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| Olivier as Heathcliff (1939) |
Wie geht's?
Having now finished Emily Brontë's novel, I'm a tad stunned at how much I'd misinterpreted the novel in my imagination.
Summed up by - what an evil bastard Heathcliff was, opposed to the poor doomed figure I'd always believed him to be. Olivier's body language is spot on, by the way.
Heathcliff really is a nasty, vindicative, vengeful, megalomaniac figure. Cathy has him summed up when she describes Heathcliff's character to the tragically naive Isabella Linton.
During morning tea at school the other day, when I mentioned I was reading Wuthering Heights for the first time, there were a couple of incredulous - really?? reactions.
But there must be heaps of 'classic' novels that people haven't read, right?
I suspect many people fudge it and say they've read Dickens, Austen, Moby Dick, Don Quixote, Hawthorne, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Ronald Hugh Morrieson, Steinbeck, Frank Sargeson, Orwell, Katherine Mansfield, and so on. But in reality, maybe they watched a film version, or a condensed version or something.
For what it's worth, thanks to my interest in literature, I've read all of the above over the years, and yet I'm continuing to play catch up, such as Wuthering Heights.
Sitting in the heavy hitters' reading pile: Steinbeck, Dickens, Emerson, and Murakami.
Next up on the reading pile is a lighter one though: Anne Tyler's Celestial Navigation (she's always brilliant) and then maybe Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth before tackling another biggie. I find McEwan a little hit or miss, so we'll see.
Love and peace - Wozza
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