Well, here we are and Happy Easter!
I’m going to begin the week with a bit of digesting, then hopefully post something more substantive later today.
Reading: I am bound and determined to finish Trollope’s The Way We Live Now…TODAY.
I do like Trollope, but this one is even more of a brick than his others. It’s a novel that’s not part of one of his well-known series like the Palliser or Barchester novels, but some regard it as his best. I’m not so sure about that. I’m enjoying it, yes, but I don’t know if I’ve ever read a novel for which its serialized origins are so obvious.
I’ve been working on it for weeks. Part of the reason it’s taken so long is that if I don’t stay with it, I forget half the details of the plot and must spend time flipping back to review. But I’ve finally reached a surge point where, it seems, those details are sticking in my head.
It’s a very interesting book because in it, Trollope is trying to capture a particular moment in social, economic and political time – after being abroad for a while, he returned to England, and what he saw concerned him. He weaves all that with his usual domestic drama, but do remember that “domestic drama” during this time reaches far beyond personal relationships – it is deeply interwoven with political and economic concerns as well. So more on that, hopefully tomorrow.
Watching: Somewhat related – I knew that there’d been a BBC mini-series adaptation of The Way We Live Now, but had deferred taking a look, first because I wasn’t even close to finishing the book until this weekend and didn’t want to spoil it for myself. Secondly, while I was, back in the 70’s and 80’s, a huge Masterpiece Theatre fan, and in fact adored the BBC adaptation of The Pallisers even more than say, Upstairs, Downstairs, as I’ve dipped into adaptations of some of my favorites recently, I was put off by staginess and other factors, and never went further than an episode.
But – noting that it’s now on Prime, I took a look, and watching the opening to The Way We Live Now, I saw something a bit different – a more sweeping, cinematic approach – and decided to give it a go – slowly, so I wouldn’t watch past my point of reading. I also hoped it would help me keep characters and incidents straight. It helps that it was created by Andrew Davies.
So I’ve watched the first four episodes (out of six) and…it’s…okay. At this point I would give it a 3/5. I’ll have to wait until after I’m finished to come to a definitive conclusion, but at this point I’d say that the series gets points off for two reasons: first, a simplification of the central economic/political plot point, and secondly, the WORST Southern American accent EVER in a non-American production. The actress? Miranda Otto, who is Australian, and usually Australians do a good job with American accents, but not this time. It’s painful and every time she opens her mouth, I think of this:
Given work and liturgical responsibilities, and that well, it was Holy Week, not a lot of watching beyond that – except for last night, when we watched Sanjuro – we’d seen its companion piece Yojimbo ages ago, so it was time.
Starring, of course, my favorite, Toshiro Mifune.
Very enjoyable, sort of strange, odd comedic moments, and a very effective, if shocking ending.
By the way, we watched it via TCM via YouTubeTV. In this new world of streaming, we go back and forth between services – we’ve had YouTubeTV for a few months because, in the pre-pandemic world, it was going to be the best one for sports, plus we had Better Call Saul coming. If you have TCM through any of the streaming services, you’ll find that they have a large library of films available to watch at any given time. I am planning to cancel YouTubeTV after Better Call Saul is over in a couple of weeks – especially now that the new season of Fargo has apparently been delayed. So we won’t have that TCM library anymore – but hopefully we’ll have the real library open again by then….
Cooking:
Easter dinner was my usual go-to for things like this –flank steak made with this recipe,these roasted potatoes, and some vegetables. Just always remember to cut your flank steak against the grain, and there’s nothing like it.
I’ve done a bit of baking – these muffins and these hot cross buns for Friday, which weren’t pretty, but tasted fine.
Now that Lent is over, we can recalibrate the cooking…..more baking and meat, basically.
Educating:
College son continues his online work. The college came through with two good developments last week: a refund for unused room and board (and considering they hadn’t been back since the beginning of March, which was there spring break – it was considerable) and the option for students to make any of their classes pass/fail. Grateful for that.
High school freshman has been doing a lot of music – he played at several livestreaming liturgies last week and his regular piano teacher is back home from graduate school (early, of course), so we are doubling up on those lessons.
But…we will be back in school business this week. Wrapping up geometry, continuing with the Odyssey, looking at the OT prophets.
Also – he made a Gold (Summa cum Laude) on the National Latin Exam! Only missed one!
Hi Amy – As the mother of a college freshman, I am curious about the pass/fail option for students and why/how this might be beneficial or not.
Would love to hear more about your thoughts on pass/fail since you have been through this college-thing several times before while we have not.
Love your blog posts; you often offer thoughts to consider that enlighten my ignorance *smile*. Thanks!
Happy Easter to you and your family.
Karen: What his school is doing is giving students the option to make a class P/F. They have until the last day of finals to decide. It’s on a class by class basis. P/F wouldn’t impact GPA, of course. My son’s viewpoint is that he wants to keep his GPA high, so if he has anything below an A, he’s going to make it P/F. Please remember, he’s not in a high-pressure program or elite school. The decision-making might be different if your ultimate goal was to get into medical school or a 1st tier law school or something. I think everyone is just sort of treading water at this point and looking forward to the fall….
Thanks for explaining. My freshman has to decide pass/fail by next week. End-of-finals deadline at your son’s school seems less stressful since one has more information regarding their status. Good luck to him! And yes, … fall….
I love Trollope and have read most of them, and I’ve heard the claim “The Way We Live Now” is the best, and I think it’s complete garbage! It’s just not Trollope at his best – which is depicting the subtlety of human nature for good and ill, in the most mundane and trivial details of ordinary life. Certainly all the Palliser novels and all the Barchester novels are head and shoulders above it, but I even think relatively minor confections like “Rachel Ray” are much better examples of Trollope’s strengths. The only sense I can make of those who praise TWWLN so highly (and likewise “He Knew He Was Right” which shares a similar reputation) is that those critics are people who want their fiction to be all about abstract ideas. TWWLN is a “message” book, and much the worse for it, but that’s what many people think fiction is supposed to be. It’s a lot like “Vanity Fair,” which those same people probably think is a recommendation, but I’d take “Barchester Towers” or “Doctor Thorne” or “Framley Parsonage” or “Can You Forgive Her” or “Phineas Finn” over “Vanity Fair” any day of the week.
My wife just finished reading the entirety of Trollope’s novels. I have only read the Barsetshire books…which made a nifty TV adaptation some decades ago (Alan Rickman and Geraldine McEwan in the most acid-laced performances I have ever seen). One disturbing thing in a lot of his books is the occasional antisemitism, but such were the times. If you want to, skip the Palliser novels, whose 1970s TV adaptation is closer and more thorough than the Barsetshire series…lots of performers from the last age of properly trained actors.
They display the preoccupations of certain classes of people which are pretty much extinct now, but many of the insights into character and motivation are still relevant to a degree in most people. It is appealing at first to view Christianity portrayed as almost an elevated gentleman’s code, but it doesn’t take long on reflection that this falls short in most circumstances.