Lol! No such thing as a low and dishonorable style in the hands of a master.
Reading Shaw’s Saint Joan at the prodding of mutual friend-of-the-blog Julianne Werlin, I’m tempted to say that there have always been moderns, but the magisterium had its… ways… of keeping them on the margin.
Thank you! I also told Julianne I'd read Saint Joan, need to get on that! Agree that the difference between the medieval and the modern (or however we divide the categories) probably does have to do with this marginalization.
Read Saint Joan! And report back!!!! I also want your take on Shaw's prefatory remarks.
It occurs to me that Shaw may be the only other major playwright aside from Shakespeare who has equally accomplished works of comedy and tragedy. If it weren't for Saint Joan, you couldn't say that. But is there another? I hesitate to call Brecht's plays either, really.
I will, I promise! I think you could make a case for a tragic sensibility in Major Barbara and John Bull's Other Island and maybe Heartbreak House (been a while since I read that one), or at least post-Chekhovian proto-Beckettian tragicomic sensibility, but that's not the same as tragedy per se. More Troilus and Cressida or Timon of Athens, perhaps, than Lear or Othello.
Lol it just occurs to me that you (obviously!) meant playwrights other than Shakespeare and Shaw not other tragic plays by Shaw! I can't think of anyone either. Wilde's Salome has slowly and rightly risen in everyone's estimation, but maybe not to Importance of Being Earnest's level. Re: your mention of Brecht and mine of Beckett, the problem play and the tragicomedy seem to dominate modern drama, with many of the best plays tragedies and comedies in one. And before that, specialization and bifurcation.
Love the Bostonians--James has some very true and sensitive appreciation both for the reactionary Southerner and the Yankee lesbian, I think both sillier and more serious than Middlemarch... and glad to see you've joined the BCH haters!
Just came by to say I haven’t encountered a literary critic with a viewpoint as actually insightful as yours in some time. Probably speaks to my ignorance but. Thanks, anyway.
The review (enriching and judicious) was truly worth the wait! Speaking of taciturn yet voluminous Germans, your playful invocation of fake titles brings to mind the two dozen or so fictitious books in part five of 2666: The Endless Rose, Rivers of Europe, Bifurcaria Bifurcata (my personal favourite), The King of the Forest, etc. (Although the Archimboldi novel I'd most like to read is The Lottery Man, about, if memory serves, the blind German veteran who peddles stolen lottery tickets in '60s New York.)
Thank you! I'd forgotten all those fictional titles but yes, very apt. Rivers of Europe sounds almost like a Byung-Chul Han book, just evocative enough. Or to combine titles for something more Heideggerean, Rivers of the Forest. "We used to bathe in rivers in the forest. Now we surf the web in the digital jungle. It is the Amazonification of Dasein. We require a corrective Rhine-o-plasty."
Lol! No such thing as a low and dishonorable style in the hands of a master.
Reading Shaw’s Saint Joan at the prodding of mutual friend-of-the-blog Julianne Werlin, I’m tempted to say that there have always been moderns, but the magisterium had its… ways… of keeping them on the margin.
Thank you! I also told Julianne I'd read Saint Joan, need to get on that! Agree that the difference between the medieval and the modern (or however we divide the categories) probably does have to do with this marginalization.
Read Saint Joan! And report back!!!! I also want your take on Shaw's prefatory remarks.
It occurs to me that Shaw may be the only other major playwright aside from Shakespeare who has equally accomplished works of comedy and tragedy. If it weren't for Saint Joan, you couldn't say that. But is there another? I hesitate to call Brecht's plays either, really.
I will, I promise! I think you could make a case for a tragic sensibility in Major Barbara and John Bull's Other Island and maybe Heartbreak House (been a while since I read that one), or at least post-Chekhovian proto-Beckettian tragicomic sensibility, but that's not the same as tragedy per se. More Troilus and Cressida or Timon of Athens, perhaps, than Lear or Othello.
Lol it just occurs to me that you (obviously!) meant playwrights other than Shakespeare and Shaw not other tragic plays by Shaw! I can't think of anyone either. Wilde's Salome has slowly and rightly risen in everyone's estimation, but maybe not to Importance of Being Earnest's level. Re: your mention of Brecht and mine of Beckett, the problem play and the tragicomedy seem to dominate modern drama, with many of the best plays tragedies and comedies in one. And before that, specialization and bifurcation.
Love the Bostonians--James has some very true and sensitive appreciation both for the reactionary Southerner and the Yankee lesbian, I think both sillier and more serious than Middlemarch... and glad to see you've joined the BCH haters!
Yes, definitely agree on The Bostonians. And I had to make up for *not* being an Honor Levy hater somehow!
Just came by to say I haven’t encountered a literary critic with a viewpoint as actually insightful as yours in some time. Probably speaks to my ignorance but. Thanks, anyway.
The review (enriching and judicious) was truly worth the wait! Speaking of taciturn yet voluminous Germans, your playful invocation of fake titles brings to mind the two dozen or so fictitious books in part five of 2666: The Endless Rose, Rivers of Europe, Bifurcaria Bifurcata (my personal favourite), The King of the Forest, etc. (Although the Archimboldi novel I'd most like to read is The Lottery Man, about, if memory serves, the blind German veteran who peddles stolen lottery tickets in '60s New York.)
Thank you! I'd forgotten all those fictional titles but yes, very apt. Rivers of Europe sounds almost like a Byung-Chul Han book, just evocative enough. Or to combine titles for something more Heideggerean, Rivers of the Forest. "We used to bathe in rivers in the forest. Now we surf the web in the digital jungle. It is the Amazonification of Dasein. We require a corrective Rhine-o-plasty."
You’re having way too much fun with this lol I love it.
To think I was criticizing other people for "haterism" last week!