This contributor to
The Times lists some very good reasons to feel cheerful these days. One of which is
Sopranos Singing Wuthering Detective Heights Pride the and Wire Prejudice, and all the other old TV series you can now revisit, but jumbled up so you can kill a few minutes. And while we’re puzzling? How come the narrative in Belgravia jumped forward 25 years but nobody aged? Did they have special creams that actually worked back then? My God. What a time to have been alive. (Deborah Ross)
But we recommend reading the whole list because it certainly lifts the spirit.
Also for a good laugh,
LitHub's inspired rewriting of the first lines of 10 classic novels for times of social distancing.
Jane Eyre
There was every possibility of taking a walk that day, as long as we kept six feet between us and the others on the path. (Jessie Gaynor)
Though our favourite is the new opening line for Jane Austen's
Pride and Prejudice. Brilliant!
Wuthering Heights also lends itself well to a retelling:
Original: 1801.—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.
Our version: 2020.--I have just waved hello to my landlord--the solitary neighbour I shall see from a safe distance.
About Manchester reports that the BBC has announced that it will be going into 'war mode' in order to 'help the population during the Coronavirus crisis'.
On Radio 4, they will dig into the rich archive of drama with such well-loved titles as The Complete Smiley, all of the novels by the Brontë Sisters, film noir classics by Raymond Chandler, and reassuring favourites as Rumpole and Wodehouse. (Nigel Barlow)
Entertainment Weekly has collected Margaret Atwood's recommendations of the best novels for self-isolating which she shared on Twitter:
Glamour (France) recommends some novels that can't be missed, such as
6. "Jane Eyre", de Charlotte Brontë : le plus romantique
Un livre pour les filles que ce Jane Eyre considéré comme un classique ? Tout ça parce qu’il y a de grands sentiments, du drame, du mystère, de la moralité, le tout en costume victorien ? Eh bien oui, et alors ? Orpheline élevée dans internat minable, Jane Eyre est engagée comme gouvernante par le ténébreux Mr Rochester qui s’amourache d’elle et lui propose de l’épouser alors qu’il est déjà marié à une folle échevelée qui fout le feu au manoir. Dans le genre rebondissements digne d’un soap, ce roman se pose là. Mais cette sœur Brontë ( il y en a deux autres) n’est pas la moitié d’une manchote. Si bien que fille ou garçon, on est totalement envoûté(e) par cette histoire et prêt(e) à passer nos nuits dans un manoir gothique ( avec l'équivalent de Rochester en moins vieux) (Erick Grisel) (Translation)
The Conversation has an article on positive thinking during isolation which begins
“They say when trouble comes, close ranks.” So begins Jean Rhys’s novel Wide Sargasso Sea. When the novel coronavirus started spreading in Europe, my first impulse was to travel home, to Italy, to be with my family. Lesson number one learned from the virus: you remember what matters to you.
Rhys was, of course, talking about racial tensions in colonial times, not families vs other commitments, or humans vs viruses. But she knew that there are good ways and bad ways of closing ranks. It seems to me we are now experiencing both. (Silvia Panizza)
New Statesman recommends Isabel Greenberg's
Glass Town.
Greenberg merges the biographical Brontë story with the landscape of their juvenalia [sic]: the “half-abandoned stories” of Glass Town are pictured in deep, almost-black blues, rusty reds and bursts of warm orange-yellow; the real world of sickness and uncertainty quite literally pales by comparison.
Greenberg’s illustrations are scratchy and childlike, but detailed and evocative too. Her drawing style is well suited to the fluid story structure, as she gracefully moves in and out of the Brontë dreamworld while the siblings struggle to choose between life and fantasy. Easily read in a single sitting, Glass Town might provide a kind of meta-escapism for a moment in time when many of us feel that fiction is brighter than reality. (Anna Leszkiewicz)
In
The Guardian, Terry Eagleton reviews
A History of Solitude by David Vincent and
A Biography of Loneliness by Fay Bound Alberti.
But there is also a good deal more: a brief history of old age, speculations on homelessness, refugees, soul mates, hunger artists and Fomo, the connections between loneliness and obesity, a digression on Wuthering Heights which fails to drive home what an utter bastard Heathcliff is, and an array of other topics.
Press Herald interviews the director of Libby Memorial Library in Old Orchard Beach, Lee Koenigs.
What is your favorite book?
[...] Another of my most treasured is “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë. (Nancy Florig)
Suitcase magazine lists '12 Of The UK’s Most Inspiring Literary Destinations', such as
7. Yorkshire
Brontë sisters, Bram Stoker
Together with their clergyman father and dissolute brother, the Brontë sisters lived and wrote in the family’s parsonage in the town of Haworth. Visit today (it’s now open to the public as a museum) and you’ll see why Charlotte, Emily and Anne had such fervent imaginations – it’s a pretty cramped spot compared to the brooding moors. Several walking trails take you past landmarks that wormed their way into the sisters’ novels – a highlight being Top Withens, a ruined farmhouse which inspired Wuthering Heights. Over in Whitby, the haunting 13th-century ruins (there are, apparently, a lot of ruins in Yorkshire) of the abbey gave Bram Stoker his cue for Dracula. Today you’ll have to ascend 199 steps to reach Whitby Abbey, but the North Sea vistas make it well worth the climb.(Rae Boocock)
The Times has an obituary for singer/songwriter David Olney.
His Titanic retold a familiar story from the unusual perspective of the iceberg that sank the ship, while another song added a “lost” chapter to Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights. “I have always read a lot,” he said. “Besides being a cheap source of entertainment, literature gives constant lessons in how to tell a story.”
Finally, as you know, the Brontë Parsonage Museum is closed, but its online shop remains open.
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