itt WOLF HALL the book by hilary mantel and the upcoming hbo/bbc miniseries based on the same

on the one hand symmetry would require me to wait for the third one to come out in paperback, even, but on the other hand I don't think my copies of the first two match all that much even, so whatever

the bbc production of this was not too bad for them

https://i2.wp.com/www.fanfunwithdamianlewis.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ep6_2.gif

guess I should read this

It’s probably a con but like any good con artist she makes you feel so good about buying into the con

actually that gif has good reason to be posted for more than the very good purposes of razzing calz :D

the scene in the series -- anne is dead, crom arrives to see the king who is gleeful and opens his arms in a delighted hug of triumph -- isn't in the book: in the book, instead, we see henry serene as he prepares to marry jane, and gloomy as he tell crom he, he henry, may now be too old to have a strong boychild, per something he read in plato (odd source for such wisdom tho i guess in this instance plato will prove correct)

it's a capper on the viewpoint of the series, of course: who is bad here? henry is bad. and this delivery of his desire -- even as it also enacts revenge on a bunch of v awful ppl who crossed crom and mocked cranmer, plus anne who he feels more ambivalent about -- of course puts crom right in the cheery bearhug of the king's badness.

one of the devices at work is bodysize: damien lewis is tall and broad, even if his character is changeable and basically whiny -- here's when he's happy he's also terrifying and horrible. unlike the historical cromwell (per holbein) and the book cromwell (per mantel), mark rylance is no physical bulk to be reckoned with.* rylance plays cromwell wary, watchful, memory-full, when alone melancholy. i think if he dominated more physically and on-screen, we'd likely take against him more. but as i say, the tv show wants the king as villain

the book is more this: while full of lovely things including (sometimes) love, the world is bad and to make it better, we too much if we can also do bad things. the king is less a villain, more a force of nature channelled by duty and fear and possibly medical conditions**, with almost random breakouts into friendship or joy. (he is certain written as kind)

*in the book version of the joust scene and henry seemingly dead, when norfolk comes at cromwell, cromwell simply stand firm and lets the other bounce off him
**reading round to discover what these were i wz delighted to discover there is a school of historian thought that argues he was suffering from SCURVY

In the books: Just as the hero is no hero, no villain is a true villain I think; what seems clearly and consistently bad (in Crom's eyes as harbinger of modernity?) is the blithe institutional acceptance, as necessities, of torture and executions, separate and especially in combination: Cromwell's attendance of a witch burning as a child; "It is true there is a rack at the Tower. No one withstands it. No one."; "the law demands the full traitor's penalty, the short spin in the wind and the conscious public disembowelling, a brazier alight for human entrails. It is the most horrible of all deaths, pain and rage and humiliation swallowed to the dregs, the fear so great that the strongest rebel is unmanned before the executioner with his knife can do the job".

All this while the prose is exquisite.

all these references to crom are making me want a wolf hall / conan the barbarian crossover

dude it already exists:

https://d12swbtw719y4s.cloudfront.net/images/hnZfncc8/ZNJ9p3EQT8n605w7Hw1l/03_Church_and_State_1.jpeg?w=620

ok so i started a place of greater safety last week and it's soooo good. i understand what people are saying upthread about the cromwell series' restriction of perspective helps focus the narrative a bit, but she's just such an engaging writer and so good at drawing all these characters that i'm enjoying the sprawl. even though that sprawl does make me less likely to sit down and read 100 pages at a time.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/22/hilary-mantel-the-mirror-and-the-light-announced-for-2020

Book 3 coming in 2020!

HarperCollins said the novel would offer “a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage”. It also confirmed that the novel would be adapted for television by the BBC, following the Bafta-winning adaptation of Wolf Hall starring Mark Rylance as Cromwell. Peter Straughan will write the adaptation, and Peter Kosminsky will direct. A film exploring the life and work of Mantel herself, from Oxford Films, is also due out next March.

hell yeah

woop

Fantastic news, I’ve just been rereading the first 2.

such good news

eat your heart out George RR Martin

March 2020 for real?

shut up ... srsly?!

:D

Wooo! Just enough time to reread the first 2.

Preordered. US hardcover 784pp, hell yeah

started rereading yesterday in prep. so so good.

Read the extract and interview in this weekend's Graun and am properly excited for the next instalment. Contemplating a re-read...

I didn't realise she lived in Budleigh Salterton. I've been there a fair bit in the last few years and I'm gutted I've not seen her - headscarfed, summoning spirits on a windy headland.

“I do have the sense of it being a very proximate world,” she says. “And sometimes the barrier seems like an enormous stone wall and sometimes it’s just whisper thin. But you can be misunderstood in talking about it. Because none of it can be literal. It’s all just a series of metaphors.”

Also desperate to re-read Beyond Black.

I just finished Bring Up the Bodies. Not saying anything anyone reading this thread doesn't already know but holy shit she is a great writer.

As someone who has read virtually no contemporary fiction, discovering Mantel and Ferrante over the past year has been truly revelatory.

Anyway, my question is: what other 21st century fiction writers are on Mantel's level?

I’m excited for Tuesday.

Anyway, my question is: what other 21st century fiction writers are on Mantel's level?

Peter Carey - try ‘The true history of the Kelly gang’ and ‘A long way from Home’

Thanks! I read Oscar and Lucinda a while back but never dug further.

in terms of literary stature (which is to say lit pages high profile) and skill (which is to say skill but also maybe a bit of scope) i don’t think there’s anyone equal to Mantel. (i wouldn’t personally put carey within a million miles of her)

there are several writers who i like v much out there, and prefer to mantel for my own taste, but they’re doing different things, in a smaller way.

i do find mantel v impressive tho. something slightly alchemical in what she does.

if I read A Place of Greater Safety will I get very weepy about Robespierre

yes

worth it tho, so fkn great & brutal

i have Fludd on my shelf to tide me over before the next one, which I'm trying to hold off on but who am I kidding will probably buy next week.

My preorder has been in since it was dated last year

I think A Place Of Greater Safety might be even better than Wolf Hall. It hits you with these jarring transitions while Mantel leaves out all the standard establishing shots.

I need to read more of her, only read the two Cromwell books, which I loved. "Alchemical" is a good word for her writing. Like a lot of people I've talked to about her, it me a little while to adjust to her, her style is really specific and can be a bit off-putting at first encounter. But it's one of those things that once it clicks, it's magical.

*took* me

the dialogue is so sharp that it can distract from her scene-setting and description, which is also incredible.

my copy is in the mail, let's gooooo

if I read A Place of Greater Safety will I get very weepy about Robespierre

As you should.

I didn't realise she lived in Budleigh Salterton. I've been there a fair bit in the last few years and I'm gutted I've not seen her - headscarfed, summoning spirits on a windy headland.

I stayed a week there on holiday in the mid-90s, still amused whenever I think of the name, so English.

copped today, finishing up WH and bodies again, wolf hall is the best novel of the 21st century so far no joke

when's the paperback out

grateful im not quarantining in the tower

No spoilers but Tom Truth's Love poetry is hilarious.

you know, i reread the first couple of these in a couple days each and i am just dragging in the third

WOW

Just finished

I'm about 2/5 through and I would like to talk about editing. I *think* I'll eventually fall on the side of immersion being everything and who's to say what should and shouldn't be present and the more time I get to spend with this consciousness the better - particularly given, y'know, the end and everything - but I still think it's a conversation to be had. Not that I'd be the one to tell her.

And this is about as tangential as possible, and it might just have been the sun, but reading TMatL today I suddenly got a flashback of Paul Morley's amazing and weird review of Patrick Wolf.

He falls in love with exactly who he wants to fall in love with.
He falls in love. With love, and then what happens, and then who knows.
He falls in.
He falls.
He.

Watch him work, play and etc in a video you might come across. He.

Permits you to watch. He. Studies himself. He. Is assembling himself right in front of you. He. Smashes his way through limited judgements of taste. He. Is detached from everything including detachment. He. Is in rude health. He. Is looking in a mirror. He. Is looking out of a mirror. He. Studies you. He. Is constantly touring. He. Screams lust and heartache into listeners ears. He. May yet shock the masses. He. Has not been brought to your attention by accident.

i am also about two-fifths of the way through and have opinions, most of which are at least tangent to editing

-- were this not an historical novel you'd immediately go 'oh, you have at least two or three clergymen too many .. and does every noble who's angry at cromwell need to have so many nieces?'
-- a lot of this is putting pieces in play that need to be in play later, though (my grasp on this bit of history being wholly nugatory) a lot of this has only become apparent to me after googling. i made a list of the five or six big things that are going to happen, and how norfolk and the church figures and risley are relevant to them, and reading is a little less stressful now that i'm not going 'why do i need to know who latimer is again' every time that name shows up
-- there's a bit too much of people reminding each other of things they'd know. 'my late cardinal and stephen gardiner, who was his secretary at the time, you remember.' that sort of thing.
-- a few too many reveries, memories, etc in general
-- the first half of wolf hall, where these are a structural device to get through a lack of chronological momentum, works better than the rest of the trilogy (unless it suddenly reaches a new height in the back half of this one.) it felt like it had the benefit of a lot of revision, reworking, thought; the rest of it feels a bit written in public, sometimes the castings back to events of previous volumes do feel like they're grasping for something no longer in the author's reach or remit since published.

Jane Seymour’s personality a bit of a casualty to the latter process