All of this to say, please be gentle with yourself if you’re having a hard time right now. Here are some links!

Gabrielle Bellot writes about her long affection for Ms. Marvel and what Kamala Khan’s struggles have meant for her as an adult. (link)

What does it mean to write trauma well? (link)

“From the use of solitary confinement, which amounts to torture, to the punitive charges for phone calls, every aspect of the American system, major or minor, seems to be motivated not by the desire to prevent crime or to rehabilitate prisoners, but by the impulse to inflict spectacular, exemplary pain for the satisfaction of a general public that derives a furtive pleasure from its proximity to suffering.” Hari Kunzru on mass incarceration. (link)

Mara Wilson discusses The Narrative and the reasons Britney Spears never had a chance. (link) Also: Britney Spears is not in control of her image, and she never has been. (link)

Another excellent piece in Stitch’s series on fandom for Teen Vogue! (link)

Not seeing herself in the world of Lord of the Rings, Namina Forna decided to create her own. (link)

Arcadia is a perfect play, and that is the end of the matter. (link)

Variety reported on the sets of Joss Whedon’s shows and what the atmosphere was like. (Not good at all.) (link)

“The love-hate relationship with the musical form that made Dolly possible is a reflection of the push-pull of Southern culture for non-Southerners. They may hate country music but they have a ceaseless appetite for its white escapism — sonic, visual, and embodied.” Tressie McMillan Cottom on Dolly Parton. (link)

On the rightwing attack on trans women and girls in sports. (link)

“She was a shiny button.” Kelly Marie Tran deserves better and always did. But she’s succeeding in spite of the haters. (link)

I caught up on WandaVision and I liked it a lot! Except for that I was/am very mad that Monica Rambeau didn’t have more to do, considering that she’s the most beautiful human in the whole world. Here are some links about that:

• The puzzle box format that TV viewers have come to expect does a disservice to the emotional storytelling in WandaVision. (link)
• “WandaVision was always telling us what type of show it was. There was no greater mystery to figure out, no big puzzle that really even needed to be solved. All we had to do was sit back and tune in.” Carly Lane on the finale. (link)
• “Once we have found our way past so much grief, after so many spent and destructive illusions, what do we want? Who else can we try to be?” (link)

Having a bionic arm isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; or, a very useful article that all Stucky fanfic writers should take into account going forward. (link)

“White feminism has always been exclusionary.” Koa Beck discusses the archival records that show the history of white (and cis, and straight) feminists excluding all other voices. (link)

I only care what Black women have to say about the Oprah interview, so here’s a few:

• The hostility and trolling that Meghan Markle has faced is a pure example of misogynoir, and we shouldn’t look away. (link)
• “[Oprah is] something of an emissary, a reactive translator of emotion, a master weaver, pulling disparate revelations into a collective portrait that colonizes the mind.” (link)
• “I’ve rarely heard white friends discuss their parallel experiences of first realizing their privilege.” Salamishah Tillet on Harry’s racial awakening. (link)

Phew, this is an article about cops who danced with protestors at a Black Lives Matter event and then stormed the capitol. (link) SORRY THE LAST LINK WAS SO SAD.

The post Quarantinaversary: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

Roxane Gay on Confederate and why she doesn’t want it. I’m going to share this one quote because it’s really good:

It is curious that time and again, when people create alternate histories, they are largely replicating a history we already know, and intimately. They are replicating histories where whiteness thrives and people of color remain oppressed.

I’ll never not want to post links about Tom Stoppard and how great he is. And like, if his best work is behind him, that seems FINE because he is EIGHTY.

In addition to every other goddamn thing, Trump is dicking up the book industry for all of us.

A roundtable discussion of black SFF authors and the ways the industry shuts them out.

What is an independent bookseller’s responsibility to Hillbilly Elegy?

Bronx native Noelle Santos is opening a bookstore in the Bronx, which since 2016 hasn’t had any general interest bookstores in the entire borough. Noelle Santos is my hero.

The Frick (a museum I have never been in GASP GASP I know I always meant to go but so far I have not been) is working on a new project that would create lil books to go along with their artistic masterpieces. Hilary Mantel, among others, has signed on to participate.

I am usually crabby as hell about depictions of child protective services, but I think this NYTimes piece manages a critique of its practices in a way that doesn’t elide some of the problems child protective services caseworkers face.

Someone on the internet is a genius, part eleven thousand.

The post At Last, the Recess: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

A few weeks ago I went to see Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, with Robin Williams (this post is making my life sound so much more glamorous than is really the case), and although it had excellent moments, overall I thought it used big, dramatic events as a cut-rate way of getting emotional responses that the writing, plot, and characters didn’t merit. Whereas Arcadia does just the opposite. It has an elaborate, well-managed plot, interesting (apart from Chloe) characters, and writing that makes me rethink my long-held position that “the dialogue crackles” is a stupid turn of phrase. It takes tiny, insignificant objects and events and gives the characters (and the audience) a tremendous investment in them. A pencil portrait and a lit candle brought tears to my eyes in the final scene.

I’m not describing the final scene, although I want to. I’ve made this distinction before, I believe: I am mad about factual spoilers (X dies, Y and Z marry), but I want to discover the emotional beats for myself. I’ll just say, the final scene of Arcadia can hardly be described in words other than “heartbreakingly lovely.” Please read it, or if you are in New York, go see it! It is worth it, worth it, worth it! Just for the last scene it’s worth it. I’m going again in May. Don’t judge.

Billy Crudup, the reason I went to see the production (that is such a lie, I’d have gone to see it if Robin Williams had played Bernard Nightingale — or no, maybe not — well, yes, I probably would have), played Bernard Nightingale as a semi-caricature of an academic. It was extremely funny, because you’ve had that professor, but there was something slightly insincere about the way Crudup played the part. I’m having trouble making the distinction between the insincerity the character possesses, and the insincerity of the way Crudup played the part, and where the problem was. I think it’s this: Bernard-the-character treats academia as a rhetorical game he’s playing, but a game in which he has (however much he jokes about it) a serious stake. Crudup’s Bernard lacks the stake. It’s insincerity all the way down.

This, plus the gaspy Lia Williams, who subscribes to the gasp-emote-repeat style of dialogue delivery as Hannah (shouldn’t Hannah be brisk?), rendered the modern sections of the play less satisfying than they might otherwise have been. Fortunately they had Raul Esparza playing Valentine, making longish expository speeches about science resonate (his Valentine has a stake in it, and it shows). Then, too, the payoff of the modern scenes is not, as in the scenes set in the 1800s, the relationships between the characters, but rather the solving of the mystery of the past. This aspect of the play could not have been written or staged to better effect. As Hannah tells Valentine, “It’s the wanting to know that makes us matter.”

Tom Riley was absolutely superb, flawless, ideal, as Septimus Hodge. I worried at the beginning that he and Thomasina were too shouty, and Thomasina was, but about him I shouldn’t have had a moment’s concern. Septimus is the play’s center – the Byron connection, the turtle owner, the genius (-spotter) of the house of Sidley, the wry un-self-pitying lover of Chater and Croom – and Riley carries it all off with quiet humor. He’s making jokes to himself, not to the audience, and that is why they’re funny. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway because I’d have forgiven him anything after the last scene (I can’t describe it, there’s no use asking me to describe it; if describing it did it justice I’d have been gushing like this after reading the play).

(What’s that you say? I was gushing like this after reading the play? Okay, yes, I was, but not about that final scene.)

Thomasina, on the other hand, is a little shrill. I was glancing back at my post on reading Arcadia, and I am unduly pleased with myself by something I said in a comment: “Every time I read this play, I think it would be so easy to play Thomasina shrill, for laughs. She’s a funny character, but she’s only funny as long as the actress playing her commits to playing it straight.” Solid call, Past Jenny! Bel Powley plays Thomasina shrill, for laughs. The writing carries her, or Septimus does, but it would have been far better if the actress had committed to playing her straight, without the cartoony hand-waving. I know that it would have been better because she dispensed with the shrillness and excessive hand gestures in the last scene, and it was better to a factor of infinity.

I’m going again. I don’t care! I’m going again, if I can in any way afford to. I have to see this play again. Also, if anyone reading this happens to be in charge of the universe, I want The Invention of Love to be revived. I would go see it no matter what it cost, probably twice, and I would tell my friends about it. Promise!

Going to see good theater in New York City ranks very high on Bentham’s hedonic calculus (first encountered in this book, wow, ages ago). Intensity, or strength of pleasure, very high. Duration, three hours or so, better than most pleasurable things, right, so let’s call it pretty high. Certainty (that it will be pleasurable), pretty solid if you’re me and are addicted to live theater. Propinquity, just across town. Fecundity (likeliness to recur), excellent, and the more theater I see the more I want to see, so this gets better as it goes. Purity (meaning, you won’t feel shitty afterwards — binge-drinking rates low on purity), excellent, I am still buzzing from Arcadia. Extent (how many people share in the pleasure?), superb, a whole theater full of people will share it with you. By contrast, cooking dinner rates pretty low. Intensity is low, duration is low, propinquity and fecundity good, purity medium, extent poor, and certainty very poor indeed. If I starve to death in New York City it’ll be because I spent my money on theater tickets instead of groceries.

The post Arcadia, Tom Stoppard (the play) appeared first on Reading the End.

When pressed, though*, I can only think of one such novel that I would recommend to a friend, and then only if I knew the friend in question didn’t mind extreme wordiness.  (A.S. Byatt’s Possession.  I should read that again.  It’s been years.)  More often I am disappointed on an epic scale by the author’s failure to live up to some arbitrary and impossibly high standard for this kind of novel.

*By me.  Much as I would like to live the sort of life where book lovers from all over the nation are constantly bashing at my door trying to get my opinion on Important Literary Matters, I am not yet at that place in my life.  Give it time.

For reasons far too complicated** to go into here, I am binging on Tom Stoppard right now.  I started with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, moved on to The Invention of Love, the result of which you saw, and just finished the play I normally claim as my favorite, Arcadia.  Arcadia goes back and forth between Byron-times, when a thirteen-year-old girl called Thomasina contemplates Latin translations and carnal embrace under the instruction of her tutor Septimus Hodge (that sounds much dirtier than it is), and present times, when scholars research Thomasina’s family and try to work out whether Byron ever shot a poet at their house.

**And awesome.  I would tell you what they are, except that I’m afraid that if I did, my sister’s boyfriend would no longer be able to write that treatise on Tom Stoppard and the nature of art that I expect he is currently planning, and also that Tom Stoppard’s people (I’m assuming he has people.  He’s Tom Stoppard.) would find this post, take umbrage at my flippant tone, and decline to allow Tom Stoppard to be interviewed by anyone ever again.  Better safe than sorry, right?

No wonder other books of this type have failed to satisfy me!  I have been comparing them all this time against Tom Stoppard!  It is hardly fair.  Especially when you consider that Billy Crudup, on whom I have a massive crush from Charlotte Gray and Almost Famous, played Septimus at one point in his career; and Bill Nighy, on whom I have a massive man-crush*** from, well, everything, was the original Bernard; and both of them are playing those roles in my head when I read Arcadia.  It’s like saying, Oh hey, I traveled back in time and saw the original production of Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Globe with William Shakespeare playing Oberon, so WHY CAN’T YOU MEASURE UP, NEIL GAIMAN?****

***My little sister and I got fed up with having no word to describe our feelings for male actors we adore but don’t have crushes on.  We can say “crush” to describe how we feel about Ben Barnes, and “girl-crush” to describe how we feel about Carey Mulligan and Helen Mirren, but there is no word for how we feel about Nathan Fillion and Johnny Depp.  So we decided to say “man-crush”.  It is officially the most useful word I coined in the 2009 holiday season (with “snuddle” a close if nauseating second).

****Confession: Before I ever saw a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I read Susan Cooper’s heart-wrenching King of Shadows, in which a lonely orphan boy travels back to Shakespeare times to play Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Shakespeare takes care of him.  While playing Oberon.  I think that may actually be why I have never seen a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that satisfied me.  That, or the Royal Shakespeare Company is massively overrated.

Arcadia gives us alternating scenes in past and present, gradually unfolding the little drama that took place in the old days between a poet called Chater and another called Byron.  Stoppard manages to maintain intellectual and emotional suspense while exploring chaos theory, the intersection of science and humanities, and the limits of human knowledge.  While, also, being very funny:

Thomasina: Septimus, what is carnal embrace?

Septimus: Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one’s arms around a side of beef.

Thomasina: Is that all?

Septimus: No…a shoulder of mutton, a haunch of venison well-hugged, an embrace of grouse…caro, carnis, feminine: flesh.

Thomasina: Is it a sin?

Septimus: Not necessarily, my lady, but when carnal embrace is sinful it is a sin of the flesh.  QED.  We had caro in our Gaulic Wars: ‘The Britons live on milk and meat’ – ‘lacte et carne vivunt’.  I am sorry the seed fell on stony ground.

Thomasina: That was the sin of Onan, wasn’t it, Septimus?

Septimus: Yes.  He was giving his brother’s wife a Latin lesson and she was hardly the wiser after it than before.

Phew.  Dizzy from all the wordplay.

Tom Stoppard, y’all.  Arcadia.  I almost got to see it in London but then did not, and I really wished I had organized my schedule better.  It’s a magnificent example of the above-mentioned double-plotline sort of story, the standard to which all others of this type should aspire.

The post Review: Arcadia, Tom Stoppard appeared first on Reading the End.

If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit.
We all assume that Oscar said it.

Thank you, Dorothy Parker.  You have lovely qualities and could bang out epigrams with the best of them.

I will not, however, sit idly by in the face of any slighting reference to Oscar Wilde that implies that he was not as witty and charming as he is renowned to be, but only fooled people into thinking he was by inventing, and then saying, little paradoxes.  WRONG.  He was exactly as witty and charming as he is renowned to be, and I will argue you into the ground on this point; and trust me, you will get tired of arguing about it before I will, because I will never get tired of arguing (about Oscar Wilde).

Last night I was reading The Invention of Love, my current favorite Tom Stoppard play.  It is set at Oxford during the youth of A.E. Housman, and also on the rivers Styx and Acheron following the death of A.E. Housman (because Tom Stoppard can do things like that).  The play is about Housman, studying Latin and being quietly and hopelessly in love with a classmate, while Oscar Wilde and British concern over homosexuality are always in the background, for Housman to take no notice of.  Viz:

Pollard: Ruskin said, when he’s at Paddington he feels he is in hell – and this man Oscar Wilde said, “Ah, but—”
Housman: “—when he’s in hell he’ll think he’s only at Paddington.”  It’ll be a pity if inversion is all he is known for.

I read this line and went straight into a snit.  I was all, “Um, Alfred Edward, you are cute and all, but out of you and Oscar Wilde, only one of you graduated Oxford with a double first, while the other (I’m not naming names) failed to pass Greats.  I think you will find that Oscar Wilde is a bit more than an epigrammatist.  I mean if it’s a pity he’s only known for anything, it’s—”

Oh.  Inversion.

Inversion!

And then I sat up and gazed at the book and read it over twice, and I said, “Oh, well played, Tom Stoppard.”  And then I got up out of bed and strode around the room waving my arms around and talking to myself about how good Tom Stoppard is.  I did this, you see, because the alternative was me drunk-on-wordplay-dialing one of my friends, and I really don’t think any of my friends would appreciate getting a late-night phone call demanding their vocal appreciation for a play on words that hinges on a term for homosexuality that’s completely out of date.

That is pretty good, though, eh?  Inversion?  Get it?  Get it?

The post Stomping around my bedroom late at night appeared first on Reading the End.

This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

So here are my fifteen books that will always stick with me, more or less in the order in which they entered my life:

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Emily Climbs, L.M .Montgomery
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
Macbeth, William Shakespeare
The Chosen, Chaim Potok
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
Greensleeves, Eloise Jarvis McGraw
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
The Invention of Love, Tom Stoppard
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
Showings, Julian of Norwich
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie

These are all books that left me breathless.  Is that what we were after?

The post Booking Through Thursday appeared first on Reading the End.

I love Tom Stoppard.  Why have I not said anything at all in this blog about Tom Stoppard?  I love Tom Stoppard.  When I was in high school I went through this phase where I didn’t want to read anything but Tom Stoppard plays.  (It was a brief phase – my plays phases always are.)  Tom Stoppard is a genius. I shall reread some of his plays and review them here soon, so that I can quote him.  He writes the Britishest plays I have ever seen, and he is an absolute master of one-liners.  If you haven’t read anything by him, you should get on that.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the obvious place to start; Dogg’s Hamlet and Cahoot’s Macbeth are fun, The Real Thing has an excellent line about Beethoven and entertains me hugely; Indian Ink and Arcadia are associated closely in my mind, and they’re both very good; and The Invention of Love is an extremely sad but still brilliant play about A.E. Housman.

Tom Stoppard.  I tell ya what.

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