Proof That Novelists Have Been Getting Tired of Naming Minor Characters Since At Least 1872

[snurri]

"the fine old-blooded idiocy of young Lord Tapir, and the furious gouty humors of old Lord Megatherium"

- Middlemarch, George (Mary Ann) Eliot (Evans Cross)

Comments

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

Lol.

Is there a Lady Aardvark?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

Not so far, but then I'm only through about 100 of 900 pages . . .

[ninstorage.livejournal.com]

Teehee.

(on a not so unrelated note, I love that novel!)

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I'm liking it a lot so far. It feels oddly contemporary in some ways; I think it's that it reads as very self-aware.

[ninstorage.livejournal.com]

I kept meaning to post this quote in relation to Middlemarch but kept forgetting; it's by Iris Murdoch whom, in writing about novel-writing and the Sublime referred to Eliot's organic way of dealing w/ novels. Murdoch admired this.

Hennyway:


"A novel must be a house fit for free characters to live in; and to combine form with a respect for reality with all its odd contingent ways is the highest art of prose"

The article's title is "The Sublime and The Beautiful Revisited". It can be found in the anthology
"Existentialists and Mystics" but it can also be found in the Yale Review, December, 1959.

Which is, to me, almost perfect in terms of a storytelling ethos.

[giantsloth.livejournal.com]

Furious gouty humors? I flatly deny this characterization!

[snurri.livejournal.com]

You realize that I am going to be calling you Lord Megatherium for the rest of our lives, now.

[giantsloth.livejournal.com]

I'm cool with that, Mister Heffylump. Monsieur Oliphaunt?

[snurri.livejournal.com]

The Colonel once referred to me as "Brother Tantor"; that was pretty good.

[sanspoof.livejournal.com]

Now if only there were Lords Toxodon and Glyptodont!

[snurri.livejournal.com]

I wish to heaven she had put an actual giant ground sloth in the novel, wearing a snazzy hat.