• About
  • Cats Dig Hemingway
  • Guest Bookings
  • John King’s Publications
  • Literary Memes
  • Podcast Episode Guide
  • Store!
  • The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Videos
  • Writing Craft Discussions

The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: August 2015

The Curator of Schlock #99: Top Ten TV Shows of ALL TIME!

14 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Curator of Schlock

≈ Leave a comment

The Curator of Schlock #99 by Jeff Shuster

The Curator of Schlock’s Top Ten TV Shows of ALL TIME!

Hey. It’s your Curator of Schlock here. I’m still waiting for Hell Comes to Frogtown to come in the mail and I’m also gearing up for next week’s 100th blog extravaganza! Come to The Museum of Schlock for Diet Rite Cola and Snyder’s of Hanover Pretzel Pieces!  In the meantime, I present to you my list: The Curator of Schlock’s Top Ten TV Shows of ALL TIME!!! Yes, in addition to be a movie expert, I’m also a television expert.

10. Primeval

A British import, this show featured a ragtag team of scientists trying to figure out why dinosaurs kept jumping out of portals and eating people. Heck, we didn’t just get dinosaurs on this show, we got giant insects, dodo birds, and future predators (those evolved bats that are going to rule the world one day.) Be forewarned, the lead actor is Scottish so you’ll want to turn on the subtitles.

9. Lady Blue

This 80s police drama was nicknamed Dirty Harriet, mainly because it featured a female detective named Katy Mahoney who acted just like Dirty Harry in that she shot the bad guys who deserved to get killed. She also had red hair, which made her extra awesome! I seem to recall this being a particularly violent and gruesome show. I think one episode involved her taking on some cowboys who were after a valuable shipment of bull semen. Jamie Rose and Danny Aiello starred.

8. Numb3rs

This was a show where they solved crimes with math. Plus, it starred the one-two punch of Peter MacNicol and Judd Hirsch. It lasted six seasons, six seasons of solving crimes with math. Did I mention they solved crimes with math?

7. Mr. Belvedere

I watched copious amounts of sitcoms growing up for reasons that I’ve buried deep down, but this one stood out in particular. It was kind of like Who’s the Boss, but with an English butler. It also featured Bob Uecker as the dad. I remember inappropriate sexual humor for a TGIF sitcom, like how Mr. Belvedere kept walking in on the mom and dad getting it on. Shudder. Shudder.

6. Paradise Hotel

The tagline for this reality TV show was “Expect the Unexpected.” I suppose that’s true since the producers made up the rules of the game as they went along. I remember they would have contestants pair up and sleep in the same room at some posh island resort. Some of the contestants were even chosen from the live studio audience. One of them was named Dave. He got picked on…a lot. And then when he outsmarted his tormentors and got them voted off, the producers let them back on the show to torment Dave again. Goodbye Dave!

5. Robin of Sherwood

This Showtime Network retelling of the legend of Robin Hood added a bit of 80s sword and sorcery into the mix. Robin Hood and his Merry Men had to go up against evil sorcerers and the Hounds of Lucifer (they’re as scary as they sound). Robin Hood also had to contend with the Sheriff of Nottingham, played like a modern man stuck in the middle ages. To call him cynical would be doing him a disservice. Frankly, I think the sheriff on this show didn’t even want to be bothered catching Robin Hood.

4. Parker Lewis Can’t Lose

Oh boy. This series featured a high school student who out-Buellered Ferris Bueller. There was this one episode where Parker’s friend Jerry suffered from video game addiction. He kept having nightmares about being trapped in the world of Altered Beast. Haven’t we all?

3. Kung Fu: The Legend Continues

The grandson of Kwai Chang Caine walks out of the past and into 1990s Canada! David Carradine reprises the role that made him famous and is joined by Peter Caine (Nathaniel Moreau), his street smart cop son. I used to think this syndicated show only had three seasons, but I later learned that there was a fourth! Please put this on a streaming service, Warner Bros! There’s a fourth season episode where Kwai Chang Caine becomes a radio talk show host!

2. Millennium

Millennium came from X-Files creator Chris Carter and never quite found its footing. Lance Hendrickson played Frank Black, a freelance forensic profiler who was cursed with the ability to see into the minds of serial killers. He could also see demons…from hell! I remember one episode in season one where this one serial killer mailed the severed tongue of a trucker to this old lady. This was shown on Network TV at 9 PM! Did I mention that the band KISS guest-starred in an episode?

1. Smallville

You have to give credit to a show about Superman that waits a full ten seasons before allowing him to put the suit on. Will a young Clark Kent (Tom Welling) realize his destiny as the Man of Steal? Nope, instead he’ll be saving his best friend Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) from an attack by the meteor freak of the week.  Kudos to the fans for staying loyal to the show even after the CW stuck in a Friday night slot. I’m suspicious that the network execs kept trying to get Smallvile canceled, but the ratings were just too high. Ten seasons. That’s unheard of.

_______

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.

Buzzed Books #32: On the Run with Mary

11 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books

≈ 1 Comment

Buzzed Books #32 by Rachel Kolman

On the Run with Mary by Jonathan Barrow

on_the_run_with_mary

The manuscript for On The Run with Mary was found the day after author died in a car crash. It was 1970, and Barrow was 22. Barrow’s brother had found the manuscript in a desk drawer, with a fresh page still in the typewriter.

To add more bizarro, Barrow was to be married two weeks later, turning his “save the dates” for a wedding into those for a funeral. A tragic story for Barrow, who tells a tale even more tragic, disturbing, and grotesque in his novel On The Run With Mary.

Barrow’s 115-page book follows a young narrator as he escapes from boarding school and navigates the unforgiving streets of London. While waiting to board a train, the narrator meets Mary, an old, talkative, alcoholic dachshund. The frantically told narrative then becomes about survival as the traveling duo pursue freedom from the boarding school’s Headmaster (who manages to pop up randomly) and the obscene, perverted adults that plague the world around him.

There’s a serious sense of perseverance in On The Run – despite all the horrors, troubles, and unsightly deaths the narrator sees, he keeps going, his spirits not yet affected by the horrific world around him. The constant movement of the plot doesn’t give the narrator – or the reader – the chance to sit and let the action sink in, which gives the prose a strangely lighthearted tone.

The narrator finally shows signs of unease more than halfway through the book when he says, “I am tired by the ceaseless commotion that now forms such a major part of my life…the daily strain is too much. I am sorry to be so dreary.” The narrator’s apology is one of the few softer, genuine moments in book, a rarity in between scenes of defecating, sexual advances, boiling flesh, giant rats, and profuse amounts of vomiting. The other caring, tender moments happen when the narrator is interacting with animals, whether it be taking care of and protecting Mary, or meeting other animals along the way, stopping to grieve when any of them die (an emotion not reserved for any human death in the book). Animals come to the duo’s rescue several times, saving them from plane crashes and drowning in rivers. In this novel, humans are mean, twisted, perverse, and animals are sweet, caring, and a victim of human cruelty, much like the narrator.

The narrator’s “I’m sorry to be so dreary” apology might also be more than a brief introspective moment. On The Run With Mary has also been speculated to be Barrow’s suicide note, as he makes a strange prediction about his own death. Halfway through the book, the narrator finds himself delayed by a wedding crowd outside of a church, who are all left horrified after the bride comes down the aisle in a coffin, turning the wedding into a funeral. It is eerie and almost beyond coincidence that Barrow himself turned his own wedding into a funeral just after finishing the novel. In an interview with the Daily Mail, Barrow’s brother says, “I do not know, or care, what such scenes really signify. It certainly indicates that there was an extraordinarily dark side to Jonathan. Did he have any idea about what was going to happen to him the moment he finished this book? If so, was he profoundly morbid or wonderfully brave?”

After the wedding/funeral scene, the book becomes much more chaotic and absurd. The narrator delivers a baby on a bus from a pregnant man, is trapped in a sewer and can look up and see through toilets, runs into a gang of large talking rats, even crashes a plane into a field of young boys and kills almost all of them. The sentences become random, gory, and frenetic, with profanity being used loosely and often.

The book ends with the narrator seeing Mary off to a maternity home and alcoholic center, as Mary confesses she is five months pregnant, but will not stop drinking. The narrator’s sweet affection for Mary created speculation that Mary’s character was mirrored after Anita, Barrow’s fiancée, who also died with him in the car crash. Barrow’s entire novel has been called a “love letter” for the whirlwind romance he had with Anita, his love-struck state giving him the perseverance to manage day-to-day life. Intentions aside, On The Run With Mary is a complex narrative much deeper than what could be viewed as an absurd, romping story about a young boy and his talking, alcoholic dog. At its core, it’s a tale about being able to bear the evil and horrors of the everyday, as long as the ones you love are close by your side.

_______

rachelkolmanphoto

Rachel Kolman (Episode 85) received her MFA in fiction from the University of Central Florida. She currently teaches composition at Valencia College and Seminole State College. She’s also a barista at Vespr Coffeebar and can make a mean cup of joe. When she’s not grading papers and drinking coffee, she’s probably watching Netflix and eating Vietnamese food.

The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #1: Romeo + Juliet

09 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film

≈ 6 Comments

Rogues Guide to Shakes on Film

#1: Romeo + Juliet (1996)

It’s a forbidden secret that Shakespeare was a playwright. At least that’s the impression one can get from an American education, in which students are forced to read the plays without necessarily watching the plays. It would be like honoring the Cohen brothers by reading O Brother Where Art Thou while never ever watching it.

I am obsessed with Shakespeare on film.

While getting out to the theater to see Shakespeare well-performed is sublime, film is another capable medium for his work—much better, to my thinking, than the bare words on the page, even as amazing as those words are.

globe

Shakespeare worked with a rather bare stage in the O of the Globe Theatre and its predecessor in his writing career. In Henry V, he apologized for the inability to transform the scenery at will. Perhaps he would have liked film very much.

Having said that, Baz Lurhmann’s Romeo + Juliet is bullshit.

Romeo Plus Juliet

Where do I start? The most obvious flaw is the acting in this rock video version of Shakespeare. The callow adolescents never manage to dignify Shakespeare’s words, not only in their sounds, but what they signify. Especially awful is Claire Danes, who for half the film grins goofily as if saying, “Look, I’m so doing Shakespeare.” Or maybe Leonardo DiCaprio was too dreamy.

Claire Danes R+J

Only Vondie Curtis-Hall as Captain Prince and Pete Postlethwaite as Father Laurence seem to comprehend what they are doing.

Compounding these generally trite performances is the overstated music, special effects, and cinematography. The urban world beats that the actors must compete with for our hearing is a constant liability. The metaphorical weather patterns make those of The Matrix seem subtle. The fast-motion segments, severe editing, and ear-shattering foley noise make following the words an impossibility.

These concerns are, of course, not random, but rest at the foundation of Baz Luhrmann’s very flawed aesthetic, for he believes that American popular culture ennobles us as much as any classic work can. Our television news is our prologue and epilogue. Nobles dress like pimps and frat boys on spring break. Verona is rendered trendy as Verona Beach. Our pop music is liturgy, our teenybopper songs of angst, opera.

I doubt whether this aesthetic can be made compelling, but I can say that in Luhrmann’s hands it is not. When James Joyce compared the twentieth century to the classical and Elizabethan worlds, the result was tragicomic. Luhrmann has little sense of humor, and what he does possess comes off with the sophistication of, say, Benny Hill.

As an editor, cinematographer, and even costumer, Luhrmann is immensely talented; as an artist who presumably has something to say, however, he reveals himself a lowly hack, ultimately the very quintessence of idiotic vulgarity, swirling about in kaleidoscopic worship of his own absurdly inflated sense of cleverness. One must understand Shakespeare to transform Shakespeare. The words, and how they are uttered, matter.

Fuck you, Baz Luhrmann.

_______

1flip

John King (Episode, well, all of them) is a podcaster, writer, and ferret wrangler.

Episode 165: Brian Spears!

08 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

A Witness in Exile, Brian Spears, Eugenio Negro, Poetry, The Satanic Verses

Episode 165 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.


Check out the great perks for The Drunken Odyssey’s fundraiser here.


In this week’s episode, I talk to the poet Brian Spears,

Brian Spearsplus Eugenio Negro writes about the adventure of reading Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.

Eugenio NegroBOOKS DISCUSSED

A Witness in Exile

the satanic verses

NOTES

On Tuesday, August 11, at 7:00 P.M. at The Gallery at Avalon Island in downtown Orlando, Jared Silvia, Stephanie Rizzo, Teege Braune, Genevieve Anna Tyrell, and I will read original fan fiction for that month’s installment of J. Bradley’s prose reading series, There Will be Words.

Check out Meg Sefton’s upcoming workshop on the fundamentals of flash fiction here.

An Albuquerque school adds 13,000 books to library and will not be using the Dewey Decimal system.

Check out the great perks for The Drunken Odyssey’s fundraiser here.


Episode 165 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Lists #21: Lyric Reflections

06 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Lists

≈ Leave a comment

The Lists #21 by John King

Lyric Reflections

  • All those years, and I felt foolish. I had gone around with total self-assurance that Jewel’s hands were, in fact, my hands, and I was so proud of myself for having four hands, two of which were pretty nimble with guitar playing. It turns out they were Jewel’s hands, not mine—even though her hands felt so natural as a form of auxiliary hands for me. Sometimes I miss not having her hands, even though I know it is wrong.
  • I am not being vain, Carly Simon, since this song in fact is about me.
  • Isn’t it ironic that Alanis Morissette doesn’t quite know what ironic means? And isn’t it even more ironic that, being schizophrenic and traveling cross-country in a car full of her selves, none of the Alanis Morissettes quite know what ironic means?
  • Katy Perry, what sort of eyes do you have again? I just finished your song and somehow missed it. Let me replay it. … Nope, still missed it.
  • Brian Johnson, so if you are a heat-seeker, then why would you need a life preserver, and under what circumstances would you need someone to hose you down? I understand that in this case, you don’t need those things, but why would other, less heat-seeking people need them? Are the metaphors burning up on re-entry? Did I miss something? I’m in the weeds here.
  • Bono, that is not the blues.
  • Um, Peter Chris, if you can’t see Beth until KISS finds its sound, well … did you ever see her again?

 _______

1flip

John King (Episode, well, all of them) is a podcaster, writer, and ferret wrangler.

Buzzed Books #31: Scouting for the Reaper

04 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Jacob M. Appel

Buzzed Books #31 by Shawn Whittington

Jacob M. Appel’s Scouting for the Reaper

Scouting for the Reaper

Jacob M. Appel’s recent collection of stories, Scouting for the Reaper, has all eight narratives threaded by one theme: the revelation of secrets in daily life to loved ones. More peculiarly, the revelations do not necessarily solve the conflicts within the tales but herald the thickening of plots yet to come. In other words, the stories mirror real life.

The first three stories, including the story the collection receives its name from, feature young teens in pursuit of romance. At first, these 1st person narratives seem to suggest a typical impulsive urge to pursue a forbidden love interest. But ingeniously, these goals mask the true conflicts, which take place more with the adults in the stories rather than the teenage protagonists. The 1st person point of view enhances the disorganized thought process in the teens’ minds as Appel artfully incorporates the mental distortion of their insatiable drives. Even more so, Appel’s stories become steadily unconventional in their plots and accomplish a rather extraordinary endeavor in writing, completing character arcs without “finishing” the story.

The other five stories place adults as the protagonists, which feature 3rd person points-of-view. Another thing to notice in this collection is Appel’s ability to weave the conflicts under the fabric of these accounts in a subtle manner that hint at the larger theme. An example of this technique is the story about a mother who suffers from seizures while nurturing a blind rabbit to the point of treating it like a human child. The narration does not point out that she misses being a mother to her grown and now successful children.

Appel is wonderful at partially revealing a realistic sense of a character’s emotional redemption. One story, written in 1st person, features a seasoned trucker transporting live zoo animals to Orlando, particularly penguins. Due to the trucker’s coarse, somewhat humorous, lingo, Appel demonstrates the procedure of subtle clues to the divorce the protagonist suffered and conceals deep down. When a teenage girl stows away in his truck, he faces the dilemma of being accused of kidnapping the difficult teen or risk not delivering his load on schedule. During this, the trucker retains a rustic charm despite these treacherous circumstances. He has a paternal quality he keeps from even himself. His character arc goes from wanting to move on from his previous marriage to wishing to see his son more often. His redemption is subtle and relative.

Scouting for the Reaper is an excellent read; Appel’s craft is remarkable. His work engages with the mundane in ways that both respect and heighten one’s sense of reality, through prosaic language and bold sentence structures. These eight stories are an immensely memorable read.

_______

Shawn Whittington 2

Shawn Whittington (Episode 156) is a writer living in Orlando, Florida.

The Global Barfly’s Companion #17: Sorocabana

03 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Global Barfly's Companion

≈ Leave a comment

The Global Barfly’s Companion #17 by Susana Gonzales

Bar: Sorocabana

Location: San Jerónimo 98, X5000AGB Córdoba, Argentina

Córdoba, a 432 years old Argentine city, can be defined as a college town among other things.

And Nueva Córdoba is a notorious neighborhood with apartment buildings crowded with college students who walk a few blocks to and from National University campus, or Ciudad Universitaria, as it is known locally. Yrigoyen, Chacabuco, Rondeau are some important streets in Nueva Córdoba. Rondeau is an especially narrow street. Trendy bars that open late in the evening are on Rondeau, the street of bars for college students, junior professionals businessmen or simply, for young people.

But Córdoba´s DNA rests somewhere else too.

A few blocks down from Nueva Córdoba is downtown. As in colonial towns in Latin America, important buildings stand around the main square; here, it’s San Martín square: the cathedral, the former cabildo (colonial municipal administrative and government unit, now a museum and cultural center), banks, coffee shops.

And Sorocabana. Right on the corner of Buenos Aires and San Jerónimo streets, across the local bank and the square.

Sorocabana 1

A huge sign on its sidewalk roof reads “café and confitería”, a coffee place. Sorocaba is much more than that; it is a bar too. In fact, people in their 80s would simply say Sorocabana is a bar.

In Spanish, at least in our local variety, a bar can also be defined as a mixture of a coffee place and a bar. That is what Sorocabana stands for. A place where anyone can sit down at a table for a cup of coffee, on tall chairs for a drink, or even on the sidewalk, under umbrellas to share a Quilmes, beer, or whisky with friends.

The array of the counter and the décor has changed over the years. Now, wooden panels on the counter and walls create a modern, clean and warm atmosphere. Croissants on a large tray sit by the taps for draft Quilmes beer, and pastries rest on a lazy Susan below an assortment of glasses for all kinds of beverages. At the back, on the shelves, bottles, tall and small, announce the blend of a café and a bar. The work area behind the counter has plenty of light that extends its intensity all over the central tables and becomes softer near the side counter, by a midsize mirror, still allowing customers to enjoy a cozy feel.

Sorocabana 2Dark tables and chairs still dominate the area by the glass walls that stand as borders separating customers focused on their conversations from the bustle of the city. Plenty of small pictures from old times framed in dark wood hanging on white pillars provide hints of a narrative. They build the history of this bar just as tables do with large papers under glass that tell short and meaningful events in the lives of regular customers that new patrons tend to read. It´s the ID of Sorocabana.

Sorocabana 3

Regulars praise croissants as the best in town (and they truly are) and they can choose from bay biscuits, alfajores or other pastries and desserts to have with coffee, tea or the like. Breakfast options in all possible varieties range from coffee with croassants or criollos, jam and butter and O.J to a light version with toasts and cream cheese.

Often coffee places are tied to pictures of people reading and Sorocabana is a coffee place too. There is selection of local and national newspapers available to anyone who wants to skim through a paper, read it from beginning to end, and sip a small coffee or have a snack with a glass of beer.

Sorocabana 4

It´s not unusual to see those who spend a long time gazing ay the paper, usually senior citizens, later engage in chats and jokes about soccer, politics, economy or the weather.

Have you ever heard of a coffee place that never closes? Probably, but here, in Córdoba this is, to my knowledge, the only place with such availability. Its patrons include bank employees, businessmen, families, poets, writers, musicians, singers, ordinary people…even a lady having a glass of beer while reading a book at four in the afternoon on a warm winter day. Who knows what she was thinking about while staring towards the square from her comfortable seat on the sidewalk?

Drinks, champagne, fine wines, liquors and batidos –sort of cocktails- are options alongside coffee and beer.

The list of drinks include different types of beer (Quilmes being the most popular), champagnes, Chandon, whiskeys, Old Smuggler, fine wines and other alcoholic drinks: vermouth, campari, fernet, the most popular beverage among local residents, piña colada, vodka, rum and even those that characterize famous choices from older days: caña Leggi, Espiridina and Ferroquina. They all cater for the wide range of possible customers that come and go to Sorocaban in the morning during bank hours, in the afternoon when families stop by or in the evening when people get out of theaters or looking for somewhere to hang out in the wee hours of the day.

Prices are not a problem as they are competitive and service is good; waiters are polite and have a friendly behavior. They are ready to ask any questions, make suggestions and ready to help. They kindly explain or suggest the type of picadas, snacks, in small or large bowls with peanuts, chips, jam and cheese, sausages depending on one´s choice of drink.

Sorocabana 5Córdoba is a cultural hub with a significant number of international students and tourists nowadays. Stopping by at Sorocabana for a cup of coffee, hot sandwiches, milkshakes, a glass of beer or whiskey is an experience that provides an insight in Córdoba´s identity no matter what time of the day it is.

_______

Susana Gonzalez is a writer living in Córdoba, Argentina.

Shakespearing #40: A Reflection

02 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Shakespeare, Shakespearing

≈ 1 Comment

Shakespearing #40 by David Foley

A Reflection

IMG_0982

I’m supposed to come up with some final thoughts about Shakespeare after my long trek through the plays, but I keep thinking about his books. I recently stumbled on a Times article from 2005 in which the author flogs the old idea that Shakespeare couldn’t have written his plays because he left no books in his will. There are several things wrong with this assumption, beginning with the question of whether Shakespeare actually owned the books he used; but it suddenly occurred to me that all the anti-Shakespearean arguments based on what’s in the plays—he must have owned tons of books; he must have been trained in law; he must have been a nobleman; he must have gone to sea—evade the central mystery of the work, which is a mind so preternaturally absorptive that it saw, heard, sensed all; everything was material to be captured and pinned down in words. It begins to feel relentless and insatiable, this will to absorb the world and put it in words.

This may be why Shakespeare still feels like one of us, even though logic tells us that he’s not. It’s as if he’s constantly striving to see past the filter of country, time, and culture to the thing itself, and as a result, for sudden, thrilling moments, he helps us see past our own filters. The other night I saw Cymbeline in the Park. The sexual politics of Cymbeline are alien to us, but Imogen’s intelligent despair is not.

Which makes me think that it’s not just the thing itself that he captures, but some kind of ideal of what it is to be human. Last week I saw Ubu Roi. I wrote in my notebook that it’s what you would get if you stripped Shakespeare of any notion of the basic dignity of the human endeavor. Not such a bad play to produce teetering on the verge (1896) of the twentieth century. But the humanist ideal dies hard, and if we keep returning to Shakespeare, it’s because he tells us that even our madness has meaning. Our sorrows are deep and often of our own making, but they’re woven into the fabric of the world and resonate in its reaches. As are our joys.

One reason Shakespeare is a touchstone for writers is that we all do some version of his grab and capture. We try to get the world in words. We do it with joy and conviction when we’re young—a clever satisfaction in the neatness of the trick—and with increasing befuddlement, perhaps desperation as we get older. The world eludes us; the project of capturing it becomes harder, the usefulness of the project more suspect. We use thornier sentences to capture a human meaning that becomes more and more elusive.

You can sense this happening to Shakespeare as he gets older. The language becomes denser, the images knottier, his faith in the dignity of the human endeavor shakier. But if you’re a writer you keep trying. As I was writing this, my sister emailed me a wonderful piece about Grace Paley, who says, “[The writer is] like an idealist who marries nearly the same woman over and over. He tries to write with different names and faces, using different professions and labors, other forms to travel the shortest distance to the way things really are.” In my Love’s Labor’s Lost posting, I suggested that Shakespeare is “our greatest poet of the real.” Maybe this is what I meant, that he succeeds more than any of us in leaping that distance to the way things really are. But even he seems to have been driven forward by the maddening inachievability of the task.

He was also a man of the theatre. I began this project in part because I wanted to get at Shakespeare the playwright. Part of the fun of it has been intuiting the ways in which Shakespeare’s theatre—so different from ours in so many ways—might have shared, indeed might have provided the first iteration of, certain features of our own: fandom, rivalry, and backbiting; celebrity playwrights and the people who collected their plays; art as an accidental byproduct of a make-or-break business; and even an audience demographic that tilted towards the queer.

It’s also been fun to see Shakespeare develop. To see him go from journeyman to innovator to, in his young old age, a kind of restless experimenter, teasing the boundaries of what theatre can and should do, so that his last plays seem to quietly break and remake the rules. Having just seen Cymbeline I can tell you that the long, closing recognition scene—containing twenty-four separate revelations, my friend told me—shouldn’t work and does. It’s thrilling.

A long time ago, on a grant application, I wrote rather grandiosely that I thought theatre tries to capture the condition of a human being trapped between earth and sky. As a formula it lacks multiplicity—it leaves out not just the range and complexity of Shakespeare’s worlds but the fact that theatre inevitably deals with human beings in relation to each other. But it does capture something about the theatrical space: boards planked above Eurydicean depths; overhead: empty, aspirant air. Between these spaces Shakespeare gave us a bewildering variety of worlds. How is it possible that the same writer gave us A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Coriolanus? King Lear and Taming of the Shrew? And yet you can see that the same mind, the same way of seeing and shaping the world, created them all. No alternate explanation of authorship can crack that riddle. As I say, it’s a mystery. Unless it has something to do with what I’ve been talking about: in each new world a flying, ferocious attempt to give us the world itself.

So my trek through the plays ends here, but Shakespearing doesn’t. John will open it up to other writers, and hopefully I’ll chime in, too, when I’ve got something new on my mind. Thanks for following me on the journey.

_______

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 164: A Live Event on the Theme of Childhood, with Wilson Santos, Ashley Inguanta, Vincent Crampton, Amy Watkins, and Moi!

01 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode

≈ 11 Comments

Episode 164 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

This week features a live Event on the theme of childhood, with Wilson Santos, Ashley Inguanta, Vincent Crampton, Amy Watkins, and moi, as your humble emcee.

This reading was in honor of Wilson Santos’s spoken word film, My Verse, which I talked to him about back on episode 138.

My Verse

NOTES

Check out more about Wilson Santos’ Dominican Republic project, including how to donate, here.


Episode 164 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Newer posts →
Scribophile, the online writing group for serious writers

Online, shop here:

If you must, shop Amazon and help the show.

Audible.com

Blogs

Not forgotten

Categories

  • 21st Century Bronte
  • A Word from the King
  • Aesthetic Drift
  • animation
  • Anime
  • Art
  • Autobiography
  • AWP
  • Biography
  • Blog Post
  • Bloomsday
  • Buddhism
  • Buzzed Books
  • Cheryl Strayed
  • Children's Literature
  • Christmas
  • Christmas literature
  • Comedy
  • Comic Books
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart
  • Craft of Fiction Writing
  • Creative Nonfiction
  • David Foster Wallace
  • David James Poissant
  • David Lynch
  • David Sedaris
  • Disney
  • Dispatches from the Funkstown Clarion
  • Doctor Who
  • Drinking
  • Dungeons and Dragons
  • Editing
  • Education
  • Episode
  • Erotic Literature
  • Essay
  • Fan Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Feminism
  • Film
  • Film Commentary
  • Flash Fiction
  • Florida Literature
  • Francesca Lia Block
  • Functionally Literate
  • Ghost writing
  • Graphic Novels
  • Gutter Space
  • Help me!
  • Heroes Never Rust
  • History
  • Horror
  • Humor
  • Hunter S. Thompson
  • In Boozo Veritas
  • Irish Literature
  • Jack Kerouac
  • James Bond
  • James Joyce
  • Jazz
  • Journalism
  • Kerouac House
  • Kung Fu
  • Like a Geek God
  • Literary Criticism
  • Literary Magazines
  • Literary Prizes
  • Literary rizes
  • Literature of Florida
  • Litlando
  • Live Show
  • Loading the Canon
  • Loose Lips Reading Series
  • Lost Chords & Serenades Divine
  • Magic Realism
  • Mailbag
  • manga
  • McMillan's Codex
  • Memoir
  • Miami Book Fair
  • Michael Caine
  • Military Literature
  • Mixtape
  • Music
  • New York City
  • O, Miami
  • Old Poem Revue
  • On Top of It
  • Pensive Prowler
  • Philosophy
  • Photography
  • Poetry
  • politics
  • Postmodernism
  • Publishing
  • Recommendation
  • Repeal Day
  • science
  • Science Fiction
  • Screenwriting
  • Sexuality
  • Shakespeare
  • Shakespearing
  • Sozzled Scribbler
  • Sports
  • Star Wars
  • Television
  • The Bible
  • The Curator of Schlock
  • The Global Barfly's Companion
  • The Lists
  • The Perfect Life
  • The Pink Fire Revue
  • The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Theater
  • There Will Be Words
  • translation
  • Travel Writing
  • Vanessa Blakeslee
  • Versify
  • Video Games
  • Violence
  • Virginia Woolf
  • War
  • Westerns
  • Word From the King
  • Young Adult
  • Your Next Beach Read
  • Zombies

Recent Posts

  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #181: Energized and Anthologized Vol. 4
  • Episode 529: Kathryn Harlan!
  • The Curator of Schlock #387: The House on the Edge of the Park
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #180: Doing Something to the Trend
  • Episode #528: A Discussion of Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends with Rachael Tillman!

Archives

  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • The Drunken Odyssey
    • Join 4,213 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Drunken Odyssey
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...