I've been rereading Silas Marner, in a distracted sort of a way, over the last couple of weeks - and got somewhat abruptly to the end tonight. Old Penguin edition - the introduction, appendix and notes by Q.D. Leavis take up a surprising amount of the volume. Is this Q.D. Leavis person the brother of F.R., I wondered - and looked him up just now to discover to my surprise that she is wife of F.R. She seems just a little over-punctilious in her notes, which is what made me think she was male.
Silas Marner - strange novel. At times I thought it was fantastic, at times I just couldn't be bothered reading the conversations (but this is more to do with it having been the last two weeks of the quarter than to do with the writing, I think). It does end rather too abruptly. But what I did like in particular was the brief trip back to Marner's "country," and an indication of that sense of distance that we've lost with the advent of mass transit. When you're studying Japanese and find out about the older use of the word kuni for provinces - a word that now is used for "country" in the national sense - it seems very foreign and odd. It's nice to be made aware that the English word "country" has undergone the same kind of transformation.
Silas Marner - strange novel. At times I thought it was fantastic, at times I just couldn't be bothered reading the conversations (but this is more to do with it having been the last two weeks of the quarter than to do with the writing, I think). It does end rather too abruptly. But what I did like in particular was the brief trip back to Marner's "country," and an indication of that sense of distance that we've lost with the advent of mass transit. When you're studying Japanese and find out about the older use of the word kuni for provinces - a word that now is used for "country" in the national sense - it seems very foreign and odd. It's nice to be made aware that the English word "country" has undergone the same kind of transformation.
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