Jeems

In celebration of Banned Books Week, I started reading Gone With the Wind today. I've never seen the film but have always wanted to. I noticed that on several tv series, there would be public movie nights where Gone With the Wind is the main attraction and hundreds of people would camp on town halls, so packed that mats and bodies and blankets cover almost the entirety of the vast, green grass. I'd always been curious but the only thing I knew about the film was that it's almost 4 hours long. Deep.

Going through a list of free e-books linked from Time.com, I initially clicked on George Orwell's 1984, aka one of the earliest dystopian novels, and found myself going through the first three paragraphs over and over in the span of 15 minutes. It's not gonna work out, I thought (obviously), so I moved on to Margaret Mitchell's novel. I was thoroughly enjoying the conversation between Scarlett, Stuart and Brent until the Tarleton twins left Tara and started talking about war. And then Jeems, their body servant, happened:

“Is y’all aimin’ ter go ter Mist’ Wynder’s? ‘Cause ef you is, you ain’ gwine git much supper,” said Jeems. “Dey cook done died, an’ dey ain’ bought a new one. Dey got a fe’el han’ cookin’, an’ de niggers tells me she is de wustest cook in de state.” 

“No, Ah ain’!” cried Jeems in alarm. “No, Ah ain’! Ah doan git no mo’ fun outer havin’ Miss Beetriss lay me out dan y’all does. Fust place she’ll ast me huccome Ah let y’all git expelled agin. An’ nex’ thing, huccome Ah din’ bring y’all home ternight so she could lay you out. An’ den she’ll light on me lak a duck on a June bug, an’ fust thing Ah know Ah’ll be ter blame fer it all. Ef y’all doan tek me ter Mist’ Wynder’s, Ah’ll lay out in de woods all night an’ maybe de patterollers git me, ‘cause Ah heap ruther de patterollers git me dan Miss Beetriss when she in a state.”

Wuh? My reading spiraled down to 10 wpm by deciphering dat aksuhnt. Crazy. But I got to finish Chapter 1, which means I now have two options: a. continue reading at least a chapter per workday (yes, at work, because that's the only time I get to tolerate e-books) or, b. quit the entire thing, aka my hobby. Ha ha. I guess I'll go with the former, until my senses can handle it. 

As with every book that I read, I didn't want to spoil myself, but of course I did. Not entirely, just a bit of whoas from Wiki and Goodreads and that's about it. I am a master at failing myself.