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I read this book in my Junior Year of High School - the year of a Gathering Storm in my heart and head. The teacher who led us through its gritty, noble intricacies, the year I assumed the role of High School Head Boy, was also my home room instructor.
Am I wrong - you professionals out there may want to correct me - or do teachers of unexciting subjects like English more often get the nod in carrying out the role of home room supervisors?
Happened to me in more years of secondary school than not!
Well, anyway, let me at any rate proceed now to set the stage for yet another of my usual hyperbolic meanderings of a literary tenor...
***
My Mom, you must understand, was in love with Ronald Colman.
Who, you kids may ask?
Ronald Colman, the early Talkies mâtinée idol, played the swoon-worthy Sidney Carton, who is the hero of this book, in the 1935 version of Tale of Two Cities.
Mom loved the trait of nobility in guys, I guess, when at 10 Years old she saw this film and imagined herself playing Lucie to Colman's Sidney, and so musta already have been dreaming of her many future noble-hearted beaux!
Trolls take note - you'll never get leers from such noble damsels.
But watching that goopy old flick Spoiled the book for ME and Mom, alas!
Ruined it.
Why?
Well, it's like this...
Mom and I didn't understand the world of Realpolitik - I certainly didn't wanna face my Student Council (after a few rancorous and rowdy run-ins over student smoking rights) - nor did Mom look forward to facing her library board, who, being elected, represented (you Got it) the voters, not dreamy literacy.
We were two round pegs in two square holes. Mashed peas, anyone?
Further, watching the movie version never gets you in touch with a book! Have you ever read Dickens' Bleak House?
Bleak House is a very vivid, very Unsentimental portrayal of the London poor. And it IS Bleak. Without hope.
And such, dear readers, is Realpolitik. Hard, cold, naked human reality. Like the evening news at its most brutal.
Now, Mom and I visited the Evening News every night - but we could never Live in it. Because we both lived in a goopy, sentimental world, being slightly autistic: innocents manqués.
But we took the evening news straight up each night and digested it.
So, when she was diagnosed with cancer at 54, she was not unhappy.
Cause she saw the World was now Dystopian.
And she wanted OUT.
***
So that friends, is this book.
The Realpolitik of the French Revolution, seen from ground level.
It's not pleasant (though it is TRULY noble).
And it certainly doesn't paint a picture of a pretty adolescent dream world, like my Mom and I always inhabited!
You know... she musta smiled with me when, a year after she died at 55, I became a Catholic.
For I had found my own painless way OUT - to the other side of death.
Am I wrong - you professionals out there may want to correct me - or do teachers of unexciting subjects like English more often get the nod in carrying out the role of home room supervisors?
Happened to me in more years of secondary school than not!
Well, anyway, let me at any rate proceed now to set the stage for yet another of my usual hyperbolic meanderings of a literary tenor...
***
My Mom, you must understand, was in love with Ronald Colman.
Who, you kids may ask?
Ronald Colman, the early Talkies mâtinée idol, played the swoon-worthy Sidney Carton, who is the hero of this book, in the 1935 version of Tale of Two Cities.
Mom loved the trait of nobility in guys, I guess, when at 10 Years old she saw this film and imagined herself playing Lucie to Colman's Sidney, and so musta already have been dreaming of her many future noble-hearted beaux!
Trolls take note - you'll never get leers from such noble damsels.
But watching that goopy old flick Spoiled the book for ME and Mom, alas!
Ruined it.
Why?
Well, it's like this...
Mom and I didn't understand the world of Realpolitik - I certainly didn't wanna face my Student Council (after a few rancorous and rowdy run-ins over student smoking rights) - nor did Mom look forward to facing her library board, who, being elected, represented (you Got it) the voters, not dreamy literacy.
We were two round pegs in two square holes. Mashed peas, anyone?
Further, watching the movie version never gets you in touch with a book! Have you ever read Dickens' Bleak House?
Bleak House is a very vivid, very Unsentimental portrayal of the London poor. And it IS Bleak. Without hope.
And such, dear readers, is Realpolitik. Hard, cold, naked human reality. Like the evening news at its most brutal.
Now, Mom and I visited the Evening News every night - but we could never Live in it. Because we both lived in a goopy, sentimental world, being slightly autistic: innocents manqués.
But we took the evening news straight up each night and digested it.
So, when she was diagnosed with cancer at 54, she was not unhappy.
Cause she saw the World was now Dystopian.
And she wanted OUT.
***
So that friends, is this book.
The Realpolitik of the French Revolution, seen from ground level.
It's not pleasant (though it is TRULY noble).
And it certainly doesn't paint a picture of a pretty adolescent dream world, like my Mom and I always inhabited!
You know... she musta smiled with me when, a year after she died at 55, I became a Catholic.
For I had found my own painless way OUT - to the other side of death.
