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icepixieI'm reading 84, Charing Cross Road, and it is DELIGHTFUL.
I came across this passage in one of Helene's letters to the bookshop*, and figured some of you out there would appreciate it.
Is there such a thing as a modern-English version of the Canterbury Tales? I have these guilts about never having rad Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon/Middle English by a friend who had to take it for her Ph.D. They told her to write an essay in Early Anglo-Saxon on any-subject-of-her-own-choosing. "Which is all very well," she said bitterly, "But the only essay subject you can find enough Early Anglo-Saxon words for is 'How to Slaughter a Thousand Men in a Mead Hall.'"
...She speaks the truth. (Although I think you could write a very short essay on being lost at sea, too. Oh, and religious devotion. Can't forget that.) Can you imagine Klein ever telling us to do that?
I do hope Helene eventually makes it over to England. It's been ten years in book-time since she started writing to the people in the shop, and they've been discussing it for like seven or eight years.
ETA: ...I guess not. Those of you who've read it before were smiling sympathetically when you read that last line, weren't you? *sniffles a bit*
* The book is a collection of letters from Helene Hanff to the people at Marks & Co., at the address in the title, in the two decades after WWII. Apparently she couldn't get nice-looking copies of books in New York City, so she mailed away for them and struck up an epistolary relationship with one of the clerks in the shop.
I came across this passage in one of Helene's letters to the bookshop*, and figured some of you out there would appreciate it.
Is there such a thing as a modern-English version of the Canterbury Tales? I have these guilts about never having rad Chaucer but I was talked out of learning Early Anglo-Saxon/Middle English by a friend who had to take it for her Ph.D. They told her to write an essay in Early Anglo-Saxon on any-subject-of-her-own-choosing. "Which is all very well," she said bitterly, "But the only essay subject you can find enough Early Anglo-Saxon words for is 'How to Slaughter a Thousand Men in a Mead Hall.'"
...She speaks the truth. (Although I think you could write a very short essay on being lost at sea, too. Oh, and religious devotion. Can't forget that.) Can you imagine Klein ever telling us to do that?
I do hope Helene eventually makes it over to England. It's been ten years in book-time since she started writing to the people in the shop, and they've been discussing it for like seven or eight years.
ETA: ...I guess not. Those of you who've read it before were smiling sympathetically when you read that last line, weren't you? *sniffles a bit*
* The book is a collection of letters from Helene Hanff to the people at Marks & Co., at the address in the title, in the two decades after WWII. Apparently she couldn't get nice-looking copies of books in New York City, so she mailed away for them and struck up an epistolary relationship with one of the clerks in the shop.
