Books In Bath #2: Austen's Emma

LOOK. On this week's edition of books 
in the bath, I give you Jane Austen's
Emma. Arguably her fittest work: a tight
marvel of deathtrap implications worked 
and sprung by a heroine so mindfully,
thoughtlessly intent on general improvement
schemes that she was once underplayed by
Gwennyth Paltrow, of all actresses! 

If memory serves, someone slept on my
arm the whole film, and then pretended
to have an understanding. Meanwhile,
Paltrow stood out on the poster: arm 
outstretched, arrow nocked - and a
prettiest little bull's-eye just out of
frame! One supposes, by the angle 
of wink and smile. Well, 
in the bath, I'll spare you
the dog-eared corners, the many
passages underlined in pencil
or circled and marked out by
quotes, and simply note

that Austen's heroine, here
has her handsful of more than just
bowstring and fletching. Fetch me
a prized apple for my own head! I
don't doubt that hawk's eye of hers
might knock it through in one, for once!

Otherwise, 
simply let the bath run
in hot and cold tears streaming from
my eyes, raising cackles of bitter chagrin
in an increasingly unseasonably steamy
milieu, a scene better off left pitched
'twixt Charybdis and a great clashing
of legs in foam and suds,
somewhere off Gibraltar, where there's
a bride in a wetsuit
waiting for 
her cue,

perhaps. Or perhaps we'd all protest,
"Too much!" Anyway, by the time my eyes
cleared and my lungs, I was so wroth
what with all the merry doings and undoings
(in the book: she's a bit of a matchmaker,
our Emma) that you could have swung me 
from a folly hung in tire and rope, off and over
a cliff! And expected
to see me drop like a stone, 
without much difference
to how this poor tome ended up:
pristine,
mint condition. Unharmed
by dash of waters or water vapors,
unhurtled at any wall, 
held 

carefully by the covers or cradled by spine, and
at all times: fine, and more than fair. A good read
for sure,

and I am I hope
a more than fair judge of such things. 

All this, a very different experience
entirely from the last time we had 
books in the bath, if you'll recall. 

Some things can and should be laid 
at the author's head, and I can't be 
blamed for how heavy Max 
Stirner can get. I hope