I'm effectively behind…better pick up my copy and start reading tonight! 😀

TinaII2None said:

La Belle Creole said:

MegC said:

@ La Belle Creole:  I agree.  I don't think a publisher would look at GWTW twice today.  Not only because of it's racism, but also because of it's length.

I think MM wrote GWTW by hand while she was recovering from a broken ankle.

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Well, an editor might give it a chance if MM included some kind of apologist social commentary in the narrative.  As you say, it would also have more of a chance if it was shorter.  Scarlett's child-marriage (she was sixteen years old when she married Charles) would have to be adjusted (age change) as well. 

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@MegC — it's astonishing to me how many wrote these massive novels by hand (we have it SO easy these days LOL). And you're right about length as well — as though I did once joke with a friend that I wondered if JK Rowling was being paid by the word (or letter) as one of her Harry Potter books ran nearly 600 pages and most of it felt like filler material that added nothing to the story.
@Le Belle Creole — About Scarlett's child-marriage. Compared to Lady Margaret Beaufort, Scarlett was almost over the hill. Poor Margaret was TWELVE when she was married to the 24-year-old Edmund Tudor! I know it was the 15th century but….

LOL … Isn't there a part of you that just cringes?   I have an adult niece who's engaged and I'm STILL a bit ambivalent about her approaching wedding.  She's almost 19 and I think that's just too young.  I know I was nowhere near prepared for marriage at age 19. 

Sharon said:

This book is Epic!  It's just too bad that some people had to stick their nose in and say it was not pc.  That really gets me!  As you said, Tina, MM was writing about “her” South.  Take it or leave it. If people don't like the way a story is told, they do not have to read it. And don't be telling me that the book is banned.  I remember how books were banned in school.  We would get the list and go right out and buy the books. 

After reading GWTW, it was a long time before I didn't want to see Sherman hung.  Come to think of it, I don't believe I have changed my mind on that score.  What a path of destruction he wrought.  I did feel sorry for the way the carpetbaggers came in and took over.  Robert E. Lee will always be a true gentleman in my book.  My husband calls me a southern sympathizer.  I am not.  It wasn't because I thought their cause was just, because it wasn't. Slavery was despicable.  I think it was because of the utter destruction that befell them.  They lost a way of life that had been theirs for 200+ yrs. It was complete annihilation.  MM made me feel the total loss those people must have felt.  She put me in Scarlett's, and Melanie's shoes. That is the way you are supposed to feel after reading a book.  They open your eyes as to the way other people deal, or did deal, with life.

Sharon — you are quite right. Not to get off on another topic, but PC just bugs the heck out of me. At some point, even if you don't intend to, someone may end up offended or insulted. But banning things isn't the way to go. Look — as an opera lover, it took me literally YEARS to bring myself to finally listen to anything by Richard Wagner. Then I heard his Tannhauser on Live From the Met and found it an incredible piece of work. His Ring Cycle — well, it's LOL long that's for sure and I've never listened to Gotterdammerung all the way through because it is a massive conclusion and in ways, it bores me whereas I really enjoy Das Rhinegold and Die Walkure. (I think Ashley spoke of Gotterdammerung and left Scarlett with one of those WTF reactions in the book). And last year I went up to Cincinnati when their opera company put on a magnificent performance of his Der Meistersinger von Nuremburg. I'm still not this huge Wagner fan, and yeah, sometimes I hear his music and automatically think of Hitler and Nazis, but I manage to find something to enjoy now and then in his work.

I do understand what you mean about the devastation of the South. I hated that most of all, and I guess part of it was again another level of the idea of Americans fighting Americans. So I get where you're coming from.

I think I remember reading that MM grew up around and also talked to Confederate veterans — you forget that the war had only ended 60 years before (give or take) she started making notes and working on GWTW. Many of these men were likely teens when they enlisted. She also may have talked to the widows and children of those that survived Sherman's March. But she got first-hand observations, the way I did when my grandparents told me of their lives through the Depression and World War II. That's what makes GWTW live — it's about the people, whether we love them or despise them and she captures the Old South as beautifully as Dickens did Victorian England, Austen her Regency era, or Tolstoy his Russia.

TinaII2None said:

Sharon said:

This book is Epic!  It's just too bad that some people had to stick their nose in and say it was not pc.  That really gets me!  As you said, Tina, MM was writing about “her” South.  Take it or leave it. If people don't like the way a story is told, they do not have to read it. And don't be telling me that the book is banned.  I remember how books were banned in school.  We would get the list and go right out and buy the books. 

After reading GWTW, it was a long time before I didn't want to see Sherman hung.  Come to think of it, I don't believe I have changed my mind on that score.  What a path of destruction he wrought.  I did feel sorry for the way the carpetbaggers came in and took over.  Robert E. Lee will always be a true gentleman in my book.  My husband calls me a southern sympathizer.  I am not.  It wasn't because I thought their cause was just, because it wasn't. Slavery was despicable.  I think it was because of the utter destruction that befell them.  They lost a way of life that had been theirs for 200+ yrs. It was complete annihilation.  MM made me feel the total loss those people must have felt.  She put me in Scarlett's, and Melanie's shoes. That is the way you are supposed to feel after reading a book.  They open your eyes as to the way other people deal, or did deal, with life.

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Sharon — you are quite right. Not to get off on another topic, but PC just bugs the heck out of me. At some point, even if you don't intend to, someone may end up offended or insulted. But banning things isn't the way to go. Look — as an opera lover, it took me literally YEARS to bring myself to finally listen to anything by Richard Wagner. Then I heard his Tannhauser on Live From the Met and found it an incredible piece of work. His Ring Cycle — well, it's LOL long that's for sure and I've never listened to Gotterdammerung all the way through because it is a massive conclusion and in ways, it bores me whereas I really enjoy Das Rhinegold and Die Walkure. (I think Ashley spoke of Gotterdammerung and left Scarlett with one of those WTF reactions in the book). And last year I went up to Cincinnati when their opera company put on a magnificent performance of his Der Meistersinger von Nuremburg. I'm still not this huge Wagner fan, and yeah, sometimes I hear his music and automatically think of Hitler and Nazis, but I manage to find something to enjoy now and then in his work.
I do understand what you mean about the devastation of the South. I hated that most of all, and I guess part of it was again another level of the idea of Americans fighting Americans. So I get where you're coming from.

I think I remember reading that MM grew up around and also talked to Confederate veterans — you forget that the war had only ended 60 years before (give or take) she started making notes and working on GWTW. Many of these men were likely teens when they enlisted. She also may have talked to the widows and children of those that survived Sherman's March. But she got first-hand observations, the way I did when my grandparents told me of their lives through the Depression and World War II. That's what makes GWTW live — it's about the people, whether we love them or despise them and she captures the Old South as beautifully as Dickens did Victorian England, Austen her Regency era, or Tolstoy his Russia.

I think, for better or worse, it's best to accept the Antebellum years for what they were.  Like any other era, it has it beauty and it has its ugliness.  In any romanticized work, the beauty of the period is intended to be emphasized. 

Taken for what it is, GWTW is a fantastic book. 

TinaII2None said:

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With Borders closing downtown, I have no nearby bookstores (I do drive, but don't own a car so I ride the bus most of the time), so I'm going to need to order mine through Amazon. Considering all the gift card credits I have built up with them, I'm going to try to get my order in tonight before I head into work.
Don't leave me behind guys!

Just placed my order on Amazon — got GWTW in paperback along with a salad spinner and a lettuce preserving container.

Okay, so the salad spinner and the lettuce preserver have nothing to do with GWTW but it's something I've been wanting and I was trying to get my $25 free shipping! LOL Book should arrive next week although I've known Amazon orders to get to me much sooner, so here's hoping I'll be able to start pretty soon. (In the meantime, I have another book I can start while I'm waiting).

TinaII2None said:

La Belle Creole said:

MegC said:

I'm effectively behind…better pick up my copy and start reading tonight! 😀

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I have a copy.  Let me kinow when you are ready and I'll begin then. 

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With Borders closing downtown, I have no nearby bookstores (I do drive, but don't own a car so I ride the bus most of the time), so I'm going to need to order mine through Amazon. Considering all the gift card credits I have built up with them, I'm going to try to get my order in tonight before I head into work.
Don't leave me behind guys!

OK.  I am going to wait until everyone participating indicates they've got a book. 

After I finish catching up on my stories on my DVR (read: the British and American versions of Being Human), I'm going to pick up GWTW and get started tonight I think.

And, btw, they totally did NOT just kill off the character of Mitchell on the BBC version!!!  WTH?!

MegC said:

Anyanka said:

Nit-pick time….Rhett refers to Queen Victoria as “the fat Dutch woman” , she was in fact half German on her mother's side and a descendant of the German house of Hanover on her father's side.

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If information was not going to directly and immediately benefit Rhett Butler, he didn't care enough to know it.  I think the point that Mitchell is sort of in a round-about way making in that is that the only “royalty” that Rhett and Scarlett and the like cared about were the upper-crust Southern type.  None of the rest mattered.  And, interestingly, there were distinctions drawn even amongst the Southern cities.  Savannah and Charleston were very old cities and more associated with “old” money whereas Atlanta had more “new” money.  I think Mitchell even mentions at one point that Atlanta was sort of looked down upon by the older cities because of its youth.
As a side note (and I have no idea whether this is true or not), but I have heard that the reason why Sherman did not burn Savannah is that when he got there, he was so struck by its beauty that he couldn't bring himself to do it.  Or maybe it was more advantageous for him to leave it intact since Savannah is the only port city in an otherwise landlocked state (which is probably more the case than the former).

That's true about Sherman.  He did not burn Savannah.  They say it was because he thought it was a gorgeous city.  But he had already brought Georgia to its knees.  He had made his point.  What a guy! And I mean this in the worst possible way, Bless his heart.

Anyanka said:

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I feel your pain. The closest bookshop to me which has anything more than a token selection of English books is over an hour's drikve away.
I sometimes feel I'm keeping Amazon.ca in business

I know I'm keeping Amazon.com going! LOL But it's usually the place for me to find the most reasonably priced books…other than the half-off book and music store, which is going to have a limited selection.

When Borders was going out of business downtown (and that's where I lucked up and found the Elizabeth Tudor Vampire Hunter novel at a reasonable price), I went in hoping to find some great deals since their inventory was 20, 30 and 40% off at the time. Even then it was more than my budget could take. I found a huge selection of cookbooks and DVDs for Alton Brown's Good Eats series — and even with 25% off it was going to run me about $30 each. I decided to pass.