(no subject)

[jfb]

Via Creative Commons (creativecommons): A list of 2002's best-selling classics (how did The Red Tent get on this list?), and when they'll enter the public domain. It almost makes me cry that The Great Gatsby won't be available for translation, adaptation, and reinterpretation for another 17 years.

Comments

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I sort of went down the list: Movie tie-in, English class, Oprah, Oprah redux, school school school school school school school. (Actually, The Grapes of Wrath also got a boost from the California Council for the Humanities (http://www.calhum.org/programs/grapes_intro.htm).) There's an obvious drop-off after the top four, too.

Do people still read Moby Dick?

Yeah, Fitzgerald's early work predates the creeping copyright extensions. But I love Gatsby.

[rollerboogie.livejournal.com]

I read Moby Dick my junior year of high school, but it was abridged (eliminating the heavy whaling passages). And that was just four or five years ago.

Incidentally, while I was home last I caught part of the Gatsby A&E film made with Mira Sorvino. It was AWFUL. Paul Rudd played Nick Carraway and seemed to have been directed to be surly straight through. Have you ever seen it? It made the Redford film look brilliant.

[jfb.livejournal.com]

A better school than mine, no doubt.

Never seen the A&E film, and can barely remember the Redford one (but I think I liked it at the time. they wore hats!). I liked Mira Sorvino as Romy, though.