It may seem all fusty and 19th century, but Edith Wharton’s “Age of Innocence” has all the elements of a 2007 blockbuster: forbidden love and New York’s filthy rich. The Caldwell Public Library, which turns 90 this year, has chosen the 1921 Pulitzer Prize winner as its Big Read, and today they’ll be continuing to read the full book aloud. (They started last night.) Check out the public read, along with a street fair going on in Caldwell today.
Saturday, October 13, 2007 – Continue celebrating our 90th in a BIG READ way, and return at 9:00 a.m. for the continuation of our “public read;” we will pick up wherever we left off at midnight last night. The “public read” of The Age of Innocence will continue, with different readers continuing the read of the Pulitzer Prize winning Wharton novel. Our “public read” will be recorded for our local history room as well as to share with the one other institution reading Wharton’s classic this year – the Museo de Arte de Ponce, in Ponce, Puerto Rico.
One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors. Good to see someone still celebrating reading and great literature!
The street fair was last Sunday, not today.
More Edith Wharton and Age of Innocence events at http://www.caldwellpl.org. Please join us!
It might be heretical to suggest this, but the first screen version of this novel, the one with John Boles and Irene Dunne, strikes me as actually better than the last one. It’s a bit vague on the costuming and some of the settings as to when it’s actually occurring, but the film’s sensibilities are definitely grounded in the 19th century. I never felt that way about Scorsese’s overly fussy movie, especially not about Michelle Pfeiffer’s lost-at-sea performance which seemingly derived more from the Malibu Colony (and the vocal patterns uttered there daily)than from either Poland or “olde New York.”