Comments on: Happy Birthday, George Eliot! (Appreciating the Avuncular)

By: Cynthia Yockey, A Conservative Lesbian

Cynthia Yockey, A Conservative Lesbian — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:19:11 +0000

Happy birthday, George Eliot…

George Eliot
Gay Patriot West, Daniel Blatt, and I share a love for the English novelist, Mary Anne Evans Cross, who wrote under the nom de plume, George Eliot. He has a lovely post today in honor of the 190th anniversary of her birth.
Eliot’s gr…

By: Cynthia Yockey, A Conservative Lesbian

Cynthia Yockey, A Conservative Lesbian — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:55:42 +0000

I linked to you in a post with my own favorite quote from Middlemarch. I can’t figure out why the trackback didn’t come through here, though.

It’s always a pleasure to read your posts on George Eliot. Thank you.

By: ILoveCapitalism

ILoveCapitalism — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:42:00 +0000

Whatever.

By: Ashpenaz

Ashpenaz — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:51:56 +0000

Oh, please, let me. . .um, that’s “Austen,” ILC. Not that I get any pleasure out of humiliating you in public.

By: ILoveCapitalism

ILoveCapitalism — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:48:07 +0000

I like Austin, although she her stories tend to be a bit too much like this, “Mary Elizabeth Jane inherited a fortune of 8,000 pounds, which gave her a respectable but meagre living of some 300 to 400 pounds per year…” (BTW, it’s always a 4-5% interest rate.)

I loved the BBC production from the 90s of _Pride and Prejudice_. The 4-hour one with Colin Firth.

By: Leah

Leah — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:13:54 +0000

Happy Burthday to both Mary Anne and to Miles, may he have many wonderful years and visits to Disneyland with his uncle.

Ilc, I found listening to Middlemarch a good way to enjoy the book.
There are wonderful characters and a great description of the times.

Can’t say I love George Eliot as much as Dan, but I will say that I find her much deeper and interesting than Jane Austin. I enjoy an Austin novel, but Eliots’ ideas and stories stay with me.

By: Ashpenaz

Ashpenaz — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:02:31 +0000

George Eliot is great (for an atheist), but I feel compelled to put in a plug for Henry James, a bitter, celibate homosexual who is one of my heroes. The homoerotic undertones of The Ambassadors is the best kind of gay porn ever.

By: ILoveCapitalism

ILoveCapitalism — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:17:24 +0000

Dan, you clearly love Eliot and thanks for trying to share it. I might be too much of a lunkhead to get it.

In the quotes you’ve chosen, the style is filled with adjectives, which tell the reader what to think or feel, rather than being a selection of ‘telling’ facts or details that will make her -see-. (I have a similar problem in whatever I write, though I tend to over-use adverbs, which is worse. So I’d know ) Meanwhile, the content – again in the quotes you’ve chosen – seems to be a series of assertions about people processing their inner experience. Again a seeming emphasis on telling the reader “It is so”, or “Think/feel X”, rather than having the reader see and infer.

We have in common a great love of Tolkien’s writing. Maybe I’ll give _Middlemarch_ a try, at some point. Its reader-written reviews on Amazon sound promising, emphasizing more its plot and character portraits, and what can be learned from those.