There's been another little flurry of interest in Beowulf lately, mainly evidenced by a DVD that has been circulating a lot, with Ray Winstone, Robin Wright Penn, John Malkovich et al. A few years ago a new translation came out by Seamus Heaney, too.
My favorite version of the Beowulf epic was the one John Gardner did from the point of view of the monster, titled "Grendel". A short book, quirky and well worth reading. (I am a big John Gardner fan, "The Sunlight Dialogues" was my Bible during high school).

Last Thursday had a very good time listening to William Cobb speak at the West Regional branch of the MPL, for the Mobile Writers Guild. He did a reading and then answered some questions, one answer being that William Faulkner is the greatest writer this country ever produced. Faulkner is who you want to take with you when you're going someplace over the summer or some other lengthy period of time, when you can't take a lot of books along, but you don't want to run out and be stuck with nothing to read either.


I just finished reading his Cobb's "Wings of Morning" which in addition to being VERY good --about the civil rights movement -- had some minor concern with catfish. Larry Brown's book "A Miracle of Catfish" had a section in it concerning the old mother catfish in the catfish ponds one of his characters ran too -- I wonder if anyone has ever done an essay or a thesis or something on the catfish and collective-subconscious/monster themes in Southern literature.

I remember back when I was in high school a scuba diver went down into the Lake of the Ozarks to observe one of the big catfish they had down there and came back in a state of total terror -- bug-eyed, white, and trembling. He said the thing was as big as a house and he thought it was going to GET him. Heard a rumor one time the OgoPogo was actually a big catfish too.

More on the British psyche; Jane Gardam, who wrote "Old Filth" about the Raj orphans ('Filth' stands for "Failed in London Try Hongkong") and "Faith Fox", several others.
The Raj orphans were the children of British stationed in India and similar parts of the empire who at the advanced age of seven or so were sent back to England to board with more or less strangers, so they would grow up to be true British. Rudyard Kipling had a lot to say on this subject too.

Caroline Blackwood wrote several darker novels about the same world, about halfway between Molly Keane and Wuthering Heights. "Great Granny Webster" is the first one that springs to mind.

On a lighter note, a writer named Eva Rice wrote a nice book called "The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets", similar setting and characters but not nearly so dire.