Tag: Books

Have You Read “Trimalchio in West Egg?”

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Netflix_GoneWithTheWind-1

One of the most challenging things a writer does is choose a title for a piece.  It is a real gift to come up with something that fits the piece and grabs the reader. It is the ultimate first impression. This article reveals the working titles of some of our most iconic novels. 

“What’s in a name?” asks Juliet. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Yet, in this 60th anniversary year of Nineteen Eighty-Four (a brilliant title), you can only wonder about the fate of Orwell’s masterpiece if it had been published under its working title of “The Last Man in Europe”. And what about Portnoy’s Complaint (“A Jewish Patient Begins his Analysis”) or The Waste Land (“He do the Police in Different Voices”) or Gone With the Wind (“Baa! Baa! Black Sheep”)?

Would you have read Trimalchio in West Egg? How about The High Bouncing Lover? No? Then you would have missed reading The Great Gatsby. As far as I am concerned,  The Last Man in Europe is the best of the bunch…

Books and the Inevitable Decay

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bodleianseldongallery
Presumably - the place readers can no longer go. Sigh.

In spite of all my ramblings about BUYING books, I do enjoy libraries. Apparently one of the more well know libraries in the world, The Bodleian, is in danger of crumbling:

“And as I take steps into the past I’ve never taken before, I now find there are steps from the past I’ll never be able to take again. Specifically the steps on the ladders in the Bodleian. Which are now, it was reported at the weekend, too dangerous to scale under health and safety regulations.”

Mr. Gove does make the safety crew seem a bit draconian. Surely they will move the books downstairs? Or, send special baskets up to professional balcony dwellers to send back down like Emily Dickinson did out of  her bedroom window? They DO seem to have a plan. I was so horrified by Mr. Gove’s suggestion that the books were permanently off limits, I had to check – here is a link to the new “scheme” – I love that – scheme. It feels like a plot. Perfect for a library.

Anyway – ultimately, he makes the perfect point,

“One of the joys of reading English Literature is that you need not go to the Bod to commune with Jane Austen. You just need to pop by Oxfam and you can get Pride and Prejudice for less than the price of a jar of instant coffee.”

So true.