Reading Wedne– Thursday

[brigdh]

What did you just finish?
Revenge of the Rose by Nicole Galland. I read this as part of my 'clearing off the bookshelves' project, as I am incredibly susceptible to buying historical fiction without knowing anything about it. In this case, it didn't work out for me. This novel is set in the 12th century Holy Roman Empire, and focuses on Willem, a young knight, Willem's beautiful sister, and Willem's best friend Jouglet, the emperor's personal musician. The writing was bland, the characters shallow, and the plot was much closer to "these are some dumb deus ex machina coincidences" than "wow, how neatly it all ties together!", which presumably is what the author was going for. But my biggest problem with the book involves a major spoiler, so I'm going to put it behind a cut: The emperor's musician is eventually revealed to be a woman. Now, I am normally totally down for "woman dresses as a man for the freedom it allows her"! It is one of my favorite narrative tropes. But this book goes really far with it before finally giving the reader this reveal; about two hundred pages and, more importantly, after Willem and Jouglet have kissed and had a serious discussion about whether Willem would get into a relationship with another man. I was so ready for a gay historical romance!

But fine, that's not what this book wanted to be. Still, since it went to such lengths to confuse the question of Jouglet's identity, I expected there to be some interesting commentary on gender roles, or desire, or something. But, nope. Revenge of the Rose is not at all interested in those topics. Instead, there's several hundred more pages to fill up with scandal about Willem and Jouglet trying to keep their relationship a secret, everyone assuming they're gay, and Willem trying to talk Jouglet into revealing herself because that will apparently make everything okay. But this is the problem: in the actual 1100s, a woman dressing as a man and taking on a political role (since Jouglet is a spy and adviser for the emperor) would have been considered just as perverse and sacrilegious as two men sleeping together! Possibly moreso! It would not have made everything okay! And the thing is, I can enjoy it when a historical novel decides to throw accuracy out the window for the sake of fun, but Revenge of the Rose had plenty of other female characters constrained by vaguely accurate gender roles. Women's virginity and dowries are major parts of the plot, and multiple female characters are forced into cloister by their male relatives. Just... none of this applied to Jouglet. For some reason.
So, in summary: not recommended.

As the Crow Flies by Craig Johnson. I meant to read something more productive next, but Revenge of the Rose was so terrible that I needed a palate cleanser. As the Crow Flies is the 8th book in the Walt Longmire series, which I've slowly been making my way through, and is one of my favorites from it so far. In this one, Sheriff Longmire is helping to plan his daughter's wedding when he witnesses a woman jump – or fall, or be pushed – from a cliff. The investigation is taken over by Lolo Long, the newly-appointed local tribal police chief (the death, and most of the book, takes place on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation). A lot of the book is taken up with the relationship between Longmire and Long; she's short-tempered, violent, and refuses to apologize, none of which are good traits for a cop to have. Longmire tries to teach her to be a better cop, and frankly, someone constantly emphasizing how important it is not to get angry might be the only police-oriented narrative I want to read about right now.

Anyway, there were multiple minor characters I enjoyed and hope to see again in future books, there was a ton of cute interaction between Longmire and his best friend Henry Standing Bear, and the sequence where Longmire takes peyote was fantastic.

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare. It feels a bit weird reviewing this; I mean really, what am I going to say that hasn't been said before? I'd never read or seen this before, and my expectations from cultural osmosis were a bit off from what it actually was. I expected most of the focus to be on the romance, so all of the battle scenes stuff about Roman politics was a bit of a surprise. I enjoyed it! But again... Shakespeare. It feels weird to call it enjoyable. I'd like to watch a production of this now, if anyone has a favorite film version to recommend?

What are you currently reading?
Haven't started anything else yet!

Comments

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

I think Antony and Cleopatra is my favorite Shakespeare play -- at least, it's my favorite right now. I'm going to see the Globe On Screen production in June and I'm really excited! Hopefully that one will be good and then it will become available on video; most of the filmed productions I have seen have been not so great. It's kind of a tricky play to do justice to because Cleopatra is so deliberately artificial, and walks such a fine line between "misogynist caricature" and "heartbreakingly beautiful drama phoenix rising out of the ashes of a misogynist caricature." Her final speech is one of my favorite things in literature (though, as noted previously, I have a lot of favorite things).

I really liked Rome's Antony, though he's a little more one-note than Shakespeare's (and Plutarch's), and their take on Cleopatra. James Purefoy and Lyndsey Marshall were both inspired casting. Actually, nearly all the cast of Rome is excellent.

[sue-bursztynski.livejournal.com]

The only film version I can recall is one with Charlton Heston, who is not a very good Antony, but chose a good British cast to support him. I'm afraid I disgraced myself once at a theatre production, when Enobarbus dies and they lean over him, by saying, "He's dead, Jim." My companion folded over in silent laughter. But I do like it and I am a Shakespeare fangirl from way back. My first play was Julius Caesar, which I discovered quite by accident when I was eleven or twelve. I used to declaim the speeches around the house. I'd thought it was a history book till I opened it and found a play inside. Then I read Richard III in Year 11 and ended up joining the Richard III Society(an amazing English teacher told us about Dughter Of Time).

Do keep up the Shakespeare and remember he was writing popular stuff for the equivalent of TV and the movies, not scholarly stuff for people to argue about hundreds of years later. I don't recommend Titus Andronicus, which was just TOO popular-stuff-for-the-masses, a bit gory for my tastes, but there's something good about most of them. Even in the Henry plays("First, let's kill all the lawyers!" Classic stuff!)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, cool! Unfortunately they don't seem to be showing it anywhere near me, but I guess I can hope the tickets sell well and they'll expand the showings. I actually had tickets to the Globe On Screen's Midsummer Night's Dream a few months ago, and then missed it due to really unusual set of circumstances, but I'm still hoping to get another chance to see that production as well. I do like the whole idea of the 'On Screen' thing; I've never managed to get tickets to the actual Globe, the times I've visited London, so this is great.

Rome's Antony was great! I especially loved their Julius Cesar, too. Really, they didn't have any bad character. I do wish we'd gotten to see more of Cleopatra, though.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

I hope they do expand the showings to reach you! The Globe On Screen is such a great project; I'm really happy it exists. Not many people turned up for Julius Caesar when it came to town (or really a couple towns over; my own town is too small for them to bother) but it was a terrific production and very thoughtfully filmed, too, so I have high hopes for Antony and Cleopatra.

The lost third season of Rome is a great regret to me. :( Apparently, they were planning to do more Egyptian stuff, but then they had to wrap up when it got cancelled. :(

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Why is it weird to think of Shakespeare as enjoyable? Back when I related to English-speaking* cultural references by "translating" them into French equivalents**, I used to think of Shakespeare as "the English Molière only sometimes he is serious". Is it because sometimes he is serious that it's weird to think of him as enjoyable?


*Sorry I don't have a good word for this.

**My favourite is when I called Muriel Robin being queer by thinking of Ellen Degeneres as 'the US Muriel Robin'.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's not weird to think of Shakespeare as enjoyable! (At least not in my opinion; I'm sure others differ.) It's just so simplistic. I mean – Shakespeare! Go into any college and there will be dozens of classes on him and professors who dedicate their whole lives to studying him; any bookstore or library will have volumes and volumes of analysis; there are dissertations on every tiny element of every single play; every little town and high school, no matter how small, will have performances. Like, I don't think there is a translation for Shakespeare's influence on English. It's not just the stories of the plays or the characters, but he's responsible for literally shaping a great deal of Modern English, both in vocabulary and common expressions (though a lot of that is just timing; he happened to be writing just as Modern English was being codified).

...and against that all I have to say is "it was fun". It sounds ridiculous, in comparison. But since I am not in the mood to write an entire dissertation (if I'm even capable of doing so!), anything else I might say will inevitably sound shallow and limited.

[weirdquark]

I saw the Globe's Antony and Cleopatra live when I was in London last summer and it was great. The actor who played Cleopatra is fantastic. She's the type of actor who likes to interact with the audience a lot, so it's extra fun being near the stage.

The Globe is generally fantastic; they have some shows which I thought were only okay, but mostly they do a really excellent job. Other notable things which are already out on DVD are their Henry's (they've done both parts of IV and V), and Loves Labor's Lost, of all things, is amazingly hilarious.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That's interesting! I sort of can't imagine Heston as Antony, although on the other hand, maybe a director could do a neat subversion with it. I can see that conservative, stereotypical masculine, cowboy-esque persona being a good fit for the Rome of the play.

Oh, this is hardly the first Shakespeare I've read! I'm a big fan. In fact, this is probably the last of his "big name" plays that I hadn't read (some of the less famous ones, like Cymbeline and King John, still await me). I love Titus Andronicus, in fact! It might be my favorite of Shakespeare's plays, though of course there's a lot of competition. It is gory, but I absolutely adore Aaron; he's such a compelling character. He's just a fun villain, with how he completely revels in being evil, but then his love for his son is touching. Plus, you've got to love a Shakespeare character who gets to make a "yo momma" joke!

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

The "translation" thing was mostly so I didn't get bogged down into trying to understand references I had no context for. Like, Ellen Degeneres: all I know about her is that she's a comedian, is blond and married to a woman. Muriel Robin is a comedian, blonde and civil unionned (unless they got married and I missed it) to a woman. That's good enough for 90% of all references to Degeneres. I used Molière for Shakespeare because they're both playwrights and french is "la langue de Molière" while English is "la langue de Shakespeare"*.

I don't really do this anymore honestly. I've enough context to get most references 'untranslated' now.


*Spanish is "la langue de Cervantès" and Italian "la langue de Dante".

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I totally know what you mean with the translation thing! I do that too.

[sue-bursztynski.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of Shakespeare villains revel in their villainy. Richard III not only revels in it, he pulls the audience with him until he does one or two unforgivable things. Iago is another. And he is so charming even Othello refers to him as "honest, honest Iago." I remember a production of the play I saw years ago, in which Iago, being led offstage under arrest, turns and laughs; he's going to die, but it was worth it for all the fun he had. A chilling performance. Aaron the Moor... Well, Frank Thring got to play the part in London many years ago. He said that in it,"I cut off the hand so beautifully that Kirk Douglas asked me if I would do it again in his film." (The Vikings, in which he cuts off Tony Curtis's hand).