JZ, weren't you going to post a literature-something something?

Tep, yeah, but I'm all swamped with work and such. In short form, though, Hec and I had a talk last night branching out from this thread in which I mentioned Fay Weldon's marvelous concept of the City of Invention, upon which she expands in the most memorable chapter of Letters to Alice Upon First Reading Jane Austen, a book which everyone ought to run out and read right now.

In short, she posits the world of Western literature as a vast city on a hill. The city has been built and rebuilt many many times over the millenia. It has pretty neighborhoods of snug little bungalows like E. Nesbit and Burnett and Terhune and less gorgeously crafted but still fun-for-a-lark complexes and co-ops like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown and all the books you read as a kid, both grand and shabby, that pulled you into the universe of the reader. There are shoddy bestseller neighborhoods, 90% of which fall over in a stiff wind but a small handful of which endure and endure. There are pulpy trailer parks; there's the porny red-light district, with the very unnerving De Sade alleyway.

There are the stately gated neighborhoods full of superbly crafted classics like Richardson and Scott that everyone admires and no one really lives in anymore; there are the nearly identical but somehow not mansions of George Eliot, which seem like they ought to be dead inside but actually see quite a bit of foot traffic. The Trollope cul-de-sac, which had fallen into dreadful disrepair, has been extensively renovated in the last few decades and is now quite the lively neighborhood. There are the sprawling ramshackle Winchester Mystery Houses of Dickens, where there's a party 24/7.

There are increasing numbers of shuttle buses and express trains to the South American, African, Carib, Near East and Far East districts, which used to be considered the boondocks, then interesting suburbs, and are gradually coming to be understood as rightly belonging within the boundaries of the City proper.

High on a hill in the center of the City is the Castle Shakespeare. It is visible from virtually every point in the City. Its architecture is a mad merry theft of almost everything that came before it, and there is no corner of the City built afterward that doesn't fall at least a little bit under its shadow. If you visit the City and ignore the Castle, you're likely to find yourself hopelessly lost. You don't have to like the Castle; you may hate and abhor it; but you ignore it at your peril. (The only addition I'd make to her metaphor here is that if Castle Will is the defining feature of the City's horizon, the streets and sidewalks are paved with the Bible and Greek and Roman mythology; you don't have to love 'em, but if you enter the City you are walking on them and building on them all the same.)

And anyone, at any time, is free to tour the City, any neighborhood you like--and, more, you're free at any time to start building and add your own home to the City.

It's my very favorite booky metaphor ever, followed by the world of literature as a great ongoing conversation existing outside of time, to which anyone who writes and puts that writing out for someone, anyone, else to read, is adding her voice.

Oooooooooh! Thanks for posting that, JZ. Yum.

JZ, weren't you going to post a literature-something something?

Tep, yeah, but I'm all swamped with work and such.

Sorry.

It's my very favorite booky metaphor ever

I am not nearly smart enough for this thread. I used to think I was a smarty-pants, but not after meeting the Buffistas.

JZ, that metaphor makes me heartbreakingly happy. I'll have to read the book it's from.

P-C, I read about 3/4 of Wuthering heights a few years back, and then something shiny distracted me. Perhaps I'll finish it this weekend.

Thousands of books, one show per thread. Occam and Soul Coughing suggest that Correlation is not Causation in this case.

I. Love. Plei.

(This post brought to you by the Plei and Soul Coughing Adoration Society)

Sean, my only "flame" is that your comment belongs in the Music thread, where the people who hang out there can respond to your accusation of elitism there.

Fair enough, except that my point was less to accuse the Music thread of snobbery than to try and remind people that snobbery is in the eye of the beholder, and that before one goes complaining about the weeds in their neighbor's lawns, they should double check their own back yard, first.

Amazing how a good quote will suck me in.

And connie nails why I fucking love Shakespeare. He has some of the most amazing quotes in all of literature (as far as I'm concerned)....

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by and idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

I mean, fuck that's good.

Henry the Fifth, and the St. Crispin's Day speech? Amazing.

Hamlet? I maintain that play is misclassified among Shakespeare's work, and should be counted among the comedies, though it's the blackest of black comedies. It was the Reservoir Dogs of its time.

Richard III? The ultimate anti-hero.

I love, love, love Shakespeare quotes.

I am not nearly smart enough for this thread. I used to think I was a smarty-pants, but not after meeting the Buffistas.

Pish and tush, m'dear. You're good enough, you're smart enough, and what with the writing classes and the essays you got to read on the radio, you already have an apartment in the City.

Wow. Literature as Sang Sacré - there's a metaphor I can get behind.

Heather [if you were talking to me], I'll try to find time to do that this weekend. One caveat: the book's subtitle is "why middle-class mothers and fahers are going broke" and it's clearly aimed only at people with children. The authors argue that kids=financial instability, at least as things are set up in the US these days.

I maintain that play is misclassified among Shakespeare's work, and should be counted among the comedies, though it's the blackest of black comedies. It was the Reservoir Dogs of its time.

Aaaand, now I'm adding Sean to my internet boyfriend list. Also thinking about rereading Hamlet for the upmtieth time and watching Resevoir Dogs to flirt with him- and to test the theory.

I am not nearly smart enough for this thread. I used to think I was a smarty-pants, but not after meeting the Buffistas.

I am one with this feeling, also. Confession time: I'm shockingly poorly read, in terms of The Classics. Every single one of my teachers & professors were big on trying to get people to read (yay them), so they gave the students a lot of wiggle room in what we were reading. Which is good and all, but none of them really pushed me to go read anything outside of my fantasy/horror 'hood.

So, oh People Better-Read Than Me, what do you recommend? I've read Wuthering Heights (and wanted to beat Cathy & Heathcliff with a stick), most of the Shakespeare plays (yay!), and Great Expectations (kinda yay, in some parts). I can't think of any other Classics with a capital C that I've read.

Help?

That's cool Dani. I have no kids, and really don't plan on having them. It's just that when I think of us or my married friends having them, I have no idea how they'd manage the costs. I mean doctor's visits alone!