If you’re interested in silent films and will be attending our film series (The Mark of Zorro is playing on Wed., Sept. 12), you may be interested in a few of our books too:
Alfred Hitchcock’s Silent Films by Marc Raymond Strauss
Who knew Hitchcock did silents? Not me. He directed ten films in five years (1925-1929), developing his cinematic techniques for later use in the well-remembered films like Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds, and more.
Stroheim by Arthur Lennig
UAlbany’s own Associate Professor Emeritus in the Art Department, Dr. Lennig examines the life and work of the great silent film director Erich von Stroheim (The Wedding March, Queen Kelly, Greed, La Grande Illusion).
History of Film by David Parkinson
This compact survey of film from it’s earliest form in moving pictures to world cinema in the 1990s is heavily illustrated with film stills and an extensive bibliography.
Categories: events · nonfiction
Tagged: book list, classics, film, library program, nonfiction
What do you think happens to Janie after the book? Does she settle back in Eatonville, living among her old friends and neighbors? Or could Janie soon suffer from rabies and die? She had been bitten by Tea Cake during the fight in which she shot him (p. 184); the doctor had previously expressed concern that towards the end of his illness, Tea Cake was a threat to Janie, that he might bite her.
Robert Haas wrote an article, “Might Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie Woods Be Dying of Rabies? Considerations from Historical Medicine” (Literature and Medicine 19, no. 2 (Fall 2000) 205-228) in which he argues that everything else the doctor said to Janie came true as far as Tea Cake’s illness, and so why wouldn’t his specific warning that Tea Cake might bite her and give her rabies also come true. Could Janie be telling Pheoby her story because she won’t be around for very long to tell it herself? What do you think?
Categories: fiction
Tagged: Big Read, book discussion, classics, fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
One of the questions from the NEA’s Big Read discussion questions for Their Eyes Were Watching God is:
”Why does Janie choose to tell her story only to her best friend Pheoby? How does Pheoby respond at the end of Janie’s tale?”
Do you think Janie will tell her story to others as time goes on? Why or why not?
At the end of the book (p. 192) Pheoby says to Janie,
“Ah done growed ten feet higher from jus’ listenin’ tuh you, Janie. Ah ain’t satisfied wid mahself no mo’. Ah means tuh make Sam take me fishin’ wid him after this.”
Do you suspect that Pheoby will be successful in her efforts to make changes in her life, like insisting that Sam take her fishing for starters?
Related links of interest:
Complete list of NEA Big Read discussion questions for the book
Categories: fiction
Tagged: Big Read, book discussion, classics, fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God
