Thursday, November 09, 2023

Media: Watching and Reading

Death Comes to Pemberley


Though usually not a fan of twenty-first century sequels to Jane Austen's books, I enjoyed reading P.D.James' Death Comes to Pemberley.  This novel is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, and takes place at the stately home of the wealthy Darcy family, now headed by Austen's characters Darcy and Elizabeth, nee Bennet.  Death Comes to Pemberley was published in 2011, and made into a BBC series in 2013. We have now (finally) watched the miniseries and enjoyed it very much. 

The TV series is full of wonderful scenes with fine horse-drawn carriages and Georgian elegance.

The Bennett family from Pride and Prejudice continue to be quirky and amusing: Elizabeth, sensitive and responsible; Mrs. Bennet, self-centered and hypochondriacal; Lydia Bennet, a self-absorbed adolescent (even though she has reached her twenties by the time of this sequel); and also Darcy, still arrogant because of his money and social status. As the matron of a huge establishment with a large staff of servants, Elizabeth Bennet shows her calm and confident maturity.

At the beginning, Pemberley is buzzing with preparations for a ball, including incredible food scenes.
Here, Elizabeth is reviewing the food in the kitchen.

The servants are all ready and at attention as their work is reviewed.

Unlike in any actual Jane Austen novel, Death Comes to Pemberley soon sees a major act of violence with a murder in the dark woods in the middle of the night. While the original novels are domestic stories, mostly of young women who must make their way in a highly challenging social world, P.D.James' novel is a mystery full of action and impending danger, especially to the irresponsible and unlikeable rogue Wickham, husband of Lydia Bennet. 

I especially enjoyed the post-marriage portrait of Darcy. Although as I said, he’s still arrogant, he continues to love Elizabeth and in a way to obey her. I think the Austen character — who obviously would have embodied the values of his era — wouldn’t have been quite so easily managed. In the Washington Post, there’s a review of a new book that analyses the character of Darcy and his limitations, and also how the character influences modern ideals of boyfriends. (See this review)

While Austen almost never refers to the current events of her time, particularly the Napoleonic was and the earlier French Revolution, the characters in Death Comes to Pemberley are both aware and involved in these historic times. In both the novel and in the TV version, I enjoyed the drama and the re-imagined characters. I found both versions very true to the original novel while now in a totally new type of plot.

Not surprisingly, the costumes are also wonderful.

Land of Milk and Honey, A Foodie Dystopia


Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang takes place after a global disaster has destroyed all wild and domestic animals, all crops and wild plants, and all possibility of restoring them. Or so it seems. What's left of humanity has only artificial, bioengineered food which tastes terrible. The narrator of this miserable post-apocalypse is a trained chef, and she finds a job in a restaurant at a secret location where the rarest delicacies have been preserved:

"Despite its vast store of ingredients, my employer’s restaurant defaulted, like others in that age, to familiar symbols of prestige. French classics with lots of cream, lots of butter, expensive ingredients, just money glopped on the plate. Money." (p. 19). 

High in the Italian Alps, the destroying smog that's killed everything but humans is mysteriously absent,  creating an end-times garden of Eden with underground storehouses full of heirloom produce and preserved game and domestic animals. This retreat belongs to an obscenely wealthy man, who is enjoying his private stash of gourmandise. He hires the narrator to be his chef for a restaurant where he woos investors in some secretive project to make him even wealthier and more powerful. 

Once this post-apocalypse scenario is set up, there's a plot, but it's kind of secondary to the food and wine descriptions, which read like a very exaggerated version of the old Gourmet magazine in its glory days. Like this: "To me that wine was fig and plum; volcanic soil; wheat fields shading to salt stone; sun; leather, well-baked; and finally, most lingering, strawberry." (p. 99).

Before the evil smog descended on mankind and on everything that grows, the narrator grew up in Los Angeles. As an adolescent, she defied her immigrant mother and trained to be a chef, but prior to that, she didn't live in a food paradise either. The predecessor of her gourmet life:

"Autumn was a harvest of big-box stores and their back-to-school sales: fruit leather, instant mac ’n’ cheese, and bread that we unhusked, crinkling, from its plastic sleeve. My mouth watered for the sweetness of processed wheat sown thick through gas stations from California to New York. Honey Buns and Wonder Breads, in perfect squares and machined circles, and the ripe weight of a Danish, mass-produced, that attempts no fidelity to the country after which it is named—no country but this one ambered by waves of industrial grain." (p. 154).

After the set-up of the catastrophic end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it and the secret stash of real food, the demands on the narrator's culinary skills get kind of weird with a lot of demand for cooking exotic animals that have been reconstructed through some kind of DNA science. She even is forced to prepare a meal of wooly mammoth which is disgusting, and other meat that's even more disgusting. 

A complex plot involving the employer and his young daughter seems to me to be kind of an afterthought to enable a wide variety of food descriptions. Maybe, I sometimes thought while reading, the author really just wanted to set up this imagined human fate. So I won't bother to describe it or the too-pat ending.

News

Recently, I have been spending a lot of time reading international, national, and local news and commentary. So much is going on in the world around me. A few of my obsessions: 
  • Primarily, I'm following the news of the war in Israel, which changes every hour, and I keep hoping that somehow either diplomacy or battle will free the kidnapped hostages. Then maybe negotiations can take place. Unfortunately I've read all too many explanations of how Hamas wants a war that will keep them in power, not a peace that will replace them with more responsible government of their people. I fear the stated goal of Hamas: "a sustained conflict that ends any pretense of coexistence among Israel, Gaza and the countries around them." (source)
  • The controversies about this war are dividing our country, as illustrated by the censure vote of the Palestinian representative in the US Congress. Her endorsement of extremist views of the war (especially quoting a slogan that has always signified a wish for the destruction of Israel and expulsion of all its Jewish citizens) is the most exaggerated example of divisions in our society. The outbreak of antisemitic rhetoric and even violence on college campuses is also very concerning.
  • Tuesday's elections in various states, especially Ohio and Virginia, were very important. I'm glad that the voters expressed such strong support for women's rights to control their own bodies. 
  • The many court cases against Trump are interesting and at the same time horrifying: how could we have put such a criminal in charge of our government, and how can it be possible that he might return to power and take revenge on all of us? 
  • I was also interested in the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the cryptocurrency flim-flam man, and the revelation of how he spun such a con on people who should have known better. Unfortunately, putting him in jail for decades won't stop the next con man from preying on the same willing victims.
I guess I'm just a news junkie these days!

Blog post © 2023 mae sander
Photos from screen shots and BBC publicity.


17 comments:

  1. The Pemberly show looks visually terrific. Is the Zhang novel a thumbs down? The critics seemed to be so high on her books. But perhaps I will skip. I'm watching a lot of news too ... though the Gaza news is so dark it's hard. Enjoy your week.

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  2. I am a news junkie, as well. I want to know what is going on. Sometimes it overwhelms me, but I do want information.
    My friend called one of her cats Pemberley!

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  3. I haven't read Death Comes to Pemberly, but it sounds right up my alley. And you can't go wrong with PD James. She was an excellent storyteller. Thanks for sharing Mae. hugs-Erika

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  4. Dear Mae,
    I think “Death Comes to Pemberley” at least has great viewing value as a TV series. I often like the costumes and house furnishings better than the story in Austen novel adaptations ;-) - I don't know if I would feel the same way with this modernized sequel. In Austria we didn't grow up with Austen novels. There are fans of it here too, but I'm not one of them, I never read one of her novels. Nevertheless, I like to see horse-drawn carriages and Georgian elegance :-D
    "Land of Milk and Honey" seems to me to be a kind of parable about the world that is probably being created by climate change - animals are dying out and there isn't enough water or bees to make fruit or grain or wine thrive. And as a counterpoint to this, the "paradise" is shown, which we actually still have now, but which we don't appreciate enough and don't protect enough...
    As for the news, I stopped watching the TV news regularly a few years ago - I still get enough of what's going on in the world and that alone puts a strain on me - I don't need any more stress. I'm trying to make my little world beautiful for as long as possible...
    Warm November greetings from Austria!
    Traude
    🍂🍃🍁🍃 🍂
    https://rostrose.blogspot.com/2023/11/ausflug-auf-den-harzberg-im-august-ein.htm

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  5. Death Comes to Pemberley sounds good, but I don't have BBC.

    Land of Milk and Honey has some interesting ideas, but it sounds like you didn't care for the book.

    While on the subject of food, have you heard of Fresh Paper? A young lady invented it and it keeps food fresh from 2 to 4 times longer. Ut was fascinating to hear her talk about it. https://www.freshglow.co/

    The elections were elating. I just hope tRump goes to jail before the elections.

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  6. I'm a news junkie these days too and it's incredibly frightening and depressing. And meanwhile, we have no budget, a shutdown looms and poor Ukraine is on the verge of being left out in the cold. Just saw Bob Woodward on Morning Joe who was speaking eloquently about Ukraine. What a mess our world and country is in.

    I have watched "Death Comes to Pemberley" years ago but never read it. I think I should. I like James' writing style.

    Do you have Britbox? If so, check out "This England." One of the best things I've watched this year. (It might also be on Amazon Prime but I don't have that so not sure.) K. Branagh is Boris Johnson during the early Covid/Brexit days. I should capitalize IS Johnson -- he nailed it. Riveting.

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  7. Lots and lots more news to come through the end of 2024. You will be in news heaven! Hope the news gets better however.

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  8. I enjoyed Death Comes to Pemberley. Love your review -- it brings back the memory of watching it for me.

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  9. I had no idea that P. D. James had ever written an Austen adaptation (fan fic?) -- this sounds interesting! BTW, if it weren't for your review of the latest book in the Thursday Murder Club series, I probably would have skipped it, and I would have missed an excellent, tenderly drawn story. So thank you!

    The news has been mighty gripping lately and sometimes hard to bear, and the apparent inability for people to agree that killing, raping, torturing, and stealing from others is wrong is deeply troubling, that in some contexts, these actions are ok? ... But wait, wasn't that SBF's argument, that if you considered the larger context, his actions were justified?

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  10. I didn't know about Death Comes to Pemberley, but now I want to watch it! Have to hunt it down. The news is disturbing and disheartening. I try to limit what I take in.

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  11. I've needed to turn off the news so I can enjoy so peace. It's too disturbing and upsetting to realize the degree of anti semitism in the United States and the world . Will it be stopped? Will Universities be held responsible for the unsafe conditions for Jewish students on campuses? I doubt it as BIG money from the Middle East and China continue to pour into and corrupt our American Universities. So sad!!

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  12. I so enjoyed Death Comes to Pemberley. I need to watch the mini-series!

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  13. Kinda glad I cut the cable at the beginning of the year and never see the TV version of news anymore.

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  14. I liked the book and loved the miniseries. I forgot I watched it, though so now I get to rewatch it and enjoy it again! Thanks.

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  15. Thank you, Mae, for bringing Death Comes to Pemberley to my attention. My husband and I love PBS, but we have a difficult time finding a series we both like. I'm confident this will work for both of us.

    The news is bleak, but I try to continue to watch and talk about it. I remind myself that I am a part of this democracy and that I must do my part to shape it in ways that are for the good of all. A very challenging time.

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  16. I didn't know that about Death Comes to Pemberley that it was a Jane Austen sequel. (Though maybe I could have guessed from the title, you'd think.) I'm not generally a fan of P. D. James, but I might have to check that out.

    Also spending far too much time reading the news these days, but what can you do...

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