Category: Literature

Alice Munro obituary | Alice Munro | The Guardian

Canadian short-story writer who won the Nobel prize in 2013 and was often likened to Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant
— Read on www.theguardian.com/books/2024/may/14/alice-munro-obituary

The death has just been announced of the truly great Canadian writer, Alice Munro. Lots to read at The Guardian and, of course, at The New York Times, including from earlier this year an “Essential Alice Munro” (astutely subtitled with the prerequisite for reading Munro being simply to have lived!)

Sent
 a life as long
 as said stories short.
Said therein
 much more than most.
Surely to live long,
much longer than most
 mere mortal days
 here spent.

- Anne Dromache, May, 2024.

‘They’re teaching me’: Greg Doran on staging Shakespeare’s unloved Two Gents with students | Theatre | The Guardian

The theatre director, now teaching at Oxford after years running the RSC, thinks The Two Gentlemen of Verona is perfect for a young cast to argue over. We go into rehearsals
— Read on www.theguardian.com/stage/article/2024/may/10/student-production-two-gentlemen-of-verona-oxford-greg-doran

Listening to Greg Doran on Radio Four’s Today programme this morning alerted me to his visiting professorship at Oxford and the Playhouse production. The above Guardian piece by Michael Billington informs on this and other aspects of Doran’s life post-RSC, and takes us inside rehearsals of the diverse student production of one of Shakespeare’s least performed (and ‘problematic’ says Billington) works. A terrific read.

Annotating the Archives

With a new feature, The Yale Review has become an even more wonderful place to go. Here, the announcement by Meghan O’Rourke of a weekly column called Annotating the Archives; archives that really are a treasure trove of 20th century literature and ideas, and which deserve to be brought to the fore and presented with perhaps a differentiated slant or emphasis – and by fine contemporary writers.

An absolute gem as opener: Claire Messud on ‘the common reader’, as identified by Virginia Woolf and as represented through her essay contributions to The Yale Review, including ‘How Should One Read a Book?’ – fittingly the concluding essay of The Common Reader – Second Series.

The First Lady of American Classics: Remembering Edith Hamilton – Antigone

The First Lady of American Classics: Remembering Edith Hamilton – Antigone
— Read on antigonejournal.com/2024/03/remembering-edith-hamilton/

Possibly Edith Hamilton (here her Wiki entry) is one of those extraordinary American women renowned only on their home turf and amongst those steeped in Classics education. Whatever, I only came across Hamilton by chance a few years ago whilst reading Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones in which the feisty young protagonist is given a copy of Mythology to read by a teacher, and finds solace in those ancient myths – and refuge from the cruel realities of poverty and despair in the Mississippi Delta.

Emma B. & Elizabeth F.

Over a festive season that stretched my resources, I turned to a German translation of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary; translated by Elisabeth Edl (admired by me for her translations of Patrick Modiano) and much lauded at the time of publication in 2012. And, I must say it seems to have left a greater impression upon me than whatever English version I may have read in the past (but not the one by Lydia Davis, also from 2012) did; for I don’t remember previously having been as stimulated … or, as moved … as this reading has left me.

To be said on this particular edition: Beyond the literary work, the notes throughout are extensive, as is Edl’s translation essay; included also in the volume are the proceedings from the law case brought against Flaubert for … what? … obscenity, shall we say … by the French public prosecutors of the day. This latter inclusion was a first in the German language, and whether it has found its way into any of the English translations to date I don’t know. At least, it – the trial, the outcome (‘case dismissed’, so to speak), the repercussions (for society, for literature) – lives, still, in academia. This essay by Christine Haines published in French Politics, Culture & Society Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer 2005), pp 1-27 and available on JSTOR is just one example.

Of an evening (that is, in bed!) my seriously serious book reading is intermittently interrupted by other forms of Lektüre, sometimes of a more frivolous nature and sometimes not. Definitely belonging to the latter; the latest (or the one before that) issue of the LRB. And, it was there, around about this Christmas time, that I was interested to read a review piece by Julian Barnes (Vol. 45 No. 24 · 14 December 2023) inspired by a new Monet biography by Jackie Wollschläger. With that, I won’t flex my (puny) Impressionist muscles; Julian Barnes may be able to get away with being an amateur art critic/historian/connoisseur, but, I not! It just reminded me that Barnes and Flaubert appear to have taken up firm residence in a similar crevice of my brain. Hardly surprising says she (to herself), recalling a stuffed parrot. But, amongst other things, I also remember his essay (also in the LRB) on the Lydia Davis translation of Madame Bovary, and that it was far from complimentary. And, this I remember because I remember it having coincided with my reading of the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time in a then new translation and also from Davis, and I further remember having been momentarily concerned that I wasn’t getting the best of Proust. What, if anything, Barnes has had to say about her Swann’s Way, I don’t know. Or, just can’t remember!

continue reading …

Every day is Shakespeare Day…

The title page of the 1623 First Folio of William Shakespeare‘s plays

Earlier this year I wrote what I remember to have been a fairly extensive entry relating to the 400th anniversary of the printing of the so-called ‘First Folio’ of Shakespeare’s plays. Looking for it today, I am mortified – radically overly stated perhaps but nevertheless appropriately theatrical in tenor – to discover it has disappeared! I do know that it was written during a period of preoccupation with the Bard (a not uncommon thing) around about the time I read Hamnet and heard about (then later acquired) Greg Doran’s My Shakespeare – A Director’s Journey through the First Folio.

Of all days – today! There has been of course much ado during this whole year, now all but gone, but the book was entered into the Stationers’ Register on 8 November 1623 so this is a good book end, so to speak.

So it is, and belatedly, that I refer again to the magnificent site, Folio 400: Printing Shakespeare set-up to inform and help navigate through all the celebratory events. An invaluable resource; that it, too, may have a long life! Their mission is self-explanatory:

The First Folio is one of the great wonders of the literary world.

Published in 1623, seven years after the death of its author, it was the first printed edition of Shakespeare’s collected plays.  Without this achievement, we would have lost half of his dramatic work.

This website is dedicated in gratitude to the 400th birthday of this foundational book on the 8th November 2023.

folio400.com

To end, as I began, on a theatrical note. On the BBC site, media editor Katy Razzall talks to David Tennant about what Shakespeare means to him and his upcoming role as Macbeth at the Donmar – sold out, but of course! And, as we lick our wounds, we are left with the special treat of Tennant’s recitation of a Macbeth soliquay (Act 1 Scene 7). (Embedded below.)

Every day is Shakespeare day, but today most especially.

Rushdie in Frankfurt

Some would say about time, others better late than never. On Sunday October 22 in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, Salman Rushdie was rewarded for a profound and courageous literary life – rather, LIFE without need of a conditional. And awarded with the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels. And, he was there – so very ALIVE with sparkling intelligence and infectious good humor (granted, das große deutsche Publikum in the pews didn’t always get it! but what the … I did!). And, with humanity, and a gift for finding the right words to articulate the misplacement and perversion of humanity and how it may be retrieved in a fractious world. Only weeks after the terror attack against Israel and the repercussions in Gaza, such a clear voice is most sorely needed

Here now is Rushdie’s marvelous acceptance, audio is available elsewhere on the site, and embedded below in PDF format all the speeches, including the laudatio by Daniel Kehlmann.

Salman Rushdie 2023 Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels Download

Coming soon: “The Iliad” trans. by Emily Wilson

An epic wait nears its end. A tweet from Emily Wilson in April (overlooked by me because an aversion that began with Trump a few years ago morphed into an aversion to Musk – from which it follows that I visit ‘X formerly known as Twitter’ but infrequently) alerts to the September 26 publication of her Iliad translation. I sort of knew this, but the official word is always reassuring. And, yes, the cover design is ‘glorious’ I think – I note the red hues in contrast to the blues of the Odyssey cover; the colors of bloody battle and wide seas respectively.