Best. Acceptance Speech. Ever.

Emma Thompson accepts a Golden Globe for best screenplay for 1995's Sense and Sensibility.



Last Austen-related post for a while. Promise.

Just wanted to say...

that George Miller, the Oscar-winning producer of Happy Feet,


looks just like Dr. Caligari.

Becoming Jane, Becoming angry

Oh, my poor eyebrows. They've been raised so many times tonight at some rather disconcerting details about the upcoming Austen biopic Becoming Jane.

First, this imdb review in which the reviewer notes that the script and Hathaway fail to convey the intelligence that Austen must have possessed. One detail warranted my posting this at all:

she [Hathaway] looks quite resplendent, dashing across the hills in a billowing red dress to watch the lads skinny-dipping

Excuse me?

And then there's this excerpt from an article in the Telegraph:

When, in the film, Jane and Tom decide to elope to London, it is impossible not to think of Lydia Bennet making a dash for it with her charming, ever-so-slightly-caddish Wickham.

Elope to London? That is so inaccurate that to call it a lie would be understatement. Most Austen biographers (except for the one who was a consultant on the biopic) do not think Austen's relationship with Tom Lefroy developed beyond a clear attraction, much less to elopement plans.

For a long time, word was that the movie was based on Claire Tomalin's measured biography of Austen, but now it has emerged that it was John Spence's more problematic interpretation of Austen's life that was the source material (oh my god! there's a movie tie-in!!). I studied Spence's biography in a grad course and found it highly speculative in parts, especially the section regarding Lefroy. I'll post about the Spence bio some other time (what joy to look forward to!), but knowing how adaptation and movie-making can play with facts, I suspect that the movie will exaggerate or extend Spence's already tenuous claims even further.

The movie opens March 9 in the UK. Perhaps I'll be able to catch it when I'm there in April. Poor North Americans must wait until August. And on a slightly different note, the UK website has the trailer, which a) sounds odd with a British-accented Voice of God and b) uses the score from Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility. What?

A poem is (not) a toaster

The Guardian's Comment is Free blog has an interesting post today about "hard" vs "easy" poetry. It's a post I think students who complain about poetry in English classes should read to understand that struggling through a difficult poem is rewarding. As the author notes:

A poem can wash over us without requiring much thought and then keep us awake at night wondering about what it really means. And we only understand the full meaning when we can recognise the references and untangle the allusions.

Poems take time. They take time to write and they should take time to read. If they're good, they can be broken up into components (rhyme scheme, meter, figurative language, symbols, allusions, tone, voice, etc.) that can each be appreciated individually, but then (importantly), reassembled to form a whole much greater than the sum of its parts. If a poem can withstand that kind of analysis and scrutiny, if the threads of references can be untangled but then rewoven, if it can reveal new insights on each reading, even if the readings occur months or years apart, then it's worth the work. Much like a tinkerer who takes apart a machine to see how it works, the reader of a poem must take it apart and then try to put it back together again. The light bulb moment, the moment that meaning is created, is worth the difficulty.

Incidentally, the "stop all the clocks" poem referenced in the post was made famous by Four Weddings and a Funeral. Interesting how the film's attempt to class itself up resulted in a sullying of the poem in some critics' eyes.

Don't look back in anger...

I suspect only former-Gauntlet people will find this funny... It's even better if you replace "do the crossword" with "read TLFs" at the end.

Former Editor Can't Believe Shit College Newspaper Is Printing

Clarissa: The Affair is Over

I have finished reading Clarissa. The last 200 pages were a total slog. As Jeff put it, thinking you have "only" 200 pages left is like driving the 1800 km from Vancouver to Calgary and thinking that you have "only" 300 km to go.


Granted, once Clarissa dies, the narrative slows down. Her death has its own odd momentum. Clarissa lets herself waste away, gradually getting weaker and weaker. While the heroine gets weaker, the suspense increases; you keep reading thinking that she's going to die any page now, and there are a couple of false alarms. Once she does die, Lovelace writes a mad letter demanding that Clarissa's body be cut open and her heart preserved in a jar for him. It's rather gruesome, but an apt continuation of the theme of bodily violation. Clarissa's will addresses this as well, stipulating that her body is not to be opened (autopsied?) in any way. Even past death she's concerned with maintaining bodily integrity.


And here it is in all its flagged glory. I still have to go through them all and make notes. What was I thinking?

The Big Two-Eight

My birthday always falls on Reading Week, as does the birthday of my friend Jenn, and for the last two years we've celebrated together, always on the first Friday of Reading Week. Most people are still in town that day (including the birthday girls) and everyone's up for a well-deserved night out. Also, we go to a bar where birthday boys and girls get $50 bar tabs each, though any communal food or drink does not count.

This year was no different.

Me and Jenn, collectively turning... um... 40. The night's theme was "barely legal."


Those who have gone drinking with me before might wonder how I went through a $50 bar tab without a) falling over b) throwing up or c) both. The key was to stay away from the beer and to pace myself. The total for the night: one burger, one Alabama Slammer, two Singapore Slings, five shots (Liquid Cocaine, bourbon, B52, China White, Crispy Crunch), an order of chicken wings, and then an Electric Kool-Aid. And lots of water. Money-wise, I'm not sure what that added up to (other than a good time, I mean). Everything was fine, except that I had to get up for 9 a.m. on Saturday to catch my ride back to Calgary. I slept all the way to Calgary, and then slept some more in the afternoon.


It was an eventful, fun evening that included Trina doing her first shot, Orion spilling a pint into his lap when he gestured too broadly as the waitress was putting the drink onto the table, a startled Jenn informing us not to use the ladies' room downstairs because two people were having sex in one of the stalls (and, oddly, the other, empty stall was locked from the inside), and someone underpaying on the tab (we know who you are, even though you might not).

For more photos, click on the "28th Birthday" album here.