Wuthering Heights by Jim Pipe
My rating: 2/5 cats
just a bad idea all around.
my own damn fault, really – i should have done some research before ordering this. it is not a graphic novel version of wuthering heights. it is more like an illustrated cliffs notes version of wuthering heights, put out by barron’s. it’s not as though they commissioned a proper illustrator for it, and made a genuine graphic adaptation, which is a bummer. sorry, nick spender, but you aren’t charles burns...
and jim pipe, who gets credit for having “retold” this classic story of everlasting love and deliberate cruelty, has summarized one of the most emotional, pivotal scenes thusly:
Nelly is in the kitchen rocking Hareton on her knee, when Cathy reveals that Edgar has asked her to marry him. Unknown to the two women, Heathcliff is listening. He can bear no more and leaves in a rage of despair.
accompanied by a drawing of what looks like this guy:
way to suck all the emotional resonance out of a scene, keeeeee-rist.
if you don’t wanna read the book, fine. if you wanna just watch the movie, fine. if you are a cliffs notes kind of person, fine. but what kind of person are the cliffs notes not easy enough for?? who needs this shit to be (poorly) illustrated?? what is wrong with the world that allows something like this to exist??
everything.
i have never used cliffs notes or any shortened form of study guide, because i know how to read. but if this is the way all of those things are, then i am officially depressed for anyone who has ever used them. this takes all the soul out of the book, and makes it terrible. it is more work to read this flat piece of shit than to read the entire novel (even the first 40 or so “boring” pages) but there are just enough actual lines for you to think you are getting the original work. trust me, you’re not.
also, i hate you.
but if you don’t know what “flogged” or “locket” mean, read this book – it has footnotes to help you. yeah, just like infinite jest.
