Effin Literature, Cotton

Whylom as olde stories tellen us,
Ther was a duk that highte Theseus;
Of Athenes he was lord and governour,
And in his tyme swich a conquerour
That gretter was ther noon under the sonne.

-- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Knightes Tale.

I almost always have a book I'm reading.  It comes in handy while I'm drinking morning coffee or for the 2 minutes between when I comfy cozy into bed and doze off.

It takes me a while to read a book.  I generally don't read while there's a perfectly good television at my disposal.

But sometimes I see a movie that I like so much that I decide to read the book that inspired it. The book is almost always way better than the movie, so I figure if I like the movie, I'll love the book.

The problem with this is that if you've already seen the movie version, it is hard to get the actors out of your mind when you read the book.  It is way better to read the book first.

I saw Fight Club before I read the book.  The great thing about Fight Club (the movie) is that it is so faithful to the book that imagining Ed Norton/Brad Pitt is not a problem.  It still happened, but it didn't harm the story at all.

Interview with a Vampire, on the other hand was so unbelievably horribly cast that even though I saw the movie first and ended up reading the first 5 or so vampire books, every time I thought of Tom Cruise as Lestat, it made me sad.  Like when you frown and stuff.

Lestat was blonde and girly like.  Tom Cruise is a big dork.  See?  Bad casting.

Before I finish up tonight's entry, I will mention that I am invoking the original agreement.  Any post is acceptable.

I have nothing to say.

Sometimes, the movie is better than the book.  There is one movie in particular that is not only better than the book.  It is better than the sum of all works by the author.  And it's not even that great a movie.  It's just a really bad writer.  Of course by now you must've guessed, I'm picking on Geoffrey Chaucer.

A few weeks ago, I was at our bookshelf, looking for something to read when I came across a little red paperback called "The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer"

Now I'm no 14th century expert or anything, but I know who Geoffrey Chaucer was.  I mean when I think about it, I'm surprised how much I know about him.

For instance, did you know that he had a terrible gambling problem?

Yep.  Totally true.

Most of what I know about Chaucer comes from the 2001 docudramedy, movie, "A Knight's Tale"

So when I saw that we actually owned a copy of Chaucer's work from that time, I was eager to start reading.  I figured it might be a little boring or something, but it'd be pretty cool to see how close the movie was to the original.

Yeah - so that passage at the top of this post is the first sentence or stanza or whatever the hell it's called from Geoffrey Chaucer's "THE KNIGHTES TALE"

After reading that, I kind of scanned through the book, looking for the name William Thatcher.  Or the part where Chaucer introduced the young Knight in the style of Michael Buffer.

But no.  Just a bunch of misspellings and crazy talk.

In conclusion, "A Knight's Tale" the movie is pretty good.  The original book sucks.

And that's why they make you read that shit at school.

One more thing.  That ridiculous sentence at the beginning of this post?  Thankfully the edition of the book I have, has all of the corrections along side it.  I guess when Chaucer turned in the assignment, they made him go back time and time again until all the spelling and grammar was fixed.

I'm pretty sure his homework was returned to him like this:
















But after he got it all fixed up, it said:

Once upon a time, as ancient stories tell us,
there was a duke who was named Theseus,
He was lord and ruler of Athens,
and such a conqueror in his day
that there was no greater under the sun.

I'm sure these corrections earned little Chaucer a gold star and everything, but it's still nothing Heath Ledger would have signed on for.  Rawr!! I mean, Rest in peace, Heath.

I like how it looks like the original script from Chaucer is on the inside of a piece of paper that says "OfficeMax" on it.  That's just eerie.