Season 21 - Clarissa (1991-1992)
If you're a true Anglophile you have pondered, once or twice, about reading Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. Don't deny it, you know you have and you just as quickly realized you probably never would. Because while it is ranked as one of the greatest English novels it is also one of the longest. I am not saying this lightly. I've breezed through doorstop tomes in my life and this one makes me stop and consider if I'm that committed a reader. I mean yes I want to but realistically, no I won't. I remember seeing the book once physically at Borders and wondered if it was a dictionary. The type was so tiny! The tome so weighty! Which is why this miniseries is great. As I see it, if you can make this good a miniseries, which is only four episodes long, out of a book that has 943,000 or 984,870 words in it depending on which of Richardson's edits you're reading then the book might be a tad overwritten. The story is a simple one, girl inherits fortune, family try to influence her, drive her into the arms of the wrong man, and she dies in sin. Richardson was apparently pissed that people liked Clarissa being seduced by the wicked Lovelace, hence the different editions of the book. But this miniseries fully plays into this love of the unrepentant bad boy by casting Sean Bean. He's so deliciously evil. Sean Bean as Lovelace was also a major inspiration in a series I love by Lauren Willig. Without Sean Bean there'd be no Lord Vaughn! You want to think good of Lovelace, you want Clarissa to run from the original literary rake, and at the same time, you so want them to play out this doomed love affair to the very end. And oh, that ending! In fact, I think that is what made the greatest impression on me, when Lovelace falls to the blade wielded by someone he thought was his friend, and that someone is played by an even better Sean than Bean! Sigh. I'm talking about Sean Pertwee. Yes, as in the Third Doctor's son. I fell irretrievably in love with Sean Pertwee as Jack Belford. A few years back he was scheduled to be at a comic convention near my house and I was totally going to go just to see him. I even thought, would if be weird if I asked him to sign a copy of Clarissa? But then he had to film a guest spot on Prodigal Son. So while I haven't met him (YET!) at least that guest appearance was totally worth it. Seriously, you all need to be watching Prodigal Son!
In the fall of 2008 I was in the midst of my worst semester ever at school. I was overextended, overstressed, and hadn't really slept in a long long time. Forget about having time to actually read a book, despite trying to carve out time to read the ARC of The Temptation of the Night Jasmine. But there was one thing I wasn't going to miss, and that was the chance to meet Lauren Willig! Since 2008 I have been lucky enough to go to several of Lauren's signings in the Chicago area; in 2010 for The Mischief of the Mistletoe, in 2012 for The Garden Intrigue, later in 2012 for the Romantic Times Convention, and in 2013 for The Ashford Affair, but I will still remember the first time. I remember almost missing the turn off to the library and doing a slightly illegal sharp turn. I remember that the library was having a book sale and I picked up a biography on E.M. Forster. But most of all I remember that despite how awesome the other authors were, and are, my mom is a huge fan of Julie Hyzy because of this event where I was introduced to her, the audience was there for Lauren. While searching my email recently for Lauren related topics, I actually found the note I sent to my friend from the aforementioned "A Subway Interlude" regarding the Cozy Library Event in Gurnee and thought it might be fun to publish it here to get my account without the fog of seven years obscuring odd details. Though I couldn't help myself from adding an addendum or five... and fixing some egregious spelling errors.
A few weeks back now, on April 12th, I was lucky enough to see Lauren in person at the Warren-Newport public library down in Gurnee, Illinois. Now this was not my first time meeting Lauren or ever my first time meeting Lauren at this library. The first time I met her was before I was a blogger and had just restarted going to school for Graphic Design and I trekked down to Illinois to gush at Lauren about her first four books with the fifth, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine in ARC form. It's hard to imagine that so much would happen in the intervening years. I never would have thought that I would be where I am now and running this blog which I love, but I could have guessed that Lauren would be a huge success, with nine Pink Carnation books in print, the tenth arriving this summer and the eleventh underway, and her first stand alone, The Ashford Affair out and hitting the charts, with her second stand alone off with her editors, and a baby on the way. She's been one busy lady!
