Books and Plays That Didn't Change My Life but Which I Like Very Very Much Anyway
© 1999, 2009 David Scott Marley
(Written June 1999, additional comments April 2009)
In alphabetical order by author:
Jane Austen, Emma
A friend of mine warned me, when I had read it only once, that Emma changes on you more with a second reading than any other book she knew. I've since reread it (several times) and she's right. A wonderful exploration of self-deception (one of my favorite themes). And not at all the same book the second time.
Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson
Max Beerbohm was born on the same day of the year that I was. I don't know if that means anything. I'm at a loss to describe this book, except that it's very very funny. I also like his A Christmas Garland, a collection of parodies. The Henry James parody in particular is achingly funny.
Beaumarchais, Figaro's Wedding
I'll give its name in English because I don't read French and have never read the play in the original language. ("The Marriage of Figaro" is not a good translation of the title, which refers to the event of the wedding, not the condition of matrimony.) It's one of the greatest comedies ever. I also like his earlier The Barber of Seville. The opera that Mozart and da Ponte fashioned from this play is one of my all-time favorites, too, though I'd be hard pressed to say whether I like the play or the opera better. They each have some incredibly good things in them that the other doesn't have. I've read Beaumarchais's third play in the series, The Guilty Mother, and I don't care for it, though Jonathan Khuner likes it.
The best translation into English that I know of is a recent one by Graham Anderson. There's a Penguin Classics paperback but the translation isn't as lively. Also the Penguin edition only translates Barber and Figaro, while Anderson translates the whole trilogy, which at least finally allowed me to satisfy my curiosity about The Guilty Mother.
Later:I've seen the opera countless times, but I've only seen two productions of the play -- it's rarely produced. (I've never seen a production of the play The Barber of Seville.) It's a shame that the popularity of the operas has led to the plays being rarely done.
The first production of Figaro's Wedding I saw was a poorly staged one off-Broadway in the late 1980s, but it had a very good cast, including Anthony Heald as Figaro, Christopher Reeve as Count Almaviva, and an absolutely stunningly good performance by Dana Ivey as Countess Almaviva. Despite the good cast, though, the staging was so artsy that I doubt anyone who didn't already know the play would be able to follow it.
Second performance was at Theater Rep in Walnut Creek a few years back, and that one was so good that Dave and I went back to see it a second time. Craig Marker was an offbeat but memorable Figaro, and the whole production was staged and costumed and directed in the style of a Chuck Jones cartoon. Sounds weird but it worked very well and it was hilarious from beginning to end.
Joyce Cary, The Horse's Mouth
This is the third part of a wonderful and profound comic trilogy, with Herself Surprised and To Be a Pilgrim. The books each stand on their own, though it's well worth reading the whole trilogy, which tells much the same story from three very different points of view.
As Robertson Davies wrote in an essay somewhere, it's a sign of how rich this book is that when they turned it into a movie they removed everything that was difficult and great about it and there was still enough material left for a terrific screenplay. This novel gets at some of what being an artist is about. I always said I'd never be like that, but as I get older I find that I'm becoming more like the clichéd irresponsible artist without meaning to.
Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark
I've liked everything I've read by her, but especially this story of the development of a great Wagnerian soprano, from childhood to adulthood. What it says about the development of an artist has kept me going through some rough times.
Ever since I read this book I've suspected that Robertson Davies used it as his model for his A Mixture of Frailties, so much do the books have in common. But Davies has written countless essays about his reading, and he doesn't mention it, nor does his biography.
Later: Both The Song of the Lark and Mixture of Frailties have become comfort reading for me when I'm feeling particularly low, mostly recently after my mother died. Both books have a lot to say about difficult relationships between artists and their parents.
Sandra Deer, So Long on Lonely Street
The works of art that hardly anyone but you have even heard of become more precious to you as a result. Or at least that's how it works with me.
I saw this play during its very brief run in New York City. It closed quickly, but it still stays with me. I like its combination of farce and poignancy very much. And a play that brings an audience to a point where they are rooting for the brother and sister to consummate their incestuous relationship is not exactly everyday stuff. Would I love this play as much if it had been more popular? I don't know, but it wasn't, and I do.
David Evans and Winnie Holzman, Birds of Paradise
Perhaps another case of loving something more because it didn't do well. This musical still seems awfully good to me. But it got downright savage reviews. After I saw it and loved it, I went back a week later to see it a second time (I figured getting a ticket at the last minute wouldn't exactly be a problem) and saw the closing notice on the door.
A young songwriter has written an avant-garde musical, based on The Seagull but set in outer space, somewhere around the rings of Saturn. A troubled but moderately successful actor agrees to direct an amateur production. Gradually it dawns on you that the whole story is itself a retelling of The Seagull set in present-day Martha's Vineyard. What it says about art's effect on us isn't totally new (a very funny movie called The Mozart Brothers covered similar ground, as do some of Robertson Davies's novels), but it's still anything but stale. Most of the score is hilarious, there are a couple of fine ballads, and the show as a whole is warm and funny and very human. Sure, it has some flaws (most noticeably a long stretch in act two where there were no songs but could and should have been). But I don't see what the critics were so vicious about. Fortunately the show was recorded and after many years of rumors was finally released on TER, so I can refresh my memory any time I want to.
Later: Winnie Holzman has now written the book (but not the lyrics) for Wicked, which has been a huge hit on Broadway for years now. How often do you get excited about the new show because of the book writer? I was. And I thought the songs were just okay but the book was really good.
E.M. Forster, Howards End
I read this when I lived in New York City and didn't think a whole lot of it. There were Good Houses, and there were Bad Houses, and the Bad Houses were spreading out from the city and swallowing up the Good Houses, that's all I took away from it. For God knows what reason I was drawn to reread it some seven or eight years later before seeing the movie version. The second time, it seemed to be about everything that I was concerned with in life: the problems of class and money, the instability of modern life, finding a bridge between conservativism and liberalism, more. How did I read this book the first time and not get anything from it? I must not have been ready for it. It seems to me now a very great book.
W.S. Gilbert, Engaged
A very funny comedy. I should be giving this slot to Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest which is just as good a comedy and a biting social satire to boot, but I've just seen it too many times. Check back in five years and maybe I'll be wild about it again. Engaged isn't really satirical and has nothing to do with real life; it's just a very funny play.
Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts
I had to read this in college and didn't care for it. I just reread it about a year ago and it blew me away. What this play says about syphilis 100 years ago is true for AIDS today. I'm slowly working my way through all of Ibsen. He just seemed boring to me when I was college. A lot of his plays still feel dated. But knowing more about where he fits into the history of theater makes him more interesting. And sometimes you come across something like this, that states things that are still true and still hardly acknowledged.
John Latouche and Jerome Moross, The Golden Apple
This wonderful folk-like piece hovers in the middle ground between musical and opera. It's fun to listen to, has a bunch of catchy songs as well as some music of breathtaking simplicity and beauty, and says some disturbing truths about 20th-century living if you want to hear them. The Iliad and the Odyssey retold in American folk terms. Paris is a traveling salesman from a big city, Helen is a farmer's daughter who's bored with life in her small town. Will the town's young men, just back from the Spanish-American War, go to fetch Helen back? They just might if it means they also get to quench their curiosity about city life.
The album has been an old-of-print cult favorite for decades, but now it's been released on CD. Maybe this will lead to what's really wanted, which is a new recording of the whole show. The original recording is something less than half the show and really doesn't do justice to its deeper themes, though it hits the highlights. The published libretto (also out of print) at least fleshes out the story, but I'd love to know what music those other words sit on. The music (at least that which I've heard) and lyrics are both first-rate.
Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes andBut Gentlemen Marry Brunettes
I think these two slim books are among the funniest ever written. I'd love to write something as simple and funny and biting.
Charles Ludlam, Plays
I came across Ludlam's work too late for it to really affect my own development as a writer, but I think I recognize a fellow spirit who was trying to do something similar to what I'm doing now. In any case, the plays are wonderful, especially the late ones. I even took (considerably modified) a couple of lines from one of them for Bat Out of Hell., though I'll be damned if I'll tell you which.
Moliére, The Misanthrope andTartuffe
My two favorite Moliére comedies. The bittersweetness of The Misanthrope particularly appeals to me. (I also have some sketches for a play based very loosely on Tartuffe, set in the present day and satirizing some modern fads. Will I ever get around to writing it? Why do I have so many more ideas sketched out than I ever complete?)
Ethan Mordden, Rodgers and Hammerstein
Mordden makes some foggy claims along the way, but a lot of what he says also seems to me to be dead on target. And a fresh look at R&H's work is long overdue. Our perception of it has too much to do with how Hollywood and a thousand amateur productions softened its edge over the years.
David Parlett, The Oxford Guide to Card Games
Parlett has done collections of rules, but this is something different, practically a history of society as reflected in its card games. It tends therefore to gloss over the detailed points of the rules, so it's not a great place to look up how to play Klabberjass. On the other hand, if you want to know what they were playing in Paris in 1650 and why they were playing it, or want to speculate on the forces, physical and social, that made playing cards what they are, this is the book to read.
Jean Racine, Phaedra
A friend of mine once said that the perfect play is no characters on a bare stage, and that while this ideal was impossible, we should try to get as close to it as possible. Racine wrote plays like that, getting an astonishing amount of drama out of a minimum of materials. You're spellbound throughout the play by the psychological twists and complexities he comes up with, and then afterward you realize how really little he chose to work with. I wish I could achieve something of his elegance and leanness in my own work.
Rodgers and Hammerstein, The King and I
My favorite among the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, and one of my favorite musicals, period. Not just because of its content but also because of its structure. Look at the way it makes use of the familiar pattern of main couple and subsidiary couple, but changes it. The subsidiary couple are the more seriously romantic couple, while most of the humor in the piece is made part of the main couple's relationship. This is not how the pattern is usually used! And the plot and subplot are so tightly linked that neither one could exist without the other one to motivate it. This is terrific construction. The fact that this musical also contains one of my favorite lyric lines doesn't hurt, either. "Toads! Toads! All of your people are toads!"
William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing andMeasure for Measure
My two favorite plays by Shakespeare. Much Ado doesn't need any explanation, but maybe Measure for Measure does. It's a great and profound comedy of forgiveness but all too often misunderstood as a drama or problem play. People try to make it into that and then wonder why the last half becomes so farcical. Treat it as a satirical dark comedy from the opening curtain, though, and it all hangs together. Claudio's soliloquy is a magnificent moment of theater, simultaneously hilarious and chilling. And when Isabella falls to her knees near the end, I still tear up.
I've seen Much Ado more times than any other play. I saw a dream production in Stratford, Ontario. I saw Kevin Kline and Blythe Danner who were wonderful as Benedick and Beatrice in Central Park, though unfortunately the supporting cast was nowhere near as good as they were. I saw a Much Ado in New York City by some small touring group (I could see if I still have the program somewhere but that would take too much digging right now) with a splendidly angry and impulsive Benedick who made you remember that there must be some reason he joined the military instead of going into, say, teaching Latin. Those stick out in my memory.
I never intended that I'd be adapting Much Ado twice as a libretto. Things just happened that way. But All's Fair and Beatrice and Benedick are quite different works, the latter being more of a direct adaptation of the Shakespeare, and the former being sort of a free retelling of the story in quite a different period.
George Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion andSaint Joan
I think these are my two favorite Shaw plays but so much of his work is wonderful that I can't be sure I won't feel differently in a month.