Several months ago I commented on the ITV miniseries Lost in Austen and the general idea of getting literally lost in a favorite novel. Recently my mind has returned to that theme thanks to me reading The Eyre Affair. In the novel some characters are able to enter books, manuals and poems. Unlike the miniseries Lost in Austen, the characters in The Eyre Affair know they are in a book. In the Eyre Affair the protagonist, Thursday Next, enters the novel Jane Eyre and becomes friends with the male lead of the novel, Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester is aware of plot points, the effect of Jane's first person narration (anything written on the book page has to be observed or spoken by Jane), and the need to protect the integrity of the story. The Eyre Affair is a lot of fun in that it treats literature very, very, very seriously. So I initially wondered if this lost in literature concept is a British thing.
"Not so!" my little mind reminded me the other day. I remembered that it was Mark Twain who first introduced my young mind to literally losing oneself in a good book. In A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court Mark, the character Hank Morgan, a "19th century citizen of Hartford, Connecticut, literally loses himself in Arthurian legend. The Connecticut Yankee brings with him knowledge of science and social liberalism and proceeds to befriend Arthur and antagonize Merlin and the Camelot establishment. (I most confess, that I've only ever read the first half of this book. It got much too complicated, satrical and political towards the end, and my twelve year old self quickly lost interest).
So, to be clear, as far as my mind recalls, Mark Twain got me lost in literature first. Again, I ask, where would you go in literature to shake things up?
2 comments:
Was Alice reading a book when she started following the White Rabbit?
No, but her sister was. Alice was bored because her sister was reading a book with no pictures in it, remember? :)
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