Although I am now well into Middlemarch, I still find it rather heavy going at times. George Eliot shows himself to be a particularly subtle judge of human nature and of the vagaries of the human spirit but these are best revealed through the sparkling dialogue rather than the reams of narrative which sometimes strike the modern reader as suspiciously like padding.
Surely even you are aware that George Eliot was in fact a woman?
ReplyDeleteNot that old canard again! It is now well established that Eliot was indeed a man, as his name suggests. The only one who thought differently was Charles Dickens, and we know how much weight to attach to his opinions. After all, this was the man who thought Jane Austen was a woman!
ReplyDeleteAny updates as to gender of Chopin's partner, then?
ReplyDeleteRegarding Middlemarch, I do know/have heard that it is supposedly one of the greatest works in English lit. but like you struggled. However, our dear Aunty Beeb filmed an extremely good version which kept to the original dialogue but somehow managed to raise the game so it became interesting and no longer turgid. This, now, is how I manage to gulp down Dickens too.
Now I have my kindle I find I have three or four books on the go at any one time and flip from classic to disgraceful - and who other than me can tell?
From the typing finger of t'other anonymous.