This might be turning into a tradition.

I re-read Possession this week. I read it before starting grad school, and it seemed appropriate to do the same after said schooling. (I did a similar read/re-read of Kluge's Alma Mater pre- and post-Kenyon.)

I still feel much the same way I did four years ago, although this time through, I could see, well, deeper into it than before, since I actually have a clear idea of the differences between structuralism and post-structuralism, or who Lacan is, or the crappy working conditions Roland in particular labors under.

...I had some thoughts about my own scholarship and criticism and the novel, but I don't seem able to put them in words. It was something about how the novel privileges both the historical context and the text, and so seems to be similar to my own style of criticism, which I think of as a blend of updated New Criticism and New Historicism (which, yes, I realize is like saying I am both a libertarian and a communist, or something equally impossible, but...it works for me, really), with a bit of cultural materialism/Marxist criticism for spice, mostly because I spent the past year with Jameson; and it was also something about how close readings seem to be coming back in style in contemporary criticism, though with the shadow of the context-heavy New Historicist style laying on them, which means that for once I am on the vanguard of a zeitgeist.

Anyway. I submitted my grades today, so I am officially finished with the semester, and thus, school. I should be thrilled, but at the moment, I'm staring down the abyss of real life and trying to get up the courage to jump. Hope my parachute works.*

* I should probably do a chromatic analysis of it at some point in the near future.

*bounce*

I just got the proof of my book review (i.e., how it will look in print, with the journal running heads and my name and everything). AHHHHHH, SO EXCITING!

Stories we want to find

Because occasionally Netflix can read my mind, today it suggested the film version of Possession to me. I'd seen it before, about seven or eight years ago, but had absolutely no memory of what had been changed from the book, so I gave it a go.

They did an okay job condensing the Christabel LaMotte/R.H. Ash storyline. There were a few hiccups, like having Christabel say, "If there had to be a dragon, I'm glad it was you," with no context (unless you had read the book, in which case you would know that was a very significant, built-up-to line), but in general they made it work. (I think Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle had a lot to do with it.)

The present-day storyline, though...oh, dear. The movie ripped the soul out of it. So many things were wrong, but the most important, I think, was leaving out the part where Maud and Roland go to Boggle Hole because they like the name, and to get away from LaMotte/Ash, not realizing that the poets had been there for similar reasons. (I originally thought that was more sad than anything, but I think I've changed my mind a little. It is sad that these people can't get away from their obsession even when they try to, but at the same time it indicates an interesting, necessary, even beautiful sort of continuity that puts me somewhat in the mind of Stoppard's Arcadia.) What Byatt was doing in the novel, I think, is encapsulated in that incident. Instead of commentary on theory and text, we get Relationship Drama, and Gwyneth Paltrow sobbing in a bathroom, which I do not think is a good trade.

The other big problem was the horrible miscasting of Roland. Paltrow just barely manages to pull off a scholarly air, and I could, if I squinted hard enough, see her Maud in front of a classroom or working on an article. Aaron Eckhart, though...noooot so much. I bought him as the holder of a PhD in English exactly once, and that was when Maud is complaining about how Fergus had used Yeats's "For Anne Gregory" to give her a hard time about her blonde hair. She starts reciting the poem, and by the time she gets to "Love you for yourself alone / And not your yellow hair," he joins in, and that, I found convincing.*

On the other hand, I can, sort of, see a rationale for why the filmmakers produced this particular film. (Well, the Eckhart casting is unforgivable, but anyway.) As an examination of romance--aside from the more overwrought moments--it works somewhat well. I did like the way they used the medium of film to suggest the connections between the two couples, such as having one do a scene in a room or at a waterfall, then letting them go out of the frame and the other couple come in. It gets at that continuity I mentioned above, albeit for a different purpose and to a somewhat different effect. We all find the stories we want to read in books, at least in ones with enough subtlety to support multiple readings. I read this book and found a story about obsession with another carried out through academic inquiry. The filmmakers found a story about obsession with another carried out through physical action--kissing, sex, and crying in a bathroom.


* For obvious reasons, that's just about my least favorite Yeats poem.