthering Heights is said to be based. (Nicola Trup)
CVNC reviews the Aquila Theatre touring production of Wuthering Heights:
As an adaptation, this production may not have captured enthusiasts’ best recollections of the classic novel – it would take much more than two hours to encapsulate Emily Bronte’s one and only tragedy in its entirety. However, Aquila Theatre’s Wuthering Heights was perfectly suited for the stage, shattering any preconceived notions that some required reading for high school students could only play out like a bad production of Chekov. Sanchez put perhaps the most emotionally charged, highest stake scenes on display for the stage, and her company rose mightily to the challenge. (Spencer Powell)
The Brontë Parsonage Facebook page shares a lovely video which celebrates the return home of the Brontës' table.

1 comment:

  1. Nice to see the Kazuo Ishiguro quote. Never read his works although I saw the adaptation of "The Remains of the Day". The Bronte sisters tend to be stereotyped as "Chick Lit", if I am using the term correctly, but many male readers have been inspired and influenced by them also. Impressive what is considered one the greatest English authors alive cites the Charlotte Bronte including mentioning "Villette". I enjoyed "Villette" overall more than "Jane Eyre".

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