Yes, that is when our next meeting will be held. Bownut is hosting our Vanity Fair event. Please check your email for additional information and bring suggestions for future readings!!
Hope you had the chance to finish reading this lengthy but enjoyable novel!
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Vanity Fair
Although this novel could demand much more familiarity with other works of literature, it gets things rolling right away when you discover the saucy orphan Becky Sharp. The story of two women and the surrounding culture and society is the basis of this satirical novel by William Makepeace Thackeray. It's not just a fun and funny novel to read, it can be a means of introspection. Thackeray has a knack for exposing truisms of human nature that even the modern reader may fall into.
William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta in 1811 but his family returned to England while he was still a young boy. There he was educated and fell into his own problems with debt. Although a failure at painting, he found his niche as a writer and wrote for several magazines of the day, notably Punch where Vanity Fair was first published serially. He wrote other works and lived on his success in his day. None of that waiting around posthumously for acclaim for this man!
Thackeray was inspired one night to write Vanity Fair which takes it's name from a fictional place starring in another novel called Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. There are more similarities than just borrowing the name, but you'd have to read that novel to understand more and, lets face it, Thackeray's Vanity Fair is tons more fun to read than the overly moralizing story of Bunyan's. Vanity Fair is written in a modernized (that is, modernized to Victorian England and then back dated 30 years earlier) form of picaresque (think Don Quioxte), a satirical novel following a low born "rogue" who utilizes his, or in this case, her wits to move around in a corrupt society.
So, dig in and we'll see you the second Thursday of November. Yes. That is, next week!!
William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta in 1811 but his family returned to England while he was still a young boy. There he was educated and fell into his own problems with debt. Although a failure at painting, he found his niche as a writer and wrote for several magazines of the day, notably Punch where Vanity Fair was first published serially. He wrote other works and lived on his success in his day. None of that waiting around posthumously for acclaim for this man!
Thackeray was inspired one night to write Vanity Fair which takes it's name from a fictional place starring in another novel called Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. There are more similarities than just borrowing the name, but you'd have to read that novel to understand more and, lets face it, Thackeray's Vanity Fair is tons more fun to read than the overly moralizing story of Bunyan's. Vanity Fair is written in a modernized (that is, modernized to Victorian England and then back dated 30 years earlier) form of picaresque (think Don Quioxte), a satirical novel following a low born "rogue" who utilizes his, or in this case, her wits to move around in a corrupt society.
So, dig in and we'll see you the second Thursday of November. Yes. That is, next week!!
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