Lev Raphael's Blog, page 66
October 15, 2011
The 3D Musketeers
The 3D steampunk version of The Three Musketeers is opening October 21, with Orlando Bloom and Matthew Macfadyen. It looks wild and wonderful and may prompt you to read the book. But which translation of Dumas's novel should you choose?
You may be tempted by the pretty-looking new version by prize-winning Richard Pevear, who's been hailed for his work with Russian authors. Resist!
I've read many translations of TTM and Pevear's is slow when it should speed along. Partly that's because ...
You may be tempted by the pretty-looking new version by prize-winning Richard Pevear, who's been hailed for his work with Russian authors. Resist!
I've read many translations of TTM and Pevear's is slow when it should speed along. Partly that's because ...
October 12, 2011
How Bibles Make Mistakes
A lesbian poet friend of mine had an intriguing strategy when she was attacked by Bible-quoters for her sexual identity. Very quietly, she'd say, "I didn't know you read Greek and Biblical Hebrew."
That would stump them, and they'd ask what she meant.
"Well, if you're reading the Bible in English, you can't be sure what it really says, so when you study those languages, get back to me."
Is there a country in the world where people quote the Bible as much as we do here in America? But what are ...
That would stump them, and they'd ask what she meant.
"Well, if you're reading the Bible in English, you can't be sure what it really says, so when you study those languages, get back to me."
Is there a country in the world where people quote the Bible as much as we do here in America? But what are ...
September 26, 2011
Don't Let Anyone Tell You How to Mourn!
A friend's father just died only two weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. He was only 72 and the diagnosis and death were a real shock.
People told my friend, "Don't worry, it'll pass, you'll get over it." He felt pressured, not comforted. He'd barely begun to understand the depth of his loss and he was supposed to get over it?
Another friend in a similar situation heard this from someone she was really close to: "Don't get so upset, it happens to everyone. We all lose our parents. You...
People told my friend, "Don't worry, it'll pass, you'll get over it." He felt pressured, not comforted. He'd barely begun to understand the depth of his loss and he was supposed to get over it?
Another friend in a similar situation heard this from someone she was really close to: "Don't get so upset, it happens to everyone. We all lose our parents. You...
Get Over Your Grief? Why?
A friend's father just died only two weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. He was only 72 and the diagnosis and death were a real shock.
People told my friend, "Don't worry, it'll pass, you'll get over it." He felt pressured, not comforted. He'd barely begun to understand the depth of his loss and he was supposed to get over it?
Another friend in a similar situation heard this from someone she was really close to: "Don't get so upset, it happens to everyone. We all lose our parents. You...
People told my friend, "Don't worry, it'll pass, you'll get over it." He felt pressured, not comforted. He'd barely begun to understand the depth of his loss and he was supposed to get over it?
Another friend in a similar situation heard this from someone she was really close to: "Don't get so upset, it happens to everyone. We all lose our parents. You...
September 19, 2011
Jane Austen Takes No Prisoners
It wasn't until I recently blogged about loving Jane Austen as a satirist that someone turned me on to Robert Rodi's hilarious blog "Bitch in a Bonnet."
Rodi's title is a tribute. He's angry that the Austen craze has defanged a novelist who's "wicked, arch, and utterly merciless. She skewers the pompous, the pious, and the libidinous with the animal glee of a natural-born sadist."
Satire really turned me on in college. Samuel Butler's The Way of all Flesh offered one of the cruelest (and quie...
Rodi's title is a tribute. He's angry that the Austen craze has defanged a novelist who's "wicked, arch, and utterly merciless. She skewers the pompous, the pious, and the libidinous with the animal glee of a natural-born sadist."
Satire really turned me on in college. Samuel Butler's The Way of all Flesh offered one of the cruelest (and quie...
September 7, 2011
Don't Be a Book Snob!
Among my twenty-one books are seven academic mysteries I had tremendous fun researching and writing, and that fun has never been spoiled by hearing someone say, "Oh, I don't read mysteries! There's nothing to them!"
Why don't I get annoyed? Because I've also published memoirs, literary fiction, historical fiction, psychology, a travelogue, self-help, biography and even a Jane Austen mash-up. I read more widely than that, and never know what genre might interest me next as a writer or reader...
Why don't I get annoyed? Because I've also published memoirs, literary fiction, historical fiction, psychology, a travelogue, self-help, biography and even a Jane Austen mash-up. I read more widely than that, and never know what genre might interest me next as a writer or reader...
August 31, 2011
Loving Jane Austen
Jane Austen is so popular these days she's probably been a write-in candidate in more than one election. Who knows, she might even have won some of them. I'd vote for her.
When I started reading Austen in college in the mid-70s, the amazing Austen boom hadn't taken place. Bookstores didn't teem with Austen mugs, memo pads, tote bags, dolls and key-chains. Our TV, movie, tablet and smartphone screens weren't filled with Austen adaptations. She didn't permeate our entire culture, but she bed...
When I started reading Austen in college in the mid-70s, the amazing Austen boom hadn't taken place. Bookstores didn't teem with Austen mugs, memo pads, tote bags, dolls and key-chains. Our TV, movie, tablet and smartphone screens weren't filled with Austen adaptations. She didn't permeate our entire culture, but she bed...
August 26, 2011
Summertime Book Blues
I used to put books aside especially for the summer, knowing I'd have more time and feel more relaxed, less stressed, more open to the long loving voyage with an accomplished author at the helm. The late novelist Sheila Roberts once told me that she found nothing so sensually delicious in life as setting one word next to another. For me, that pleasure radiated especially from each summer book I plunged into and surrounded myself with.
In the old days I could happily sprawl somewhere enjoyi...
In the old days I could happily sprawl somewhere enjoyi...
August 20, 2011
When Reviewers Get Thanked (It Happens!)
Most reviewers don't get compliments from nude fans, but it's happened to me more than once.
That's because people at my gym listen to the monthly book reviews I do for East Lansing Public Radio on a segment called Under the Radar. We try to focus on books the audience might not have heard of, for whatever reason. Often it's because they're from small presses.
Whether the compliment comes in the showers or the locker room, I'm always glad to hear the review's been helpful and people enjoy what ...
That's because people at my gym listen to the monthly book reviews I do for East Lansing Public Radio on a segment called Under the Radar. We try to focus on books the audience might not have heard of, for whatever reason. Often it's because they're from small presses.
Whether the compliment comes in the showers or the locker room, I'm always glad to hear the review's been helpful and people enjoy what ...
August 13, 2011
Pride and Prejudice and Hebrews
I've published twenty books in genres from memoir to mystery but I never thought of doing an Austen mashup until I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
While I enjoyed Zombies at first because it was surprising and funny, eventually it started to feel like a one-note protest against all the decorous PBS Austen series and all the die-hard Austen fans around the world. Dude, forget carriages and bonnets, gimme brains!
Zombies reads like graffiti, which can be ugly or beautiful depending on your point of view. You see that split on amazon.com, where half the reviewers give it four or five stars, and half give it from one to three stars. Did the author even like Austen? I wasn't sure. But he sure had fun taking a bite out of her.
I'd been reading and enjoying Austen since college, and analyzing Zombies technically got me thinking: why not do a mashup the opposite way? Instead of imposing a whole elaborate system onto one of her novels that turned her characters into caricatures, why not weave changes into the fabric of the book? What if I could do a Pride and Prejudice mashup which didn't call attention to how crazily it veered off from the original, but read as if the changes were organic? An alternative novel as much as an altered one; an appreciation, not a parody.
Given my publishing history, my immediate inspiration was to make the Bennet family Anglo-Jews, or "Hebrews" as they were often called in Regency England. This opened up one door after another, raising questions about many of the characters and their actions which I found logical answers to, once I posited Lizzy as proudly Jewish but assimilated. Prejudice takes on a whole new meaning in this book, as does the entail of the Bennet estate, Mr. Collins' hopes for marriage, Mr. Darcy's contempt, Mrs. Bennet's exuberance, and even Lady Catherine de Bourgh's fulminating.
There are no monsters in my novel Pride and Prejudice: The Jewess and the Gentile, except of course for anti-Semitism, which still stalks the earth today like the Undead.
While I enjoyed Zombies at first because it was surprising and funny, eventually it started to feel like a one-note protest against all the decorous PBS Austen series and all the die-hard Austen fans around the world. Dude, forget carriages and bonnets, gimme brains!
Zombies reads like graffiti, which can be ugly or beautiful depending on your point of view. You see that split on amazon.com, where half the reviewers give it four or five stars, and half give it from one to three stars. Did the author even like Austen? I wasn't sure. But he sure had fun taking a bite out of her.
I'd been reading and enjoying Austen since college, and analyzing Zombies technically got me thinking: why not do a mashup the opposite way? Instead of imposing a whole elaborate system onto one of her novels that turned her characters into caricatures, why not weave changes into the fabric of the book? What if I could do a Pride and Prejudice mashup which didn't call attention to how crazily it veered off from the original, but read as if the changes were organic? An alternative novel as much as an altered one; an appreciation, not a parody.
Given my publishing history, my immediate inspiration was to make the Bennet family Anglo-Jews, or "Hebrews" as they were often called in Regency England. This opened up one door after another, raising questions about many of the characters and their actions which I found logical answers to, once I posited Lizzy as proudly Jewish but assimilated. Prejudice takes on a whole new meaning in this book, as does the entail of the Bennet estate, Mr. Collins' hopes for marriage, Mr. Darcy's contempt, Mrs. Bennet's exuberance, and even Lady Catherine de Bourgh's fulminating.
There are no monsters in my novel Pride and Prejudice: The Jewess and the Gentile, except of course for anti-Semitism, which still stalks the earth today like the Undead.
