Seems necessary to say farewell to Burmese Days. Being the first book-length electronic text I’ve read, I wonder how it would have gone had I not been familiar with the work. It did take an effort and an extraordinary amount of time to finish, and I think that’s because it wasn’t waiting atop the bedside stack every night. I had to remember to read it.
I’d call this my most attentive reading of it. That may be because I know I’m by nature a careless reader of electronic copy, so I gave the effort a little extra. It turns out it is a book worthy of a little extra.
Elizabeth has grown mature surprisingly quickly, and a certain hardness of manner that always belonged to her has become accentuated. Her servants live in terror of her, though she speaks no Burmese. She has an exhaustive knowledge of the Civil List, gives charming little dinner-parties and knows how to put the wives of subordinate officials in their places--in short, she fills with complete success the position for which Nature had designed her from the first, that of a burra memsahib.
I’m not sure I always know the difference between irony and tragedy.
Well, Mel Brooks says that tragedy is when I cut my finger; comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die. So maybe irony is when you walk into an open sewer and die and you're the sewer inspector.
Posted by: Alan Allport at March 2, 2005 02:51 PMLOL
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at March 2, 2005 04:35 PM