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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: May 2015

Shakespearing #34: Pericles

17 Sunday May 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Shakespeare, Shakespearing

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David Foley, George Wilkins, Pericles

Shakespearing #34 by David Foley

Pericles

34 Pericles lighter

Last week I mentioned a tug-of-war I’d felt in college between the Shakespeare-as-literature and the Shakespeare-as-drama camps, but now I wonder if I just don’t get academics in general. In his introduction to the Pelican edition of Pericles, Stephen Orgel of Stanford calls the play “a masterpiece—which is to say that by the standards of the Renaissance stage, it was very good theater.” At the same time, he says, Pericles “excites whatever interest it does today only because Shakespeare’s name is attached to it.” And even as I try to get my head around an understanding of “masterpiece” as “very good for its time” (or even of Pericles as “very good”), it occurs to me that if anything is keeping Pericles alive today it’s not Shakespeare’s name but Shakespeare.

Orgel makes his claims while wrestling with the authorship question. The second half of Pericles is understood these days to have been written by Shakespeare and the first by someone named George Wilkins. In making his case for Pericles as a whole masterpiece, Orgel cites the play’s choral figure, John Gower, as its “most striking element.” But Gower changes in both form and intent halfway through the play. The change is pronounced enough to make you feel that Shakespeare has seized the reins of the play from Wilkins with a certain irritable impatience.

Gower, a contemporary of Chaucer, wrote the narrative poem on which the play is based, and in the first half of the play, he narrates the story in a fusty tetrameter sprinkled with archaisms (“iwis,” “speken”). This is the kind of slightly academic conceit that can seem, to the amateur playwright, like a good idea, but in Wilkins’ hands it adds to the static, novelistic development of the early scenes. Shakespeare’s Gower moves; he sweeps the audience along with him, urging them to “think [Pericles’] pilot thought” as he “[thwarts] the wayward seas.”

Perhaps because the division of labor is so marked in Pericles, it’s easier here to see the difference not just between Shakespeare and his co-author but between a dramatist and someone just writing a play. The difference you feel when Shakespeare takes over is a sense of being lifted up into a livable world, a world of motion, of lives both animated and animating. You feel it in the reply of the villainous Dionyza when Leonine, charged with murdering Marina, objects that “she is a goodly creature”: “The fitter then the gods should have her.” You feel it in the intractable reality of the Bawd, who, like the Nurse, can’t leave a room when she’s dismissed. You feel it in Marina who, like many of Shakespeare’s women, anneals deep feeling to sharp intellect, whether she’s arguing with Leonides for her life or with Lysimachus and Boult for her chastity. “Do anything but this thou doest,” she tells the panderer Boult. “Empty/Old receptacles, or common shores of filth,” and you understand that the key to Shakespeare’s drama is the mind and heart in fierce motion.

It’s insane how moving Marina and Pericles’ recognition scene is, given the often clunky path that got us there (and the improbable set-up; it depends on no one actually mentioning Pericles’ name to Marina). It’s as if, in taking over from the clumsier playwright, Shakespeare reconnected with his own powers and at the same time began to imagine, after the bitterness of Coriolanus and Timon, a new dramatic world of clemency and reconciliation. “Did you not name a tempest,/A birth, and death?” Thais asks her rediscovered husband in the final scene. Well, yeah.

_______

David Foley

David Foley is a playwright and fiction writer living in Brooklyn. His plays include Cressida Among the Greeks, Paradise, Nance O’Neil, The Murders at Argos, A Hole in the Fence, and Sad Hotel, among others. His novel The Traveler’s Companion is available on Amazon. He teaches at New York University.

Episode 153: Leonard Kinsey!

16 Saturday May 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Disney, Episode

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Episode 153 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I interview the iconoclastic Disney author Leonard Kinsey,

Leonard Kinsey

plus Terry Barr writes about leaning not to teach The Catcher in the Rye.

Terry BarrTEXTS DISCUSSED

The Dark Side of DisneyOur Kingdom of DustHabst and the Disney SaboteursIt's kind of a cute storyThe Catcher in the RyeNOTE

The music accompanying Terry Barr’s essay is “Wingspan” by Carlton Melton, from their album “Photos of Photos.”

Photos Of Photos_______

Episode 153 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #88: Mildred Pierce

15 Friday May 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Curator of Schlock

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Mary Pierce

The Curator of Schlock #88 by Jeff Shuster

Mildred Pierce, or All’s Well That Ends Well?

Mildred Pierce

I covered a movie about Joan Crawford last week, so I thought it would fitting to cover a movie actually starring Joan Crawford this week. So I’ll review the one she won Best Actress for, Mildred Pierce. I have to admit, these black and white features from Hollywood’s Golden Age certainly hold up well in the visual department. They do have a timelessness to them that really can’t be matched by modern movies about hobbits, super heroes, vampires, Transformers, or Liam Neeson..

What is Mildred Pierce about? Mildred Pierce is anti-redemption story about a working class mother who wants her daughters to enjoy the finer things in life. Her husband is a working class Joe who resents Mildred for spending money on fancy dresses for their eldest daughter, Veda (Ann Blyth). They have another daughter named Kay who is content enough to play football with the neighborhood boys, mucking it up in the muck. Veda doesn’t like the fancy dress her mother bought for her, saying it’s cheap and smelly.

Mildred1

Mildred and her husband separate, leaving poor Mildred to go on a job hunt that eventually rewards her with a waitressing position.

Mildred2

She actually gets rather good at waitressing, earning enough from tips and pie-baking to afford a maid along with ballet lessons for Kay and a singing teacher for Veda. Mildred is afraid of Veda learning that her mother is a waitress, but Veda finds out anyway and chides her mother for disgracing their broken family. I’d also be ashamed if my mother was a waitress…no, hash slinger…no, a…a…a chum scrubber! I wouldn’t care how many fancy dresses or manservants or singing teachers she bought me.

Mildred3

Remember kids, being part of the upper class is a state of mind. If you berate your parents for their position in life, they might just decide to start their own chain of restaurants named Mildred’s, make bags of money, and buy even fancier houses and fancier dresses and more maids! The reason they call it the high life is because there are no limits. Some would say there’s no satisfaction either, but satisfaction is for people content to be losers.

Eventually, Veda grows tired of being a rich fish in a small pond. She marries Ted Forester, a young gentleman from a wealthy, respected family, but she doesn’t love him.

Mildred4

They get a divorce, but since Veda is pregnant, she insists on $10,000 or there’s going to be trouble. The joke is on the Foresters since it turns out Veda was lying about being pregnant. Ha! She wants to get away from her mother and her “chickens, pies and kitchens. Everything that smells of grease.” She calls her mother a “common frump.”

Mildred5

I remember reading a Mary Worth comic strip a few years back. Mary had a friend who decided she needed to get ahead at the company she worked at so she accused the vice-president of sexual harassment, got him fired, and took his position. The accusation was a lie, but she got what she wanted and couldn’t understand why Mary didn’t approve. It sure blew my mind.

5 Things I Learned from Mildred Pierce

  1. Police inspectors won’t play along with your frame job.
  2. Don’t leave your waitressing uniform tucked away in the back of your closet. Your daughter will find it!
  3. Pneumonia kills real fast!
  4. Cash the check before you tell your mother of your little pregnancy scam.
  5. Don’t scorn a woman who is holding a loaded pistol.

_______

Jeffrey Shuster 4

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida.

Aesthetic Drift #2: On Motherhood: Rethinking Hurston’s Most Famous Novel

14 Thursday May 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Aesthetic Drift

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Rochelle Spencer, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

 Aesthetic Drift #2 by Rochelle Spencer

On Motherhood: Rethinking Hurston’s Most Famous Novel

Zora Neale Hurston.

Zora Neale Hurston.

Though I hadn’t read Their Eyes Were Watching God in more than fifteen years, when I returned to graduate school a couple of years ago to complete a doctorate, I was assigned Zora Neale Hurston’s famous novel three separate times within seven months.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

I read Their Eyes for a class on the global south that examined southern identity in the Caribbean and in southern, central, and northern America. I reread the book for a class on multicultural women writers, and I most recently read it in my American South class, a class which examined race in the southern literature of the United States.

The flexibility of this novel—its ability to help us uncover truths about cosmopolitanism, gender, race, and so much more—is one of the reasons it’s so often taught. But, personally, what the novel has helped me to discover about myself as an individual is just as important as what it has taught me about the world. Today, as a black woman in her mid-thirties, I realize Their Eyes has given me a model for being in the world, for making difficult and individualized choices and dealing with the gossip and isolation that comes along with them.

For me, at thirty-six, the most curious thing about Their Eyes isn’t Janie, the protagonist’s, sensual dreamlike beauty or the near-magical love she develops for Tea Cake—Janie’s younger, poorer soul-mate who sees the intelligence Janie’s beauty sometimes obscures—it’s the novel’s complex, contradictory, and near-revolutionary relationship with African-American motherhood.

Mothers are revered everywhere, but perhaps especially so in the black community where single mothers are common and playing the dozens—making jokes about say, how someone’s mama is so dumb, she thought a quarterback was refund—can lead to violence. To this day, I have friends who are wholly indifferent to their fathers, but make just one small, seemingly innocuous comment about their mothers, and they will pull the hair from your skull.

Complicating the black community’s relationship with motherhood is how, historically, thousands of black women became mothers not by choice, but by force. Hurston isn’t afraid to demonstrate this painful truth either: Leafy, Janie’s mother, is both a product of rape (Leafy’s mother is raped by her master) and its survivor (Leafy is raped by a schoolmaster; this rape then produces Janie).

Janie’s relationship with her mother, whose early life is nearly as troubled as Leafy’s, is nebulous. In chapter two, Janie tells her friend Pheoby that she had “never seen mah papa…mah mama neither,” but in chapter 9, Janie’s “seldom “ seen mother becomes one who has “never” been present. Janie’s contradictory statements could be an oversight from Hurston, but Janie’s words also suggest her ability to look towards a future that looks and feels different from anything her mother or grandmother could conceive. For it’s also in chapter 9 that Janie, recently freed from an abusive relationship, decides against conventional choices: going off in search of her mother, returning home to tend to her grandmother’s grave. Janie, opts, instead to spend some time alone, just getting to know herself.

Janie’s initial longing for privacy and solitude, when coupled with Janie’s unapologetic attitude about not becoming a mother, is what allows me, finally, to read Their Eyes as a revolutionary text. When I first encountered Their Eyes in high school, I didn’t understand why so many people saw Janie as a feminist character. To me, then, Janie was weak—a woman defined, realized, and ultimately resurrected by romantic love.

But now that I have a better understanding of Janie’s willingness to simply make choices that will make her happy, I see her as courageous. Because, even today, we’re told women have to make certain choices, that we must be a certain kind of woman to be worthy of love. Just a year or so ago, one of my Facebook friends wrote on his wall that all educated black women—regardless of whether they were in a committed relationship or not, regardless of whether they were well-off or not—had a responsibility to have children. My friend’s post received several “likes,” and I wondered just how much harder it must have been for a woman in Janie’s era to not have children. The reasons for Janie’s childlessness aren’t fully clear, but Hurston implies that Janie’s decision to ditch respectability politics (marry a nice middle-classed man, raise children, maintain a spotless home) is exactly what allows her to move freely in this world.

Their Eyes has made me both a better writer and a better person. Janie is a pretty, middle-classed black woman, whose life, at least superficially, seems more comfortable than many of her counterparts. But by writing about Janie’s path towards self-love and discovery, Hurston shows the turmoil, the quiet everyday tragedies underlying Janie’s decisions. Writers are told that we should write about big subjects like war, that if our language isn’t violent and loud, then we’ve somehow failed. Hurston reminds us that women’s lives are important enough, rich enough, to be explored.

And the next time a friend or relative accuses me of being selfish for not having children, I hope I’ll have the kind of courage and self-possession Janie did, the same sort of spirit that allows her to snatch life “from around the waist of the world” and wrap life’s possibilities—the horizon—around her “like a great fish-net.“ I hope that my soul, like Janie’s, is ready “to come and see.”

Note: This essay first appeared on episode 151 of The Drunken Odyssey podcast.

_______

Rochelle Spencer

Rochelle Spencer (Episode 151) is co-editor of the anthology All About Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2014), a member of the National Book Critics Circle, and a recipient of fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. She’s currently working on a dissertation on Afro-Surrealist literature at the University of Indiana at Pennsylvania.

Heroes Never Rust #93: Master Plans

13 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Heroes Never Rust

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Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, sean ironman, Watchmen

Heroes Never Rust #93 by Sean Ironman

Watchmen: Master Plans

So we have come to this. The penultimate issue of Watchmen. The issue when the villain is truly revealed and his master plan is set. Although a few pages are given over to some of the residents of New York City, most of the issue is set aside for Night Owl and Rorschach’s confrontation with Ozymandias, the comic’s villain. There is some action, with Ozymandias easily taking care of the two heroes. (I must say, on a side note, how interesting it is to make Ozymandias so much more powerful that the heroes in this issue. At no point, do the heroes really even stand a chance at stopping Ozymandias. I like it.) The problem that many stories have, not just superhero stories, is that the villain ends up explaining the whole plot to the heroes. A lot happens in Watchmen, and readers do need to understand how each piece fits, but usually, there is no actual story-based reason for a character to lay out the plot. Yet, here in the penultimate issue, Ozymandias tells Rorschach and Night Owl everything. And it works! The issue is one of the best of Watchmen.

Watchmen 11

The comic sidesteps the exposition aspect of revealing Ozymandias’ master plan by making the revelation less about revelation and more of a persuasive argument. Ozymandias, for all his power, does not show aggression toward his old teammates. When Rorschach and Night Owl first approach, Ozymandias is eating. He only strikes Rorschach and Night Owl in defense. Once the heroes are on the floor, Ozymandias asks, “Now…what can I do for you?” Ozymandias isn’t looking for a fight. He truly believes that what he is doing is the best thing for the world, and instead of beating Rorschach and Night Owl, he is trying to convince them. He wants his old teammates on his side. When Night Owl asks Ozymandias what he’s trying to do, Ozymandias responds, “What we all tried to do after our initial struggle to find our feet. I’m trying to improve the world.”

Watchmen 11 detail 1

Ozymandias doesn’t just reveal what he’s trying to do, but what he has done. He goes back to his beginnings as a masked vigilante. He talks about meeting The Comedian, about meeting his old teammates. Ozymandias is building an argument. The physical fights that occur between his words are because Rorschach attacks him while he is speaking. Ozymandias wants to help the world, just in a different way than Rorschach and Night Owl. The death of a few to save the many. Ozymandias only got Doctor Manhattan off world because Doctor Manhattan is too powerful, and The Comedian was killed because he discovered Ozymandias’ plan. Rorschach asks, “Blake’s murder. You confess?” and Ozymandias responds with “Confession implies penitence. I merely regret his accidental involvement.” Ozymandias, in a way, is right in distancing himself from emotion. A doctor cannot get emotionally involved with his or her patients. Perhaps a superhero must be objective. Ozymandias does not revel in what he has done, but he believes that by destroying the present system in place then the future will be secured.

At the end of the day, the issue works when Rorschach and Night Owl refuse to let Adrian succeed. They have listened to his pitch, but they won’t let him do it. And, in response, Ozymandias utters one of the best lines of Watchmen, “Dan, I’m not a republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I’d explain my master stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.” The heroes are too late. Ozymandias isn’t trying to convince Rorschach and Night Owl to help him. He’s trying to convince them to understand why he did what he did. Being far from New York City, the location of the attack, the heroes don’t realize it’s too late to stop the attack.

Watchmen Detail 2

The problem with the villain explaining the whole master plan is that, of course, the hero is going to get free and stop the villain. The villain is really just telling the hero how to stop the plan. But, here, the trope is turned on its head. As Ozymandias is laying out what he has done and why, readers will rely on what they have learned from stories so far, that the heroes will win. The villain’s plan will not succeed. But, the reader is proved wrong in Watchmen. It makes the comic more memorable and more shocking, not by the murder of the residents of New York City, but by making the reader feel comfortable and then pulling the rug out from underneath. Without Ozymandias revealing his master plan, even if the same attack was set and went off without the heroes standing a chance, the issue would fall flat. A surprise only works if readers are led to believe one thing first. By relying on the cliché of the overly talkative villain, Watchmen brings something new to the table.

_______

Photo by John King

Photo by John King

Sean Ironman (Episode 102) earned his MFA at the University of Central Florida. Currently, he teaches creative nonfiction and digital media at the University of Central Arkansas as a visiting professor. His work can be read in The Writer’s Chronicle, Redivider, and Breakers: A Comics Anthology, among others.

The Global Barfly’s Companion #7: The Cloak Room

11 Monday May 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Global Barfly's Companion

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The Global Barfly’s Companion #7 by Scott Gilman

Bar: The Cloak Room

Location: 1300 Colorado St, Austin, TX 78701

CloakRoom7

As I am walking north on Colorado on a humid but comfortable night, tall, expansive trees provide visual cover from what really shades The Cloak Room bar just past 13th Street: the Texas State Capitol. There is a Trail of Trees within the Capitol grounds; on this block you’d be nearest the Bur Oak and Redbud. The orange light emanating from the top of the Capitol dome indicates the legislature is in session; for four months every two years, representatives and senators from Killeen and El Paso to Tyler and Houston descend upon Austin to collectively determine the policies of one of the most successful, backwards, proud and largest states in the country.

I walk down a tight flight of white stairs to a white door that looks like the entrance to a storage facility. Stevie Ray Vaughan plays on the sound system. It would either be him or Willie, wouldn’t it?

Long past happy hour, The Cloak Room on a Friday evening is still full, the lights so dark you can barely make out people’s faces, several men, likely elected officials, wearing suits, younger men and women in their 20s and 30s, likely legislative aides (no one dresses this formally in Austin) are several drinks in, talking loudly about church-state separation as they scroll through their mobile phones.

It’s a smaller room than I remembered, the bar consisting of just five stools. I sit at one and see the bottles of whiskey lined up; I look to see what beer they have but don’t see any cans or bottles on display. I ask the bartender and it’s a particularly down-market selection, so I settle on a Shiner Bock. A TV is playing a basketball game.

CloakRoom4

Looking around, what stands out most prominently is the wood paneling of the walls. If you took out the bar this space feels like it could function as an extension meeting room of the Capitol; with the bar, it probably is.

A woman comes up to the bar and strikes up a conversation with the bartender. Bev, it turns out, has a worn face and long, straggly blondish hair; she’s been the bartender here since 1989. The woman orders a double Bulleit rye for her boyfriend, a single Bulleit rye for herself, and a Shiner Bock for each of them.

Country music is now playing, and I moan. I go to the jukebox and it seems the most recent music might have been added by Bev herself when she started; besides some Prince, Madonna, Michael Jackson and of course Stevie, everything else is old R&B (Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke) or country (Waylon Jennings, Boz Scaggs, Ray Price). I put on Etta James, Elvis and some more Stevie.

CloakRoom6

To use the restroom you go towards the back with the saloon-type swinging doors, then up the stairs (how often does that happen?) in a stairwell lined with photos from past visitors.

CloakRoom1

Have that many people really come here? It makes it seem like it’s a pilgrimage of some sort to visit the Cloak Room.

I’m nursing my beer when a couple comes in and sits next to me. He’s wearing a coat and tie and she has on a nice dress. They leave after one drink (she a glass of red wine, him a Maker’s Mark) and then after a few minutes another couple comes in.

Bev has disappeared so they wait patiently, smiling at each other, until the bartender returns. The woman drinks a Maker’s with amaretto while he orders a shot of tequila. As I nurse my second Shiner Bock, the three women and one man at the table behind me start singing to the Etta James. Then the large group who was sitting in the darkest part of the bar gets up and leaves; it appears the day’s governing business is done.

The music stops and the bar is silent. Bev arranges the paper slips with everyone’s orders in a row along the bar. She says, “They might be walkin’ but I’ve got their credit card. They’ll be back.”

I finish my beer and go back up the stairs to use the restroom before leaving. Before I swing through the saloon doors again, I notice a pay phone and phone book. When was the last time either were used?

CloakRoom3

Back up the stairs and outside, walking to my car, there is no traffic around the Capitol. It is quiet. The orange light is still on. Session, as it’s referred to, continues.

_______

Scott Gilman

Scott Gilman lives in Austin, Texas and enjoys exercise, reading, writing, eating and drinking. He is working on his first novel and a short story and essay collection. More of his writing can be found here.

Episode 152: Kattenstoet! A Roundtable Discussion of Cats

10 Sunday May 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1Q84, Alice in Wonderland, Archie and Mehitabel, Jared Silvia, Kattenstoet, Lisa Roney, Philip Deaver, Ted Hughes, Teege Braune, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath

Episode 152 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, we have a roundtable discussion of Kattenstoet, the Belgian cat holiday that may or may not be a retroactive apology for medieval atrocities against felines.

Kattenstoet

Kattenstoet

Present for this discussion were Jared Silvia, Lisa Roney, and Teege Braune.

Kattenstoet 1

Not present, but honored were

Zoë Reads Hemingway

John’s cat Zoë Reads Hemingway.

Miroslav

Jared’s cat, Miroslav (on the right).

IMG_3085

Teege and Jenn’s lazy little beasties.

Kolwitz Reads A Farewell to Arms.

Mr Sundrop

The terrible Mr. Sundrop.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

archy and mehitabel

dream quest of unknown kadathsteadman_alice1Q84

Alicia Ostriker’s “The Orange Cat.”

_______

Episode 152 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Shakespearing #33: Timon of Athens

10 Sunday May 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Shakespearing

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Collaboration, David Foley, Playwriting, Shakespearing, Thomas Middleton, Timon of Athens, William Shakespeare

Shakespearing #33 by David Foley

Timon of Athens

33 Timon of Athens

Timon of Athens is supposed to be one of the plays Shakespeare collaborated on. The speculation is that Thomas Middleton (Women Beware Women) wrote about forty percent of it. To make matters worse, according to James Shapiro, “individual scenes [are] divided between the two, suggesting that the collaboration…was unusually close.” Which, I suppose, only matters if, like me, you keep pontificating airily on what “Shakespeare” is “doing” in his plays. The question of what Shakespeare is doing becomes vexed when you’re not sure who’s doing what.

Other than that, the idea of Shakespeare collaborating doesn’t bother me that much. Maybe it’s because I’m a playwright. When I was in college and double-majoring in English and Drama, I experienced a bit of a tug of war, pulled on one end by those who saw Shakespeare as literature and on the other by those who saw him as theatre. To literary types it might be unnerving to find out that Shakespeare didn’t always work alone, but theatre is a collaborative art, and it’s easy enough to imagine Shakespeare wanting to share the burden of a play, or another playwright wanting to avail himself of Shakespeare’s know-how. I suppose I’d be more troubled if it were revealed that Shakespeare had collaborated on one of the great, unified masterpieces, like Hamlet or Lear, but Timon is a mongrel kind of play, though like many a mongrel it packs some power in its yap.

Trying to track down the current thinking on the Timon collaboration, I found (in Wikipedia) this quote from Melville: “it is those deep far-away things in [Shakespeare]; those occasional flashings-forth of the intuitive Truth in him; those short, quick probings at the very axis of reality:—these are the things that make Shakespeare, Shakespeare. Through the mouths of the dark characters of Hamlet, Timon, Lear, and Iago, he craftily says, or sometimes insinuates the things, which we feel to be so terrifically true, that it were all but madness for any good man, in his own proper character, to utter, or even hint of them.”

The first thing you can say about that is that it’s really Melvillean, and then you can worry whether those “sharp, quick probings” in Timon are Shakespeare or Middleton. But then you think maybe he’s right. Aren’t there moments in Shakespeare when you feel suddenly, like Pip in Moby Dick, bobbing alone on that mind-breaking sea?

It’s Timon’s curses that first made critics want to give chunks of the play to Middleton, as when he cries to the earth:

Teem with new monsters, whom thy upward face

Hath to the marbled mansion all above

Never presented!…

Dry up thy marrows, vines, and plough-torn leas,

Whereof ingrateful man, with liquorish draughts

And morsels unctious, greases his pure mind

That from it all consideration slips—

 Maybe that’s Middleton, but he seems to have been studying Lear, another mind sent bobbing out on that sea.

And Timon’s generosity is as terrifying as his bitterness. The play may (for all I know) reflect Middleton’s sardonic view of friendship and advantage, but the dizzying speed with which Timon’s beneficence sails free of reality seems Shakespearean. It occurs to me that Lear’s cry, “O, let me not be mad!” rings through much of Shakespeare’s work. It’s not what Iago says or insinuates that seems “terrifically true,” but the ease with which he unmoors Othello’s mind from reason. And you can feel the terror of Melville and Shakespeare come together when Timon says to himself, “Lie where the light foam of the sea may beat/Thy gravestone daily.”

_______

David Foley

David Foley is a playwright and fiction writer living in Brooklyn. His plays include Cressida Among the Greeks, Paradise, Nance O’Neil, The Murders at Argos, A Hole in the Fence, and Sad Hotel, among others. His novel The Traveler’s Companion is available on Amazon. He teaches at New York University.

Episode 151: Greg Proops

09 Saturday May 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comedy, Episode

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Greg Proops, Rochelle Spencer, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Smartest Book in the World, The Smartest Man in the World, Zora Neale Hurston

Episode 151 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk to comedian, podcaster, and now, author, Greg Proops,

Photo by Idil Sukan/Draw HQ

Photo by Idil Sukan/Draw HQ

plus Rochelle Spencer writes about the liberating politics of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Rochelle SpencerTEXTS DISCUSSED

The Smartest Book in the World Their Eyes Were Watching GodLive at Musso and FrankselsewhereProops Digs InHouston We Have a ProblemJoke BookThe Smartest Man in the WorldNOTES

Read Teege Braune’s review of Greg Proops’s comedy special, Live at Musso and Frank, here.

To keep up with all things Proops, go here.

A masterpiece composed during the Locally Grown Words summer book fair:

Exquisite Corpse StoryLocally Grown Words_______

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The Curator of Schlock #87: Mommy Dearest

08 Friday May 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Curator of Schlock

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Mommy Dearest

The Curator of Schlock #87 by Jeff Shuster

Mommy Dearest

Mommie_Dearest1

One of the problems with having older sisters is that they would occasionally get control of the cable box, and thus I was subjected to Mommie Dearest on more than one occasion. I had never even heard of Joan Crawford. I was a kid. The only black and white movies I would watch starred Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi. I’m sure for me and many of my generation, this movie serves as our first and only exposure to Joan Crawford. Which is a shame because I’m sure any Joan Crawford movie would be better than this piece of tabloid cinema trash.

Mommie_Dearest2

Revisiting Mommy Dearest was an interesting experiment. Two abuse scenes were seared into my brain all these years. We have the one involving the meat. I remembered the daughter refusing to eat her dinner and how the mother kept serving the same exact meal to her every night until it was rotten.

MommieDearest3

For some reason, I remembered the meat being ham when it was, in fact, beef steak. I’ve never been a big fan of ham.

We then have the famous wire hanger scene. Joan Crawford goes into her daughter’s bedroom in the middle of night to inspect her dresses. She freaks out tearing every dress off the rack screaming, “No more wire hangers ever!” This scene always confused me because I couldn’t figure out what other kind of hangers there were. Did Joan Crawford prefer hangers carved out of ivory? Maybe the 8 year-old daughter sold them and replaced them with wire hangers so she could get some decent food.

MommyDearest_Compre_1

Faye Dunaway plays Joan Crawford. At no moment in this motion picture do I see a glamorous Hollywood star from the golden age.  Her Joan Crawford is a ghoul. There’s a scene where Crawford asks her daughter why she can’t treat her the way any stranger would. The daughter replies, “Because I am not one of your fans!” Joan Crawford then tries to choke her daughter to death. This whole movie plays out like a segment out of a Rashomon styled story. I can imagine another movie where the Crawford’s daughter is portrayed as the abuser.

Mommie Dearest has endured all of these years because it has a following by those who consider it camp comedy. I didn’t find it funny when I was a child and I certainly don’t find it funny now. There’s a creep factor that hangs over the whole production from Dunaway’s skeletal grimace to the shoddy 1980s made-for-TV productions values. I think I’ll watch Mildrid Pierce this weekend to get this movie out of my system.

Mildred Pierce

That or Rashomon.

Five Things I Learned from Mommie Dearest

  1. Scalding hot water and ice cubes will keep you forever young.
  2. There is no such thing as a clean floor.
  3. Three showerheads are better than one.
  4. 8 year-old girls go heavy on the Scotch.
  5. The 18th Annual Academy Awards were nothing to write home about. Who gives an acceptance speech on their front lawn? Honestly.

_______

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida.

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