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Attempt at a Proper Post
Feb. 20th, 2012 09:19 pmSo. This past weekend I obsessed about a couple of small points of grammar, but today I cornered Professor D. and geeked out at her about obscure syntax issues and Rules and text-editing, and now I think I have some of it out of my system. The other half won't be gone until after my presentation on Wednesday, though. The other thing that dominated my life this weekend also converged into a Thing, because I read Death Comes to Pemberley, a couple of the Victorian-Steampunk short stories in the Kelley Link and Gavin J. Grant Steampunk! anthology, and watched the finale of Downton Abbey. The result may have been that when I dragged myself away from JSTOR around 12:30 and fitfully fell asleep, I had dreams about the Dowager Countess and the pluperfect subjunctive.
I shall cut as soon as there are spoilers -- no worries. But first I would like to draw your attention to this article from the NY Review of Books (spoiler alert), which is, naturally, doing it's "critical takedown of overrated pseudo-intellectual television programming" thing. I think it's incredibly entertaining that so serious a publication as the NYRB has an essay whose first third is basically a shipping manifesto/plea for Lord Grantham/Bates* I always like to say that I learned how to do close reading by discovering the Harry Potter fandom in high school (back when…only 4 books had come out) and that fandom is basically an exercise in criticism of a sort; here the lines are definitely getting blurred!
I will say one thing about P.D. James's P&P sequel-cum-murder mystery: it was successful as a mystery: combining interesting period procedural details with red herrings and a not-too-obvious denoument. But I was expecting more Lizzie and Darcy tease each other and solve mysteries, and in that, I was disappointed…in this respect it is very like Downton: a noble, proud, and distant gentry obsessively caring for their dignity and their estates. Elizabeth and Darcy barely had any page-time together (she being busy bring jellies to the tenants and dealing with the housekeeper, while he was off doing the sorts of things that a magistrate of the county has to do when his estranged brother-in-law is found over a dead body on his estate.) I mean, Jane Austen characters are always more than paragons of social virtue! The best character by far was the eccentric and crochety fellow-magistrate Sir Selwyn Hardcastle, who got all the best one-liners and occasionally even provoked Darcy into being a little bit sardonic (obviously, Elizabeth was given no opportunity to indulge in such things.) [Also: aren't the Selwyns an old Harry Potter family? I'm just saying that Sir Selwyin's being a wizard would explain a lot.] I would say that it was a bit of a dystopian, Haha, You Thought It Would Be Happily Ever After Did You?, ironic sequel, but it wasn't. James obviously felt a great deal of affection and respect for Austen's characters. Too much respect. ( Spoilers for Downton Abbey S2 and Death Comes to Pemberley start here )
Also: these paper dolls are pretty amazing.
I shall cut as soon as there are spoilers -- no worries. But first I would like to draw your attention to this article from the NY Review of Books (spoiler alert), which is, naturally, doing it's "critical takedown of overrated pseudo-intellectual television programming" thing. I think it's incredibly entertaining that so serious a publication as the NYRB has an essay whose first third is basically a shipping manifesto/plea for Lord Grantham/Bates* I always like to say that I learned how to do close reading by discovering the Harry Potter fandom in high school (back when…only 4 books had come out) and that fandom is basically an exercise in criticism of a sort; here the lines are definitely getting blurred!
I will say one thing about P.D. James's P&P sequel-cum-murder mystery: it was successful as a mystery: combining interesting period procedural details with red herrings and a not-too-obvious denoument. But I was expecting more Lizzie and Darcy tease each other and solve mysteries, and in that, I was disappointed…in this respect it is very like Downton: a noble, proud, and distant gentry obsessively caring for their dignity and their estates. Elizabeth and Darcy barely had any page-time together (she being busy bring jellies to the tenants and dealing with the housekeeper, while he was off doing the sorts of things that a magistrate of the county has to do when his estranged brother-in-law is found over a dead body on his estate.) I mean, Jane Austen characters are always more than paragons of social virtue! The best character by far was the eccentric and crochety fellow-magistrate Sir Selwyn Hardcastle, who got all the best one-liners and occasionally even provoked Darcy into being a little bit sardonic (obviously, Elizabeth was given no opportunity to indulge in such things.) [Also: aren't the Selwyns an old Harry Potter family? I'm just saying that Sir Selwyin's being a wizard would explain a lot.] I would say that it was a bit of a dystopian, Haha, You Thought It Would Be Happily Ever After Did You?, ironic sequel, but it wasn't. James obviously felt a great deal of affection and respect for Austen's characters. Too much respect. ( Spoilers for Downton Abbey S2 and Death Comes to Pemberley start here )
Also: these paper dolls are pretty amazing.
