I've been reading George Eliot's brilliant Middlemarch during the pauses in the last few days. I love the old English classics for several reasons, and one of them is because they are so different from modern fiction. No one writes like that anymore. No one today would dare make a three or four paragraph aside to the reader, leading them through various philosophical studies before meandering back to the plot at hand. No one takes pages to cover all the aspects of a feeling or thought so that you end up leaning back in satisfaction and savoring the incredible insight wrought so simply and acutely before your eyes.
I get into a strange mood when I read stuff like this, however. George Eliot, in particular, was an incredibly keen and sharp observer. She holds up her characters to a very bright light, allowing us to see every single facet, good and bad. I always walk away from a reading session feeling faintly ridiculous. Here she is describing all my own little faults and foibles through the medium of her fictional creations; and even if she does love them overall, I can't help but do a lot of self-introspection and examination to see if I'm really as weak as all that. Yes. Yes, I am. But I might have a few of their strengths, as well, let us hope.
Husband is playing his ukelele. He's always wanted the joy of being able to play an instrument, and he knows how much I love ascending into a musical trance while playing the piano or cello. So he thought about it and thought about and then selected the ukelele. He already knows guitar chords, so since he got his ukelele, he's been able to immediately sit down and play and sing. I've loved hearing him spend hours enjoying himself. Right now, all the kids are in bed (except the two oldest, who have a bedroom in the basement and who are far more autonomous with their bedtimes), and Husband is accompanying himself while singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."
No comments:
Post a Comment