1. HBOTW [Human Being of the Week]: former Harmon (Middle) School colleague Tim DeFrange (we taught English together--then he moved into taking charge of the media center). This week, Tim, having read about my cancer issues, sent me a lovely card that contained news of something else he'd done for me--personal, so I'll not share. But it moved me ...
2. I finished one book this week--Girl, Woman, Other--a 2019 work by Bernadine Evaristo, a novel that shared the Booker Prize last year with Margaret Atwood for The Testaments.
When I bought the book, I'd never read any Evaristo (she has about a half-dozen others). To be honest, I'd not heard of her until I read about the Booker Prize. Her background is Nigerian--and many of the characters here share that with her.
The design and organization of the novel are astonishing. It has about it a whiff of As I Lay Dying, but Faulkner confined that story, pretty much, to a single family--the Bundrens.
But here? We have about a dozen principal characters, and each section bears the name of one of them (as Faulkner did). But within each section we often deal with generations of the family.
We begin with Amma, a playwright who has finally hit it big (after a long, long wait)--a production at London's National Theatre. Today is the opening. We also meet her son, Yazz, and as the story proceeds into the lives of other characters, we at first don't see the connections. But when they they come--never really bluntly or obtrusively--it is with a subtlety and intelligence that, well, dazzle.
Faulkner once plotted a novel on a wall of his house, Rowan Oak, in Oxford, Mississippi: A Fable, 1954, and if you visit Rowan Oak (open to the public), you can see what he did. (Photo below.)
Anyway, Evaristo must have used all the walls in town!
The title--Girl, Woman, Other--refers to the various sorts of women (and transgendered people) she is writing about, and we see just about every sort of human being here--in a variety of settings.
One thing that really struck me: As a former teacher, I rarely read books (or passages in books) about teaching that ring true to me. This one did (one of the characters is a high school teacher). Spot on.
As we approach the ending, we realize that many of these characters are going to meet again at the premiere--and what a scene that is!
3. Last night, Joyce and I went to see the latest film of The Call of the Wild, a book I taught for fifteen years, a book I was obsessed with for about that same amount of time. (See yesterday's post.)
I also expected the filmmakers would make myriads of changes--from small to large. Among the small: in the film Buck lands at Skagway, not Dyea; the dogsleds are not the type used during the gold rush (and they go much faster than any dogsled in history!); they skip the scene in Seattle; they eliminate some important characters; they offer more backstory for John Thornton (virtually nothing in the book). Among the major changes: the violence is much diminished (in Seattle, "the man in the red sweater" beats Buck severely; here, one swing of the club, which we see only in shadow; in the novel Buck kills Spitz; in the novel Hal, Charles, and Mercedes all die; in the novel, near the end, Buck kills both a bear and a moose; in the novel, Indians arrive to kill John Thornton--and Buck delivers some payback). And on and on and on.
Oh, and the scenery does not always resemble what it was--and Buck's life in California is shown here almost as a family cartoon with a big, fluffy, rambunctious dog.
Of course, lots of this is due to the (undeserved/inaccurate) conception by many (who have not read it) that The Call of the Wild is a book for kids. Jack London did not write such books. And one of the things that used to startle/bother my students was how graphic and brutal the book can be. It's downright Darwinian--which fits: London took On the Origin of Species with him during his own trip to the gold rush.
So ... it wasn't much at all like the novel. But--as I said yesterday--that's the way it goes with many books-into-movies. Different ideas, different media. Live with it.
I think the filmmakers were really hoping for a hit (oh, the ads I saw on Facebook!), but, last night, there were only about twenty people in the audience--and many of them were ... older. I don't want to infer too much from that--but I wonder? I'll check the weekend numbers tomorrow.
People, by the way, were laughing a lot last night. That doesn't happen much in the novel--though there are a few amusing moments--like when Buck wakes up in the snow and can't find the other dogs (they've buried themselves to stay warm). (This happens in the film, too.)
Oh, and the filmmakers also left out the "ancestral memories" and visions that Buck has in the book. Instead, Buck gets some sort of black "spirit wolf" that appears now and then and seems to embody the call of the wild.
Nor do we get the bet about how much weight Buck can pull (PETA would not go for a scene like that--even with a CGI dog?!?).
I guess what I found myself most impressed with? The quality of the CGI. That dog almost always looked real. Yes, he was as emotional and sentimental as, oh, some cartoon dog (which he kind of was)--or Lassie. But still ...
If you're looking for women characters, don't look too hard. There are some in California, and the filmmakers transformed mail-carrier Francois to a woman--but that's about it. Plus Mercedes. But there aren't really any in the book, either--save for Mercedes. And an old Indian woman who appears in a single sentence.
So ... what did I think? It's not Jack London's book come to life--no way. But if you don't know the story at all--and if you like clever dogs that can read the minds and hearts of humans--if you want to go "awwwww" a bunch of times--and laugh? Go see it! It's sort of fun.
PS--How does John Thornton narrate at the end? He's, you know, ...?
4. This week I had a brain MRI (with and without contrast). My family physician is pursuing the cause(s?) of my persistent dizziness, so although I had that same scan in 2017, she thought we ought to try again. The results: No change. So ... on to the cardiologist!
5. Sadly, this week we finished streaming all episodes of Upstart Crow, the clever BBC comedy series about Shakespeare. Both Joyce and I loved it. Now--thanks to the suggestion of our friend Chris--we've started a similar series (by some of the same folks) called Black Adder. The first episode is about Richard III, the Battle of Bosworth Field, etc. We've both laughed a lot!
- from dictionary.com
thersitical [ ther-sit-i-kuhl ]
Adjective: scurrilous; foulmouthed; grossly abusive.
WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THERSITICAL?
The very rare adjective thersitical “scurrilous, foulmouthed,
abusive” derives from the Greek personal name Thersítēs, itself a
derivative of the adjective thersiepḗs “bold of speech.” Thersites
appears in Book 2 of the Iliad in the assembly of the Achaeans. Homer
describes Thersites as lame, bowlegged, with shoulders that sloped inward, and
a pointy head covered with tufts of hair—the ugliest man at Troy. Thersites
accuses Agamemnon of greed and Achilles of cowardice, for which Odysseus beats
him severely about the head and shoulders to the great amusement of the rest of
the Achaeans. Thersitical entered English in the mid-17th century.
HOW IS THERSITICAL USED?
… there is a pelting kind of thersitical satire …. LAURENCE STERNE, THE
LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, VOL. 2, 1759
These he lists in language so richly thersitical that his
English translator, likely Herring himself, must have strained his vocabulary
to its limits to do it justice. TODD H.J. PETTIGREW, STEPHANIE M. PETTIGREW,
AND JACQUES A. BAILLY, EDS., "INTRODUCTION," THE MAJOR WORKS OF JOHN COTTA, 2018
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