A different perspective on Lady Chatterley's Lover
In 1959, a writer by the name of Ed Zern was working and writing for Field & Stream magazine (which, if you aren't aware, is an American magazine about the outdoors--hunting, fishing, camping, etc.) when it was decided that they should add a book review section.
Mr. Zern was told to select a good book about the outdoors to review. Unbelievably, he selected Lady Chatterley's Lover, which of course had been banned in this country, and he wrote this review:
Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by Grove Press, and this fictional account of the day-by-day life of an English gamekeeper is still of considerable interest to outdoor-minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper.
Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savor these sidelights on the management of a Midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's Practical Gamekeeper.
Yeah. And I bet Mr. Zern only bought Playboy for the articles.
I can't say that I was paying much attention to gamekeeping while watching Mr. Sean Bean in Lady Chatterley. You?
6 comments:
Sean. Bean. Mmmm.
'scuse me while I clean the drool off my keyboard.
My oh my.
And Lady C's Lover wasn't so bad from memory. Hey, you think Mr. Zern was being sarcastic/funny on purpose?
Hilariously, during the book's obscenity trial, the prosecuting counsel thundered to the jury, "Is it a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?"
LOL! Didn't know that, Jane.
And Celia, I don't think so. Based on what I read about Mr. Zern when I researched this little anecdote.
I love this, I really do-it's a classic example of seeing things as you want to rather than as they are.
But don't any of you Crumpets get comments when people actually read your books along the lines of-"Wow there actually was a plot and characters in there amongst all that sex-who would've thunk it?"
Or maybe that's just me.
Methinks Mr. Zern doth protest too much. (grin)
I was enthralled by the 1981 Lady Chatterley's Lover -- of course, being seventeen then, I was enthralled by male nudity of any kind. I should watch it again to see if it's as good as I thought it was.
Something tells me the book is worth looking into. Am I correct?
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