{"id":2046,"date":"2004-05-22T13:04:04","date_gmt":"2004-05-22T17:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2004\/05\/22\/2046.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:46:05","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:46:05","slug":"book-report-bleak-house-a-nove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2004\/05\/22\/book-report-bleak-house-a-nove\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Bleak House, A Novel of Connections -and- a proposal for Gentle Readers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yes, Your Humble Blogger has gone off the deep end about Bleak House<\/I><\/a>. I sought out a “Reader’s Companion”, Bleak House: A Novel of Connections<\/I><\/a> (Boston: Twayne<\/a> 1990), by Norman Page. I assume the author isn’t the Norman Page who played Mr. Guppy in the 1920 silent film of the novel, but I’m not sure. Anyway, this is sort of a high-rent Cliff’s Notes<\/a>, pointing out a few things of interest, some themes, some points that scholars write about and so on. Not very taxing. It’s like a one-hour lecture in an intro class; it assumes that if you are really interested, you’ll get more, but at any rate it’ll probably open up a few windows for you.\n

To my surprise, I am really interested. I’ve read a few essays of more serious lit-crit, which have at least reminded me why I don’t like lit-crit very much (more on that later). What I have is the Swarthmore<\/a> attitude, which requires that I talk with somebody else about the thing before I can claim to start understanding it.\n

So, any Gentle Reader interested in closely reading Bleak House with me? If there are a few, I’ll start over again (I will anyway, I think) and we’ll take it together. I’m imagining a weekly or maybe twice-a-week session, either using the comments on this Tohu Bohu, or email (or possibly some sort of instant message thing for real-time discussions, if people really want to do that), where we talk about two or three chapters at a time. I’d be inclined to read at the rate the original issues came out, but then it would take a year and a half, so perhaps we’ll read one monthly episode a week (or, if we can’t keep up with that, every two weeks). I’m not particularly looking to impose a particular frame on it myself. I’m curious to know what other people like and dislike, what connections they make, and whether the things I think I see in it are in other people’s sight as well. Something more than a one-evening book club discussion, but less than a symposium.\n

So, Gentle Readers, please consider this. If I can come up with half-a-dozen people to read with me, I’d be thrilled. Let me know. If it works, I’ll let somebody else pick the next book.\n

                           ,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, Your Humble Blogger has gone off the deep end about Bleak House. I sought out a \u201cReader\u2019s Companion\u201d, Bleak House: A Novel of Connections (Boston: Twayne 1990), by Norman Page. I assume the author isn\u2019t the Norman Page who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17027,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046\/revisions\/17027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}