Coriolanus

I finished Coriolanus, the last of my Shakespeare plays, at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Not where we live, but where we often visit. The Tea Lounge is a unique coffee/tea shop (except for the other Tea Louonge relatively close by). We spent alot of time there this fall when we didn't have Internet at home, since they have free wireless. The decor of the Tea Lounge is unimaginably cool; first, it's enormous and I mean warehouse-enormous (which in New York is rare): it's both wide and open, crappy couches fill the space, the coffee bar turns quickly into a real bar, massive fans sway above your head, and they often play truly good music (and usually the whole album!) like The Beatles, Nirvana, and Bob Dylan. A couple warnings: food is expensive and not all that spectacular, the place can be packed on weekends with a mix of hipsters and Brooklyn yuppies, and on weekdays it is the place where all the young mother's gather (and my god there is a lot of them in Park Slope!) for play-dates, for gossip and knitting, and other activities which you wouldn't expect in 21st Century Brooklyn but occur nonetheless .

It was a rainy day in Brooklyn, and our plans for a picnic in the botanical gardens were therefore postponed. So instead we spent three hours at the Tea Lounge. I finished the play, reading the final bear-the-dead-like-a-soldier speech, while my fiance simultaneously read the chapter in Little Women where Jo declines Laurie. What symbol might be drawn from that conjunction, I don't know. But it was fun, nonetheless. We celebrated my completion of Shakespeare's play by proceeding to a market and picking up salmon and Kronenbourg for dinner. It was all in all a lovely, surprising Saturday. In New York City any weekend where you don't do much of anything--where you remember that simple days are still possible--is a good one.

Coriolanus proved a difficult play to get into, although the play begins with action: a blossoming of various battles (which seems a rarity for Shakespeare, there was very little exposition). The first act feels initially as though it should be the fourth or fifth. I did finally get grasped by the play, but by the end I didn't feel fully moved or astounded. Plot-wise the play is very well put together, and it certainly deals with some interesting issues, but I felt it lacked the emotional punch of almost every other of Shakespeare's tragedies.

The story is pretty simple, Coriolanus is a soldier through-and-through, a man who performs daring and near god-like deeds in warfare. However, his inability to double-speak or make love to the plebians of Rome causes his downfall and eventual banishment from his home. To revenge himself upon his citizens, he joins with an old enemy, Aufidius, to storm the gates of Rome and lay waste to the city. Militarily, he is set up to succeed, but he is finally convinced to seek a truce when by his mother. As revenge, and partly as a way to regain his own status, Coriolanus is murdered by Aufidius. Shakespeare took the story from Plutarch's Lives.

The main set-up of the story, as I see it, is the tension between Coriolanus, a man of action, utterly incapable of duplicity, and the nature of Rome (or political states in general) where one must be able to play the political game, i.e. being a war hero is not enough. Coriolanus can often be compared to Achilles, the greatest war hero of war-heroes (although, I felt Coriolanus lacked the potent mix of raw fierceness and knee-jerk passion which Achilles represents so well). Both men achieve great military victories for their state, both men feel underappreciated, and both men meet tragic ends. It could be argued that Achilles' blend of undiluted anger and arete is more more accepted by the society of Ancient Greece than Coriolanus' same qualities in later Rome, but I think that's overlooking the consistent reactions of the Greeks to Achilles in The Iliad; Achilles is often lectured by Agamemnon and Odysseus for his temper, he is treated as a child, unable to grasp the political realities of Ancient Greece. While it is certain that Achilles was revered throughout classical Greece as a hero worthy of emulation, I don't think The Iliad itself makes it so, the portrait painted there is too complex. The same stands for Coriolanus. While a war-hero and a man who lives up to his word (except in foregoing the destrcution of Rome), Coriolanus is still protrayed as petulant, almost stupid, and certainly a mama's boy. He is only kind of worth his hero-status, only kind of worth emulation. Perhaps, what this best attends to is the sense that certain aspects of society should not be forced to mix. In other words, soldiers--even the greatest--should not be forced into politics by default. Just as being a politician does not automaically make one a good soldiers. With that I'll let the heroes lie.

One nice coincidence: I finished my Shakespeare-play-completion on April 22nd, but I read the Introduction on the 23rd--Shakespeare's (supposed) birthday. It seemed fitting.

That evening in Park Slope, as my girlfriend and I walked from the Tea Lounge to the grocery, I was saying something about how I was excited that now I had read everything Shakespeare had written.

"Really everything?"

"Yeah, I think so. All the plays, the long poems--you know."

"You've read all the sonnets?"

"Ah...well, no."

And there it is. Now, I've got to pull out the sonnets and get to work. Well...maybe. I think first a break is required. Perhaps a classic children's novel is in the works, one in which I was too deprived to have read as a child.

Much ado.


Book borrowed from the 96th St. New York Public Library.

Coriolanus

By: William Shakespeare

Signet Classics, 2002

Paperback, 384 pages

ISBN: 0451528433

Breath

In college I minored in history. I now think that I probably should have double-majored: english and history (maybe tripled, theatre). Since graduating, my fascination--obsession may be a better word--with history has only grown. It's incredible to wonder at the scale of lives that have come before ours, each one unique and important. There are so many stories in those multitudinous lives. I think it would be nearly impossible to be a good reader (which is what I strive for) and be bored by the past. In fact I doubt if it's possible to be fully engaged with the world, and be bored by the past.

I am always surprised how history receives a bad rap in our culture (but then I am also puzzled by how 'intelligence' is given a bad rap too). Like math and science, history is usually considered a boring subject, only for specialists, i.e. geeks, nerds, and the like. At most history to us is a source of entertainment (i.e. movies) or a harmless hobby and not illumination. A basic example is the amount of not only badly made historic films, but also the amount of inaccuracy in Hollywood. A film may cost three hundred million, but none of this seems to go into any actual research. There are of course exceptions: Master and Commander comes immediately to mind. But as usual I am digressing, let me just say that history--while always entertaining--is more than entertainment, and the past deserves more respect and curiosity than is usually granted it.

I don't think Donna Jo Napoli is well known outside of the YA market; this is a shame. From the two novels I have read of hers, she is a sublime novelist of history. She is a masterful storyteller with a style that punches by way of its simplicity. Using just a few sentences she can craft historical places and times that prove both recognizable and entirely alien. I imagine any run-of-the-mill time traveler would undergo a similar experience. Most of her novels take familiar fairy-tales or myths and attempt a new spin on them while infusing raw and gritty historical 'reality' over most of the fantastical elements (in fact it is only really when Napoli attempts 'fantasy' that her stories slip a bit and fade).

Breath is a retelling of the medieval story of the pied piper who stole away Hamelin's rats (and children) by music. But really Breath only focuses on this traditional part of the story in the last fifty or so pages, and it is the previous two hundred that I found truly enthralling. Here we see a small, 13th Century German town and farmstead recreated in brief, yet utterly believeable, detail (a scene in which a grandmother and grandson make a sparrow-pie dinner sticks out). Salz--our narrator crippled with cystic fibrosis--tells his story in heart-breaking, stark prose. One minute he's playing with his new kitten, and the next he's stricken with tremendous, life-threatening pain, but the change is so abrupt and simple, the reader hardly recognizes it until they are in the midst of the pain, with Salz.

The bulk of the book deals with the slow destruction of Hamelin as a mysterious illness overtakes one household after another. The disease is blamed on a sudden increase in rats--hence the piper. But the disease takes on a form that may be even more terrifying than the black plague (which had not yet reached Europe from Asia in 1284 when the novel takes place). This plague instead causes night-madness: hallucinations, sexual deviance, explosive violence. Salz proves immune to this sickness (whose scientific nature is explained thoroughly in an Afterward by Napoli), and it is through these innocent eyes that we watch his family, and the whole town, suffer a fate worse than death. It is a nightmarish Jekyll-and-Hyde vision, gut-wrenching and haunting. And Napoli protrays it with such care and simplicity that the terror rises almost unbeknown. Certainly, it is unwelcome, even by the reader: one cannot help but react to the town's devastation with even more disbelief than does Salz.

As with Bound, the other Napoli novel I have read, the book loses some of its focus and even believability in the last few chapters. By hewing so close to the Pied Piper story, she gets herself stuck in a situation that is just not believable, and starkly so against the gritty realism of the rest. Still the book is harrowing, affective, and give you a better glimpse of the 13th century than almost any movie and most other books. Rather meant for adults or children. However, if you're looking for a good medieval antithesis to Breath (that's still every bit as wonderful and accurate) check out Adam of the Road, a wondrous, beautiful tale of a boy who loses his father and dog in the medieval England.

If Breath sounds like it shouldn't be meant for children, that's probably right. In my mind this is really a 14 and up YA novel, however a mature 12-year-old could probably handle it. But this brings up one of the depressing issues surrounding "Young Adult Literature" (and there are many). More and more books are being classified young adult simply by the age of the narrator or main character and not neccesarily based on content and/or the author's desired audience. Donna Jo Napoli is a wonderful writer for young adults, but she is also a wonderful writer for any age. But how many adults take YA literature into consideration when choosing their next book? Of course, the majority of YA novels are crap, but this doesn't mean the gems should be stuck in the same category. Having spent the last nine months reading and re-reading children's literature, I can safely say that a lot of it deserves wider attention than it receives and some of it deserves far less attention than it already gets (i.e. Gossip Girls series, The Clique series, and any of the other trashy, nullifying kid lit. out there).

Well that is enough of this rambling entry where I seemed to cover everything (and resolve little) from American society's take on history to the actual book to various issues in classifying books as Young Adult. Next time (Shakespeare returns) I'll try to focus a little more.

(Book borrowed from work; picture above is of the hardcover edition, because I think that cover is far better)

Breath

By: Donna Jo Napoli

Simon Pulse, June 2005

Paperback, 272 pages

ISBN: 068986177X

Monster Blood Tattoo, Book One: Foundling

A brief word on reading in New York City's subways. First, it is wonderful. Every weekday I have on average one-and-a-half to two-hours of pure reading time. That's a pretty significant chunk (1/12 of a day). However, there is another plus to reading on the subway: it is a way to hide. My book is a tortoise's shell, whenever I want I just pop my head in-between the pages. This allows me to avoid high school tourists singing " Santa Fe" from Rent (although that was actually very amusing), crazy men screaming and ranting that MLK Jr. was a whoremonger, kids selling candy for god-knows-what, and of course the cursory panhandler. It also allows me to take a breather from New York's freneticism, its overwhelming characters, and the poisonous vapors that come through whenever the doors open.

That brings me to: drawbacks. Let's be honest, reading on the subway is not sitting at home in late-afternoon light with a cup of lemon tea listening to classical music. Reading on the subway often means reading the same sentence two dozen time because A) you were eaves-dropping on some suit's take-over-the-world conversation, B) your eyes were straying to a dread-locked dude playing Mario Brothers, C) your focus (though not your eyes) was pulling to the woman who is proclaiming that Christ is coming, or D) you just have no idea what train is what on the weekend. In other words, sometimes the shell isn't as dark or thick as I want it to be, and despite my best efforts I still can't avoid being drawn into the daily show that is New York City.

Another reality: for subway bibliophiles you have to choose book size wisely. For example, I have to keep checking out manageable copies of Shakespeare's plays from the library because I simply can't cart around the hefty Complete Works. Finally, by reading on the subway you must accept that people will look at what you are reading and judge you accordingly. I thought about reading the Bible (since I'm trying to finish that as well) but then I realized a portion of the populace would judge me as an over zealous-Christian-fundie-rightwing-missonary while others would want to compare with me their 'finding Jesus' stories. I decided to avoid such associations, and read Monster Blood Tattoo instead.

Before I begin my Monster Blood consideration, I should explain my job. I currently work as a Children's Book Buyer at an independent bookstore. For the purposes of these pages, this means I will be writing about a significant amount of children's literature. This also means I have access to tons of books before they go on sale. Monster Blood Tattoo releases in May. Currently, I am reading a galley; it's an unfinalized version of the book that publishers send around to allow stores to review the book before they decide whether or not to buy.

I have one chapter left of Monster Blood Tattoo, but feel sufficiently well informed to write about the book (which got the Australian writer a six-figure deal and a trilogy). Let me start off by saying that I love fantasy. It's one of the only 'genre-fictions' I am drawn to regularly. On the other hand, I am pretty picky about my fantasy. No one touches Tolkien. C.S. Lewis is a genius. And contemporaneously, Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series and Harry Potter are the only fantasies I read consistently.

Monster Blood Tattoo while enjoyable does not belong in the realm of the aforementioned. It contains an incredibly well crafted and pretty original (considering how difficult it is to be original in fantasy or sci-fi anymore) world. Apparently, Mr. Cornish spent many years crafting the world before drafting the story. This is not surprising, the detail is staggering and for the most part believable. The world is most closely comparable to a few Miyazaki films and the later Final Fantasy video games.

Fantasy is known to a genre of pretty awful writing, but D.M. Cornish does not fall into that category. His style is entertaining and interesting, his dialogue especially crisp and character-driven (I loved it when his monsters opened their mouths). Still, his writing does lack something, a kind of visceral (and if not that, mythical) quality that makes us delude ourselves into believing this is a real place and not just some planet misting in Cornish's mind.

While the writing was overall pretty good, the plot lacked some punch. The beginning drew me, as basically the story is simple and one I particularly enjoy: child-protagonist on a journey into the world. Where, of course, things are neither what they seem nor what he expects. Cornish does a nice job of instilling his hero, Rossamund (a boy with a girl's name) with wide-eyed wonder and, when needed, shock at the world's cruelty. Also, it is nice to read a fantasy that almost feels prosaic, so far our hero is not a CHOSEN one; he is not out to save the world or any such thing; he posses no remarkable abilities or objects; he's just a Candide out for a wander (however there are hints of chosen-one, world-saving to come...I hope not). My large complaint with the plot is that by the end (or by the near-end) not enough has happened. It feels like I should only be halfway through the first book, when instead I am 18 pages from the end. Loose ends are tied up far too easily and conveniently, characters either discarded or returned in an altogether unbelievable style. The climax is lackluster. This is not to say the book is rotten by any means. I enjoyed it quite a lot, though I am not sure if I'll have enough reserve interest to read the next volume whenever it appears.

I must close with a word about the title. How about: what the hell were they thinking. Monster Blood Tattoo sounds like a very crappy video game or a very crappy comic book. If this book wants to be a new serious contender in the ever-more-crowded genre of young adult fantasy, it should not have a title that would make even an undiscerning thirteen-year-old snicker. Why? Why? Why? The title of the series does make (some) sense once you read the book, but that doesn't really matter, because it's the first impression here that sticks.

It makes me wonder where Lord of the Rings would stand today if Tolkien, as he initially intended, had called his protagonist Bingo instead of Frodo?



Some alternative titles:

The Lord of the Rings -- My Year Saving Middle Earth

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe -- Jesus Allegory in a Wardrobe

The Wheel of Time -- The Apocalypse, Again


(Galley, courtesy of Penguin)


Monster Blood Tattoo, Book One: Foundling

By: D.M. Cornish

Penguin, 2006

Paperback, 432 pages

ISBN: 0399-24638-X

Timon of Athens

Rather than begin with an introduction both of myself and of this blog, I will instead begin with a book. I'll shelve that introduction for another time, another place.

I am at the tail-end of a reading journey (which I do not doubt will prove the most fulfilling of my life) of Shakespeare's works; this journey began twelve years ago when I first read A Midsummer Night's Dream. I was on an extended hiatus from school and had checked out the play from our local library. I remember sitting in bed, eating a TV dinner I had microwaved myself, and reading the entire play in one sitting. I felt daring and grown-up. One, because I was home alone and left to my own devices, and, two, because I was reading literature that was clearly beyond me. I probably understood a fifth of it at the time (although perhaps that is being too generous), but I recall laughing whole-heartedly at the lovers' mercurial hearts. The line that sticks out most from that particular reading belongs to Lysander: 'And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake!' I still crack-up at that one when I see the show performed; in most audiences I think I am the only one to laugh.

Currently--what seems a lifetime later--I am reading Timon of Athens on the subway to and from work. This is my last Shakespeare play, but one. After Timon, it's Coriolanus. Once I'm finished with the canon, I don't truly know how I will respond. I suppose I should expect some sense of loss, some cold frigid feeling. After all, unless in my lifetime some lost play of Shakespeare's re-emerges (I'm hoping for Cardino simply because the title is so striking), Corialanus will prove the last time Shakespeare's words will be entirely new to me. But in actuality I don't feel any foreboding toward the end. For one thing, Shakespeare is one of the rare writers whose works I can read (or see) again and again without any trepidation. His plays age better than wine, and are far less expensive (cheap bottle of wine in New York: fifteen dollars, used Shakespeare play: four). Though this view will certainly not gain any points in originality: I attest that Shakespeare is the greatest writer of any age. There is something about his words that is inexpressible, they reach into the deepest valley of what it is to be human--and pull out conundrums. His metaphors, while never unfunctional, are always bold, daring, and replete. He creates characters that are at once bigger-than-life yet at the same time as true-to-life as any person who has ever graced this earth. He is the master imaginer.

But enough of this, I'm certain I will return to 'why-Shakespeare-above-all-others' again in the future. On to: Timon of Athens. I just finished Scene 1 of Act IV, in which Timon curses Athens--with true Shakespearean passion--the city that has grounded his ruin. The play is not one of Shakespeare's best, however I still find myself enthralled. One of the things that intrigues me most is how Shakespeare can write a compelling play centered almost entirely on economic issues (although I shouldn't be surprised: A Merchant of Venice). To me--a person with mostly an artistic and dramatic sensibility--it seems like a rather bland topic. But here Shakespeare brings both the micro-economy of Timon and the macro of Athens into light. He is fascinated by how the decisions one person--or a community--makes with money can so easily shape our fates. What are these gold pieces, these dubloons, these talents, this cash? Of course, Shakespeare doesn't answer this question; it would be ridiculous if he did. But for myself--entering my late twenties--I almost wish he did. Us post-college loaners could use a little Shakesperean advice.

Shakespeare's round-about, open treatment of loaning/lending reminds me of Neal Stephenson's own presentation of cash in Quicksilver. I read that book this summer, and while I did not love it enough to read the two following hefty volumes, I really did enjoy the read (except for the very strange sex/purging scenes). I was especially drawn-in by Stephenson's obsession with money or, perhaps more properly, the rough-and-tumble beginnings of a capitalist market economy where money becomes like air. It's there: we know that because we breathe it, it allows us to live; it's there, but it's no longer tangible. It's tied up. It's invested. It is--beyond true comprehension.

But Timon begins with actual assets, and then loses everything due to unbridled spending. Or does he lose everything because what he invests in (friendship) refuses to pay him back? There is no return on camraderie, certainly not cold hard glittering cash. So here money is not based on material worth or market value, but rather on social ties and social relationships. Or are social ties only corrupted by financial? Maybe. Maybe not. Here is a sign of things to come: there will be no answers in this blog. Answers don't belong in great literature, only questions and musings.

While it sucks to be Timon, at least he's expressive enough to pay back his lackluster friends with perfected cursing. I'll leave you with these impassioned words:


bankrupts, hold fast;
Rather than render back, out with your knives,
And cut your trusters' throats! bound servants, steal!
Large-handed robbers your grave masters are,
And pill by law. Maid, to thy master's bed;
Thy mistress is o' the brothel! Son of sixteen,
Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire,
With it beat out his brains! Piety, and fear,
Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,
Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,
Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,
Degrees, observances, customs, and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries,
And let confusion live!


(Library Book, NYPL 96th St.)


Titus Adronicus/Timon of Athens

By: William Shakespeare

General Editor: Sylvan Barnet

Signet, 1989

Paperback, 432 pages

ISBN: 0-451-52269-9