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!
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?