2007-08-30

Day 30

I leave it to you, dear reader, to evaluate whether a month without internet is a good or bad thing.

  • Unable to ease my boredom by trolling the iTunes Music Store, I am left to search through CDs I haven’t listened to in years, including those I stole from my mom. Like Aerosmith.
  • I can not Google whatever’s wrong with my iPod Shuffle from home, and I never remember to do so at work. You know. Because I’m working.
  • I am not able to visit my bank account online everyday. My fear of identity theft at once grows and diminishes.
  • Without cable, either, I can’t check the weather before getting dressed. And anyone who lives in Edmonton knows that looking out the window is not the same thing. Although I guess the explorers would have done it. Or something.
  • I have little time to update my blog -- but more time to read.

So. On reading. Since I’m doing so much of it, without hurting my eyes by staring at a computer screen.

Our book club read another man’s selection -- The Known World by Edward P. Jones.

By this point, having a man select the book club book of the month is no longer a novelty. We have lots of men in the club now, and it will be a man who chooses the next book, too. Besides, since I forced them all to read Judy Blume, we never have to talk about the male perspective again.

Now, The Known World won a Pulitzer Prize, don’t’cha know. And it’s a national best seller. And, if it were ever an Oprah Book Club Selection/Movie, it would surely star Denzel Washington. Except they would have to rewrite a character to make him likeable. (I think Elias. Because Elias, a slave who tried desperately to run away, was very close to likeable. And perhaps in this Denzel-ized version of the book, it would somehow be explained why I should care that every 97th person in modern-day Virginia would be a descendent of Elias and his wife Celeste.)

I think Morgan Freeman might also be in it. He would be an excellent Augustus -- The Only Character I Liked In This Book.

And perhaps Henry, the former slave-turned-slave owner, could be played by Jamie Foxx. Because I really like Jamie Foxx, and while he certainly is very talented, sometimes his acting is very shallow (see Dreamgirls) and frankly Henry Townsend, while billed as the centre of all things in The Known World, is an incredibly shallow, barely-there character.

In my opinion.

(Not unlike how Anna Karenina is the most barely-there character in Anna Karenina.)

Why did this book win a prize?

I am sure it was winning, at least in part, because we love to turn our perception of history on its head. We love when things aren’t what they seem. When heroes aren’t really heroes, when villains aren’t really villains.

Perhaps this tale of the Deep South, and a black man who owned black slaves, and the society he coolly took part in, flips around known history. Or the known world. Or whatever. Even though we already knew there were Africans in Africa who profited from turning their neighbours or enemies over to Europeans as slaves to begin with -- which frankly makes this tale significantly less shocking.

I wonder if Will Smith could get a part in this film?

And who would want to play the Conflicted White Sheriff Who’s Actually From the North, So Does Not Believe in Slavery But Still Has a Thing for the Slave Girl/Daughter Figure Who Lives Under His Roof?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I only wonder which character Oprah would play (because you know she'd want to...). Something tells me a much wiser and all-knowing Fern

Trish said...

you totally nailed it, Erin! who would play Caldonia?