I continue to read classics this year because the classics are free and as long as I don't hum the tunes from the movie soundtracks (since after all, when you read a book, you just have to watch the film and comment to your partner just how wrong they got it), I am relatively safe from the RIAA. I finished Pride and Prejudice yesterday and it is darling, how sweet and chaste and polite they all were, and I laugh trying to imagine me back then, figuring out some way to bleed off my sexual frustration. Maybe I'd take up fox hunting, beat the hell out of some small animal. I certainly wouldn't write a polite letter, extort the resident lothario into marrying off the 15-year-old whore-sister of my unconsummated love interest. I'd sharpen a spear, bunk up with an exotic man and sail around the world killing and murdering entire orca pods. If something dies in me, you better be sure that at least one of mother nature's creatures would meet a similar, albeit less metaphorical, fate. I would be the follow up act of God.
This is the thing that is killing me about the classics: they are so happy that I want to set my face on fire. Happily ever after is the awfullest fate for protagonists because my god, I wouldn't wish contentment upon my worst enemy. Yay! We finally overcame all our obstacles at the ripe old age of 21 and can now marry and make babies and buy a villa and...and...and...YAWN.
5 Years Later - STILL HAPPY
10 Years Later - STILL HAPPY
20 Years LATER - HAPPY HAPPY
50 Years LATER - SAME OLD SAME OLD
75 Years LATER - THEY WEREN'T KIDDING WERE THEY
So I was very careful not to download Anne of Avonlea from Librivox, because as much as I adore Anne Shirley, I couldn't help but wish that things had not quite turned out so well for her in the end, like instead of maybe getting the teaching position at Avonlea, she would have instead had to take the position at Carmody, and on the first night there realized that all the kids are in fact seed pods for a race of vengeful, land-living krakens. And when Gilbert Blythe came to save her, they would have just gotten away and he would have proposed to her, and then after kissing he pulls back a bit, looks mildly confused, and while she's wondering if she's just a lousy smooch, scream in horror as she realizes he's got a tentacle wrapped around his neck. The confusion was from hypoxia, after all!
But it's public domain, so my expectations are curbed.
4 comments:
Yeah, that would have been good. But if it makes you feel better, I'm sure she always wanted to be a famous lithographer.
I started Anne Of Green Gables with my 5-year-old about a year ago, but he lost interest in favour of Harry Potters One Two Three Four Five and currently Six. We WILL get back to Anne, and when we do, I am SO stealing your ending.
Clearly you need to read more Russian authors. :)
jake, being as how she was canadian, i'm sure she was a famous lithographer. goddamned overachievers.
peefer, i cannot believe as a canadian that you would start anne of green gables and not finish. don't they deport you for that offence?
mg! i happen to have notes from the underground on my mp3 player as we speak. don't be surprised if i liveblog my own suicide in december.
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