Thursday, January 20, 2005
The Only Book Club to Involve Actual Clubbing
I’m reading Madame Bovary right now and I’m sort of enjoying it. For one thing, the copy I got from the library has all these hilarious color illustrations with captions like "Rodolphe Boulanger was cynical in temperament and keen of intellect" (under a charcoal drawing that looks remarkably like Matthew Broderick, but with a ‘fro and a handlebar ‘stache) and "Madame Bovary pleading with her lover" (Madame Bovary’s lover has a huge top hat but no face or, apparently, pants). These really help me to visualize the story, although in my visualizations I do tend to add pants. But what I really like is the way Flaubert sets up these colorful vignettes (a schoolroom, a country wedding) and uses them to reveal things about the characters without getting all up in their heads Dr. Phil style. I’m not that far in, but as I say, it’s sort of fun.
I really think I’m going to start my own book club. It’s not going to be one of those nice ones where Oprah or Katie Couric takes you to dinner and asks you how you felt while you were skimming Toni Morrison. No, in my book club I will employ violence or the threat of violence to make people appreciate novels that I have personally found wonderful. We’ll do the violence with themes to make it fun, like exposing a housewife from Des Moines, IA, to dangerous air-borne pathogens until she understands the genius of Albert Camus’ The Plague, or threatening to release a horde of angry Southerners unless Bob from accounting learns to love Faulkner. And I can totally rag on people’s opinions, saying things like "Should we spend our first fifteen minutes today sounding out the hard words?" and "Only an idiot would compare Henry James to the Batman movies." I really think I’m going to do a lot for the printed word.
I’m reading Madame Bovary right now and I’m sort of enjoying it. For one thing, the copy I got from the library has all these hilarious color illustrations with captions like "Rodolphe Boulanger was cynical in temperament and keen of intellect" (under a charcoal drawing that looks remarkably like Matthew Broderick, but with a ‘fro and a handlebar ‘stache) and "Madame Bovary pleading with her lover" (Madame Bovary’s lover has a huge top hat but no face or, apparently, pants). These really help me to visualize the story, although in my visualizations I do tend to add pants. But what I really like is the way Flaubert sets up these colorful vignettes (a schoolroom, a country wedding) and uses them to reveal things about the characters without getting all up in their heads Dr. Phil style. I’m not that far in, but as I say, it’s sort of fun.
I really think I’m going to start my own book club. It’s not going to be one of those nice ones where Oprah or Katie Couric takes you to dinner and asks you how you felt while you were skimming Toni Morrison. No, in my book club I will employ violence or the threat of violence to make people appreciate novels that I have personally found wonderful. We’ll do the violence with themes to make it fun, like exposing a housewife from Des Moines, IA, to dangerous air-borne pathogens until she understands the genius of Albert Camus’ The Plague, or threatening to release a horde of angry Southerners unless Bob from accounting learns to love Faulkner. And I can totally rag on people’s opinions, saying things like "Should we spend our first fifteen minutes today sounding out the hard words?" and "Only an idiot would compare Henry James to the Batman movies." I really think I’m going to do a lot for the printed word.
