i managed a lovely wee quarter hour yesterday meeting up with a friend of my to, initially, have a chat about middlemarch. she's way younger than me and hadn't read middlemarch before. me, i'm old, antisocial (see previous post!), and i'd read middlemarch after a gap of 7 years or so. i was surprised that the middlemarch i read this time seemed much more open, characters that used to be feel sympathetic (i'm looking at you dorothea!), characters that didn't (arthur brooke and even, to a certain extent, poor old causabon), and so different from what my friend had read. what a lovely experience to be able to share different perspectives!
i'd shy away from any attempt of what defines a classic. but i think there's something that speaks to humanity. both of us liked how the characters, despite being fictional, despite the gulf of time, were instantly recognisable and identifiable. here's rebecca mead talking about this sort of thing in the new yorker
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