This page contains further notes on novels that I discovered, and might be of interest to others....
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
While reading this book I came across many instances when a name or place was blanked out, and a dashed line was substituted. I could not for the life of me figure out why this was done. I'd been meaning to ask an English professor some time, but found this answer on-line at: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=307906
"A friend just read Jane Eyre for the first time, and wondered as I have, why Charlotte Bronte used "-----shire" rather than a real place. I believe I recall that Jane Austen does this too. Does anyone know why? I always assumed that it was because if she used a real place name, readers living there would say, "This author obviously knows nothing about this place. What a stupid book!" But I would like a more definitive answer if there is one. Thanks!"
"That's one reason why they did it. A development of this was that if they used real places, or real regiments, or what looked like real places and real regiments, then people could say "Well, the Colonel of that regiment wasn't callled xxxxxx, or the Colonel of that regiment didn't do that/wasn't the fool you make him out to be/couldn't possibly have given that order!" Authors would be opening themselves up to accusations of libel, if not stupidity.
It's also a fall-out from a literary convention of the time when many books and pamphlets were written criticising the government of the day, or important figures, by using false names. Defoes' Gullivers Travels is possibly the best known of the earlier ones. Since the reporting of Parliamentary discussions was banned until about 1808, it had to be reported in newspapers under false names (and Samuel Johnson first did it by reporting the activities of the people of Lilliput!). Some rather scurrilous stories were also printed which were thinly veiled parodies or criticisms of important figures.
So when Jane Austen wrote the _________shire regiment, or the Earl of _________, she was a)avoiding the pitfall of being accused of inaccuracy and b) avoiding the pitfall of being accused of criticism of some important political figures.
And just for the record, there realy was a militia regiment that went to Hertfordshire and then camped for the summer at Brighton. It was the Derbyshire Milita.........
Now the Bronte sisters followed in this tradition, although I really don't know if they were as worried about political consequences as JA was. Jane Eyre is fairly obviously set in Northern Yorkshire and Durham, (The reference to Gateshead, a real place gives it away.) But Lowood Schooll may wel be based on a real place, in which case Charlotte was playing safe by not giving any more deatil about its location than she absolutely needed to."
So that's the answer... interesting
SPOILER ALERT ... do not read on if you want to read the book for yourself...
As I said, the ending in The Godfather is different than the movie. In the book you learn much more about the relationship and internal thoughts of Kay Parker - Micheal Corleon's wife. How deeply in love with him she is, and why, though she suspects what he is, she still marries him.
In both the book and the movie, after Micheal has taken care of ALL the family business in one day, Kay confronts him, asking if he had Carlo (his brother-in-law) killed. He tells her that just this once she can ask about his business. She asks again, and he lies right to her. She tries to accept, but when she sees him with meet with his captains, and they call him "Godfather"... she knows he has lied to her. She takes his children and leaves.
SPOILER: But this is where the movie and the book part ways... and in the last 10 pages too... Earlier in the book, Kay had a conversation with her mother-in-law, Don Corleon's wife. (They get to be good friends in the book.. for some reason, the mother-in-law really likes Kay and makes her feel welcome even though she is not Italian) In that conversation Kay asks her why she goes to Mass every single day, and she is told it's to pray for her husband, so he goes to heaven instead of hell.
In the movie, Micheal retrieves his kids and shuts Kay out of his life.
In the book, Tom Hagen (the family lawyer) comes to visit Kay to try to reason with her. At first he sticks with the story he has been told to give, but then relents, and explains to Kay why Micheal had Carlo and several others killed. From the book (next to last page):
"Is this what Michael sent you up here to tell me?"
Hagen looked at her in genuine surprise, "No," he said. "He told me to tell you you could have everything you want and do everything you want as long as you take good card of the kids." Hagen smiled. "He said to tell you that you're his Don. That's just a joke."
Kay put her hand on Hagen's arm. "He didn't order you to tell me all the other things?"
Hagen hesitated a moment as if debating whether to tell her a final truth. "You still don't understand," he said. "If you told Michael what I've told you today, I'm a dead man." He paused again. "You and the children are the only people on this earth he couldn't harm."
She returns to Michael, and converts to Catholicism, and, joins her mother-in-law every day at morning mass - praying for Michael's soul.
I was much happier with this than the cruelty of the movie.
Ask any scholar what the greatest book of the last century was, and they will say Ulysses by James Joyce. Ask any scholar whether he has read it, and the answer will probably be no. (like Finnegan's Wake) The book is widely acknowledged to be nearly incomprehensible .." in part because Joyce seems to assume that all his readers grew up in Dublin and were educated by Jesuits". It's the greatest book never read.
I am attempting to read it. It's difficult. There are so many literary, historical, and local references that you need to be a scholar just to read the thing. You also need to be able to deal with made up grammar... and made up words. Words like contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality - No, I did not make that up.. It's from the book.
"Warring his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred heresiarch. In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With bearded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts." (see Note below)
Cliff notes has nothing to say about this bit.... (but I did find one reference that gave a plausible explanation of the word... a sense of impending scapegoatism - as in what a jew might feel before world war ii) However, some parts are very readable... like this little bit from a later section...
"Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and yielding, but resisting, began to read the second. Midway, is last resistance yielding, he allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not to big to bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive. One tabloid of cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move or touch him but it was something quick and neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on sitting calm above his own rising smell."
Ah... have you ever read any more poetic description of someone taking a shit in an outhouse ? Also note how both sections seem to refer to constipation... lol... at least that's how I read it... Wish me luck!
NOTE BELOW: Okay.. this paragraph is a reference to the ancient Christian scholar Arius - who argued against the concept of consubstantiation. - That Jesus and God always existed eternally. He was banned from the council of Nicea along with everyone who agreed with him so that the council could have a unanimous vote on the whole consubstantiation issue. Later he was re-instated, but as he made his way back he suddenly had to take a shit, and died in the toilet. (I'm not making this stuff up !!!!!!! - From Wikipedia "It was then Saturday, and . . . going out of the imperial palace, attended by a crowd of Eusebian [Eusebius of Nicomedia is meant] partisans like guards, he [Arius] paraded proudly through the midst of the city, attracting the notice of all the people. As he approached the place called Constantine's Forum, where the column of porphyry is erected, a terror arising from the remorse of conscience seized Arius, and with the terror a violent relaxation of the bowels: he therefore enquired whether there was a convenient place near, and being directed to the back of Constantine's Forum, he hastened thither. Soon after a faintness came over him, and together with the evacuations his bowels protruded, followed by a copious hemorrhage, and the descent of the smaller intestines: moreover portions of his spleen and liver were brought off in the effusion of blood, so that he almost immediately died. The scene of this catastrophe still is shown at Constantinople, as I have said, behind the shambles in the colonnade: and by persons going by pointing the finger at the place, there is a perpetual remembrance preserved of this extraordinary kind of death.")
Yee Gods!!!! Gives you and idea why Joyce is so hard to read. I picked ONE paragraph because of the word it contained, and the other because of what it described - and in the end THEY BOTH OCCUR IN OUT HOUSES!!! No wonder they tried to ban this book.