The most interesting things, dramatically, are the things we don't understand about ourselves. And what makes great art is not fully understanding such things, knowing such things are infinite, and that to constrain and render them finite is trite. It makes the world small. Here's to not knowing. And Shakespeare. And his Globe. OR, as Jonathan Bate puts it in 'The Genius of Shakespeare', discussing Tolstoy's misreading of Shakespeare: 'The demand for sincerity was Tolstoy's error. The genius of King Lear is that it was written by a man who was totally unlike his creation. The poetry of a teenager in love is sincere; that is what makes it bad. The key to dramatic art is Insincerity, i.e., th
William Shatner, in his post-Star Trek days, has to be one of my favorite artists. He has a key quality- the willingness to go out on a limb. Much of the time he makes a fool of himself, but every once in a while he nails a performance. Almost all of his musical performances from the 60s and 70s were train wrecks (appropriately lampooned on David Letterman), but his 2004 album 'Has Been' is a minor masterpiece. He doesn't really sing, just talks, and the songs are funny as hell, honest, and even revealing- reflections from, well, something of a has been. The one exception to his performance disasters from the 60s and 70s is his version of Rocket Man, available on YouTube at https://www.youtu
This is as far as I got, in the Great American Anti-Novel: CHAPTER 3 The Spouter-Inn Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old- fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. I sought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with a room, received for answer that his house was full- not a bed unoccupied. “But avast,” he added, tapping his forehead, “you haint no objections to sharing a harpooneer’s blanket, have ye? I s’pose you a goin’ a whalin’, so you better get used to that sort of thing.” I told him that I never like to sleep two in a bed; that if I should ever do so, it would dep
