To read about F's and my London trip, start here and click "newer post" to continue the story.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Here is a delicious short story by Edith Wharton: The Lady's Maid's Bell. It's a ghost story, first published in 1902.

Now I'm going to take my migraine to bed. We go to Mississippi tomorrow to bring F back for Christmas break.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

at this time of year it's also always good to READ "The Christmas Carol." it's a great Christmas/ghost story. (i do admit to being partial to the George C. Scott version as well.)

Laura(southernxyl) said...

Yeah, that's always a good "what's it all about" read. I think the last one I watched was the one with Patrick Stewart, and somehow Capt. Picard as Scrooge just didn't do it for me.

Anonymous said...

yeah, the stewart one was pretty accurate to the text, i believe. but it didn't have the feel of victorian england that the scott version did.
compare the the counting house in each--the house in the stewart one is nearly empty--how is that a place of business? why would scrooge waste business time keeping his house empty?

the house in Scott's version is piled with ledgers, books, and stuff--it has a feel that the newer version didn't--the newer version was too shiny--in a modern entertainment way.

i suppose i should be giving credit to the directors and not the actors.

Laura(southernxyl) said...

That's why a lot of times I prefer to read rather than watch the movie. Dickens didn't give a lot of detail about things like that counting house, or Bob Cratchit's family's circumstances. His intended audience didn't need them. He just painted a few deft strokes and they filled in. Sometimes when I watch a movie based on period literature I'm afraid of having my ideas of what things might have been like contaminated by somebody else's ideas, that might be less accurate.