There is a great quantity of eating and drinking, making love and jilting, laughing and the contrary, smoking, cheating, fighting, dancing, and fiddling: there are bullies pushing about, bucks ogling the women, knaves picking pockets, policemen on the look-out, quacks, (other quacks, plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tinselled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind. Yes, this is VANITY FAIR: not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one, though very noisy.A lively and delicious read - rather like a practical and entertaining version of Machiavelli!
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Vanity Fair
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Haven't read this one, but in my English class this year we read The Luck of Barry Lyndon, also by Thackeray and worth checking out. I wrote a paper about its footnotes.
ReplyDeleteI had not realized that Barry Lyndon was Thackeray - there was a pretty good Barry Lyndon movie made some years back (checks IMDB)...oh yeah! Directed by Stanley Kubrick, but I'm surprised that I didn't recall it starred Marisa Berenson, whom I used to think was gorgeous. Thanks, Colin - I'll check out the book. In my mind, this book/movie is coupled with Tom Jones, which was extremely entertaining as a movie, and I have been thinking I might like to read the book.
ReplyDeleteWhat was special/interesting about the footnotes?