STOPPARD, ALBEE, AND THE MEANINGLESSNESS OF WORDS. The article by Ben Brantley I linked to yesterday argues that Tom Stoppard and Edward Albee follow Beckett and Pinter in believing that words are inadequate to communicate. Further, Brantley contends that Pinter and Stoppard believe that their words in particular are inadequate, saying that “[no other living playwright] is more achingly conscious of the inadequacy of how they say what they say.” Brantley also says, “Mr. Albee and Mr. Stoppard respond to the echoing silence by talking a purple streak. That doesn’t mean that they don’t know that unfathomable quiet will always vanquish the sound and fury of speech, however impressively loud and polysyllabic.” One would think that Stoppard would be disheartened to know that all the words in his two recent plays (THE COAST OF UTOPIA and ROCK ‘N’ ROLL)– which distill into twelve hours much of the European history of the last 150 years– can be so easily dismissed.
Archive for February, 2008
STOPPARD, ALBEE, AND THE MEANINGLESSNESS OF WORDS.
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008LEARNING SHAKESPEARE’S LINES.
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008LEARNING SHAKESPEARE’S LINES. Ben Brantley writes here about how Tom Stoppard and Edward Albee use words. In the course of the article, he makes a comparison that is very timely for me: He describes how their use of language “makes actors say that mastering these playwrights’ ornate, fast-footed language requires the sort of hard study demanded by Shakespeare.” The comment is very timely because of my circumstances. The local community theater is performing JULIUS CAESAR and a last-minute illness means that I will be performing as Julius Caesar for the first weekend (beginning March 6) with a real actor coming in for the next two weekends. Which means that I have been applying brute force to the learning of Caesar’s lines (144 of them). My current experience has been different from that of the actors that Brantley references. Striking, vivid lines are easier to memorize than simple bland ones. The lines that have been most difficult have been the simple ones–greetings, for example. Fortunately, almost every line that Caesar has is vivid and brilliant. I hope and trust that if I say the lines loudly and clearly that Shakespeare’s words will carry the day.
CAN PROUST BE ABRIDGED?
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008CAN PROUST BE ABRIDGED? Of course, I mean can Proust be abridged successfully? (The old law school joke tells of the Vermont farmer who asked if he believed in infant baptism, responded that yes, he had seen it done). I posted here on Adam Gopnik’s reflections on abridging MOBY-DICK. Laurence Grenier has done an abridgment in French with quotations from Proust interspersed with summaries of bridging passages. The book is available here (in French–an English version is a possibility). It has been about a year since I finished Proust (in translation). My nephew Andrew Schaefer says that because I read it in translation, I have never read Proust. I miss the time spent with Proust in the evenings, and some time this year I expect to read
Laurence’s abridgment.
DID PROUST CHANGE MY LIFE?
Monday, February 18th, 2008DID PROUST CHANGE MY LIFE? Mary Jane and I loved Alain de Bouton’s HOW PROUST CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE. We gave it to friends. Yet it was not until I heard Laurence Grenier give a couple talks on Proust that I was moved to begin reading REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST. I was never moved to tears by the book that was my daily companion for many months. But the book did do what I said my favorite paintings do: it changed the way I looked at life. I think of Proust as a person—restricted by illness—who experienced with great intensity the life he was permitted. And he wrote beautifully about how he experienced that life—and how to experience life.
CAN A BOOK MAKE YOU CRY?
Monday, February 18th, 2008CAN A BOOK MAKE YOU CRY? I posted yesterday on how Laurence Grenier had encountered people who reacted physically to certain paintings. Laurence is interested in this because she herself has had a profound emotional and physical reaction to reading Proust. She is not alone in having this kind of reaction to literature. Housman said that he tried not to think of a line of true poetry while he was shaving because the poetry would make his whiskers stiffen and make it harder to shave.
JEAN RHYS AND THE EXACT WORD (CORRECTION).
Sunday, February 17th, 2008JEAN RHYS AND THE EXACT WORD (CORRECTION). I realize I made a mistake here when I said that AFTER LEAVING MR. MACKENZIE began with the words in the title. I looked at the book again, and see that it begins, “After she had parted from Mr. Mackenzie, Julia Martin went to live in a cheap hotel on the Quai des Grands Augustins.” I am making the correction (and sliding in a rowback on the spelling in the title) because Jean Rhys was precise with her words, and she chose “parted from” rather than “left.” According to an article by Vanessa Thorpe, her editor told of how Rhys complained five years after the publication of WIDE SARGASSO SEA because the book had been published before it was finished. It turned out that Rhys thought the book contained two unnecessary words. One was “then”; the other was “quite.”
CAN A PAINTING MAKE YOU CRY?
Sunday, February 17th, 2008CAN A PAINTING MAKE YOU CRY? Laurence Grenier in the video I linked to yesterday says that she had asked about 150 people the question I raised yesterday: why do you like your favorite paintings? Only Laurence phrases the question differently than I remembered because I think she was interested in a slightly different question. Some people answered, as Mary Jane and I did, in terms of the characteristics of the paintings we liked (Laurence mentions the person who was was drawn to paintings with an open window). But Laurence was interested in how you know that you like a painting. She was struck by the people she had found –and she did find some–who had a physical reaction to certain paintings. One heard the sound of a bell before one painting. Another cried.
WHY DO YOU LIKE YOUR FAVORITE PAINTINGS?
Saturday, February 16th, 2008WHY DO YOU LIKE YOUR FAVORITE PAINTINGS? We know a remarkable lady, Laurence Grenier, who used to ask people why they liked their favorite paintings. She asked us the question when there were were eight or ten of us conversing, and I was somewhat surprised that everybody had an answer after thinking for a couple minutes. Mary Jane said that the painting had to convey beauty. Another person in the conversation said that the color blue was important in the paintings she loved. After reflecting for a minute, I said that my favorite paintings made me see the world differently. Here is Laurence (in French) (at just past the six minute mark) talking about some of the answers people gave. I will be posting on some of the answers, but you might see if you have an immediate answer to the question.
TOLKIEN AS AUDEN’S TOUCHSTONE.
Saturday, February 16th, 2008TOLKIEN AS AUDEN’S TOUCHSTONE. Frank Kermode in the London Review of Books for February 7 says that, [“Auden’s] devotion to Tolkien was such that any refusal, however polite, to accept that author’s achievement as beyond criticism entailed exclusion from the company of critics he would thenceforth pay attention to.”
DID THE ROMANS RESPOND TO ECONOMIC INCENTIVES? (COMMENT).
Friday, February 15th, 2008DID THE ROMANS RESPOND TO ECONOMIC INCENTIVES? (COMMENT). I posted here on the question “Was there an ancient Roman economy?” Zenpundit commented that “Rome’s population (actually all of Italy’s) could not have been sustained without a vigorous degree of trade and mercantile activity” and continued with an excellent description of Roman economic activity in Italy and the Mediterranean. I believe everything in the comment by Zenpundit is correct. However, it appears that this view of economic history is a minority view, held mainly by economists. The opposing view, called the “Finley/Polanyi orthodoxy”, is apparently still in the ascendant. The orthodoxy is based on THE ANCIENT ECONOMY by Moses I. Finley. According to this review, Finley’s book “unveiled a view of the economic underpinnings of ancient economies in which markets and economic motivations played little if any role. Status and civic ideology governed the allocation of scarce resources.” These issues are hotly contested. The review says, “At present the study of the ancient economy might be compared to a minefield, full of perils for the unsuspecting scholar.”
