What Are You Reading, Chapter 6

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

To accompany my requisite three readings of Julius Caesar in preparation for our Shakespeare group's next meeting on 11/11, I'm refreshing my acquaintance with this old favorite. Shaw's play is set in an earlier time frame than Shakespeare's. Historically, Cleopatra was 19 when she met Caesar, and gave birth to his child. In Shaw, she is 16, and -- in typical Shavian fashion -- their relationship is chaste. This is one of the few Shaw plays that actually works on stage. And, as he does in the introductions to several of his plays, he explains why he is "Better Than Shakespeare?" (the title of the introduction to C&C). A wonderful play!




And I really enjoyed this comic book version (graphic novel must be the better term) of Jane Eyre. The official selection for our book group was a bodice-buster mystery entitled The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte, fictional adventures that led to her writing of Jane Eyre. Optional related readings were Jane Eyre and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea. Since everybody who read the official pick hated it, those of us late to the party have turned to the options; and since the Bronte loooong, I went for the comic book version with the Rhys to follow.

[walto]

For what it's worth, I liked the movie version of Sargasso Sea better than the book.

Also, I don't agree that Shaw only wrote a "few plays that actually work on stage." I have the BBC DVD collection, and a lot of them are great.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Walter, I love Shaw, too, but some of my favorites -- Man and Superman and Back To Methuselah come to mind at once -- are clearly 'reading' plays and never reach the stage. (For M&S, you might see the dream sequence staged, Don Juan in Hell.)

What do I think works for stage? Mrs Warren's Profession, Arms and the Man,
Candida, Caesar and Cleopatra, Major Barbara, Androcles and the Lion, Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, Saint Joan... That's nine. Is that more than a few? Probably is, maybe I should leave out "few". Some of the others kind of work, like Misalliance.

But for me the brilliant prefaces, the lengthy and beautifully written stage directions, the afterwords (like The Revolutionists Handbook from M&S), all suggest that GBS was a writer for the page first, and the stage secondarily.

[Gary Sisco]

Been reading Richard Dawkins. Finished *The God Delusion.* Halfway through *The Blind Watchmaker.*

And a biography of the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket.

[walto]

Walter, I love Shaw, too, but some of my favorites -- Man and Superman and Back To Methuselah come to mind at once -- are clearly 'reading' plays and never reach the stage. (For M&S, you might see the dream sequence staged, Don Juan in Hell.)

What do I think works for stage? Mrs Warren's Profession, Arms and the Man,
Candida, Caesar and Cleopatra, Major Barbara, Androcles and the Lion, Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, Saint Joan... That's nine. Is that more than a few? Probably is, maybe I should leave out "few". Some of the others kind of work, like Misalliance.

But for me the brilliant prefaces, the lengthy and beautifully written stage directions, the afterwords (like The Revolutionists Handbook from M&S), all suggest that GBS was a writer for the page first, and the stage secondarily.

I like your list, but I think I'd add The Millionairessas well as Misalliance.

[Monte Smith]

I saw Misalliance on stage in Seattle. It worked reasonably well, but didn't stick in the ol' memory box much. I liked it enough to buy the play, but that I put aside.

[walto]

BTW, it seems like whether my 11 or SqD's 9 is right, Shaw would be one of the most prolific writers of excellent stage plays since Shakespeare. (I mean, what the hell could anybody want--egg in their beer?)

[Pete C]

I saw the film at about 10PM on a Saturday night in the early '70s at the Elgin Theater before the midnight Marx Brothers marathon. Then, at about 5AM, folk singer Larry Estridge came on and did a half-hour set. We were on some putative psychedelic that was mostly speed.

[Wombatz]

Takes 20 seconds of googling. Interesting, but I think I prefer Westworld.

[Monte Smith]

Takes 20 seconds of googling.

As does any trivia question.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

As does any trivia question.

Yes. In our Shakespeare group we have enough mutual respect for each other's abilities that it is understood we would let a question like this ride for a day or so, to see if any of our group legitimately knew, before anyone reduced themselves to the status of a mere googler.

But it is indeed R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots), 1921 by Karel Capek, which I saw on television as a kid (was Spencer Tracy in it?) and which reduced me to rubble. Marius and Sulla were the male and female prototypes of the most advanced model robot, cynically named by their creator but the first robots capable of fellow-feeling and eventually love. The play ends with the last surviving human telling them: "Go Adam, go Eve, the world is yours."

[Monte Smith]

I recently read A Grief Observed, by Lewis. It's a personal work, a little eccentric as it does deal with a personal grief. I was curious about it. I'm reading a stack of Lewises in preparation for my meeting with The Great Skeptic. (Yes, that's a portrait of you, Mr WH).

[Monte Smith]

R.U.R. is, of course, the greatest drama of all time--in crossword terms.

[Brian Olewnick]

I'm actually part of a net-based trivia group that operates on the honor system. Works very, very well:

http://www.learnedleague.com/

[baksheesh]

The Endymion Omnibus by Dan Simmons. Not bad, but not a patch on Banks.

[rollhead]

[lonely-at-the-top]

[Uli]

[lonely-at-the-top]

wonderful old stuff(school), Uli! better than Chandler

[walto]

The thread on agnosticism. It was some kind of attack on SqD, I believe.

[baksheesh]

Thanks, Monte! Glad you enjoyed it.

The longer I spend here at JC the more I start to realise just what the fuck is actually going on, and the quality of what a lot of the folks here are putting down in their quotidien...

...and the more I appreciate all of that good shit, the more I try to keep m'think box quizzical so as to be receptive to what's coming down the line at any given moment.

('course there are lapses, times when there doesn't seem to be shit happening, but...

...that is...

...just...

...lifeness itself...

...hmmm...)

[Jett]

Just finished "Moby Dick" which I believe to be the really Great American Novel (if there is such a thing). It's the fourth time through this beauty and it gets better with every reading. Next up is to reread the collected works of William Faulkner in no particular order so I'm starting with the trilogy, "The Hamlet,""The Town," and "The Mansion." No one writes in a style that satisfies me as much as Bill. I've read all of his works at least once and some five or six times. (Tears still come to my eyes when the county attorney meets "The Girl" at a cocktail party in New York. It's magic.

I also have a newly purchased copy of "Gidget" by Frederick Kohner so as to fall in love with his daughter all over again and to remind me of what it was like to be young in the late fifties. Hell, to be young anytime. Oh well, time marches on.

By the way Uli, anything by Marquez is a great way to spend a few days. I didn't read him until about ten years ago but have made up for lost time. Great choice.

Jett
Del Mar, CA

[Monte Smith]

I'm doing a bit of fishing near a marina library, black drum and sea trout, and I found a weatherbeaten copy of Trout Fishing in America. Never read it before, but it is amusing.

[walto]

Trout Fishing was one of my favorite hippy novels. I loved Watermelon Sugar too.

[john williams]

Seen a lot on this lately and there was even a Simpsons episode about it. Anyway, this is a very readable book covering most of the rather disturbing information on the topic. I'm sure there are better more technical books discussing Colony Collapse Disorder but this is a good introduction.

[rollhead]

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Next up for the Shakespeare group, Twelfth Night on Twelfth Night (January 6th), with the irresistible Olivia/Cesario and the cross-gartered Malvolio.

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

[walto]

Love that play.

BTW, re: Julius Caesar, Iremember hearing that the reason there are seemingly hundreds of sayings from that play that are now common coin, is that there was a time when that was one of the only Shakespeare plays that school children were allowed to read. No sex, etc.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Caeasar was the first Shakespeare we did at Brooklyn Tech, but we followed it with probably the steamiest couple in all the plays, Mr & Mrs Macbeth. We were 14 -- we were finding sex in O Henry, in orthographic projections.

But that's not the reason there are so many famous quotes from Caesar. The reason is that it's a play about the power of rhetoric, the key scene being the dueling funeral orations of two masters of persuasive speech: Brutus (whose superiority in arguing skills allows him to override Cassius's better judgement at three critical moments) and Antony (beside whom Brutus is as a child). That kind of speech lends itself to posterity more readily than equally powerful informal exchanges. In fact, there is a formality and ceremony about the language of the whole play, reflecting Shakespeare's accurate take on Roman life, newly brought to London in the form of the first translation into English of Plutarch's Lives, which WS faithfully follows throughout.

[Jazzooo]

I'm reading a crime novel a friend wrote and somehow got published by a third party. It's pretty tough going. It must have been a quickie cheapo publisher or one that you actually pay to take your book, one-step above self-publishing. It looks like it was edited by a blind man. One who doesn't know how to edit.