2024 Books I Read, and other stuff

Shakespeare once again dominated my reading schedule, and not just because I can read a play in an afternoon. For the record, this year’s plays were Macbeth, Merry Wives of Windsor, Comedy of Errors, and Much Ado About Nothing. There is also some Shake-related nonfiction in the 2024 list, a little on the academic side but worthwhile reading nonetheless.

Notably, this year’s list is shorter than in past years, though I did dip into some short story and poetry collections. I blame my fractured vision (cataracts) and attention span (Olympics, college reunion, comedy improv with Clay Aiken). Here’s my year, in roughly chronological order:

1. The Razor’s Edge, W. Somerset Maugham (fiction; re-read). Not the only first-person autobiographical tale on the list, but not by design. I’d read this many years ago and remembered liking it, but couldn’t remember why. Philosophy, I guess: A nonmaterialistic hero wants everyone to be happy. I like that.

2. The Brothers Karamazov, F. Dostoevsky (fiction; re-read). More psycho-philosophical fiction. Handy to have class notes in the margins of my college-days paperbacks so I could continue underlining themes and significant passages. I seem to have a fondness for the nonmaterialistic hero who wants everyone to be happy type. Note: this list only takes me through March. Slow reader with distractions.

3. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen (fiction; re-read). Hm. Curiously unambitious choices so far. I usually like to mix things up. Jane’s first story probably could have used some paring of extraneous characters, as I much prefer the Emma Thompson script. But it’s far more sophisticated and engaging than …

4. Mount Vernon Love Story, Mary Higgins Clark (fiction). George and Martha Washington as Hallmark Channel love interests, a bit too “she gazed into his soft gray eyes” for my taste. Blech. Still, it seemed sufficiently well-researched to merit becoming a nice giveaway to new donors to the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, a very worthy cause.

5. Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments, Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley, eds. (philosophy). Apparently a collection of New York Times columns, though I suspect the readership and the authorship were the same demographic. I skimmed through the topics that interested me—morality, religion, race, women, the future. There was something in the discussions about women that annoyed me when I read it back in April, but I’m too lazy to re-read that stuff. Much, much more interesting is …

6. An Unfinished Love Story, Doris Kearns Goodwin (history, memoir). Doris specializes in writing about the great men of American history, but here she truly makes a case for the historic greatness of her own husband, Dick Goodwin (Kennedy speechwriter best known to some of us as the guy who went after the Quiz Shows back in the day). And like Doris’s stories of other American heroes, she does not forget their ladies—in this case, herself. So you say you want a love story? This is it! Now I wish she’d write that George and Martha thingy.

7. Ocean Breathing, Barbara Mathias Riegel (fiction). I admit I bought the book because a dear friend’s mother wrote it. I like to be supportive, and the story takes place in our familiar neighborhood. The first-person narrator is dealing with severe anxiety, which she only begins to overcome when other people’s problems supersede her own. A less-than-gentle therapist (or reader) might say “Get over yourself.” She does.

8. Shakespeare’s Language, Frank Kermode (literary studies). Survey of how Shakespeare’s command of language (metaphors, motifs, and stuff like that) matured from play to play and advanced the English language along the way. Maybe a little academic, but like Shadowplay (a survey of the plays through the lens of religious and political conflict), an interesting way to review the plays and Shakespeare’s greatness.

9. The Code of the Woosters, P. G. Wodehouse (fiction; re-read). Speaking of a master of language! Not that Wodehouse advanced the English language itself, but he sure had fun with it.

10. Philippe Halsman: A Retrospective (photography). One of the great portraitists of the 20th century, showcasing some of the greatest personalities of the time. Yes, we like looking at celebrities. Halsman made them jump for him. Literally.

11. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens (fiction, though likely autobiographical). A first-person narrator reflects on his life, and it’s a ripping yarn. There are people! Things happen! It’s how I can get through an 800 page book gladly, whereas with some remembrances-type fiction I can’t get through four pages (I’m looking at you, Proust and Joyce).

12. Shakespeare’s Sisters, Ramie Targoff (literary history). Okay, it got a good review in The New Yorker and it had Shakespeare in the title, so I bought it. Targoff covers the work of four key women who wrote at the same time as William but were not in fact related to him. Well worth reading, but I’d quibble about the book’s title.

13. Headlong, Michael Frayn (fiction). Art history in a comic mystery! What a fun book.

14. The Bully Pulpit, Doris Kearns Goodwin (presidential history, biography). While Teddy Roosevelt made the cut for Doris’s top four presidential leaders (with Lincoln, FDR, and LBJ), the well-liked and judicious William Howard Taft had a lot going for him. Another one of my heroes who wants everyone to be happy? Despite their epic rift, Doris gives William and Teddy a happy enough ending to make me cry. (Also sobs-inducing, the Titanic death of Archie Butt, their mutual friend and security man.)

15. Circe, Madeline Miller (fiction). A “Wicked”-type retelling of familiar myths from the witch’s point of view. Richly rendered language thick with metaphors and similes, if you like that. I did.

16. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens (ghost story). Rereading this every year might become a tradition for me, along with watching as many different versions as possible (from Magoo’s to Patton’s, er, George C. Scott’s). There is no perfect rendering of the story, however, other than Dickens’s. They all leave something necessary out or put something unnecessary in. And I think Scrooge was really more indifferent than angry or hostile. Scott’s rendering of the character wins on that point.

Confession: I broke my rule this year about finishing everything I started to read. As mentioned above, I couldn’t make it into Proust’s Swann’s Way, for its lack of characters and actions. This is also the reason I couldn’t make much headway into 2025 from the old Coates & Jarratt futurists shop. I spent a career making futurists’ writing accessible to nonfuturists. The book’s many scenarios of new technologies and future problems were devoid of any human beings doing anything. I just couldn’t take it.

The real 2025 looks promising, bookwise: I spy James by Percival Everett at the top of the pile!

Love, hosaa

Happy New Reading

Books of My Year, 2023

It was a big year for my Shakespeare reading, only coincidentally because it was the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio. Sundays are always good play-reading days, but I decided at one point to binge the Henrys.

Part one (Spring): Richard II; Henry IV part 1, part 2; Henry V

Part two (Fall): Henry VI part 1, part 2, part 3; Richard III

This is about the extent of my English history, so I’d guess Henry V was pretty much the best king. Also, in Shakespeare’s world, Joan of Arc was a villain (HVI-1). It’s all about perspective.

In addition to the books listed below I read a few magazine stories and poems and, less aesthetically pleasing, reports via PDF (to wit: January 6 Committee, USA v DJT). 

Unlike past years’ readings, I didn’t love everything here. In fact, a couple of things made me question how and why I majored in English (specifically the poetry and prose of Hart Crane, which I didn’t finish). I simply don’t have the mind for high, literary poetry. If I don’t know what you’re talking about, is it really all my fault?

That said, here’s what I read (omitting the PDF reports and stray stories and poems), roughly in chronological order:

1. The Sky Is Not the Limit (memoir) Neil deGrasse Tyson. Life as a smart, successful, charismatic Black man in America. Perspective matters even when your eye is on the sky.
2. Romeo and Juliet (play) William Shakespeare. I still think Juliet should have left with Romeo that night.
3. Living (screenplay) Kazuo Ishiguro. My favorite novelist. The film was quietly moving, emotionally restrained yet draining, like Ishiguro’s other tales. I’d read somewhere that the source material he adapted drew from ...
4. “The Death of Ivan Ilych” (short story) Leo Tolstoy. Sociology of ambition and frustration. 
5. Howard’s End (fiction) E. M. Forster. Liberated women and the men they try to save. 
6. America’s Presidents (biographical portraits), National Portrait Gallery. Good historical primer. As I learned in the Chernow history below, Washington had lots of portraits done. Lots.
   
   
   
7. The Philosopher’s Stone (quantum physics?) F. David Peat. Oh dear. I loved his other book, Einstein’s Moon. This one went totally over my head, and not in an inspiring, “look up at the sky” way.
8. Common Sense (political philosophy) Thomas Paine. Very witty. Interestingly, he had no love for the Quakers.
9. Come Looking (poetry collection) Dan Johnson. I still like the one about the Tastee Diner, but the rest made me want to turn in my English B.A. Huh?
10. Shadowplay (Shakespearean history) Clare Asquith. Was Shakespeare a propagandist trying to persuade Elizabeth I to go easy on the Catholics? Persuasive survey of the plays in the context of religious, social, and political history.
11. Utopia (political philosophy) Thomas More. Much like Plato’s Republic, and all “utopias,” really, it’s about structuring the irrational human condition. Is order better than just learning to deal with chaos?
12. The Gentleman Poet (Shakespearean fan fiction) Kathryn Johnson. An enjoyable romance with Shakespeare himself popping up in a Tempest-like milieu.
13. Ten Great One-Act Plays (theater) Moliere, Chekhov, Shaw, Williams et al. Since my copy is apparently from my college days, I recognized rereading the one I’d been assigned to perform in class, "Something Unspoken” (Tennessee Williams). I had no idea at the time it was about lesbianism. I guess I’ve always been clueless.
14. Alaska (travel) Bern Keating, National Geographic Society. It’s a nicely written and photographed travelogue from the 1960s. Educational, too. Did you know Alaska is both the Eastern-most and Western-most U.S. state? 
    
15. A Lesson Before Dying (fiction) Ernest J. Gaines. Endurance and dignity. Much in common with the deGrasse Tyson memoir (above). It’s important to experience the world from other perspectives.
16. As You Like It (play) Shakespeare. I do get some of the comedies mixed up. This is the one with the forest and the girl says something like, “Why talk we of fathers when there is such a man as Orlando?”
17. Stuart Little (children’s fiction) E. B. White. Some reading from my niece’s bookshelf. Charming, but the ending left me a bit unsettled. I won’t spoil it, though.
18. The Time Machine (science fiction) H. G. Wells. From my brother’s bookshelf. Better than the movie. The fact that the machine stays in one place and only travels through time satisfies my notions about how time travel should work. I’d rather do it without machinery, but even Quantum Leap’s brain wave transmissions need an accelerator.
19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (fiction) Mark Haddon. Experiencing how someone navigates a chaotic (to them) world. Perspective, once again, matters. 
    
    
    
20. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (fiction) Mark Twain. Re-read from very long ago. Huck was the more interesting character, but he’s only beginning to evolve here.
21. Cradle to Cradle (environment) William McDonough and Michael Braungart. All about how to make the sustainable plastic paper out of which this book was manufactured. Truly the most difficult book I’ve ever had to hold in my hands, heavy, inflexible, exhausting. 
22. Contemporary American Short Stories selections: “Sex Education” by Dorothy Canfield, “A Shower of Gold” by Donald Barthelme. Both good, but show their age.
23. Beyond Gender (political memoir) Betty Friedan. The occasion of the book is a report on symposiums Friedan had organized in the 1990s, so a lot of this is quoted material. But the post-feminist point is that the whole battle of the sexes thing that mid-century feminism launched missed the point of what was happening to society and the economy. Women weren’t taking jobs from men; corporations were hiring more women so they could pay their workers less. Follow Robert Reich on X/Twitter now. Same thing Friedan was saying. 
24. The House of the Dead (autobiographical? fiction) F. Dostoevsky. A deeply humanistic look inside an abominable institution. 
25. Washington: A Life (biography, history) Ron Chernow. Probably not the best employer, but a damn good leader. 
26. Around the World in Eighty Days (science fiction) Jules Verne. Spoiler alert: There’s no balloon. 
27. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (play) Shakespeare. It’s all about getting the right lovers together in the end. And Bottom, who wants to play all parts. Ass.
28. For Whom the Bell Tolls (fiction) Ernest Hemingway. Far more graphically violent than I was expecting after having read A Farewell to Arms last year. But the writing is so good. And a bit mischievous with all the “obscenity” he’d throw in. The bottom line is that the “bell” tolls for all of us; that’s what ties humanity together.
29. A Life in the Theater (memoir) Tyrone Guthrie. All the names worth knowing at the time. 
30. The Drawings of Albrecht Dürer (art history) Heinrich Wölfflin. An opportunity to look closely at how lines create shape and volume.
31. Two Gentlemen of Verona (play) Shakespeare. It’s all about getting the right lovers together in the end.
    
    
    
32. Mayday (allegory; art) William Faulkner. Faulkner’s original drawings highlight a special edition Arthurian-type story written for a would-be girlfriend. Do you choose death (fame as immortality) or life (dull, unheroic)?
33. Here at the New Yorker (memoir) Brendan Gill. All the names worth knowing at the time, but unlike Guthrie (above), Gill comes across as a bit smug. 
34. Incarnations : A History of India in Fifty Lives (collected biographies) Sunil Khilnani. There’s more to the history of India than Gandhi (and the other lives surveyed here really make you rethink your hero worship of the former).
35. Remember When (Christmas season stories) Clay Aiken, editor, for Bubel-Aiken Foundation (now National Inclusion Project). Earnestly if not professionally written personal memories, some tragic, some comic, and all relatable and human.

Speaking of nonprofessional writing, again, I’ve collected a few more Wordle-generated “stories." Click to open the image in a new tab and zoom in. Thanks for reading!

Love, hosaa

Maybe I’ll just go to the movies next year.

Books of 2022: Reading List

Or, technically, read and re-read books. Mostly off my own shelf, but also borrowed and reviewed titles.

Listed in chronological order of my reading:

1. The Essential Gandhi (1983) wherein I find he’d never written “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” or something like that. Bookmark the Quote Investigator, which suggests that Gandhi may have spoken these words on multiple occasions, but didn’t use it in his published articles—none in this anthology of his writing, to be sure.

2. Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice (1993) by Mark J. Plotkin. An ethnobotanist’s sensitive journey through the Amazon to discover how the environment and cultures heal (or kill).

3. A Land of Ghosts (2007) by David G. Campbell. More botanical research in far western Amazonia. A little less culturally and environmentally sensitive than Plotkin’s book, in my opinion. Good on the history of imperial exploitation and the collapse of a resource-based economy (rubber) when synthetics are invented.

4. “What’s the Deal, Hummingbird?” (2022) by Arthur Krystal, New Yorker, January 24. Somewhat stream of consciousness reflection on our quarantine. The kind of thing I wanted to write.

 

5. In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown (2018) by Nathaniel Philbrick. More Washington than hurricanes, and actually more about how much the French Navy helped America win independence. I love Philbrick’s writing. Will read more.

4. The only book so far that I just could not get myself to finish reading: Loon Lake (1979) by E. L. Doctorow. One of my favorite writers, and I don’t mind a fractured and confusing narrative; it was the child rapes I could not abide. Bought it at the thrift store, and it’s back in the outgoing thrift bag.

5. All’s Well That Ends Well (play) by William Shakespeare. Re-read. I get a lot of the comedies mixed up, so it’s worth a second or third or fourth indulgence. I love smart heroines like Helena the doctor’s daughter.

6. Maggot and Worm, and Eight Other Short Stories (1969) by M. M. Liberman (who shared my birthday). Stories from before he was my Grinnell professor. It can seem strange reading several first-person stories with different protagonists, and especially strange when you know (knew) the author. Literature that reminds me why I never wanted to teach (or write) literature. (I liked but didn’t love it.)

7. Great Expectations (1860) by Charles Dickens. (Re-read) How come the only thing I remembered from my initial reading decades ago is the decaying bridal gown on the jilted Miss Havisham? Anyway, a good reminder of why I love Dickens: character, language, theme, and perfect storytelling. How come I only have five Dickens books on my shelf? (GE plus Pickwick, Oliver, Two Cities, and the Carol)

8. Silent Spring, and Other Writings on the Environment (2018 Library of America Collection) by Rachel Carson. The poisoning of the baby boom. Brought back memories of the green plastic poison-injecting stick Dad had us use to treat the dandelions at one house, the mandated gypsy-moth spraying at another house, and the sweaty bandanna Dad wore up at our orchard in West Virginia, working his own poison-spraying machine. Amazed we all survived. Rachel’s own life chronology had me weeping.

9. The Editor (2019) by Steven Rowley. Novel about a writer who is blown away to meet his glamorous editor, Jacqueline Onassis. I don’t read a lot of contemporary fiction (I know, I know), but I picked it up because: Jackie. A good companion to the Clint Hill memoirs of guarding the Kennedy FLOTUS.

10. The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (1991) by Daniel Yergin. Borrowed from my brother’s bookshelf, with a boarding-pass bookmark indicating the timeliness of the book when he started reading it. I do like resource-focused histories, and this one is a good study for me in the geopolitics. More enlightening, though, is the role of energy and other resources in war. Logistics. Came up again with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as well as in General Grant’s memoir (see below).

11. Emperor of the Air (1989) by Ethan Canin. Short story collection. More first-person literature. Six months later I don’t remember any of the stories, but I remember enjoying the writing. When this collection came out, Canin was working on his first novel. He did a story reading at one of the long-gone bookstores in town. I miss those days. I remember telling him, as he signed my copy, that I wrote my first novel in three weeks. Obviously it never got published. (But see how long it took me to read his work.)

12. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1991) by Doris Kearns Goodwin. A more psychologically analytical critique than I was expecting in a biography. She reveals more of LBJ’s breakdown in the-end-of-presidency years than is hinted at in Robert McNamara’s memoir (see below). Note: Also on my bookshelf but not yet read is John Dickerson’s The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency, which deals extensively with Johnson but also with the most-recent one-termer. I need more time before I consider this a safe “history.”

13. The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination (1992) by Daniel J. Boorstin. I expected more art and artists in this, but “creation” includes the creation of ideas about creation itself. So: mythology, philosophy, and religion. Nonwestern thought is included, but not as extensively as Western. Not many women, but, as I noted in my notes, “Thanks for Virginia Woolf.”

14. “The New Dress” (1927) by Virginia Woolf and “The Madonna of the Future” (1887) by Henry James (both in one of my anthologies, Masters of the Modern Short Story, 1955). The stream of consciousness by Woolf apparently was revolutionary (per Boorstin, see above). James’s “madonna” was about the artist who would portray his madonna but [SPOILER ALERT] never did, so it was really an unactualized work of art. Which you could say is what the future is.

 

 

15. The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (1885; my cheap 2012 edition with multiple typos collects volumes 1 and 2). Describing his early years, Grant reveals a wry sense of humor but little of his personal life once he meets and marries Julia Dent. And of course he died shortly after his account of the Civil War. Since Grant had spent time as a quartermaster, much of the war strategy was about getting food and arms to the men. It was also about resources and geography. Logistics! (See The Prize, above.) If only, if only he’d been able to write about his presidency. I imagine it would resemble McNamara’s In Retrospect. Their accounts of the wars they directed were remarkably similar, high on personal responsibility, low on assigning blame.

16. A Room with a View (1908) by E. M. Forster. All I remembered from the movie was Daniel Day Lewis as Cecil. [SPOILER ALERT] I didn’t really see the happily-ever-after ending coming. The novel is included in an anthology with Howard’s End and Maurice. On my list of books to clear off my shelf, but I guess I should read the other two first? The movies were really enough.

17. Art as Therapy (2013) by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong. On understanding art as a way of working out our own lives. Maybe. The lessons are well laid out, but I can’t see taking the book with me every time I go to a museum to look at art. Maybe Visual Intelligence by Amy Herman is a better choice for looking at art and seeing the world (outside of oneself, that is).

18. Barefoot Boy with Cheek (1943) by Max Shulman. Midwestern American humorist (viz. “Dobie Gillis”) looks at college life and the intellectual (or anti-intellectual) influences of the day as proposed by the variety of co-eds the guileless protagonist pursues. Much of the fun is with the naming of characters, more heavy-handed than even Dickens and Wodehouse: Yetta Samovar, the communist; Alpha Cholera, the fraternity.

19. Voluntary Simplicity (1998) by Duane Elgin. Anecdotal, survey-based. The psychological impacts of changes individuals made in their lives for the sake of environmental preservation and just simpler living. I would like to have had more how-to pointers and lists. I guess that’s the magazine editor in me. From my notes: “I feel like I’m trying to read the safety instructions card while the plane is going down. It’s 2022 and here we go.”

20. A Farewell to Arms (1929) by Ernest Hemingway. One of those classics I’d never read, but what great writing! A slice of World War I (medical corps of Italian campaign) I know nothing about, mixed in with a love story. I’d read two of the other novels in this collected works (The Old Man and the Sea and The Sun Also Rises) but not For Whom the Bell Tolls. I’ll have to read/re-read all eventually.

21. Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen (1984) by Fay Weldon. Lecture-y but tender. Made me want to re-read Emma, which I have done (see below).

22. “Phaedo” in The Portable Plato. Dialogue. On the death of Socrates and the immortality of souls.

23. Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s (2010), edited by Robert W. Rydell et al. Academic companion volume to the exhibition at the National Building Museum, which was overloaded in the captioning (hence my purchase of the book). Essays are scholarly (lofty but flat), and the reproductions are crap. Interesting, nevertheless, for the art and cultural history.

24. Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare. One I’d never read or seen. How sad! The story, I mean.

25. The USS Emmons: Eyewitness Accounts from Survivors of the Battle of Okinawa (2020), transcribed by Cheri Yecke. Re-read in preparation for presenting a copy to the Navy Heritage Center (Robert Smith, archivist). I still think it’s better than a Spielberg movie.

 

with Rear Admiral Frank Thorp (ret_USN)
at Navy Heritage Center

26. Breaking New Ground: A Personal History (2013) by Lester R. Brown. The life and work of my favorite “futurist,” an environmental and agricultural researcher and policy analyst who started life as a tomato farmer. (His writings about sustainability in The Futurist had the most influence on me personally.)

27. Art of the Twentieth Century (1976) by Maurice Besset. One of my college textbooks, which I probably only dipped into at the time. Really kind of appalling how hard it is to read textbooks. I’m surprised I learned anything in college. Also appalling how few women artists are included. Love me some Paul Klee, though, and he’s treated well here. (Yes, I’ll say it: I’m a Klee-mate.)

28. “Extricating Young Gussie,” aka “The Man With Two Left Feet” (Saturday Evening Post, 1915) by P. G. Wodehouse. Noted as the first appearance of Jeeves. (I needed something to help get me through Art of the Twentieth Century.)

29. King John (play) by William Shakespeare. Another one I hadn’t read or seen before. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys right away without actors showing you. But once you get to beloved young Prince Arthur you know. And you cry your eyes out.

 

30. How Right You Are, Jeeves (1960) by P. G. Wodehouse. Included in a three-volume collection with Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1962) and Jeeves & the Tie That Binds (1971). There’s no point to summarizing the plot. The language is the thing.

31. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (1995) by Robert S. McNamara (with Brian VanDeMark). A survey of the mistakes and failures that comprised the Vietnam War. Like General Grant in the Civil War, McNamara is reluctant to blame anyone, including Johnson, for all that happened. But, he emphasizes, Johnson should have been less secretive. See Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on the subject of Johnson’s pathological need to control all information.

32. The Republic by Plato. Last of the dialogues included in The Portable Plato. Terrifyingly accurate description of the tyranny confronting us as the threatened successor of democracy (due to growing popular resentment of some people’s profligate expression of their rights and freedoms). On educating the future guardians of his ideal republic, Plato (in the character of Socrates) argues against teaching literature (fiction/poetry), such as is found in Homer where it is unauthentic (lies). I thought he was being sarcastic, since he cites Homer a lot. If Plato is the imitator of Socrates, does that mean he, too, is removed from Truth?

33. Beyond Identities: Human Becomings in Weirding Worlds (2022) by Jim Dator. Sociology, futurism, memoir, diatribe. Reviewed for Foresight Signals. Dator is one of the best known and most revered futures academics of our time. I liked the memoir and (Trump-directed) diatribe parts the best.

34. Emma (1815) by Jane Austen. Re-read because Fay Weldon seemed to admire it the most (see above). Well, yes, it is pretty perfect. None of the melodrama of scoundrels defiling maidens (Wickham, Willoughby).

35. Much Ado About Nothing (play) by William Shakespeare. Still my favorite comedy. Re-read in preparation of seeing modernized version at Shakespeare Theatre Company (Spamalot alum Rick Holmes as Benedick).

36. Wait Till Next Year (1997) by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Memoir: on being a young girl who loves baseball, specifically the Brooklyn Dodgers and Jackie Robinson. A detailed and moving reflection on the 1950s and its terrors, from polio to McCarthyism. DKG herself is as interesting as the subjects she writes about as a historian.

 

37. The Stranger (based on Stuart Gilbert’s 1946 English translation) by Albert Camus. A novel about a seemingly disengaged man who is tried for a murder but is really found guilty for not feeling sorry enough about his own mother’s death in a nursing home. His biggest emotional outburst is directed at the cleric who foists religious beliefs on him at the end. Contemporary readers either view the narrator as a monster or “diagnose” him as having Asperger’s syndrome. But is he not “existentialist” in the sense of accepting present conditions (such as his mother’s death) as they occur? His intolerance of heat and bright light suggests sensory issues, but I wouldn’t call his nonbelief in the afterlife “monstrous.”

37. The Tempest (play) by William Shakespeare. Re-read in preparation of seeing Teller’s magical interpretation at Round House Theatre. I’d forgotten how much of the play was about forgiveness. (The RHT production’s magic tricks were distracting, but I forgive it. It was a jump-to-your-feet standing ovation performance.)

38. Becket, or The Honour of God (play, 1959) by Jean Anouih. Henry II and Thomas Becket the martyr. Sorry, hated it. Henry and Thomas were both pretty despicable. I remember seeing T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral years ago, but I don’t remember disliking the story this much. Maybe someone could recommend a good history?

39. A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) by John Irving. Religion, baseball, the 1950s, Vietnam. Friends and mothers. Broken people. It’s been a while since I’d read John Irving. He is masterful with the details, just as Doris Kearns Goodwin is with her own memoir of the same era and themes. The narrator (author?) is as angry with Reagan as many of us (specifically Dator, see above) have been with Trump.

*Addendum: At some point while reading the Gen. Grant memoir I took a Sunday off to re-read Othello, again in preparation for attending a related production, Red Velvet, at Shakespeare Theatre Co. Sunday afternoons have always been good Shakespeare-reading times, going back to my Shakespeare Readers days.

I find memoirs to be my favorite window on history. I loved every one I read this year, from U. S. Grant to D. K. Goodwin. As for the history plays, Shakespeare’s kings, Anouih’s martyr, I will only say my mind’s eye is an insufficient interpreter. Give me dramaturgs, directors, designers, and actors.

There was also more philosophy and religion in my readings than I even expected with my Gandhi and Plato, to wit, Camus’s Stranger and Irving’s Owen Meany. These readings are broadening my understanding of misunderstandings. And I like how Irving describes faith itself as a miracle.

Lastly, turning obsession into an art form (and trust me, the point of this was not puzzle solving. It was inspiration), a compiled layout of the privately printed Stories My Words Tell. Nobody seems to have gotten the point of it. I apologize for the "stories" not being legible. Inquire within. Love, hosaa

Stories My Words Tell, C. G. Wagner.
Hint: open the image link in a new tab and zoom in.

Labors of Love

Two shows within a week's time invite comparisons: A Doll's House, Part 2 (DH2) at Round House (temporarily quartered at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Lansburgh venue) and Love's Labor's Lost (LLL) comfortably nestled in the library-within-the-library at Folger. [Note: Spoilers within.]

Holly Twyford and Craig Wallace in A Doll's House, Part 2. Round House Theatre via Facebook.

Love's Labor's Lost set designed by Lee Savage for Folger Theatre

Both stories conclude that love is harder than it looks, no matter how agile your language skills are. Language requires communication skills, which are broader than the leaps over furniture Nora (Holly Twyford) effects in her abandoned Doll House. (Here, I go by the Signet Classics paperback edition, which eschews punctuation and possessiveness in titling Ibsen's play A Doll House rather than the more common A Doll's House. Signet also eschewed the hyphen in Moby Dick. What can I say.)

What the stories demonstrate is that true love requires respect, and respect comes from (and with) honest communication. Nora and Torvald traveled that road (with injuries) after Ibsen's story ends and Lucas Hnath's continuation completes. And Shakespeare broke the rules of Comedy by bringing this revelation about honesty and respect to his heroes and heroines without joining them in a four-way wedding at the end of the story (or five if you count Don Armado and Jaquenetta, which you should). I almost want to see Love's Labor's Lost, Part 2 after the four principal couples reunite a year and a day hence to see if respect conquers all after all. It didn't in Nora and Torvald's case.

As for the theater-going experience, I saw both shows in matinee mode, which I've been told doesn't bring out the best in either performers or audiences. I've always disagreed with that and have rarely been disappointed. I'm far more awake in matinees than evening performances, and I've never discerned a lack of energy in matinee performers.

That said, I'll say I appreciated DH2 but loved LLL. For some reason, I was expecting more comedy (though not necessarily Comedy) from DH2 than was there. As a modern take on Ibsen that wasn't reflected in the set (a broken home), the production added language (vernacular; i.e., vocabulary; i.e., dirty words) I didn't expect and didn't appreciate. It wasn't clever, to my mind and sensibility. 

The DH2 set was devoid of a home's warmth, which I suspect was the point but made for a somewhat lifeless experience. On the other hand, this allowed the focus to be on the character's speeches, which indeed were speeches rather than dialogue (mutually respectful communication). 

In contrast, the LLL set, a sumptuous library (with a hidden bar behind the books), provided an idealized world for would-be academics showing off their erudition and sophistication. 

For both DH2 and LLL, the delight is in the performances. I am in awe of actors, and the direction guided their performances to perfection. Round House is always full of favorites, and the cast of four--Twyford, Craig Wallace (Torvald), Nancy Robinette (housekeeper Anne Marie), and Kathryn Tkel (Nora and Torvald's daughter Emmy) all are RHT alumni. I always look forward to actors I consider familiar friends. Over at LLL, that familiar friend was Eric Hissom as the ridiculous Don Armado (I'm reminded of the Adolpho character in The Drowsy Chaperone). Other standouts in the cast were Zachary Fine as a virile yet ultimately humble Berowne and Megan Graves as an adorably impish Mote.

Love, hosaa

Respect's labor's found 

Much Ado about No Shakespeare

Back from yesterday's matinee performance of Much Ado About Nothing at Synetic Theater in Crystal City. This was the 11th of Synetic's renowned wordless (not silent) Shakespeare productions, an oxymoron that produces varied reactions (not unlike those when revealing that one is a Clay Aiken fan), ranging from bemused condescension to moral outrage.

Ben Cunis as Benedick and Irina Tsikurishvili as Beatrice. Program art for Much Ado About Nothing, Synetic Theater.

Shakespeare, of course, offered the world more than poetry, and the gift of the Synetic approach is that it winkles out the subtleties of character development and the nuances of situation comedy--and tragedy--that is also all Shakespeare. A wordless theatrical production of Shakespeare is every bit as legitimate as the Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet or the Mendelssohn Midsummer Night's Dream, and music and dance are among my favorite tools in the artistic toy box.

It's interesting that a lot of the updates of spoken Ado are set in the black-white-silvery worlds of Art Deco, leaving all color to the language, whereas the text-free Synetic production is all color and movement and music. Set in Fifties-era Las Vegas, with showgirls and motorcycle gangs (wearing "Syneticon" gang leather jackets), this Ado drives a harsher wedge between light and dark, farce and ferocity, through sheer physical power--not just the athleticism of the dance and pantomime, but also the attention given to details in props, costumes, lights, and music. All senses are on alert and fully, energetically engaged.

There is, appropriately, a parental advisory on this production, which goes a bit beyond the bard's usual bawdy humor: "This production is recommended for ages 14+ for some drug use and stylized sexual content." It's not for those squeamish about hypodermic needles, either.

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Synetic Theater (1800 South Bell Street, Crystal City, Virginia 22202), through March 22, 2015
Directed by Paata Tsikurishvili, choreographed by Irina Tsikurishvili

Ears Gladded, Eyes Pleased at Blackfriars

A last-minute decision to join the Shakespeare Explorers' Meetup group's planned weekend excursion to the Blackfriars Playhouse/American Shakespeare Center (I don't know which is the container and which is the thing contained) in Staunton, Virginia, took me on a pre-foliage-season Saturday morning/noon/early-PM battle with bumper-to-bumper traffic. The rewards: a venue I'd never visited, a play I'd never seen, and friends I wanted to keep close to despite a summer of frugal nonindulgence in the arts.

Pericles produced at Blackfriars Playhouse, Staunton, Virginia. Photo by Lindsey Walters, courtesy of American Shakespeare Center

Gregory Jon Phelps as Pericles, overlooking audience at Blackfriars Playhouse. Photo by Lindsey Walters, courtesy of American Shakespeare Center.

The matinee performance of Pericles, Prince of Tyre delivered on the prologue's promise "to glad your ear and please your eyes." The venue and the production both were audience friendly, even chummy at times as the actors engaged with those nearest the stage. When Bawd (Allison Glenzer), the madame of a brothel, complained of her lack of sufficiently enticing stock, I was glad that she was pointing to the females in the other side of the audience and not on my side:

We were never so much out of creatures. We have but poor three, and they can do no more than they can do; and they with continual action are even as good as rotten.

The so-indicated creatures in the audience were good sports about it, however. All in good fun. Since I didn't have time to read the plot summary before the performance, I didn't know what to expect. Pericles just isn't as familiar to this aging former English major as are the greatest hits, the Romeos, Hamlets, and Macbeths.

The program notes report that the artistic director, Jim Warren, knew this play would be unfamiliar to the audience, and he specifically called for clarity "of words, thoughts, sentences, and story." For the most part, these instructions were well followed, and my only trouble was in following the plot line of the first of three father-daughter stories: the incestuous King Antiochus and his unnamed daughter, which sets up the good-versus-evil machinations.

The problem I had was that the daughter was played by the same actress (Sara Hymes) as someone else's virtuous daughter, Thaisa, who becomes Pericles's wife. It can be an interesting artistic choice to have the same actors playing "mirrored" parts (as in Shakespeare Theatre Company's Winter's Tale), but unfortunately I did think it was the same character. When I finally realized it wasn't, I wondered what happened to Antiochus and benighted daughter.

Temporary confusion aside, I enjoyed the second half of the production a bit more than the first half, and Harold Bloom (in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, 1999) explains why: "The first two acts of the play are dreadfully expressed, and cannot have been Shakespeare's." The attribution for the dreadful parts went to George Wilkins, "a lowlife hack."

The second half of the play, Acts III through V, are of Shakespeare's glorious hand and voice in the depictions of the drama's lives low and high, from the brothel scenes (As Bloom notes: "Shakespeare surpasses all possible rivals in the gusto with which he portrays the oldest profession") to the climax of Pericles's reunion with his lost wife and daughter: "The 150 lines of the recognition scene (V.i. 82-233) are one of the extraordinary sublimities of Shakespeare's art. ... Shakespeare holds us rapt."

It seems, though, that everyone's favorite parts were the pirates, and the actors played their modern pirate accents up to full cartoonish comedy. Arrrrggghhhh!! Arrrrggghhhh!!

Lauren Ballard as Marina, flanked by pirates Patrick Midgley, James Keegan, and Chris Johnston. Publicity photo by Michael Bailey, courtesy of American Shakespeare Center. 

The glorious second half of this play belonged to the character of Marina, Pericles's daughter, whose indomitable virtue turned lechers into saints. I liked that. Usually you never think that innocence is a trait worth cultivating, associating it instead with naivete or even helplessness. But Marina's virginity wasn't that kind of innocence; it was a virtue with the power to instruct, to tame, and ultimately to lead. And she was portrayed by Lauren Ballard with every bit as endearing a performance as the far more comical corollary, Philia, in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

For it was truly the rewards of all this goodness that brought tears to this sentimental old creature.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre
By William Shakespeare
Blackfriars Playhouse, American Shakespeare Center, Staunton, Virginia, through November 28, 2014
Director: Jim Warren
Costume Designer: Jenny McNee
Set Design is not credited; Blackfriars Playhouse emulates original stage conditions. As explained in the program notes: "Shakespeare's company performed on a large wooden platform unadorned by fixed sets or scenery."

Cast
René Thornton Jr. (Gower, the Chorus)
Gregory Jon Phelps (Pericles, Prince of Tyre)
Sara Hymes (Thaisa, Pericles's wife; Antiochus's daughter)
Lauren Ballard (Marina, Pericles's daughter)
James Keegan (Antiochus, King of Antioch; Bolt, servant of Pander and Bawd)
Patrick Midgley (Helicanus, Pericles's friend and counselor; Pander, brothel owner)
Allison Glenzer (Escanes, a counselor; Lychordia, Marina's nurse; Bawd, Pander's wife)
John Harrell (Cleon, governor of Tarsus)
Sarah Fallon (Dionyza, wife of Cleon; Diana, a goddess)
Jonathan Holtzman (Simonides, Thaisa's father; Philemon, Cerimon's servant)
Chris Johnston (Thaliard, an  assassin; Cerimon, Thaisa's protector)
Benjamin Reed (Leonine, an assassin; Lysimachus, governor of Mytilene)

Sara Hymes (Thaisa) and Gregory Jon Phelps (Pericles). Photo by Lindsey Walters, courtesy of American Shakespeare Center.

René Thornton Jr. (Gower, the chorus). Photo by Lindsey Walters, courtesy of American Shakespeare Center.

Stripped Productions and Big Blonde Vocals

Back from Ordinary Days last night at the Round House and will use this to catch up with one other previously unreported artistic experience, the concert version of A Midsummer Night's Dream by the Baltimore Symphony, performed at the Strathmore.

I'm not a fan of overproduced shows, and it's a problem in musicals, especially, when I can't hear the lyrics to the songs. In a show like Ordinary Days, which is sung through, I wouldn't have much of a chance of following the plot if it weren't for the stripped down production--in this case, a pianist (musical director William Yanesh) and the powerhouse vocals of the actors.

I was excited to see a couple of familiar names on the program: adorable Erin Weaver as quirky, neurotic graduate student Deb and the handsome Will Gartshore as man-in-love Jason. Will has been around the Round for quite a while, but I really took note of him in this season's This. And Erin was the fabulous Juliet at the Folger's R&J production earlier this season. That's a little bitty blonde with a great big voice, and she took over Ordinary, too.

Erin Weaver. Courtesy of RHT via Facebook

Will Gartshore. Courtesy of RHT via Facebook

Likewise, the stripped down production of Midsummer was a full concert with seven actors running in and out of the orchestra, changing costumes on stage, and speaking their Shakespearean lines whenever the orchestra put Mendelssohn on pause.

Again, one of the attractions for me is always a familiar name/face, in this case Katie deBuys, who played Shakespeare's Hermia and was last seen at RHT in Seminar. But in this case, the "blonde with the big vocal" and very comical presence was Kate Eastwood Norris as Helena.

Maybe they teach you this in Shakespeare Clown School, but Kate had a way of running hilariously, like Tom Story did in Winter's Tale back at Shakespeare Theatre Company. It involves the arms flapping and flailing over one's head or outstretched in front while exiting (whether chased by bear or not). Anyway, she cracked me up.

Kate Eastwood Norris, via KateEastwoodNorris.com

Levity, lightness, a deft touch and a powerful voice. That's all it takes, and it's what I go to the theater for.

That, and the confetti. ;)

ephemera collected from Ordinary Days at Round House Theatre

ephemera collected from Ordinary Days at Round House Theatre

Love, hosaa
prop stealer

Clowning Around with Shakespeare

I can't take credit for "discovering" the Synetic Theater - it's been recommended to me, repeatedly, by my Shakespeare Explorer friends. Still, it's a great pleasure to discover a new troupe, a new venue, and a new way of looking at Shakespeare.

The current production of Twelfth Night is virtually wordless, as that is Synetic's approach to making theater: extracting from text the language of gesture. It's dance, it's mime, it's slapstick, and everybody's a clown.

All images lovingly borrowed from Synetic Theater's Web site.

How to stage a storm at sea and subsequent shipwreck.

So this begs the question, What would Shakespeare think? The Bard, it seems, has been abandoned. Where is the poetry? Where is the word play? Where is that lilt of language that sings stories to fill our hearts and expand our minds?

Here's where someone should throw a pie in my face. Artists don't just create art. They inspire it.

Any theater company that values dance will have my heart, and Synetic used every theatrically useful physical trick in the book to tell the story of the brother and sister separated at sea and thrown separately onto an alien shore. The gender-bending farce (girl dressed as boy meets boy in love with another girl and must woo her on his behalf... Ack, I'm confused) cannot be more ridiculous. And the loss and ultimate recovery of the brother and sister cannot be more heart-swelling.

But all in a tale told by clowns! Even the darling heroine Viola (choreographed and performed by Irina Tsikurishvili) transformed herself into the ultimate clown of modern times, Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp. She could not have been more adorable!

Kathy Gordon as Olivia (l), Irina Tsikurishvili as Viola

Philip Fletcher as Orsino, with Irina Tsikurishvili

Twelfth Night poster art, Synetic Theater

So, since my point is that the words don't make the play, I leave off with a strong recommendation for this production and the company's own video trailer.

Love, hosaa
gesturing mad approval

"Crown of Shadows," Richard III, Titanic 3D, and Celebrity Apprentice

Oh boy, another "catch up" post, you say? No, these productions really do have some things in common.

Crown of Shadows, the new (world premiere) production at Round House, is subtitled The Wake of Odysseus, and is a modernization of the story of Penelope and her son, Telemachus, who needs to grow the hell up before the state makes this presumed widow marry a despicable new king.

Normally I would come home after the play (which I saw on my usual Preview Thursday subscription night last week) and give a bit of a recap. But truthfully, I was tired, the play itself was draining, and I was distracted by the actress who played the ambitious little schoolgirl/love interest because she reminded me too much of my niece (incidentally a two-year RHT student summer program alum).

Julia Proctor (as Calliope) with Michael Morrow Hammack (as Telemachus), courtesy of Round House Theatre Facebook page.

I recognized Ms. Proctor right away from her previous RHT performance in The Picture of Dorian Gray (which apparently I didn't recap back when I saw it in 2009, though I can say I liked it a LOT better than the Washington Post's reviewer did). The characters she played were strikingly similar, both in their naive ambition and in their ill-fates.

Her resemblance to my niece was particularly disturbing because it made me realize that, as a then-aspiring actress, Rachel may have had to make some difficult casting decisions. With both Crown and Dorian, Ms. Proctor was required to simulate being sexually assaulted, with semi-nudity involved. Though I didn't discuss these choices with Rachel, I knew they never would have been hers. Just as well she switched from theater to business major.

I'll note also that I continue to enjoy seeing familiar actors in shows around town. Crown had a bit of a Sabrina Fair cast reunion, as both Proctor and Hammack had minor roles in the latter. (And, in checking my SF program, I see our pal Tom Story --from RHT's Next Fall, Ford's 1776--also played son of privilege, David Larabee.)

So this little segue leads me to the connection in the productions mentioned in the title of this post. And here I confess it isn't a particularly profound conclusion: In all of these, I see the corrosive effects of not power, but privilege.

In Richard III, which was read yesterday by my Shakespeare Readers group, I was especially struck by the differences between King Richard's battlefield speech and that of Richmond.

Richmond (oration to his Army):
...
If you do sweat to put a tyrant down,
You sleep in peace, the tyrant being slain;
If you do fight against your country's foes,
Your country's fat shall pay your pains the hire;
...

compared to a baser appeal from the tyrant himself

Richard (oration to his Army):
...
Remember whom you are to cope withal;
A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,
A scum of Bretons, and base lackey peasants,
Whom their o'ever-cloyed country vomits forth
To desperate ventures and assured destruction.
...

Don't worry, I won't belabor it for Titanic 3D - just think of the Cal Hockley character (played by Billy Zane). As with Telemachus and Richard, any attempt to deny his privilege of property is met with a pathological descent to subhuman violence.

Which brings us to Celebrity Apprentice. I've been wanting to talk about this show from the business perspective, but as my friend Patrick aptly pointed out, Celebrity Apprentice is to business as circus clown cars are to Transportation.

Heh!

Now, you know I am only watching this crap because of Clay Aiken. And while Trump and his privileged offspring are actually very well behaved compared with most of the celebrities (Clay most definitely excluded), the aggressive sense of entitlement is just simmering below their waxy surfaces. Though they clearly have several brain cells among the three of them, and are trained in spotting weakness, their main talent is telling Daddy Trump what he wants to hear. God forbid they lose their entitlements by displeasing the king.

As evidence I present to you Failure to Launch (video of full episode available on NBC.com until June 4), in which Daddy Trump petulantly fires Adam Carolla for the sin of not being surnamed Andretti (racing royalty), and Andretti for not being as smart about cars as his name would imply, thus displeasing the brand, Buick, that wanted an Andretti endorsement on the cheap.

Look at the presentations of the two teams (the "winning" team mispronounced the Buick product being sold, among other flubs), and then look at the childrens Trump telling Daddy that he did the right thing.

Okay, I'm done. I have no privilege, so I'm just a yammering jealous little what-not. And I still love Clay Aiken. *g*

love,
hosaa