One of the layers of pleasure in reading Shakespeare is that which streams through all the different plays and genres and styles. It is that process oOne of the layers of pleasure in reading Shakespeare is that which streams through all the different plays and genres and styles. It is that process of accrual by which all sorts of interlinking themes, motifs, equivalences and references play out in the mind, much like the equivalent process of passages in books triggering sympatic memory. This very Shakespearean process which occurs in the mind always brings wondrous delight: 'oh, yes, that's exactly like that scene in...', 'ah, I remember that context in...'. One of the pleasures of reading an erudite Shakespearean, and this occurs page by page in Nuttall's discursive survey of Shakespeare's thought, is that he does a lot of this work for you. The very nature of his approach, taking the plays in chronology of writing and linking the developments of ideas, style, and form, deliberately creates this. Reading this intrinsic web of interconnectivity therefore constantly ignites that warm correlative function in your mind again and again. It truly is a thrill, that occurs in your own reading of the plays, and in reading others' analyses of them as they do this.
What results is a complex three-dimensional map of relations much like a map of the solar system, at first, then linking up wider bodies of similar characteristics into a more complex network of connections that comes to resemble at least a galactic quadrant, if not the whole galaxy or cosmos. With a truly thoughtful and deeply learned scholar, this process occurs throughout, and the map we get touches on, is part of the collective - but often disputed - Shakespearean scholarship, forming an SMAP, part of the LMAP of the cosmos of literary study, part of the WMAP of cultural knowledge. As with current observations from WMAP of an expanding universe, these bodies of knowledge are constantly growing.
So, while we read about the disputed dates and sources of the early histories and comedies - chicken or egg (I follow the RSC's chronology) - Nuttall reads in them the germinal seeds of later plays, scenes, characters and styles, while putting into context the particular play's techniques and styles in relation to both the Shakespearean and Renaissance canons (Marlowe...), thus building a picture of the development of Shakespeare's art. In between, you naturally form your own notions, and these are not merely nebulous fumblings, but undergo the same process as the learned scholar, in accruing a morass of detail combined with the larger intuitive estimations which the brain utilises with large-data problems, while naturally conceding a far reduced working data set from which to work, being less scholarly. But this is also why we read, to develop this process within us, to enlighten us, stretch us, exercise the mind, build up, extend that map. And to respond to these innumerable triggers which spark little explosions of serotonin in the process. The mind literally lights up.
In this respect - the intense pleasure experienced by a good book - this is a very good book. In the similar way that we feel we are being addressed by Shakespeare in The Tempest, say, we are very conscious of the author's voice, thought and mind, much like we are (particularly so) reading Bradley's definitive work of Shakespearean Tragedy (1904), or Felperin's on Romance (1972), or Kermode's on Shakespeare's Language (2000). What each of these books do is drench you in their passionate love for the canon, the language, the drama, and their phenomenal observation of and even extension of life through art - like all good works of art. Litmus and lightning, paradigm and possibility, probability and contention, postulation and proof, appreciation and pleasure. This is an ongoing pleasure through each essay on each play, sparking off memory, causing nods of agreement and frowns of objection. But first, you have to have read the plays. While Nuttall has taken the chronological approach of their (probable) writing, you can cherry-pick without losing too much context, but that context *is* the development of Shakespeare's thought as well as output, so it is best to start from the beginning. Unfortunately, I haven't yet read the Henry VI plays, but perhaps more importantly, with respect to the comedies and the idea of language and the pastoral, don't remember any of Love's Labour's Lost (1595), which seeds the development of Shakespeare's comedies throughout the rest of this book. Yet I have the principles.
Perhaps the central question to what makes great (or good) drama is that the author will demand of you a willing suspension of disbelief at some (or several) point(s), and his/her mastery of the dramatic form and of dramatic language will be so skilful as to convince you of its final resolution, and at times only just get away with it that the question hangs in the mind, provoking further questioning about the drama's and the author's efficacy, often leaving issues for sometimes fierce discussion. In Romeo And Juliet (1595-6), we are asked to accept such great loss (for we have come to like this couple of fresh lovers in their brief spring) upon the grating device of a single undelivered message, or a great excuse like the plague. And it works. It works because a comedy turns into a tragedy on that single hinge, and the fall takes so little time but ends at the foot of a great cliff. Shakespeare has built that fleeting paradise of hope atop a great cliff off which our lovers fall, while we have always known (from the Prologue) they will. It works, it is superbly well balanced, it's a bit of a magic trick.
But this is but one overall impression, while nonetheless a very valid one (consider the ask at the end of The Winter's Tale [1611], a play that stays with you long after the first experience). It is the ask of dramatic action, a wonder our minds should be open to, requiring our faith. However - staying with Romeo And Juliet - there are many more tropes, themes, generic precedents, cultural heritages, figures, devices, and so on embedded within each play, and the language of the play can seem so unique to it (Mercutio's Queen Mab speech) which in the canon is cross-fertilised (A Midsummer Night's Dream [1595-6]), that we can stay at the level of such references and not see the trees for the wood by doing so.
Nuttall opens up certain speeches in the play to things I never even saw. One fine example is the analysis of Juliet's soliloquy, just after Romeo has left the balcony (2.2.158-63), relating to Echo living sadly solitary in the cave. If you've read Ovid, or have a good annotation in your edition, you will get this reference; if you haven't, you will miss much of its impact, and when you are suddenly made aware of the reference in the imagery (without which it still carries a certain superficial imagery), you go 'ah!'. Because the depth of imagery in the metaphor, the reference to Echo's cave, and why she's there, alone, expands the imagery (and the tragedy) like an explosion - the very point of the imagery, of what Juliet wants to do, but is constrained by convention - here, the feud between the houses - not to do. It speaks of the bursting desire of love, of the constraints of the warring factions, captures the way love (and convention) enslaves you, portends the loss of their love, and echoes with a mythical model of doom. It is almost as if I had not actually read the play. This is the stuff upon which dreams are made.
He does, however, miss a trick, I feel. In his examination of Juliet's soliloquy in 3.2, after her wish that Phaeton's horses 'Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds', to more quickly bring on Romeo with the night, he does not pick up his own cue. When Juliet implores 'love-performing night' to bring on her Romeo, 'That th' runaway's eyes may wink, and Romeo / Leap to these arms' (3.2.5-6), the image of the runaway (from his house, from society, from the conventions of the day, from everything but Juliet and the night) surely must be one of those steeds, having escaped its harness of day (for is it not always cantering towards the night?), closing its eyes and making the leap up onto the balcony and into the bedroom, with the blindness and blind faith of love seeking its master/desire. As such it is a very powerful image, the pulsing musculature of the wild beast, the black steed, freed from its constraints, and so on. For at the start we are with Juliet in her bedroom, above the secret garden below. Our mind is in hers, our mental location in hers, above. The image of the runaway black stallion leaping up into the bedroom, crashing in, unstoppable, powerful energies having burst its bonds, a wildness, a madness, the blindness of night she then goes on to negate, is such a powerful, and powerfully sexual one, surely it is unmissable? It precisely runs with the 'wildness of the love-death' theme he goes on to discuss (pp.117-8). Nonetheless, this talk of night and death is brilliantly illuminating.
In 'Isolating a Monster: Richard III', though, Nuttall seems to make a double error in a single paragraph. Discussing Richard's ability to inject humour into his largely cruel interactions, here in his retort to Lady Anne as being the beast who killed her husband, Nuttall says 'Richard counters again with impeccable logic: since he feels no pity, by her reasoning he cannot be a beast'. But beasts feel no pity, certainly not predators for their prey. (Or do they? Big cats kill by choking the neck, surely a mercy from their terrible claws. Perhaps he has a point?). He then immediately says, 'He shows mastery as he beats her, easily, on her own, theological ground (as Angelo will later easily defeat the less intelligent Isabel in Measure for Measure)' (p.51). Yet I disagree: Angelo is clever, not intelligent, he rules by pedantry, lacking the mercy requisite of the law, whereas Isabel lives by principle, intelligently, her actions governed by a deep morality. Angelo, who creates the central moral dilemma in the play, sentencing Isabel's brother to death for sex before marriage - while the brothel lies not yards off - rules by the letter of the law, utterly lacking the compassion and mercy which Isabel personifies. After having just talked about chiasma, and the issue of characterisation (from Bradley), Nuttall appears, in his support of Richard to have created his own logical chiasma. Or error of judgement, in the clarity of an analysis of the psychology Shakespeare was putting across of the wicked prince, Richard's words all ambiguity and full of self-serving, as twisted as his form. Ambiguity is meant, but he is a beast, without pity, and Isabel a paragon abused by men, and, by that cross-fertilisation of reference, Anne too.
Richard is an alexithymic: he does not feel compassion or empathy, he acts it as a tool learnt from those who do. This is why he both offends our sensibilities and has in some small part our sympathy at times. Because we seek to understand through our innate empathy. Yet it is easy to be molly-coddled by this streak of humanity in us, for there is none in him, and we must remember that. No, Angelo was not intelligent, nor is Richard. They are both clever users. Why, Richard, even in his final (stilted) examination of himself, lies to and about himself: 'My conscience hath a thousand several tongues' (5.3.193). He has no conscience, and this dread soliloquy (no direct address here, this is eavesdropping on his private thoughts) demonstrates precisely his alexithymia. No, this is Shakespeare using that moral baseline in ourselves, that Richard knows of, but cannot use himself, about himself, because he utterly lacks it intrinsically. So it is not his 'conscience', but ours he is placing up there in the centre of his fallacious moral argument, his 'casuistry', as Nuttall aptly points (p.51). Nuttall, though, does come back to the plank of our own opinion: 'In Richard the vigour of the late medieval "Vice" gives place to the mystery of the wicked individual, lost to pity, goodness, and humanity. This is *character*' (p.53). A Bradleyan, then (as he concurs, p.46). But this is a good passage on the dark psychology and specious ambiguity of Richard's character and the play. Specious = 'plausible but false; based on pretence; deceptively pleasing'. Richard, precisely. And yet, do we not have still some pity for him, the deformed child always thinking that none could love him, even the most generous always in some small part loathing? There goes that streak of humanity. This is dark psychological stuff, later anatomised in Macbeth (1605-6), in the dense darkness of its language.
Turning to Richard II, we get to those points of conclusion - via a roundabout view of the issues of monarchical absolutism, divine right, and king within the law - which sum up why we love the play, and, as Nuttall concludes, 'Suddenly we love Richard. But I am not sure that we should' (p.149). Richard's key three speeches, the despair on the shore (3.2), the deposition of his abdication (4.1), and the prison scene (5.5), are soaring highlights within Shakespeare. Richard's histrionic despair, his tears of self-pity, his childish remonstrance, is delivered of such beautiful poetry that we receive several shocks on different levels. Here is a true investigation into interiority. Here is a profound, intelligent character going through real pain, despite his collocation of personalities, the play-actor, the Christ-like figure, the child losing his toys, the observer of introspection and self, and the poet. Here is someone in despair who touches the empathy within me. All this floods us in a concurrent recognition that this is a very modern pre-Freudian representation of the psychology of identity. But more than anything, when such a seemingly unstable figure has a public breakdown in front of his former subjects, friends and the designated new ruler, who sobs with tears, who articulates himself beautifully, who has the brilliance of wit to say 'Ay, no; no ay, for I must nothing be: / Therefore, no "no"' (4.1.195-6), in summation of his fractured soul, witnessed by the hundred shards of the mirror, we are witnessing greatness in self-destruction. Surely this is what every suicide feels. And so it touches us more. While not a great play, it is a great tragedy. Yes, we do love Richard, even though we shouldn't. For even while we are on the side of the king of the people rightfully claiming his rights, against the god-anointed hegemon and his abuses of privilege and power, Richard has character, intelligence and soul, whereas Bolingbroke demonstrates little of either.
While is this not a 10/10 book, despite its erudition, its philosophical and theological learnedness, and its admirable largeness in analysing the development of Shakespearean thought, Nuttall demonstrates thought far, far greater than I ever could, and the deficiency in the rating is all mine....more
'The dream, if it was a dream, drew a long breath.' (p.76)
Mary Poppins, the original text, is really a collection of short stories of the different dr'The dream, if it was a dream, drew a long breath.' (p.76)
Mary Poppins, the original text, is really a collection of short stories of the different dream-like adventures of Jane and Michael Banks, often with moral lessons inserted for them, bookended by the sudden arrival by the East Wind and the sudden departure by the West of the eponymous nanny. It addresses social constructs of class, race, propriety and behaviour in sometimes strange fantasies (or dreams) involving a pagan magic. Mary Poppins herself might be a revisioning of the good witch, the strong woman often central to communities who perform certain acts of care and healing, but she also behaves oddly with a conceited false pride and snootiness which seems to betray a kindly nature beneath her contempt. She is certainly, in the book, something other than we might expect. Part fairy tale, part absurd surrealism, this strange book is escapism of the imagination which celebrates the carnivalesque, blended with a sometimes obscure didacticism ('Care killed a cat', p.118).
I don't think anyone is unfamiliar with the film of 1964. But as is the case when reading a children's book for the first time as an adult, much of the magic just will not come alive; it needs a particular kind of open imagination at a particular time in childhood. I can see it has magic in it, but I can’t feel it. I should have read this book aged seven, then I would have felt all the magic.
Nonetheless, it comes freighted with its own baggage, or rather, lots of associations held within a seemingly empty carpet-bag. It has, since Saving Mr. Banks (2013) a certain sad undercurrent, knowing Helen Goff's childhood, and why she changed her name. But it also comes with one of the brightest symbols of the sixties, Julie Andrews, who encapsulated the personality of both Mary Poppins and Maria of Austria. And there's those dancing penguins.... Yet while the book has its own brand of silliness, which may not have caught fire in the mind were it not for the images from the film, it also should be read as a thing itself.
It has originality - if you forget for a moment that Peter Pan was born in 1911 - and it has personality - if you forget Wendy, John and Michael - and it has fairy tale fantasy - if you forget Neverland. What it does not have is a family dog. In this book, Nana is Mary Poppins, and she does not slobber (though she does tut quite a lot). Of course, while parts of its fantasy may be derivative, we must judge the book on its own merits. It seems to be written for children aged 5-7, and there is a certain primness and properness to its imparting which seems to fit the mould of Mary Poppins. Barrie's novel was so beautifully written that you could read it as an adult (I hadn't, as a child) and love it for how it said it all. That is not the case with Travers' book. Accordingly, it was a race for a course, and not a literary pleasure.
But it seems, investigating its morality for a moment, to be a series of analogies, some based on fairy tales, like ethical epithets: you shouldn't anthropomorphise a dog, even as a pet; you can't not laugh at the world; it's dangerous to go wandering unprepared and alone (Little Red Riding Hood); be what you are (the cow had to jump over the moon to stop dancing); don't romanticise poverty (the Bird Woman = the Little Match Girl); all kinds of strange little lessons. I'd like some better insight into this, since this is what each chapter is implying.
Yet what struck me most was that Mary Poppins wasn't the lovable 'pretty as a picture' nanny of wonderful adventures that she was in the film: this one was a cross, stern, even an angry person. We have been spoilt. And spoilt more by those wonderful songs. The two are inseparable, book and film, even though they differ so greatly. But I like the film better. After all, who could ever come up with such a song title: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! But if some of the genius in the songs is in the original idea, that idea is the nanny flying off with her umbrella, iconic, copied, but original. But again, I should have read it when I was seven, or had it read to me when I was six....more
A pretty hard book to take, it is persistently intense. Firstly, there's the initial reactions: 'why on Earth would you put up withThe end of silence.
A pretty hard book to take, it is persistently intense. Firstly, there's the initial reactions: 'why on Earth would you put up with even a tenth of that gutter tripe from that mouthy school bully?!;, and, stand up and say outright what it means to you in front of the class, put him down, and walk away. or better still, 'put him down', with a good old kick in the balls. He won't be laughing then. And this really expresses my problem with its emotional positioning straight away: Izzy, victim of misogynist 'banter' from Jacob AND her stepfather at home, behaves, mentally, in the first person interiority of her torment, like a victim. Just dock him! They'll never look at you the same way again. And do it in front of Max, in case the ****er gets up.
So, yeah, I was kind of angry pretty quickly, and felt uncomfortably shoved into a victim story, where the victim - unlike her black feminist gay friend Grace, a pretty tough combination to follow - doesn't exercise any rights of the 'peripherally' abused. These are not just the awkward 'rights of passage' of the coming-of-age story, though, this is pretty much a persistent stream of abuse from the school jerk and the sneery stepfather. At home but not at work, or at work but not at home: survival. But in both: nightmare. Izzy may not believe in fairies any more, but she is certainly in need of some knight on a white charger, even if the metaphor is patriarchal. If only she could really rely on Grace's understanding support, or Max's understanding. But she doesn't come out and say it as it is. And so, I felt manipulated into a very tight and incessantly intense corner. But that's the purpose of the novel, isn't it, to put you in her place, so you might understand?
However, this comes at a cost. You start, very early on, to not respect Izzy, because she doesn't think clearly about anything. She doesn't stop to think, but is overloaded with emotional freight, which makes her a cipher. The intention of filling in the silence through her first person interiority is to give her a voice which we listen to. But there comes a point where all this screaming and pleading and giving in feels so saturated in weakness and hopelessness - the hope being that she will speak out against someone, to someone - is a constant barrage of self-doubt, self-hate, hate, and still more hate. There's no positives in it, only regrets, denials, enslavement to ugly feelings and what others may think of her, it's difficult to believe that anyone would not fight back at some point somewhere. Could this really be probable? Is this how someone out there normally feels? In its extremity, do we believe enough that we at least stick out the remainder of this incessant shrieking? Using all logic to justify her fears, doubts, enslavement? Is the quality of the writing, necessarily levelled at a young adult audience, enough for us to trawl through this miasma of misery?
It doesn't occur to Izzy early on that switching off her phone will solve half of her problems. The other half are what the book is also informing us, and that's finding a support network that will help with setting up a new home away from the home abuse. You realise that when you've got nowhere else to go - parents, siblings, relatives - you have to have somewhere to go, that's the only practical step that's going to prevent the immediate continuance of abuse. You realise the lifeline those organisations offer.
And while Izzy and her mum take that break, the knight on a white charger comes by. Izzy finds her strength, the strength to face her problems with her mum and her temporarily lost best friend, and face the necessary confrontations with the school bully and her manipulative stepfather. We breathe a sigh of relief, the energy of the piece has swooped up, the hate has dissipated and the positives appeared. We appear out of the fog of self-hate and internal screaming to a litany of affirmative action. It took two-thirds of the novel to arrive, but in the end, all it took was a break, a spell of healthy independent friendship and a realisation that Izzy could be actively loved for who she is, not what others wanted her to be for them.
This has been the most difficult YA novel I've read, and far from the most positive. Personally I preferred Garden's Annie On My Mind (1982). Annie demonstrated a maturity that Izzy hardly does, but Annie was already liked and respected at school and loved at home. Izzy started with none of this, and the barrage of assault that takes up much of the novel is brutal in its incessancy. It doesn't involve drugs or gangs, but bludgeons with coercion and rape. And it is somewhat of a relief that it is not all women who help resolve these problems, while the female support network is vital to its outcome. So at least it is in some part a vindication that not all men are like Jacob and Daniel. Why do I feel let off the hook, though?
That's because silence is not permission or collusion, that there's a clear line between misreading the signs and manipulation, that in the worsening world of contemporary politics, power is abused and abused, and silence there is a form of collusion. We see it in American political and corporate life, in British entertainment and sport, we see it countered in the MeToo movement and the outing of manipulative men, and the mix of all this is a confusion of tolerance and intolerance. But the line is always clear. Read Gaitskill's This Is Pleasure (2019) and watch Bombshell (2019). They are riddled with complications, dilemmas. But the line is always clear. Things are changing, in that others are more inclined to come forward. But first, you have to help yourself. Speak. Sooner....more
A double first person narrative of David, 14, who has wanted to be a girl since he was at least 8, and Leo, who likes Alicia, and becomes friends withA double first person narrative of David, 14, who has wanted to be a girl since he was at least 8, and Leo, who likes Alicia, and becomes friends with David. Gender is fluid, typically a polarised social construct based on the pink and blue of our infancy and reinforced through our parents, toys, school and many other aspects, but even though we might be male or female sexually, our identities consist of both male and female qualities and responses. Just because you're a boy and wear pink socks doesn't make you odd because some unthinking person teases you about it. Just because you're a girl and play like a tomboy doesn't make you odd, even though you're rarely teased about it. But dealing with a dominant desire to be a girl when you’re a boy, that takes some handling.
Williamson presents an ordinary day in the life of both David and Leo, with their own idiosyncrasies and family and school issues, but keeps something in reserve which she hints at through Leo's interiority. As both 'boys' establish relationships in the somewhat brutal bustle of school, public reaction governs and limits their freedom of movement and expression, reputations formed out of rumour and relationships out of the need to connect, to love and be loved, seen and recognised for themselves. Nothing unusual here, and the brief bullying is quickly halted. (Another YA novel about bullying, I swear I'd scream).
And while we like both these boys, as the novel moves towards its peak, it suddenly gets duller, the tension seeps away, and what was an ordinary day in the life of two likable gender-questioning characters becomes a bit of struggle in its deepening ordinariness. It is, however, very nicely written, if a little too middling British to be unusual enough for interest. That might be the point, though, to set up an unusualness to allow the developing personalities to come forth. The obstructions, however, aren't epic enough to raise it to a heartbreaker, but again, that's the point, not of two boys trying to fit in, but of being accepted into an ordinary world, allowed to be themselves in an otherwise everyday life. While I find it now improbable that the typical youth reaction would be the redneck one we encounter here, that's because we now largely move in informed circles aware and tolerant of many LBGTQ issues. Remembering my time at a secondary modern, where glam-rock allowed us a little leeway in our gender representation, I'm pretty certain I'd never have had the courage to go to a school ball wearing a dress, even though I wore the make-up. The reaction would have been as expected.
Even while this longish novel didn't move me, I liked it - enough to finish it, and to come away with a liking for the characters, including Leo and David's friends. It takes in a lot, and in a warm voice not dissimilar from the author photo in the inside cover, and simply because I didn't encounter these issues myself as a teen, a lot of people have, are and will, and I wish them all the luck the world has to offer in their journey....more
A first person narrative about a fourteen-year-old teenager who is bullied at school, told retrospectively in interviews with his legal counsel in theA first person narrative about a fourteen-year-old teenager who is bullied at school, told retrospectively in interviews with his legal counsel in the present, while being held in a juvenile detention centre awaiting trial for murder.
But this story about Gray doesn't seem to me to be by the same author as Annie On My Mind (1982).
Annie On My Mind sensitively handled the same-sex inclinations and love of a teenage girl, addressing the hypocrisy of the modern world, the reactionary parents and teachers, and in particular a conservative headmistress. Pitching the emotional tenor of such pieces is a fine skill, and Annie convinced me of the problems of 'public opinion' in a largely white conservative heteronormal world, but didn't manipulate me into anger against the conservative type. Instead, Garden guided her story so that our sympathies were evoked through Annie's sensitivity, and in particular because Annie was a smart everyday girl who just so happened to fall in love with another smart sensitive girl.
However, in Endgame, Garden doesn't steer this line. What she does is offer caricatures and manipulation. You’re meant to have sympathy for the teenager who's good at music, but who can't even be honest about the problems he's facing from the archetypal school bullies. This is because the dad tends to anger and occasional violence, and the mum is too cowed to stand up to the father and steer a reasonable course at home. The older brother, who would certainly have heard about the bullying at school, does nothing to help or intervene. The teachers, who are surely now trained to see the flags of such perennial problems at school, do nothing to stop it, and some even turn a blind eye because the bullies are the popular varsity jocks. And the friend who is also bullied takes it lying down, because that's how you’re 'supposed' to deal with trouble at school, not grass. Stiff upper lip, despite split upper lip.
Alll of this, and much more, becomes an issue, because every single support group supposed to be either trained (guidance counselling, teachers, form teachers) or in the picture (parents, brother, friends) fails him. But he also fails himself. Not that I don't understand. I used to carry a knife around for a year after I was beaten up by a group of thugs, whom the CID couldn't prosecute, because I was too concussed to identify them. That was foolish and wrong. I also witnessed severe bullying at school from people I knew and was able to put a stop to it, but not until the brutal act had just been committed. That was difficult. So I know a bit about the subject first hand from two perspectives. But on neither occasion did all support groups let me down. My dad was angry that I had put myself in the position that I could be assaulted, but he was there to pick me up. My deputy head threatened me with a beating if I didn't give up the names of the two bullies I knew, one of whom I knew was severely bullied by his father, and who I found at home confiding in my mum one afternoon. Both situations could have forced me to go completely quiet, become uncooperative, and even withdraw with a very angry grudge. It took years before that anger over being assaulted went away. I was there.
But what makes me angry about the story Garden paints is not the injustice of all those failures of systems and parents, but that the characters are all caricatures, because nobody is that stupid, that reactive, that reactionary. Judges, maybe, I'll grant - but they have probably had all empathy burned out long ago, seeing such brutal thuggery and violence for so long every day for decades. But not every responsible person in the story? And no point at which the pattern wasn't recognised by someone? I simply do not believe it. The authoritarian world isn’t that unanimously purblind. Nor do I accept that Gray, who is not bright like Annie, would pretend that nothing was wrong to his parents simply because his father 'got mad', or from some vague fear that his mother would. It's all too skewed, all of it.
I am not convinced, and feel manipulated, and am disappointed. This is a weak novel which did not evoke my sympathy, because it was not credible....more
A clever little opening with scant clues of the identity of two new characters brought together to reveal the mystery that is JJ. We await the revelatA clever little opening with scant clues of the identity of two new characters brought together to reveal the mystery that is JJ. We await the revelation of the horror six years before, sure that it was some accident, but it takes a long time coming. Meanwhile, we get to know and like Alice, as a series of flashbacks reveals her childhood. I am writing about second chances right now, for my dissertation. Where will this one go, for those romances usually end the story with the gifted second chance - they don't tell us how well the gifted cope with their changed fortunes, as this does. But the mercy of the second chance is fraught with the possibility of going backwards. Or being sucked backwards...
What this story does point up - as if we needed reminding - is the intransigent immorality of the newspapers. The old conflict between purveying the truth as a responsible fourth estate and running exposés on private individuals out of some scurrilous prurience in assuming that anyone in the public eye must somehow love it (a product of the silly 'celebrity' culture) is at question, and really it's a no-brainer. Live and let live.
This is not the story from the victim's perspective, and it's interesting for being from the perpetrator's. How do you construct a new life, or live with yourself when something so drastic has caused you to kill? It's an entirely hypothetical issue, under the circumstances, children being innocent since Rousseau, corrupted through the process of growing up. Very few can answer with anything but hypotheses, and so it's nigh impossible to have any benchmark by which to judge a narrative such as Jennifer's, but Cassidy handles it with expert sensitivity.
However, the middle half of this novel is murky and highly unpleasant, and just gets worse. At its heart are three incontrovertible certainties: an abusive mother through persistent negligence; an immoral press; and a crying heart deserving of a second chance. Plus a handful of caring women. Jennifer's story was really well handled, but after a while I wearied of its incessant depravity....more
A very worthwhile journey through the linguistic arts of Shakespeare's dramatic poetry (and prose), particularly the dominance of the figure, or metapA very worthwhile journey through the linguistic arts of Shakespeare's dramatic poetry (and prose), particularly the dominance of the figure, or metaphor; but not only. McDonald has the ability to maintain a highly sustained concentration on the abstract, and while this develops into a very interesting foray into the rhetoric toolkit of the playwright's portfolio, illustrated by many interesting examples (some delicious), it can become very difficult to sustain that level of concentration oneself, as a reader. This is why illustrative examples from the plays are essential (it would be a little achievement without, of course).
There are moments which spark the brain into life like an electric frieze of pattern. Such moments include the schemata of figures in the illustration of Henry Peacham's Garden of Eloquence (1577); the examples from Richard II and Romeo and Juliet; and Brutus' soliloquy on Caesar from 2.1. These fair catch fire in the mind's eye, and reading them out of context elevates them in their exemplification.
But there are whole passages which cause one to drift off, catch the breath, pull back and re-read. When giving illuminations from a broad spread of critical theorists of the twentieth century, clarity reigns, and you cannot help but wonder, with this complex topic, if the task is simply too ambitious for a casual (non-study) read. Yet, while the discussion around metonymy, for example, is akin to visually following a telescoping perspective, you need to know the premise of metonymy in the first place. While technical terms are explained (in parenthesis) during the illustration of an example - anaphora (fine), metalepsis (?) - some, such as the latter, evade clear understanding, or do not quite illustrate the definition. For these occasions, re-reading is essential. For the error or omission of understanding is clearly on my side.
It does take a couple of chapters to get going, building from the historicist view of historical context, before we get into examples from the plays; and as each chapter brings increasing rewards, it becomes a book you would rather pick up than put down. There can be no better recommendation. So persistence through the opening passages pays off, and proportionally more as you progress. I found that schema perfectly placed to give my mind something totally clearly structured to lean on and move on from. More of these flashpoints - of discrete, highly structured visual cues - would have improved my experience, but pacing helps as well. One chapter a day is not a fool's cop-out. And that's how I read (red) it: for pleasure, not for any other reason than the reward of enquiry.
I had a bit of a problem with definitions in the section on Prose. Firstly, McDonald's comparison of style in the first to second tetralogies, and his assertion that in the later tetralogy (R II, 1-2 H IV and H V), "a great deal of prose is spoken, mostly in the tavern and on the battlefield by non-ranking soldiers", may apply to the 3 Henries (I have not yet read the two Fourths), but Richard II is 100% verse, so it is, in the canon, the most opposite of his point. Secondly, when delineating the difference between 'protaxis' and 'hypotaxis' in prose construction, his definition of the former, that "elements are linked with conjunctions, 'and' or 'but' or 'neither...nor', is contrary to the OED's definition that such elements (i.e. lists) are NOT linked by conjunctions, which clouds the issue. The crux of the definition is, according to the OED, 'the relation (of coordination or subordination) between them' [a series of propositions or clauses] without indicatory conjunctions. This is technically the most demanding section of the book, and clarity and accuracy of definition are pretty important for understanding. I get the 'colour' of his argument, but other sources disagree with his definitions.
On the whole, though, this is the kind of detailed investigation of the arts of Shakespeare's rhetoric, and especially of his figurative writing, which is essential not just to understanding some of the plays (Macbeth, especially), but for enjoying them. Each time you read a book like this, you feel that your treasured knowledge of a challenging author's work is enriched, through more discrete awareness, through little cross-fertilisations of referents, through a gradual accretion of understanding. Shakespeare's plays are a network of feasts, and within each something sits which electrifies as the eye crosses it, the sound forms, the mind builds the imagery, and the smartness of the point (or compound points) impresses. Shakespeare can thrill, and the more you read works like this, the more you become aware of those thrills, and the more you relish the next experience of the kind.
It is an intriguing realisation as you move through this book that the author is building up a pattern of meaning from a simpler introduction to more and more sophisticated means of illustration; just as Shakespeare started his early plays with the conventions of iambic pentameter, and then moved through the sophistications of the tragedies and into a denser language of metrical variation, syntactic disjuncture and a form of linguistic compression. Perhaps there are also disjunctures within this emerging sophistication, such as Richard II (1595-6), roughly a third the way through his portfolio, 100% verse, marking the end of medievalism and the chivalric period. Different forms or poesy and device, illustrating wider cultural significance or concentrating our attention - albeit often semi-consciously - on psychological as well as behavioural states. Finding patterns, searching for greater meaning, is what our minds naturally do, and it is quite pleasurable to follow McDonald's path through this vast and vastly impressive body of work. It seems, at times, a shame to limit the discussion to so few examples. But maybe, if you grow to love this linguistic approach to Shakespeare's hidden messages, this book is merely a primer for a far greater body of research.
One of those areas, which McDonald ends his book on, are the late romances; something got me about those last two of them, The Tempest, a long time ago, and The Winter's Tale, a couple of years ago. That move from the potentially tragic disaster to the optimistic (comic) ending. That something is reflected in McDonald's summing up, and it is the optimism on which they end, and the achievement of a seeming impossibility, another chance at a broken relationship, which makes them so valuable. Such hope is persistent, and fitting to a career and a life. And to this book.
Certainly I have come away with a greater appreciation of the later plays, particularly the romances and their artifice and turbulent language. I want to read more about the linguistic content of these plays. I shall read his next: Shakespeare's Late Style. I want to see more performances. I want more - and that is wonderful tribute to a book....more
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