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Nancy and I went to the Shakespeare Festival St. Louis performance of Othello* this past summer. And just this past week I finally actually read the play for myself. Boy, what a portrait of pure evil Iago—“honest Iago”— is! And for what? To what end? Just because he’s ancient instead of lieutenant to Othello? To get Roderigo’s money? Seriously?

No. Not seriously. It’s even simpler than that. He’s just supposed to be a depiction of evil. He’s not motivated by anything. He’s unmotivatable, even. (Unmotivatable??) He’s just there so we can put a face on evil. So we can see how it’s tricky. It’s untrue. It may look beautiful. Friendly. Loving, even. And honest. Honest. Each main character at some point speaks of “good Iago” or “honest Iago” or even “honest, honest Iago.” Everyone is duped by this devil.

Except us. We readers and audience members get to see it all. And it ain’t pretty. We just have to sit helplessly by and watch everyone be taken by this scoundrel. To the bitter end. The bitter, bitter end.

I guess it’s kind of nice, though, that Shakespeare doesn’t give us any reason to like Iago. Sometimes that burden is too painful: recognizing the humanity or goodness that exists in what we want to see as just evil. That’s not easy. But it’s real.

Everything’s not black or white, good or evil. People aren’t doing things we think are evil for the pure pleasure of doing evil or because they’re simply evil themselves. Heck, the people or things we think are evil, under more scrutiny, might prove to be quite the opposite. That’s hard to accept. That’s hard to even consider most of the time.

So thank you, Shakespeare, for making it easy for us in this play. For taking us out of this real world for a few hours and letting us see things how we want to see them. And for letting us come back to this real word thankful that at least there aren’t a bunch of real Iagos running around.

After spending an evening with my youngest niece, I decided to take a short break from drama to read that book I read every Christmas break from the time I was about 16 or 17 to the time I was about 22 or 23* (she had just finished reading it for school). It was either junior or senior year in high school, right before Christmas break, when my English teacher Miss Burch had said she thought I’d enjoy it, and so I picked up a copy from The Book Emporium and read it. She was right; thus my annual reading of it. I guess I kind of knew where old Holden was coming from. I don’t know if I exactly got out of it what Miss Burch thought I would, but still.

We adults have probably all read it at least once. As teenagers, most likely. I’d invite you to read it again as an adult. I mean, 21 or so years later I still love the book. I read it differently, though, I think. I mean, jeez! I’m probably older than the oldest person mentioned in the book. Well maybe not older than the Spencers. Although to a 17-year-old, someone my age might seem to be a million years old, so they may not be that old. But, as usual, I digress. Back to the book.

As an adult I can see how old Holden’s taking everything way too seriously. Remember that? Remember how high school was soooo important How everything that everyone said and did we took so personally? How we felt like every tiny little thing in the world was “All. About. Me.” How we hated “phonies.” We, as old Mr. Antolini says, were on a path to “hate people who say ‘It’s a secret between he and I’.” We broke rules and got hurt and hurt others. We loved and hated and had to learn to forgive … everybody. Ourselves. Our parents and teachers. Our brothers and sisters. Our best friends. Our worst enemies. How in the heck did we get through that?

I wonder if maybe parents oughtta read this book when they have teenage children. I mean, it really reminded me of how it felt back then. And I think it would do a lot of us adults a lot of good to remember that sometimes.

Oh, by the way. This picture is of Patrick’s copy of the book. Mine is packed away in a “duplicate copies” box somewhere. He was a (self-described) maniac about keeping his books in near pristine condition. Like he barely opened them when he read them so he wouldn’t make any creases on the spine. I tried to keep from making creases in his book’s spine when I read it. If I hadn’t been so lazy, I would’ve searched for my ratty old copy so I wouldn’t’ve had worry about it… Oh well.

Still on drama. Still on Shakespeare. Still on his later works. This one, The Winter’s Tale,* a true tragedy.

Where the “great tragedies” deal in the truly tragic — and pretty much only the tragic — this true tragedy does more. And less: less tragic. For sure. But more? The more: Recreation. Regeneration. Rebirth.

Ahhh…. makes me reminisce a little. Bear with me, sorry. Anyway. So, I had to pick up that book I read every Christmas break from the time I was about 16 to the when I was probably 22 or 23. So it’s been at least 21 years since I’ve read it. And I must say, when I read, where did the ducks go* that really got me. I guess you had to be there.

Anyway, so back to Shakespeare.

The foolish king, too eager to believe his own stupid fantasies (sound familiar?), suffers great and tragic loss (oh, too familiar). Then later, his colleague, equally foolish (at least at the time), comes very close to suffering his own tragic loss. What is with these king-fools? Really!

But thank goodness! No more tragedy! The foolish kings realize how silly they were and each learns his lesson. Yay! It almost seems too easy.

So you probably all think I’m some lightning-fast reader or something. Oh, nay. Not so. It’s just that plays are relatively short, as books go. You know, they’re meant to be performed in the course of a couple hours, so… you get the drift.

Anyway, The Tempest is a lovely romance — you could interpret that as love story, but I really mean it more like this: “a medieval tale dealing with a hero of chivalry, of the kind common in the Romance language” (from my OS X Dictionary widget). It’s a tale of transformation, like King Lear, only not tragic. And really, everyone is transformed. Well, maybe except Miranda and Ferdinand, who just seem to be perfect from the get-go.

But on the love-story angle, I did tear up when I read this from Ferdinand:

[…] My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.
My father’s loss, the weakness which I feel,
The wrack of all my friends, nor this man’s threats
To whom I am subdued, are but light to me,
Might I but through my prison once a day
Behold this maid […] (52-53)

Isn’t that beautiful? And then later, when Prospero has him (Ferdinand) hauling logs, Miranda:

If you’ll sit down,
I’ll bear your logs the while. Pray give me that:
I’ll carry it to the pile. (74)

And Ferdinand doesn’t even yet know her name!

Shakespeare can really tell it.

So again, I’ve added all performances I can find to my Netflix queue. I’m a little disappointed, though, because Peter Greenaway’s film, Prospero’s Books, is not available on Netflix.

References are to The Pelican Shakespeare edition.

Drama is so fun to read! I’m sure I read this in college in Mr. Cerniglia’s theater class. I really loved that class. But I sure don’t remember this play. I remember how Mr. Cerniglia would pronounce “misanthrope,” though. It was very beautiful sounding when he said it.

It was also very beautiful sounding when my second-eldest niece said it. That was years ago. She was maybe 8 or 9 years old. She and her younger brother were staying with us for a weekend, and it was our tradition to always try to teach the kids a new word when they stayed with us. That year, her word was “misanthrope.” She loved it. I’m pretty sure she hadn’t heard of Molière’s The Misanthrope</a* when she offered to put on a little play for us. The image of her and her brother holding up these silly masks I’d made of Patrick and me, and her dramatically posing and saying, “I FEEEEL like a mees-ann-THROOOOOOPE!” will be with me all my days, I think.

I’ll also be fond of coincidences all my days. Here’s one: At the very end of the introduction to the play: “The Misanthrope is Molière’s Hamlet.” Good one.

P.S. The book in which I read this play is a used copy. Someone else’s notes & underlining…

Remember last week (?!) when I read Hamlet after having watched all the episodes from the Canadian television program Slings & Arrows? Yes, the same thing happened with King Lear (season 3, and final). I’d never read it, so… I added it to my list.

So this morning I emerged from my reading station and said to Patrick, “Lear is a vain, old idiot.” Then later, “I mean, banishing Kent, who’s pretty much the only person he can trust?” To which he replied, “Yes, but if he hadn’t, you’d have no play.”

I’m sorry for calling Lear a vain, old idiot. And now I’ll go dry my eyes and fill my glass.

Oh yes, this was exactly the thing to read after Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Tom Stoppard’s R&G (or G&R) definitely bring to mind Samuel Beckett’s Didi and Gogo (or Gogo and Didi). I was thinking this morning about whether I would have preferred to read Waiting for Godot before I read R&GAD … I’m not sure. There was something about the joy I felt making the connection, but from latter to former.

I felt the same thing when I read Hamlet“>Infinite Jest.”*":/pages/legal#affiliate It was so cool to think, “Wow, Hal is Hamlet with out the met!” and “And his mom is living with his uncle!” and “His father…” well, not quite the same as Hamlet’s father… you should just read that part for yourself. But he (Hal’s father) does sort of haunt him (Hal). In a way. Anyway. I digress.

Back to WFG. I had recently read this post, Revising Prose, by Jason Z. of 37 Signals. And I really liked the dull vs. dynamic diagram near the end. The gist is that if you put a hard return after each sentence in your paragraph and the right “rag” is pretty even, the rhythm of the paragraph is more likely to be dull than if the “rag” is more, well, ragged. When you’re reading drama, with lots of dialog and few soliloquies, you can really see this. And when it’s Beckett, you really, really see it:

It’s really pretty, isn’t it? I love the shapes the white space makes. And it was really pleasing to read, too. It just moved along so nicely.

I’m tellin’ ya. I’m totally going off topic here. I know as a kid I loved to read. Mom would take us to the library a lot and I’d get as many books as she (and the library) would let me. And in high school, Ms. Burch really got me to love contemporary and classic literature — so much so, that that was actually what I read for pleasure.

Of course, then… later I got a job… and then a car… and then old enough to go to bars… and… well… I didn’t read as much as I had previously. I still read, just not as often — probably not daily.

When I started hanging around with Patrick and Jason, they both were heavy readers and often would talk about what they were reading, so I sort of got back into it. I’d at least read daily. But not well, I don’t think. And certainly not quickly (I’m still sorta slow).

And now, after 20 years with Patrick, while I don’t spend my whole day reading, I think the quality of my reading is really pretty good. I think I may pay more attention or something. Or maybe it’s just that he always recommends the best stuff for me to read. Or maybe it’s that I love it when I’ve read something really cool and I have to run into his office to tell him about it and it seems like it makes him happy. Probably all of it.

OK. Back to WFG. Again. There’s so much I want to say about this short work! but I’ll just say this one last thing. I asked Patrick if it was supposed to make you think “Waiting for God.” He said there are people who take it that way. I can see that.

Man, this was a long one. And my writing’s not quite that of Beckett… or Stoppard… or DFW… or Shakespeare. Not even close. So stop reading this and go grab something good to read.

But come back again soon and read some more stuff on Hurley House, OK?

My Patrick is so smart. I’d told him about what I had in my reading queue, and he suggested that if I wanted to, I could put Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead* by Tom Stoppard in there. Just to keep in the same vein, you know. A few — more than a few? several? — years back, when he (Patrick) was teaching a literature class, he taught Hamlet* followed by R&GAD for good reason… obviously. Reading them in that order worked out well for me, too.

So I’ll recommend it to you! Read Hamlet followed by R&GAD. Then watch the movie directed by Tom Stoppard and starring Tim Roth, Gary Oldman, and Richard Dreyfus.* (It’s available watch instantly on Netflix … today (12/4/2012), anyway.)

Stoppard does such an excellent job with this tragicomedy. Here’s a little telling treat: “What are you playing at?” “Words. That’s all we’ve got.” It seems so simple, but isn’t. Not really. You read these simple exchanges and go deeper. It’s really cool.

If you’re interested, you could read the description on the back of the book (or on amazon) for a hint about something you’ll be hearing about from me very soon. Not that I’m trying to be like Patrick or anything. Oh wait. Sure I am. Everybody should.

I’ve been really busy with work lately, so I haven’t posted about what I’ve been reading. Don’t fret, though, I am still reading!

So you know how when Patrick’s at work (and I’m not busy working myself) I’ll just sit around and watch stuff on Netflix all night? Well, I was re-addicted to the Canadian television program Slings & Arrows, and that really made me want to read some Shakespeare. Enter Hamlet.

I don’t think I ever read Hamlet. Not sure why. So I grabbed this edition that Patrick has of Hamlet* and jumped in.

We all know the story: King’s brother kills him, marries his wife, and becomes king. King’s son/nephew-son learns of the treason/incest and must exact revenge. Tragic. Everyone dies.

My notes:

1. This edition was a bit distracting to me. There’s a little mark after every word/phrase that could possibly need a little clarification, and a footnote for that clarification at the bottom of the page. OK. I get it. I was reading a “critical” copy. Next time, though, I’m going for the old Penguin Classics edition. Those little marks just interrupted the poetry too much for me.
2. I had never thought about this before: pretty much all our sayings these days that don’t come from Oscar Wilde, come from Shakespeare.
3. I wondered why parts of the play were in the iambic pentameter form, and some were not. There must be a reason. Haha. I bet it was discussed in one of the essays in this edition. Or maybe not. But still. I didn’t read the essays. All I read was the introductory material that comes immediately before the play and the play itself. I wasn’t in the mood to study Hamlet, just to enjoy it.
4. But, not to contradict what I said in 3, I did benefit from that introductory material. It sort of gave me insight into what the people at the time expected of a play and so helped me put myself into something more like that mindframe while reading it.
5. I’ve added every performance (that I could find) of the play to my Netflix queue.

Well, that was fast. OK, sure it’s technically a children’s book. And the type is fairly large. And the margins are fairly large. But still. I’ve been so busy lately it seems I don’t have a lot of time to read, so this was the perfect book to pick.

Who Could That Be at This Hour?* is the first in Lemony Snicket’s new series, All the Wrong Questions. This time, our hero is Mr. Snicket himself. So far, anyway.

I loved his Series of Unfortunate Events,* and so was very happy to find out there was a new series. And so far, it does not disappoint. Snicket is a 13-year-old apprentice to an inept chaperone, working on solving a mystery. I won’t give you details, because you should really read the book yourself. If you liked ASOUE for more than just the story of the Baudelaire siblings, for the style and grace of the writing, then you’ll surely like this new series (at least the first book).

Just as an aside, I love the way he can really simplify things without over-simplifying them to the point where it’s condescending. Maybe it’s his humor. His gentlemanly prose. I dunno. But like this: “It reminds me of a book my father used to read to me…a bunch of elves and things get into a huge war over a piece of jewellery that everybody wants but nobody can wear” (237). Nice one.

Go forth and read, my friends.

Confession: I’m sort of in love with this book. Correction: not sort of.

I tried to read Watt* by Samuel Beckett, oh, probably 10 years ago or so. I couldn’t do it then. Maybe I didn’t have enough patience. Or maybe my mind wasn’t in the right place. Or maybe I didn’t have the right reading background yet. Whatever the reason, I simply could not read this book then.

I’m reading it now. My bookmark is almost in the middle of the book. And I love it. I think every day I walk into Patrick’s office and tell him how much I love this book.

So long story short: this book is not for everyone.

It is, haha, actually, short story long. And dense. The story is short, but long and dense. 254 pages long. Dense, dense, dense. But awesome. The length and density. The story, well, the story is secondary, I think. To the density and length. Or the length and the density. And the length, I guess, too, is secondary. To the density. It’s the density. The density of the language. It’s poetic. OK. Now. That’s it. The poetry. That is primary. Everything else—the story, the length, the density. Secondary to the poetry. But maybe that’s not entirely true. Maybe everything else—the story, the length, and the density—is the poetry. Without everything else—the story, the length, and the density—can their be poetry? Sure. Yeah. True. Poetry doesn’t depend on story or length or density. Sometimes poetry doesn’t want story or length or density. Just words.

There are lots of words in Watt. I’m not going to count them. But there are lots. Just trust me.

OK. Non-sequitur here. I may love this so much because I think of Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity* by David Foster Wallace. The part near the beginning when he talks about how, you know, you wake up early in the morning before it’s actually time to wake up and you start thinking metaphysically… about the floor. And why you trust the floor. Why you trust it will be there when you put your foot on it. And it will hold you up. It won’t collapse and send you into the basement to lie in a pile of rubble. Why? Because the last time you stood on it it held you up. It didn’t collapse and send you into the basement to lie in a pile of rubble. So this time will be the same. Right? Or will it? And then. And then. And then. What is it? Is it real? How do I know it’s real? Am I awake? Does that make a difference? Is what my mind conceives when I’m awake more real than what it conceives when I’m asleep? Isn’t reality really just in my mind anyway? Isn’t (as my speech teacher in college always said) “perception situated in the subject”? Isn’t my perception mine alone? And isn’t that real?

Yeah, so this book makes me do that. In the daytime. After I’m all the way awake. No question about it. I’m awake.

…

…

Or am I?

I can’t decide what I should write about this book, Ubik* by Philip K. Dick. Mainly because I don’t want to be a spoiler, so I don’t really want to talk about the story.

There’s the delightfully simple cover design for the edition I’m reading, of course. I think it speaks for itself, though.

Maybe this: It’s so interesting to read a book that was published in 1969, and set (mainly) in 1992. Alyson was born in 1992. She probably doesn’t remember too much about that year, but I’m here to tell her that it’s pretty different from PKD’s vision in Ubik.

Isn’t it funny to read another person’s vision of a future that’s in your own past? Like for instance in the 1992 of Ubik—this doesn’t spoil anything, promise—we have colonized Mars and the moon, and you have to pay to use pretty much everything: 5 cents to open the door to your conapt (apartment), for example. No, we hadn’t colonized Mars or the moon by 1992… or 2012, even. But then…

Then there’s the anachronistic stuff. Is that the word I mean to use? I think so. So the setting is, what, 25 years later than when the book was written. How’s the music scene? I worked at a record store that year, in real life. Yes, we still sold some vinyl, mainly 12-inch singles meant for DJs. We had lots of tapes, and cassette singles. And CDs. Crap-loads of CDs. CDs were our main source of revenue. How was PKD to predict CDs? Our hero plays an LP (OK, yes, LPs have made a resurgence, and Patrick and I try to buy music on vinyl when possible—vinyl is final, as Jenny’s dad used to say—but still). And he has some tapes. In PKD’s 1992, you mainly listen to LPs and tapes.

But your refrigerator charges you to open it—10 cents, I think. And speaks to you. And people don’t know how to drive what they call “surface vehicles” (cars). All travel is by air/spaceship/whatever.

And then the clothing. The clothing is hysterical! Everyone seems to dress like a caricature of a complete freak. And PKD describes everyone’s outfit in great detail. Killer. It’s all like real and everything. I mean it’s kind of actually sometimes pieces that would have been worn in 1969 and even earlier. They just put their ensembles together, let’s just say, eccentrically.

It’s really a fun read. And in true PKD form has me wondering what the heck is real… to the characters and to myself.

Wow. OK. What I’ve read, actually. I started what. Ten days ago. Ten? That long? I guess so. I’ve always said I’m slow. But now I’m finished. I cried a little when I finished Mao II.* Not when I finished this, though. No. Why? I don’t know. When I started reading it, I sort of didn’t like it as much as I wanted to. Patrick had said, “It’s not his best novel.” Maybe. I am impressionable. I am the highly impressionable type. Was that why? Maybe. There was a little too much sex for me. Not my style. And I didn’t like Eric. He’s pretty much a jerk. But that’s not why, either, I don’t think. No. Maybe there’s no reason. But then I did like it. I kind of loved it. I couldn’t stop reading. I just sat there and read. So much work to do. Tons to do. Work, work, work. But I just read. Sitting there. Reading. I read it all up like a good girl. And I sort of liked Eric by the end. There was a specific point at which I thought he became human. “Good. That would be nice. Thank you Anthony” (162). Matt asked me if I liked to read different books by the same author right in a row. Do I? I do it. Does that mean I like it? Does it run together? Did I notice something about this that was like that? Yes. I reread that passage because it reminded me. It did. But now I’m finished. I started because Chris said they’d seen the movie. People walked out, he said. I found that funny. I like it when people walk out of movies. And I don’t. Walk out. I don’t walk out. I don’t think I’ve ever walked out. Of a movie. Even a really crappy one. We’ll probably watch the movie on Netflix sometime. “He realized he’d known this feeling before, tenuously, not nearly so dense and textured…” (205). I reread that. It reminded me. “How do we know anything? How do we know the wall we’re looking at is white? What is white?” (206). What. What is white? Still, I didn’t cry. Even a little.

Cosmopolis: A Novel*

Update: Listen to this: “The nice thing about life is that it’s filled with second chances. Quoting Bill” (224).

Seriously. Nailed it.

This was nice, too: “Scott leaned toward her to sing a bit of old Beatles, a line about carrying pictures of Chairman Mao”* (223).

I’m not quite finished with the book yet, so I can’t promise that there won’t be more interjections like this. Too good, too good, too good.

If you don’t already own the book…*

This: “He […] could feel a slowness come upon him, familiar though never felt before […] deeply and totally known” (216). ¹

And this: “They show the great state portrait in the deep distance and she is pretty sure there is no wart in Andy’s drawing” (178).

Or how about this: “In other words a series of open-mouth antics with a strutting component” (173).

Let’s not forget: “Then there was the finger Bill had received in the mail. He kept it around a while, a ring finger he guessed, …” (197).

Maybe mostly: “… the champagne came sluicing …” (211).

“Sluicing.”

Say that again: “sluicing.”

Slower: “slooooo siiiiiing.”

Oh yes.

I’m so happy we got to see Don DeLillo speak when he was here at SLU (sing? sorry. couldn’t be helped.) a few years ago. He was amazing. Oddly, smaller than I expected. I guess he looks taller and bigger in the head shots on his books. ??? Anyway.

You should just read Mao II: A Novel* by Don DeLillo. Heck, you should read everything he’s ever written (note to self).

I’m pretty nearly finished with Mao II. The language is so… artful. That’s the word I need. Artful. Just amazingly artful. The dialogs are perfect. The way you are inside a character’s head, but not shoved there, more like sucked there, but almost imperceptibly. It. Is. Just. Beautiful.

And there’s sluicing.

The second book in Harkuki Murakami’s Rat trilogy, Pinball, 1973* again stars our unnamed narrator, The Rat, and J (who runs J’s Bar). Our narrator has a unique relationship with a three-flipper pinball machine, “Spaceship,” as well as with a pair of twin girls, also unnamed, but for a while 208 and 209.

This is another very short (179 pages of main text) book, so I finished it pretty quickly, too. Good thing, because that means I also don’t have to write a long post about it and can soon get to my piece on Mao II: A Novel*, which I’m love-love-LOVING! Every time I sit down to read, there’s something I want to write about. Luckily for you, as soon as I stand up I forget what it was, and I haven’t written any notes…. So that piece might be short, too. We’ll see…