Magical War Poodle

Some passing thoughts and recommendations from the summer months:

After Cathy's demise, Wuthering Heights is s-l-o-w. The death of the best and most infuriating character occurs about 6 hours into the audiobook version. For the remaining 6 or so hours, Heathcliff persists in his domestic scheming, young Linton whinges a lot, young Cathy is spirited like her mother and Ellen Dean remains shockingly shocked at Heathcliff's godlessness. Gradually the cast fades out due to one deprivation or another. Warmth. General resilience. Broth.



I made it through, and then I ingested it again in film form - the 1992 version. This would be a much more effective adaptation if they hadn't used Juliette Binoche, who is exactly as you might picture Cathy except that she's French. Mostly she hides the accent well, but other times her 'oo' and hard 'th' sounds give her away. If you squinted your ears, she could be South African.

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I want to recommend the debut novel of my compatriot Eleanor Catton: The Rehearsal. Don't be put off by the trashy cover - Catton's writing is deliciously stylised and economical, and has seen her nominated for the Guardian First Book Award.

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Characteristically a generation behind everyone else in discovering webby things (see: hashtags; podcasts), I have only just spent some time getting acquainted with Google Books. I already do a fair amount of my reading online, but it is all Online Writing - formatted accordingly - and I like the literal, haphazard translation of paper page to web page. So far I've perused the occasionally crookedly-scanned pages of Emily Dickinson,
 

the June 1979 edition of Cruise Travel magazine,

and Clifford the Big Red Dog.

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Also in Google-related news, street view has wandered into the galleries of the world in the form of the Google Art Project. Tuesday afternoon as the MTC foyer overflowed with conference attendees in tangerine lanyards, I sat at my desk and enjoyed the sun outside the palace at Versailles. I went inside and lurched googly through busty rooms, coveting chandeliers, dizzied by marble striations. Then I skip-clicked over to the Uffizi, where I went through some artworks in close-up. Caravaggio's Medusa head is a startling thing to zoom quickly in and out on.

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My favourite blog at the moment is Res Obscura. Its author, the plosively-named Ben Breen, studies early modern history (shwing) and is apparently researching a dissertation on the early modern drug trade and posting odd bits and pieces he finds along the way. His blog puts the surreal back into early modern history. For example, it was here that I learned of Boy, the magical poodle who accompanied Prince Rupert of the Rhine on the battlefields during the English Civil War. Below are a contemporary woodcut depiction of Boy's death, and a portrait of Rupert of the Rhine, discernibly a poodle owner.