Coincidence & #TheGuernseyLiteraryAndPotatoPeelPieSociety

“When respect for other people goes out the window, the gates of hell are surely opened and ignorance is king.” 

#TheGuernseyLiteraryAndPotatoPeelPieSociety

Okay. This is a twofer.

Coincidence #1:

A week or so ago, my best friend / friendgirl texted me and asked what I knew about Charles and Mary Lamb. No context, just that question. I wrote back and said that all I knew was that they had written a book called Tales From Shakespeare which retold The Bard's plays so that children could understand and appreciate them. She thanked me and said she was going to go look for it. I thought that that was kind of strange, as I've been reading for about fifty-five years and I don't think I've ever heard anyone else mention Charles and Mary Lamb. But I stopped thinking about it almost immediately.

This morning I was folding some laundry and I decided to watch something while I did it. I tried to news, but it was just the same old thing. I looked at what I had recorded, and just didn't feel like going there. So I dialed it over to Netflix and started going through My List. Nope. Nope. Nope. Went over to look at Trending Now. Was going through the list when I needed to focus on folding for a moment, and as I did the show on which I had paused in my  search began to play a preview. It was  The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society. Of which I'd vaguely heard, but was not in the least bit interested. But as the Preview played, I saw that it was about a book group...and Nazis...so I thought what the heck and hit the play button.

It didn't take long before a character in the story mentioned Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. I immediately paused the movie and texted my friendgirl, asking if she had seen the movie and if that is why she had asked me about the Lambs. She texted back "Yes!" immediately.

So that's a pretty weird coincidence, ennit? I mean, of all the things I could have watched, I happened to watch that show.

Coincidence #2:

I started liking the movie quite a bit, so I continued to watch it even after the laundry had all been folded. And I was brought up short when one of the characters said the line

“When respect for other people goes out the window, the gates of hell are surely opened and ignorance is king.” 

to a sleeping Nazi. (He'd been sent to monitor the group, but he couldn't take the boredom engendered by a bunch of people talking about books and ideas and such stuff.) That line really hit me, and I wanted to see where it had come from, so I paused the movie and Googled. So far as I could tell, it was original to the movie...though there was a vague comment that it was similar to something said in Walter Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz. So I thought I'd go and have a look for that...but as I was on the movie page for the quote, I happened to see that the name of the actor who had said the line was Tom Courtenay. That rang a bell...a distant bell...miles away and muffled by thick fog. So I Googled his name. 

His first movie was The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, in 1962. When he was 25 years old. And if that sounds familiar, then thank you, because you must be a loyal reader of my blog. Yesterday morning I watched The Loneliness of the Long Distance runner, and one of my comments about it was the the guy who played the lead looked a lot older than the part called for, but he was in fact only 25 years old. And just to add to the level of coincidence, the only reason I watched that movie was because a former student had recently Facebook Friend Requested me, and I remembered that she was a long distance runner, which made me want to re-read that story. When I looked on the library website I saw that there was a movie, requested it, and just happened to get around to watching it yesterday morning. So in the space of less than 24 hours I saw Tom Courtenay age 56 years.

That's pretty weird, isn't it?

Is this mic on?

P.S. I did a little poking around, and I found two passage from A Canticle for Leibowitz which could be seen as inspiring the line from the movie:

"Ignorance has been our king. Since the death of empire, he sits unchallenged on the throne of Man. His dynasty is age-old. His right to rule is now considered legitimate. Past sages have affirmed it. They did nothing to unseat him."

&

"Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges."

Wow. That is some powerful stuff, isn't it. I think I'm going to need to read that novel right quick soon.