Month of July, 2008

This is just all kinds of silly fun: Rush playing “Tom Sawyer” in Rock Band, backstage at the Colbert Report.

Thanks to Merlin (via MetaFilter) for linking to a great essay by Kurt Vonnegut: “How to Write With Style”.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead —- or, worse, they will stop reading you.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

He sums up:

1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple
4. Have guts to cut
5. Sound like yourself
6. Say what you mean
7. Pity the readers

Well, last week it was a prime minister likening himself to Heathcliff. This week, it’s a former deputy of the Bush Administration, the controversial Karl Rove, comparing himself to…Grendel?

In Forbes, “Karl Rove Speaks Up”:

Perhaps the only accusation Rove didn’t—and couldn’t—deny regarded his role as a public punching bag. “A lot of people beat up on me every day,” he said with a it-doesn’t-bother-me shrug. “I read The New York Times every day. Have you read some of the ugly things they say about me?”

“I’m like Grendel in Beowulf,” he continues. “People talk about me … and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Except to keep talking, which is precisely what the Fox News network is paying him to do.

You gotta wonder. From Wikipedia:

As noted in lines 106-114 and lines 1260-1267 of Beowulf, Grendel’s mother and Grendel are described as descendants of the Biblical Cain. Beowulf leaves Geatland in order to find and destroy Grendel, who has been attacking Heorot, killing and cannibalising anyone he finds there. Barring his lineage, all motives for his attacks are left up to the reader. Usually in most film or literature adaptions, Grendel attacks the hall having been disturbed by the noise the drunken revellers have made. One cryptic scene, in which Grendel sits in the abandoned hall unable to approach the throne, hints that his motives may be greed or revenge. After a long battle, Beowulf mortally wounds Grendel by ripping his arm off. Grendel dies in his cave under the swamp. Beowulf later engages in a fierce battle with Grendel’s mother, over whom he triumphs. Following her death, Beowulf finds Grendel’s corpse and removes the head, keeping it as a trophy.

Now, I didn’t see the recent movie, so maybe there’s some connection there I don’t know about, but if so, that’d be the same problem Gordon Brown apparently had remembering Laurence Olivier and not the real Heathcliff.

Unless Rove is really big on the killing, cannibalizing, greed, and revenge. Which, to hear tell, might not be too far from the truth. ;)

Via The Lede.

So in a recent interview, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown compared himself to the Byronic hero of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff. This has set off a bit of reaction from the press, as in the Guardian article “Brown reveals his wuthering romantic side”:

His comment was seized upon last night by opposition politicians and literary experts. The Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said: “Heathcliff may be dark and brooding but he is also ruthless and vindictive. He ended his life a broken and tormented man haunted by a ghost. Tony Blair perhaps?”

Andrew McCarthy, acting director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire told the Daily Telegraph: “Heathcliff is a man prone to domestic violence, kidnapping, possible murder and digging up his dead lover. He is moody and unkind to animals. Is this really a good role model for the prime minister?”

Over in the Guardian book section, a commentator wonders if Brown was thinking of Laurence Olivier in the 1939 film adaptation instead of the character in Emily Brontë’s book.

Still, one wonders, has Brown actually read the book recently? If he had then he’d know that Heathcliff is actually a half-savage Gypsy boy who skulks around the Yorkshire moors in the freezing cold, sleeps in stables and drives the woman who loves him to an early grave. He is mostly a hair-trigger away from violence and can be guaranteed to lash out with his fists if anyone so much as gives him a funny look. Oh, and he also speaks in such an impenetrable dialect that it’s all but impossible to know what he’s going on about.

Actually, now that I think about it, that sounds more like our President. ;)

Coincidentally, I both read the book and saw the 1939 movie back in January — the film first, which I don’t usually like to do, but it was on TCM one night. From my notes after reading the book:

The first thing I had to do is “de-visualize” the characters from the just-seen 1939 movie, as they are not the same people at all, not to mention there are many more of them. Took a while, but the confusion cleared as time went by. That film had been mentioned as having been a faithful adaptation — as enjoyable as it was, it was in no way adequate in translating this book. In fact, it has character and place names in common, and little else.

Wuthering Heights is available at Project Gutenberg. It’s just awesome — if you haven’t read it, or haven’t since high school, please do. It became one of two new favorite books from my classics reading in 2008, Dracula being the other.