Kansas City Library Book Building
The Community Bookshelf runs along the south wall of the Kansas City Central Library’s parking garage in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. The building showcases 22 titles reflecting a wide variety suggested by Kansas City residents. The book spines measure approximately 25 feet by 9 feet.
This hurts my soul.
The only way you’d believe an edition of Romeo & Juliet is the same size as Lord of the Rings is if you’d never read those two books. One is an epic fantasy and the other is a three hour play. Even if the latter was printed in 16 point typeface with loads of commentary, there’s no way it would stack up next to a Tolkien tome. Same with A Tale of Two Cities vs. Charlotte’s Web.
Somewhere, Captain O.G. Readmore is weeping.
Hipster is rather like Justice Stewart’s remark on obscenity. I can’t always define it, but I know it when I see it.
Reading Amazon reviews of Emily Giffin's books reminded me why I don't bother with "chick lit."
It’s almost a game to try and see how many euphemisms a romance novelist can come up with for penis. And, seriously, pirates. There are no pirates in chick lit.
I am reading Pride And Prejudice by candle light. I wish Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy would have angry sex already. All these snippy comments and drawn out pauses and coldness needs to just stop and they need to fuck. Like animals. All night long. In the dirt. Or against a tree.
Incidentally, tomorrow is the only drinking holiday that I can tolerate. This is true until such time as a considerable portion of the populace decides to jump on the bandwagon and make Jameson jello shots and the wearing of beads obligatory.
Until then, it is a quiet evening with a Guinness and a toast: yes I said yes I will Yes.
Many scholars have interpreted the book as an allegory or metaphor for the political, economic and social events of America of the 1890s.
- Dorothy, naïve, young and simple, represents the American people. Also Dorothy can represent the workers of the union. She is Everyman, led astray and who seeks the way back home.
- The cyclone was used in the 1890s as a metaphor for a political revolution that would transform the drab country into a land of color and unlimited prosperity. The cyclone was used by editorial cartoonists of the 1890s to represent political upheaval.
- The Tin Woodman was the dehumanized industrial worker, badly mistreated by the Wicked Witch of the East who rules Munchkin Country before the cyclone creates a political revolution and kills her. The Woodman is rusted and helpless—ineffective until he starts to work together with
- The Scarecrow (the farmer), in a Farmer-Labor coalition that was much discussed in the 1890s, which culminated in the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota (which still exists today).
- The Munchkins are the little people—ordinary citizens.
- The Cowardly Lion was William Jennings Bryan.
- The Winged Monkeys may play a role similar to the hired Pinkerton agents who worked for the Trusts and hounded labor unions. Monkeys were used in cartoons to ridicule politicians.
- President McKinley was often called a “wizard” for his political skills. The Wizard of Oz seems to be the president of the Land of Oz.
Following the road of gold leads eventually only to the Emerald City, which may symbolize the fraudulent world of greenback paper money that only pretends to have value, or may symbolize the greenback value that is placed on gold (and for silver, possibly).
Bret Easton Ellis on notoriety:
… Did I lose some friends? Yeah, I totally lost friends because of it. My close friendships with male writers became more like rivalries. Suddenly, I became a problem. The book getting published in the first place freaked some of my peers out, and then when it became successful, all bets were off. I sensed a shift, but then it was confirmed eight or nine years later when we were all drunk and we were talking about it. I said, “I thought you guys were so excited for my success. You all thought I was so great and you loved me so much.” And they were like, “Bret Easton What? We hated you! We fucking hated you! We totally resented that whole situation. We thought it was completely unfair, that you were not more talented than us.” I got that talk and I was like, “Whoa.”
(via)
thecityhorse) (via
Most of the time Shakespeare strikes me as overrated. Or rather, overrated for the wrong reasons. Other times he pulls me up short and I think to myself, “Goddamn, that sumbitch had a fastball.”
Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.
Puddleglum to the the Emerald Witch in The Silver Chair.
C.S. Lewis was a non-believer before he was a theologian. So he speaks our language. He cops to the charge: Babies, making up a game.
Disagreement on Hamlet
Look, it’s a sickness, okay? I admit it. Freely. Just scroll past. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Parts 1 & 2 here. (What? It’s Tuesday. Everyone has to get their own fix somehow.)
I inadvertently wax academic, just imagine I’m slurring my speech. But damned if I’m going to back down from a brawl with some debauched theater person. Emotions were meant to be discussed in abstract, not experienced.
That’s the heart of it. You’re comfortable with a boring, inactive protagonist who doesn’t exist in the text. But there’s no evidence the author shared your view. There’s evidence to the contrary.
Shakespeare is dead. So is his entire Elizabethan audience.
And with them died a native enjoyment of the play, yes.
They’re mouldering in their graves. Most of them have fully mouldered. So it’s not clear why Shakespeare or the Elizabethan audience get a special say in how to interpret Hamlet.
Because you can interpret it wrong. You can screw it up. You can objectively ruin the ending. Plays and movies aren’t like novels or poems: you have to watch the damn things in real time. The dramatist needs you to cry and laugh and wince at the right moments to keep your attention. It ain’t Ulysses. If you mistake authorial intent, you can (centuries later) end up interpreting Dumb & Dumber as leaden drama. You can perform Precious as broad comedy. You can spoil The Sixth Sense by showing the psychiatrist as already dead. 400 years later, you can perform Hamlet as a depressed loon who won’t get off the dime. Hamlet is a murder mystery, Which means certain information needs to be revealed at certain times. The importance of that information is lost on 21st century critics because there’s a yawing theological/metaphysical gap between then and now. Elizabethans didn’t know if the Ghost was a lying, malevolent demon (sorta like the Macbeth witches) or was his father back from the grave to right a horrible wrong. Neither does Hamlet.
Doesn’t that fall, in large part, to individual director?
No. It’s like you’re an interior decorator and I’m a general contractor and we’re discussing the architect’s plans. You’re walking around the building site asking, “Why don’t we curve the roof inward? toward the building? It’s a new interpretation.” I’m telling you it will ruin the house. The architect designed elements of the building to produce a specific product. The roof is pitched upward so snow and rain will run off and not cave the damn thing in. The architect is the playwright and the audience are the future residents and not the readers of the play. We have to be Scalias with Shakespeare. We have to be strict constructionists. We have to make the house he’s telling us to make or it won’t function correctly. Hamlet is a whonunnit. And if we already know Who Done It, then of course you’ll all be confused as to why Hamlet won’t slice his uncle’s throat already. You academics think he’s inactive or insane when, in fact, he tries very hard to find out if his uncle’s a murderer. He uses all sorts of clever tactics. But he’s got obstacles. He can’t just go up and ask the murderer if he did it. And if you have Claudius looking daggers at Hamlet straight out the gate, as countless productions do, then the cat is outta the bag, for everyone.
To current day audiences?
Current day audiences are ruined by the time they’re five years old. We’re saturated. There’s no mystery. The usurping-uncle-who-kills-the-father-who-must-then-be-avenged-by-the-son-to-put-the-kingdom-aright is boilerplate by now. Ever seen The Lion King? Does anyone have second’s worth of doubt about Scar’s innocence? That’s how Hamlet gets warped into themes like maturity or inaction. Simba goes into the jungle and grows up.
To the centuries of performers, critics, and editors who have shaped the play into what it now was?
You mean like the Victorians who rewrote the genders and the ending? You mean the Freudians who’ve inserted weird, distracting subplots? You mean the amateurs like Harold Bloom (yeah, I said it) who engage in quantum leaps of critical absurdity? You mean like the Olivers and the Mel Gibsons and the Ethan Hawkes who told us it was Colonel Mustard in the study with a candlestick about three minutes after we bought our popcorn?
Hamlet is not Our Greatest Work primarily because it is a great play. Hamlet is a great play because it is Our Greatest Work.
Which is a bit like saying the Chrysler Building doesn’t need to hold people. It’s a beautiful structure and whether the elevator functions is incidental to its greatness. No, it’s a great work of architecture, first and foremost, because it’s an impressive building.
I’m not totally sure what you mean by “win” in this case. … If you mean something more conventional by “win”, I’m not sure I agree. Similarly, the fools don’t always come out poorly in Shakespearean tragedy. At least, they tend to survive.
I could have been clearer there. I mean that during individual scenes (contra madness theory), Hamlet achieves his short-term objectives. In a battle to hide information from Polonius, he fends the old man off. He smokes out his mother’s innocence. (He doesn’t know! Neither do we!) He dispatches his deceitful college buddies. He finds out if Claudius is guilty. In every pure exchange of wits, he wins. Fools and crazies don’t operate on that level in Shakespeare. Making violent choices which then lead to premature death is a necessary end for a protagonist in a Shakespearean tragedy, full stop. (Othello, Macbeth, Romeo, Juliet, etc.) Such behavior indicates neither indecision nor madness.
I’m clearly not saying that Hamlet can’t be played with a sense of urgency—but the text doesn’t require it.
The text tells us exactly how the play should be performed. The character is another matter. An indolent, indecisive shmuck though, he is not.
We should maintain some critical distance from Hamlet. Is Hamlet as crazy as Polonius thinks he is in the way Polonius thinks he is? Clearly not.
There. How many pixels did that take?
But is he a beacon of rationality? Hardly. He certainly exhibits some bipolar tendancies.
Wrong. Again, if that’s the standard, then Macbeth, Othello, Romeo, Juliet, all tend toward bipolarism. Man, this stuff is all crystal clear once you get paid to put butts in seats.
So Hamlet decides that his uncle killed his father.
But how long did it take him to get to that point? Do you know how hard he has to work, how crafty he has to be to gain that information? It takes half the freaking play.
He shouts at his mother in a way that was probably less awkward before Freud invented new ways to feel uncomfortable.
“Interpretation.” So, yeah.
He sees a ghost.
A ghost that, if you’re following the logical syllogism of the play, is real, and turns out to be a reliable source of information.
And he stabs a curtain, killing his girlfriend’s father. Is that really calm, healthy decision making?
Now who’s being oversimple? A lot to unpack there: Is he calm after seeing the spectre of his dead father? No. Should he be? No. Does it make him insane? No. Is killing the ostensible-usurper “healthy decision-making”? If the Ghost is telling the truth… yes. (And by the way, this “healthy decision-making” seems an odd standard for tragic protagonists. They all have some baggage, whether it’s anger or jealousy or ambition. But the issue at hand is insanity.)
I will, of course, agree that it is neither helpful nor enlightening to treat Hamlet’s actions as uncaused, inexplicable, or totally random.
But will you concede they are the exact opposite? That they are directly caused, explainable, specific and necessary?
And, while I’m not inclined to call Hamlet’s actions pathological, I also wouldn’t say Hamlet is in sound mental health.
You’re conflating the ruse of madness for being in extremis.
He is not a cold-blooded revenge machine.
He’s cold at dispatching two unsubtle, treacherous toadies (R&G). He’s cold toward his girlfriend because he doesn’t know which side she’s playing for. But he’s hot once when he thinks he’s caught a guilty party. He’s hot once he sees his mother poisoned. He’s both, as circumstances dictate.
Really, though? Even 400 years ago, I bet the “maybe his soul will go straight to heaven” would have sounded somewhat lame.
Are you implying the Elizabethans didn’t take theological dogma seriously? Cause you would be the first.
Revenge is, at all times, theologically problematic.
Yeah, but we’re not at the Council of Trent, we’re in Elizabethan London. And they address some of those theologically-based problems in the chapel. But it’s a revenge play. It’s the best revenge play. It’s the only revenge play. It’s a political Kill Bill.
Surely if that were all that was stopping Hamlet from acting, he could have found an easier way around it and avoided a side trip to England.
Again, you’re mistaking obstacles from inaction. But we can both agree that England is where the play looses steam.
Much of the intrigue in Hamlet is internal. Half of the violence in the play is in his head.
We have no record of Shakespeare’s stage directions. We have what was added afterward. There’s no indication that what happens “in his head” isn’t meant for prying ears. Spying is the play’s single most common activity.
Squashed? I’m just getting warmed up.
It’s Monday night—which means it’s time for an All Tumblr Shakespeare Throwdown. On any other night, Generic1’s reading of Hamlet would simply have been a bit over-simple. But on Shakespeare Throw Down Monday, it’s dead wrong.
What you are about to witness is a brawl between a theater person and a literature person. And Imma win with one dramaturgical hand tied behind my back. These eggheads have been overthinking Our Greatest Work for centuries now. But Shakespeare was one of us.
Nothing about the play is clear. That’s half the point.
A cause & effect reading makes the play quite clear. Shakespeare did not delight in ambiguity. Neither did the Elizabethan audience. Four hours of abstruseness doesn’t compete with bearbaiting.
Hamlet is neither clearly sane nor particularly decisive.
No, he’s clearly sane. Crazy people don’t win in Shakespeare. Ophelia does not manipulate. Lear does not engineer the downfall of others. And choosing NOT to do a thing when the results would be personally disadvantageous does not make me indecisive; it makes me strategic in my choices. It makes me smart.
Stabbing Polonius through a curtain was impulsive, not decisive.
If we’re drawing that distinction then half of Shakepeare’s characters are impulsive, not decisive. Hamlet thought he was stabbing the King. He thought he was doing The Thing The Play’s About. How is that not a decision? It turned out instead to be his girlfriend’s dad. And so we have a whole other set of problems to be dealt with.
Sure, Hamlet acts crazy—but he also saw some crazy things—so he’s got to at least be doubting his own sanity.
The first time he sees “the crazy thing” he’s accompanied by others. He has corrobaration. He doesn’t doubt his own eyes, he doubts the veracity of the source. Also: show me the line where Hamlet doubts his own sanity and I will show you the difference between a soliloquy and a monologue. Existential angst is not the same as mental illness.
And there is an inaction problem. Sure, he makes excuses for himself—but who doesn’t? Should he kill his uncle? But what if it just sends his uncle to heaven?
You’re mistaking obstacles for inaction. His charge is not to merely kill, but to exact vengeance. When Michael Corleone kills Sollozzo, they’re one and the same, but not in Elizabethan England. Hamlet cannot complete that action during the prayer. This is what I mean by an expiration of the 400 year-old worldview. He can’t do what the Ghost tells him to do because circumstances are in his way. Getting around those circumstances are the bulk of the drama.
Should he kill himself? But what if he goes to hell? Or perhaps there’s an action problem.
When the cast of the West Wing is walking and talking, is there an action problem? Is all palace intrigue boring unless there’s bloodshed 24/7?
When Hamlet doesn’t act, things go more or less okay.
The stasis of Hamlet is not “okay”. That’s the point. Time is out of joint. A murderer rules. Incest abounds. A Polish army is marching straight toward them. Ain’t no acceptable equilibrium there. Things are going to hell on a personal, familial and political level.
When Hamlet does act, bodies pile up.
Well yeah. It’s not called The Tragedie of Hamet, Prince of Denmarke because everything turns out rosy.
In fact, the one truly active and badass thing Hamlet does, switching the notes on Rosencratz and Guildenstern, happens off stage.
And yet, somehow during all this dithering he connived an incredibly successful murderer to telegraph his guilt to the entire Danish court. Somehow that’s not active to you guys.
And even then, his friends end up dead. And yes, beating Laertes in the duel was impressive—but Laertes had to get the ball rolling there.
I’ll concede that action is initiated by Laertes & Claudius. But the causal chain (for Laertes) starts during the Polonius stabbing (read: Hamlet’s action).
Hamlet is perhaps most notable as a character everybody can identify with and nobody could agree on.
I don’t identify with Hamlet at all, and I’m Danish.
Semi-crunkcore hipster reading Twilight.
Some girls came by and, hand to god, he switched it up for Armistead Maupin.
