I only have one Marlowe play left to revisit. I should start thinking about a set of plays for this winter. I will likely read up to 1603, 1604, the end of the Elizabethan age. Please suggest favorites.
MARLOWE AND SO ON
Astrophil and Stella (c. 1580), Philip Sidney –
Kicking off the sonnet craze.
The Jew of Malta (1589?), Christopher Marlowe – I will
point you here.
Henry VI, Part 3 (1590?) &
Henry VI, Part 1 (1591?), William Shakespeare – A bit
on Part 3 over here. Part 1 is as weak
as I remember. An early quickie prequel,
perhaps slapped together while Shakespeare was working on Richard III.
Arden of Faversham (1591?), ??? – Quite good, really.
Doctor Faustus A (1592?/1604) &
Doctor Faustus B (1592?/1616), Christopher Marlowe – Some
notes back here. The line in the title
is from Faustus’s great last scene, the A text.
The B text replaces the commas with periods – also good.
Richard III (1592?), William Shakespeare – Some weaknesses,
but so many great scenes.
Lord Strange's Men and Their Plays (2014), Lawrence
& Sally-Beth MacLean Manley – I had planned to look at this book,
but it was so interesting that I read it. The use of evidence is exemplary, meaning
cautious.
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of
Shakespeare's Greatest Rival (2025), Stephen Greenblatt – Briefly reviewed.
FICTION
The Death of Virgil (1945), Hermann Broch – Why make
art?
The Heat of the Day (1948), Elizabeth Bowen – London during,
or just after, the Blitz. A bit of a spy
story, surprisingly. Bowen’s mix of
Flaubert and James, or what I think of as Flaubert and James, is always
interesting.
The One That Got Away (1992), Percival Everett &
Dirk Zimmer – A picture book about cowboys and numbers, written and illustrated
for little children.
Vaim (2025), Jon Fosse– Look, a new novel! The Fosse seemed slight to me, the characters
much simpler than the artist I spent so much time with in Septology. This is the first of a trilogy, so maybe it
is all going somewhere. I enjoyed the
voice of the characters; Damion Searls is an ideal translator.
Shadow Ticket (2025), Thomas Pynchon - Another new novel. Against the Day (2006) was the last
big book I read before starting Wuthering Expectations. I guess it exhausted me, and my interests
wandered elsewhere, so I skipped the next two novels, but I am now well-rested
and, since Pynchon is 88, I am amazed this book exists. Talk about simpler, compared to, say, Gravity’s
Rainbow, with which it has many connections, but anyone sympathetic to what
Pynchon does should be happy with this book.
It features a number of things that glow in the dark; quite a lot of
cheese, and cheez, and lots of information about the American cheezscape. Biblioklept has put together some useful and entertaining annotations. I hope someone
from Milwaukee is doing the same for all of the Wisconsin-specific detail. It amuses me to think of 80-some year-old
Pynchon spending his time making sure he squeezes all of the good details out
of 1930 Milwaukee.
IN FRENCH & PORTUGUESE
Os cem melhores contos brasileiros do século (The
100 Nest Brazilian Short Stories of the Century, 1903-38), various – I read
the first thirteen stories, through the 1930s.
Machado de Assis, Lima Barreto, Graciliano Ramos – plausibly among the
best Brazilian short stories of the century, yes. And just hard enough for my Portuguese study.
Les gommes (The Erasers, 1953), Alain
Robbe-Grillet – I read Robbe-Grillet’s fussy, screwball anti-mystery ages ago
in English. I enjoyed revisiting it,
although I have less of a clue than ever why so many people thought this was going
to be the future of the novel. I would
not have complained, but why, why?
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