050519: went to see production of this play last night. independent theatre, perfoif you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com
050519: went to see production of this play last night. independent theatre, performance, company, simple, single set, industrial stage, one scene informed by lighting tech, not much sound, special effects, so very good acting obvious. as read so many times it is possible to go by memory for all dialogue not heard. which is most of it (my hearing deficit not performance). seeing play performed is no doubt the art. all the reading, all criticism, all anecdotal reviews, like this, are only gestures toward the art. i could appreciate the staging, interpretations of characters, immediate presence, time passing, community of audience... if i have read the play recently it is possible to recall lines, then again some quotes are indelible. i do not find it bleak, dark, difficult, do find it tragic/comic and sometimes just comic (slapstick works more onstage than in writing). i love this play... but then all of us are born mad, some of us remain so... and if you do not love the play, well, as didi and gogo would say with resigned shrug: (there is) nothing to be done...
020219 from ???: this is from many years before my birth, this is history, this is maybe out of fashion, but i love this play. and i am not alone (i think) though this past month or so i have asked many people, mostly here at the coffeehouse, mostly younger, if they have read or seen or even heard of it: the answer has been No...
how is this possible? is this definitive tragicomedy less than essential art for our postmodern world? should not everyone at least have heard of it? of its bleak, hilarious, pointed, depiction of eternal deferral? i have read this several times but never seen it produced. does it not translate? has the world moved on? is it no more than artifact of its time? i tell a young woman who is studying theatre set design that my favourite set is for this play... this is a joke that fails, for she has never read the set description (a country road. a tree) and of course telling why the joke ruins it... but this remains a favourite fiction...
someone said this is a play in which nothing happens. twice. i love it. others might not be so very sad this play is not universally known. i want to see productions and productions... and people to see it everywhere from springfield to seinfeld to donnesbury. this is my kind of laughter falling from birth to grave. the man need not have written anything else to secure his place in literary history......more
???? 80s: it has been years (decades...) since last read (twice). i am moved to write this review in response to a friend's assurance this book is the???? 80s: it has been years (decades...) since last read (twice). i am moved to write this review in response to a friend's assurance this book is the best, wisest, trenchant, etc. respectfully i must disagree. when i read this first i had not read much philosophy if any and decided i just was missing out some key understanding. i felt the same about ulysses at the time... but the second time i had read enough philosophy and since much more, to decide my original distrust of possibility, value, truth, of his narrator's way of living...
absurdity. i did enjoy and recognize some quiet satire, some remove, some individuality, through his dealings with social expectations, social relations, social emotions. it is difficult to care about a character who does not care about any others, but there are such people, usually known as psychopaths. such people often are narcissistic, for whom others are if of any value no more so than instrumentally. target practice...
absurdity. i am not sympathetic to arguments that because religion, society, football clubs, do not provide surety of meaning, we have no meaning. no doubt many who proclaim adherence to great values are hypocrites or at best dupes, but these arguments are to dismiss those who are sincere, committed, engaged, to similar values. to discover that the earth goes around the sun and the sun is only an ordinary star of billions, or that we are less than an eyeblink of geological time, is not a reason to then declare we have no value. we have human value. can there be anything more...
absurdity. this does get a three even in memory because it inspires me to think, to try and form my own sense of values against cosmic indifference. it is said the opposite of love is not hate: it is indifference. this way of being in the world, of not searching for meaning, of finding, of rejecting, does not seem minimally human. as psychopath at least this character is not 'algerian psycho' but aside from the man he kills he also kills himself. there are other characters, other books, other extreme portrayals of misanthropy where suicide argues for itself...
de beauvoir in The Ethics of Ambiguity says that my life has meaning/value only to the extent i should recognize the value of others, and this seems to me a good place to start ethics. 'should' is the key word, should is prescriptive, should is necessary, should is not some independent fact we find in the world but 'how' we find the world. as humans we should 'care', should recognize there is no quantitative measure of our engagement with others but some 'quality'- ranging from indifference, mild agreement, passionate love, and this gives all our lives possibility, value, truth...
absurdity. it is a short book. it is a book, it is fiction, it may be not a character we would enjoy sharing a coffee with in actual life- but then he does not exist and has no claim on our time or sympathy. we can read it. we can stop here or there or not finish it. in an instrumental way this book is valuable: give it to one or another of your friends and start a discussion, find out your or her position on meaning of life... can you ask for more from a book...?...more
121215: i have decided to reread some work i had originally rated five or four- particularly when i was very young, unread,same review as The Wretched
121215: i have decided to reread some work i had originally rated five or four- particularly when i was very young, unread, innocent of much litcrit, but not genre young adult. this is a good idea here...
i read this book first when i think i was 19 as Les Misérables. i had read some big books, Shogun: A Novel of Japan, The Lord of the Rings, Moby-Dick or, the Whale, when i decided to read it. this is a new translation, a new read, but as i do not read fluent french, i have forgotten details, i am uncertain how this differs, only certain that it seems longer though that was not an abridged version. i now realize that i read that translation before most of my artist friends and other friends, were born. i feel very old.. but this book makes me feel young...
there are questions. when rating my memory of the first read for goodreads, i gave it a 4. since reading some reviews, very effusive (hello aubrey), very intriguing (hello lisa), i decided to read it again. new translation, new perspective, from so many books read since, so much life passed, this was an interesting qualified rating- mostly because rather than read i was studying it. i read this in a slightly more educated, thoughtful, mature manner. as the reading progresses i find myself recalling what comes next but i am unsure whether this is vague memory or effective foreshadowing, and of course, sometimes i am frustrated that hugo is taking so long but then this probably reflects style of the era...
there are questions. in actual reading this time i also read various other works, novels, nonfiction, graphics, as the momentum of plot is not as intense when i already know the story, but there are surprises, things i did not remember, though the main queries remain- why does he take so long? why does he have entire chapters devoted to tactics, soldiery, results of clashes, at waterloo? why does he have a chapter explaining/apologizing for the use of slang? (france does now maintain a government section that rules on what is proper french). why have a chapter detailing the work on and history of paris sewers? (you are there, i guess it is useful) why why why? you will have a lot of reading time to ponder these questions...
yet i give this a five. i try to maybe learn something from everything i read, even if those things learned are things to avoid, things i do not like, but any such problems are swept away in the epic grandeur, epic emotions, epic actions, of hugo's work. i could give this a three, could grumble over digressions, sincerity of religious, moral, romantic thoughts- could even be bothered that this metropolis of paris if not the whole of france, seems to be inhabited by a very limited population who are all significantly, conveniently, connected to each other, through the years, through the city, the country, and show up at the right thematic time- often after moments that their presence, knowledge, action could have changed something in a big way- and i also notice, please, that no one ever truly talks or thinks thoughts always so endlessly and helpfully moving the plot along...
characters? there is no shortage. motivations? only strangely misinterpreted by such characters. emotions? well from the standpoint of a cynical 21st century man- there is a strong urge to slap some sense into him (you will know who). suffering? yes there is a lot of that but it mostly serves as plot motors or is carefully arrayed in the background portraying this cruel world. narrative voice? never remotely unreliable, always omniscient, only occasionally entering without comment into details of this or that character's thoughts. long? did i mention that?
so maybe i would have liked it shorter. so probably it is necessary that it is not shorter. some of this book works by delaying recognition, delaying revelation that everyone, everyone, everyone, somehow has a role to play, and emotional plot details about less important characters are finally shown as so meaningful. what is abridged in previous version? i suppose some of the digressions, but do not know. if i am learning something, well why this and not say stephen king? everything reads better from french? for i do learn, about architecture of melodramatic plot, identifiable characters, how to add this or that riveting episodes, irony and inflexibility not least in disproportion between fault or crime and punishment, in redemption and conscience and heroism born of suffering and meeting just the right forgiving bishop...
i study this with evidently more pleasure than i expected, given the length. i am slightly removed from all anguish, sorrow, suffering and survival of this book, maybe because i know some scenes coming up- but aside from satiric urges when he (you will know) suffers and fumbles through love-at-sight, there is some pleasure that is not diminished by repetition: rescuing from on high above the ship, faith and fate, love and war on the barricade, flight through the sewers...
so i did read versions of this twice- but probably not again unless I learn more fluent french, and proust is more likely to then read. yes i did read it over a month interspersed with other work, but i did come back to it, did enjoy it, did learn much from it, not least in granting value to melodrama, to romance, to adventure all in one. on the other, i have no desire to see either movie or musical...
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