Anne with an Eeek.

We've watched the first three episodes of Anne with an E on Netflix over the last couple of nights. Increasingly it's become apparent that this is a reconstructed Anne of Green Gables, as if the writers/directors wanted to change as much as possible within the overall framework of the story, and to add in stuff that made it more 'up to date,' if that's the phrase I want.

Sadly it isn't working. Not for us, anyway. Anne, in this version, is at odds with everyone, whereas in the original story she endeared herself to people and found friends - even if at first they had to rethink their views. Anne was an original, someone whose background should have knocked her into the ground, but didn't. She rose above it.

Here, she's constantly struggling. She's almost a drama queen - albeit one who has some reason to be one - and her imaginations seem a bit cockeyed because the world keeps hammering against them, however positive she may be. Several reviewers talk about her having PTSD (which might be translated as post traumatic stress drama.)

Marilla and Matthew (both wonderfully played, by Geraldine James and R H Thomson respectively) remain much as they were, except that they have vastly more to deal with than before. Matthew even goes chasing off after Anne when Marilla sends her back because of the apparent theft of a brooch. This leaves Matthew wounded, exhausted, without funds and desperate over two or three days. Dramatic, certainly, but not true to the story.

There are flashbacks to Anne's former life in an orphanage, and with a horrible family to which she acts as servant. These are made as unpleasant as possible. And then there's the relationship her first (male) teacher is having with one of the pupils, and Anne's subsequent discussion of him having 'intimate relations.' When she tells the other girl pupils about this, they react in horror, and talk about being tainted by her. But the discussion leaves the viewer feeling queasy too. It's as if Anne has no sense of boundaries.

There are many other changes and additions - we haven't seen all of them, but they're discussed in various articles about the series, such as this one, or this.

Bring back Megan Fellows, I say, and the wonderful cast of the 1985 version, which remained much truer to the books.

Clearing and rediscovering books

As a result of our big book clearance - we're selling off or giving away hundreds of books (it's the bravest thing we've done on the book front for decades) - I've decided to read more of the books I've still got on the shelves, rather than keep on getting new ones from the library, or elsewhere.  Even with the big clear-out we're still loaded with books (and that's not including the ones that we're keeping hold of for the shop I used to work for, which has since closed down).   I remember reading about a woman - Susan Hill - who decided to read nothing but the books she had on her shelves for a year.  (Ironically, she turned her year of reading her own books into yet another book.)  She placed an embargo on buying new books or borrowing them, and spent the year rediscovering her own library.  I can't say I've placed an embargo on buying or borrowing anything else, but at least the clear-out has given me the chance to take up some of my unread, or long-since read, books. 

For instance, I've read two of the Dorothy L Sayers' murder mysteries, featuring Lord Peter Wimsey.  I've had most of the titles in this series for years, but curiously enough had never read the first two: Whose Body? and Clouds of Witness. These intricately plotted books are a joy - even if you think that Sayers cheats just a little in how she plans the thing out.  They're a joy because the characters are such fun, the wit in the writing is a delight, and the inclusion of innumerable quotations - either clearly remembered by Sayers, or half-remembered and mangled by some of her characters - adds to the enjoyment.  (Check out the Dowager Duchess getting herself thoroughly tangled, or Lord Peter in full flight, Parker, the detective, talking about biblical commentaries.)

From there I've moved to another book I've never read, even though I've had it forever.  It's Henry James' The Bostonians.  I read Portrait of a Lady a number of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it (and was later disgusted at the mess and muddle New Zealand's Jane Campion made of the film version.) The detailed writing seemed to dig deeper and deeper into the characters' lives, and the dialogue was splendidly written, with each speech twisting and turning the story. 

The Bostonians is different, though not in the style of writing, of course.  There seems to be less dialogue  - at least so far (I'm up to about 70 pages) - but each character is brilliantly dissected, and alongside that is the wit that James allows himself at times - I'd forgotten about that.  It's subtle, but it's certainly there.  It's extraordinary how he manages to keep us interested while unravelling yard after yard of the characters' inner lives, or how one line of dialogue can lead to a page or two of dissection.  No doubt it's not everyone's taste, but I'm enjoying it.  You can't read speedily, as you can with the Sayers' books.  Miss a phrase, or even a word, and you have to go back because you find you've missed how that word connects into what comes next.  I'll report more on it when I've finished it.

William James on sciences

The following is a quote I recorded some years ago, from Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals- chapter one, by William James.

The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics (if there be such a thing) never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly; and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made such mistakes. A science only lays down lines within which the rules of the art must fall, laws which the follower of the art must not transgress; but what particular thing he shall do within those lines is left exclusively to his own genius. One genius will do his work well and succeed in one way, while another succeeds as well quite differently, yet neither will transgress the lines.

Pity some of the supposed scientists, like our old friend, Richard Dawkins, didn't pay attention to what James has to say here.

Deluded

I'm not sure why, but Blogger seems to have been playing up for the last couple of days.   It's worst at work, where it just crashes on Mozilla Firefox every time I try to open the posting page, but it's also playing up at home.   And even on my daughter's laptop, which I'm using at the moment, it's a bit iffy.   Seems to be better on Internet Explorer than Firefox, so perhaps the latter has added some component that's upsetting Blogger.   Or else Blogger itself has changed something, since the pages are loading differently to waht they used to.  Whatever the problem, it's a bloomin' nuisance!

What I'd been trying to add on here was a quote from George Monbiot, a stalwart defender of Global Warming.   He was writing in the Guardian, and, in talking about Clive James (who's a disbeliever in the religion of GW) he said:

Had he bothered to take a look at the quality of the evidence on either side of this media debate, and the nature of the opposing armies – climate scientists on one side, rightwing bloggers on the other – he too might have realised that the science is in.  In, at any rate, to the extent that science can ever be, which is to say that the evidence for man-made global warming is as strong as the evidence for Darwinian evolution, or for the link between smoking and lung cancer.

Regrettably George's argument lets him down twice in this short paragraph.   Firstly the two opposing sides aren't scientists versus bloggers, but scientists versus scientists and a great many other intellectually well-endowed people (whom he manages to dismiss completely early in the article).  And secondly, telling us that the evidence for man-made global warming is as strong as the evidence for Darwinian evolution is just like saying that the evidence for dinosaurs having bad breath is as strong as the evidence for knowing the names of the first person on the planet.  

There is no 'evidence', but there is a lot of speculation.   Unfortunately, the Darwinians are so into their own philosophical speculation that they pretend it's actually an argument with some basis in fact.   And equally unfortunately, they've taken to Global Warming like it was latest piece of evidence for everything Darwinian.  

Deluded. 

The 'Yes' of Christmas

Interesting opinion piece in the Herald (and ODT) this morning from Colin James, entitled (in the ODT) Small Civilising Acts of Goodness.
Here's a quote:

The message of Christmas is often a "no", a Christianity of what must not be done, the wrongness of humanness. And there is much that is wrong.

The good news of Christmas is a "yes", a Christianity of what can humanly be done, the rightness of humanness. There is much that is right.

The wrong is so big that it questions the very notion of "civilisation".

Greens are mistaken to insist we must act now to save the planet. The planet will be here long after humans have run our ephemeral course. The right green message is to act to save humans from our uncivil instincts.

You can read the whole article on the NZ Herald online site.

The Private Patient

Just finished reading The Private Patient (an Adam Dalgliesh mystery) by P D James.

The pervading tone of this latest James’ mystery is Gloom. It’s a while since I read any of her other books (The Murder Room was the last, I think), but I can’t recall there being previously quite such a bleak atmosphere. It’s as if with her exalted age (going on 90) she feels that not only is everything going to the dogs (as one of her characters also feels) but that there isn’t much that’s good in the world. We’re constantly reminded, for instance, whilst in the beautiful Dorset countryside, that small animals are being killed by larger.

Dalgliesh(he of the easily misspelt name) eventually gets married in this one, but there’s little sense of joy about the approaching marriage. Or rather, though James tells us that he experiences joy, as a reader I didn’t feel he did.

And there’s virtually no humour to leaven the gloom; the characters almost all have a kind of dourness about them, or an ugliness. Even the attractive young man, Robin Boyton, is regarded by his friend, Rhoda Gradwyn, as typical of people on whom beauty is wasted, because, in her experience, such people are often mundane, ignorant or stupid. He isn’t, but James gives the impression that he might as well be.

For some reason, James gives us Gradwyn's 'exit signs' in the first paragraph - we know she's going to be the murder victim from the outset, which seems to undermine any suspense.

The plot is convoluted in a typical Jamesian way, almost to the extent that I gave up trying to figure out who did what (let alone whodunit). By the time I’d finished I was still rather puzzled about the murderer’s motives, and what half the other people had to do with it all.

James is a stylish writer, but few of the characters in this book seem to breathe real life. Two or three of those in minor roles briefly give things a lift, (particularly Mrs Skeffington) but the bulk of the main characters talk in such well-ordered language that you strain to think of any real person who’s quite so articulate. (The supposedly 'comic' character, Mogworthy - "Nobody can be called Mogworthy" complains Gradwyn - is as dull as ditchwater.)

Along with Dalgliesh and his bride, another couple gets married at the end. This couple ties the knot without having given the slightest hint throughout the rest of the book of being in the least bit interested in each other.

I know how they felt.

Couple of books

On the train from Firenze to Pisa this morning we met an American woman who’s been living in Italy for many years (she’s married to an Italian). Unlike most of the Americans you meet, the ones who are on tour, she didn’t seem to be out to prove anything. She was just pleasant and down-to-earth. She’s a Christian, and it was partly because I saw her with a piece of paper that had the word Christian on it, and partly because she was reading Henry James’ short stories that we started chatting to her. She said she’d been reading a book called Reading Lolita in Iran, which has a section on Henry James in it, that got her started on reading her old high school copy of the book. Plus she’d recently seen The Others, (with Nicole Kidman), which is in part based on James’ The Turn of the Screw. From my memory of it, I wouldn’t say the film is very close to the book, but certainly it has some aspects of similarity. Reading Lolita in Iran is apparently about a woman teaching English in Iran and she works through various authors in the course of the book, showing the effect they had on the Iranian students. Sounds worth hunting down. I came across a book by awell-known British writer whose name has slipped my mind which is something about the Queen getting into reading (after a library bus stops near where she’s staying). It sounds worth getting hold of too.

Henry James II

Mrs Touchett might do a great deal of good, but she never pleased. This way of her own, of which she was so fond, was not intrinsically offensive - it was just unmistakably distinguished from the ways of others. The edges of her conduct were so very clear-cut that for susceptible persons it sometimes had a knife-like effect.

From Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, chapter three.