Who the funk is George Eliot?

[jackshoegazer]

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel`s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."    ~George Eliot

Sometimes, I would like to make this the goal of all my writing.

 

Comments

[rejectcarp.livejournal.com]

the bane of my high school literary career, that's who. how the hell do you dissect that without being clumsy about it?

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I suppose I look at anything humans do as clumsy. It's the natural oder this far down the spiritual ladder.

One must remember that emotions, vision and feeling are processes, not things, they are life. In order to dissect something, you must kill it, like those poor frogs in our biology classes.

If you take something that is fromthe heart, and analyze it, you are killing it. You must hold it still, stop the process, and this is death.

This is why emotions never hold up to the onslaught of rationality, why when we feel things, we can never be talked out of them.

Pay attention when people speak. If someone says, "I think.." they are using rational thought, but if they say, "I feel..." they are speaking from their hearts.

Hearts cannot lie, they can be wrong, but they never lie.

I don't know where I was going with this, but apparently I was feeling verbose :P

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

I got distracted last night when we were talking about Lost in Translation and the line where she says "Evelyn Waugh is a man." I was about to say, "you'd be surprised to know how few people realize George Eliot is a woman and Evelyn Waugh is a man."

George Eliot was a mid-19th century author who wrote under a male pseudonym so her works would be published and taken seriously. She wrote Silas Marner,, which was my sleeper hit of high school. I was fully prepared to despise it, but ended up loving it. I need to read more of her books, particularly Middlemarch. She's lovely, Jeremy, but she's "old." ;)

I'm telling you, darling, you should read some of those classics someday!

[ghostwes.livejournal.com]

I quite like Waugh. Funny guy.

My favourite quote by Eliot: "Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

Waugh is great. I can't wait to read several of his books as I embark on my quest to read the Modern Library Top 100.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

"Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact."

This could have been my motto throughout my formative years :P

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

J.K. Rowling published as J.K. rather than use her name because she didn't think boys would want to read a book about a boy wizard written by a woman.

I've read some classics, and they're okay.

I need to tell you the problem I'm having with Jim Morrison and why surrealism might have to go out the door a bit for me.

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

Iiiinteresting...this will be a nifty discussion, I think. I've always had this feeling (and it has nothing to do with my personal preference) that your best writing would be more Irving than Robbins.

You should read more classics. If I can't get you to read the Modern Library with me (which are all 1900+, none are older than that), I'll pick select ones and make you read those. I think you should read some George Eliot AND some Evelyn Waugh, though.

[saditymaus.livejournal.com]

Love her. :)

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of her. I found the quote in someone elses journal.