Aubrey Smith’s character in the 1939 film The Four Feathers, parts of which seem to have drifted into Rutherfurd’s imaginarium-eventually allows Trader into his demesne, but only after Trader loses an eye and thereafter projects a Lord Nelson–ish aspect. The stern Scottish general who inspects him in India, whose “eyebrows turned up at the ends so that he looked like a noble hawk”-think C. “I can chop his head.” Grandfather is a fellow named John Trader, who appears early in this century-spanning story as an ambitious lad who lives up to his last name shifting opium and tea. “Shall I kill him, Grandfather?” asks the young lad who lobbed the googly. Here it plays out in a tale full of Orientalizing clichés that would drive Edward Said to despair, from the obligatory “Confucius says” to yowling rebels dispatched by heroic Britons, with one such ingrate coming a cropper thanks to an expertly hurled cricket ball. An overstuffed coffer of silver yuan, renegade generals, general yearning, jeweled nail guards, and pilfered testicles.Ĭhina: The Novel may have all the marketing ring of Hot Dog.The Movie, but Rutherfurd’s formula over half a dozen period soaps remains constant: Take a historical period, populate it with dashing and dastardly characters, and go to town.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |