I got a gift certificate to the French version of Borders for my birthday, so I went to spend it today. I was choosing between Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin and Zadie Smith's White Teeth. Both are books I've wanted to read for years, and they were both in the tiny selection of books-in-English. It was all decided when I flipped open Smith's book, and saw this on the opening page:
"What is past is prologue" -- inscribed on a Washington monument.
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Seriously, Ms. Smith, how lazy are you and your editors? As a prospective reader, I had these questions, which I answered with just two minutes online:
1. Which Washington?: DC
2. Which monument?: The quote is inscribed on the pedestal of a statue on Pennsylvania Ave., at the entrance to the National Archives.
3. It is a QUOTE: Please cite the original source.
4. It is a FAMOUS quote: Shakespeare, honey. Shakespeare!:
1. Which Washington?: DC
2. Which monument?: The quote is inscribed on the pedestal of a statue on Pennsylvania Ave., at the entrance to the National Archives.
3. It is a QUOTE: Please cite the original source.
4. It is a FAMOUS quote: Shakespeare, honey. Shakespeare!:
We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,
And by that destiny to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.
The Tempest, Act II, scene i
The Tempest, Act II, scene i
Now, maybe the fuzzy attribution has to do with the novel itself, and if so, I take all this back. Otherwise, Ms. Smith, no grace. No grace for you.
1 comment:
I don't know if you've made your purchase yet, but I should tell you that someone once gave me Atwood's Blind Assassin - and I have never finished it. Weird, cause I really liked a couple of her earlier books (Handmaid's Tale, especially), but I've not yet made it through any of her's that've been published recently.
White Teeth is fairly good, by which I mean, I finished it, but I can't remember what happens in the end, so it must not have made that much of an impression.
Did they have any Alice Munro at the English bookstore? Seriously, she is AWESOME. :) I should've sent you home with her new one, Runaway, or her collected stories, which I picked up at the nagy Libros in Budapest. :)
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