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Gone With The Wind (column by George Will)
Townhall.com ^ | June 25, 2006 | George Will

Posted on 06/25/2006 9:55:57 AM PDT by EveningStar

Confined to her bed in Atlanta by a broken ankle and arthritis, she was given a stack of blank paper by her husband, who said, "Write a book." Did she ever.

The novel's first title became its last words, "Tomorrow is another day," and at first she named the protagonist Pansy. But Pansy became Scarlett, and the title of the book published 70 years ago this week became "Gone With the Wind."

You might think that John Steinbeck, not Margaret Mitchell, was the emblematic novelist of the 1930s, and that the publishing event in American fiction in that difficult decade was his "Grapes of Wrath." Published in 1939, it captured the Depression experience that many Americans had, and that many more lived in fear of. Steinbeck's novel became a great movie, and by now 14 million copies of the book have been sold...

(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: books; civilwar; dixie; franklyscarlett; georgefwill; georgewill; gonewiththewind; gwtw; history; literature; margaretmitchell; nostalgia; novels; robertelee; slavery; thesouth; wbts
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To: Dems_R_Losers
This passage struck me.

"Not trust a darky! Scarlett trusted them far more than most white people. ... They still stuck with their white folks and worked much harder than they ever worked in slave times."

In both the book and the movie, the character Mammy had more sense than all the white characters combined. She spoke more for the social traditions of the South than anyone else.

21 posted on 06/25/2006 10:48:49 AM PDT by Publius
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To: Bigg Red
As for capturing the spirit of the American woman, I hope that you don't see the grasping, conniving Scarlett as the archetypal American woman.

Actually, yes, Scarlett epitomizes the spirit of the American woman ain the early 21st century. She was a feminist before that term had even been dreamed up.

More than any other character in the book, Scarlett O'Hara is relevant to today's world. How many Melanie's do you see on the scene today?


22 posted on 06/25/2006 10:50:46 AM PDT by caryatid (Jolie Blonde, 'gardez donc, quoi t'as fait ...)
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To: caryatid

It's not that well-written but the story line and the characters are unmatched by anything, short of the novels of Charles Dickens.

Who can forget red-headed Will the foreman, or the Slatterys, or Aunt Pittypat, or Dilsey, not to mention Mammy, Pork, Suellen --- how many minor characters are there? And they all fit and they are all believable.

And the writing is awful.


23 posted on 06/25/2006 10:55:17 AM PDT by squarebarb
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To: EveningStar
I generally don't bother reading anything that George Will writes, but the subject matter got my attention here.

Discussions of whether GWTW is "great literature" are pointless - a matter simply in the eye of the beholder. The real test is whether it survives and once opened is read from cover to cover. It passes that test.

24 posted on 06/25/2006 10:56:53 AM PDT by Malesherbes
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To: justshutupandtakeit
William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust is one the best novels I've ever read.
25 posted on 06/25/2006 10:59:22 AM PDT by Alberta's Child (Can money pay for all the days I lived awake but half asleep?)
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To: Publius
In both the book and the movie, the character Mammy had more sense than all the white characters combined. She spoke more for the social traditions of the South than anyone else.

Not everyone in the South treated their slaves [and then former slaves] well; however, in my research, I have found countless examples where freed slaves chose not to leave their former owners or the plantations on which they lived. Others left but found really hard times ahead of them.

One very telling example is a story related to me recently by a 94 year old friend:

She was working for the local doctor in this rural county when a very elderly black man came in one day, with his hat in his hand, and said, "Excuse me, Miss, but they tell me you are Miss Austinia's granddaughter". She replied, "Yes, I am." He then told her, "We went North after the War. We were terribly poor and there was no work. If Miss Austinia had not taught me how to read, I never would have made it ...".

In this state, and probably in others as well, it was against the law to teach blacks to read. Schools were conducted on many plantations and children from surrounding farms were educated there. In any number of cases I have run across, black children were taught to read as well.

The South is much maligned and unrightly so. Slavery would have died a natural death as it had become un-economical in an increasingly industrial age. The history of this country was forever changed, and not for the better, by the deaths in the Civil War of a generation of the best young men ... South and North.


26 posted on 06/25/2006 11:06:00 AM PDT by caryatid (Jolie Blonde, 'gardez donc, quoi t'as fait ...)
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To: InterceptPoint

Yeah. Will and Gergen are typical of "conservatives" the liberal media puts on tv. Like David Brooks, they are house conservatives whose job it is to show the rest of the world that conservative opinion is honored; when in fact it's dismissed from the gitgo.


27 posted on 06/25/2006 11:13:38 AM PDT by kjo
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To: EveningStar; AnAmericanMother

My Grandmother was a friend of Margaret Mitchell's at one point in their lives. Until her dying day my Grandmother couldn't believe MM wrote that book.


28 posted on 06/25/2006 11:14:01 AM PDT by groanup (Shred For Ian)
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To: kalee

bookmark


29 posted on 06/25/2006 11:15:02 AM PDT by kalee
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To: AzaleaCity5691

I'd recommend it for entertainment and epic drama, but the "accurate portrayal of American history" is open to debate. ;)


30 posted on 06/25/2006 11:15:20 AM PDT by linda_22003
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To: groanup
LOL!

Don't know what the matter has been with Will lately. He seems to spend most of his time apologizing for being conservative.

He ought to just say what he thinks and let the chips fall where they may.

31 posted on 06/25/2006 11:21:18 AM PDT by AnAmericanMother ((Ministrix of Ye Chase, TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary (recess appointment)))
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To: likelyvoter

It's a book only a teenaged girl could love; the movie is worse.


32 posted on 06/25/2006 11:22:44 AM PDT by kjo
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To: groanup

MM had help from a Priest, but I can't remmber his name....my father wrote about it in his autobiography.


33 posted on 06/25/2006 11:31:49 AM PDT by Suzy Quzy ("When Cabals Go Kaboom"....upcoming book on Mary McCarthy's Coup-Plotters.)
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To: EveningStar
Mitchell had been born in 1900, just 35 years after Appomattox and 23 years after Reconstruction ended. Her sensibilities were not what ours are. The novel has passages that cannot be read without cringing. (``Not trust a darky! Scarlett trusted them far more than most white people. ... They still stuck with their white folks and worked much harder than they ever worked in slave times.'') But to read such passages is to be stunned, once again, by the amazing speed with which America has changed for the better. In 1936, in Mitchell's Atlanta, the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, Martin Luther King, had a son who was 7.

Thanks for a great post -- freedom allows our culture to turn on a dime. And sometimes for the better...

34 posted on 06/25/2006 11:34:37 AM PDT by GOPJ (Once you see the MSM manipulate opinion, all their efforts seem manipulative-Reformedliberal)
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To: EveningStar

I liked the Movie GWTW, but whoever wrote that sequel should have been horsewhipped.


35 posted on 06/25/2006 11:47:52 AM PDT by sgtbono2002 (The fourth estate is a fifth column.)
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To: EveningStar
I half-expected Will to say that GWTW has been surpassed by The Wind Done Gone.

GWTW prettifies slavery and justifies the post-war Ku Klux Klan. These are serious flaws but both institutions were long dead by the time the novel was written. More harm is done by a modern novel which justifies abortion (e.g., John Updike's Couples).

My college literature professor dismissed Gone with the Wind as a soap opera.

36 posted on 06/25/2006 12:11:04 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: EveningStar

37 posted on 06/25/2006 12:14:48 PM PDT by Donald Rumsfeld Fan ("fake but accurate": NY Times)
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To: sgtbono2002
I believe it was Alexandria Ripley who was to blame for the sequel.

As Groucho Marx says in one of the Marx Brothers movies, "I'd horsewhip you, if I had a horse."

38 posted on 06/25/2006 12:15:27 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: Verginius Rufus
My college literature professor dismissed Gone with the Wind as a soap opera.

I remember reading somewhere that 'Gone With the Wind' was rated the best movie of all time by the American people. Number two was 'Casablanca'.

39 posted on 06/25/2006 12:19:03 PM PDT by Donald Rumsfeld Fan ("fake but accurate": NY Times)
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To: Dems_R_Losers

If I had been a girl, my name would have been Melanie. Plenty of women my age who do have that name.


40 posted on 06/25/2006 12:22:17 PM PDT by RobbyS ( CHIRHO)
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