Archive for the ‘priority’ Category

Shakespearing at The Drunken Odyssey

Monday, June 30th, 2014

Riverside 2 smallWhat began as a summer project and now looks as if it will take me into next spring has recently made its debut on John King’s website, The Drunken Odyssey. For reasons I explain in the first post, I’ve been reading all of Shakespeare’s plays in (presumed) order of composition and writing 600-word blog posts about them, starting with Henry VI, Part 1. As I write, I’m five plays ahead of the postings, which means I just finished Titus Andronicus. So far its been a great summer adventure of reading, responding, and writing.

Reading Titus Andronicus, which is supposed to have been partly written by George Peele, I was reminded of something I wrote a while back about Shakespeare’s relationship to the “university wits.” It was part of a longer piece (well, rant) about the effect of college playwriting programs on the kinds of plays we were seeing, but the Shakespeare stuff is here:

In a way, it’s an old story. Shakespeare was condescended to by the University Wits, Jonson, even in encomium, slighting his “small Latin and less Greek.” It is an indignity from which he still suffers. One of the oddest arguments of the anti-Stratfordians is that he couldn’t have written his plays because he didn’t go to university. This seems to me such a coarse misunderstanding of the sources of art in general and playwriting in particular as to overleap all but the most high-flying of the absurdities by which that curious faith is promulgated. And in light of what I’ve been discussing it seems just about exactly untrue. Isn’t there, to Jonson and even to Marlowe, a sheen of the academy, which would detract from Shakespeare’s unruly engagement with life as it is lived, as it is felt, as it is endured? Isn’t it possible that Shakespeare was better spared the university?

Here’s a story I love about Shakespeare. Many years after Shakespeare’s death, Jonson delivered another of his left-handed panegyrics. While avowing that he loved Shakespeare “this side idolatry,” he throws in, “Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter: as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, ‘Caesar, thou dost me wrong,’ he replied ‘Caesar did never wrong, but with just cause,’ and such like, which were ridiculous.”

Imagine it. It’s opening night of Julius Caesar, and here’s Jonson congratulating Shakespeare in the time-honored manner of rival playwrights. Jonson says whatever is the Elizabethan equivalent of “Really, really interesting, Will,” and then slips in his, “Oh, by the way…” And Shakespeare, irritated and abashed, sensitive about his lack of a university education as he is about his doubtful coat of arms, inwardly resolves to change the line. As he apparently did, at least if Jonson is quoting him correctly, since it has come down to us in different form.

But, of course, Jonson was wrong. Yes, the line is a rhetorical absurdity, a flagrant violation of whatever Elements of Style Cambridge was circulating at the time. But it is the line’s queasy failure to mean that captures the casual corruption of political speech. It leaps the centuries. Who in this year, this week in the life of the ailing American experiment can fail to recognize the rhetorical slippage whereby a leader never does wrong but with just cause? When we speak of the genius of Shakespeare, this is what we’re talking about. And it’s not something easily taught or even nurtured at the conservatory.

Summer Beach Reading

Sunday, June 30th, 2013

OK, summer’s here, and it’s Gay Pride day, and now the Supreme Court says everyone (well, 30% of everyone) can marry the person of their gender preference. What better time to pick up a sweet gay travel romance for some summer beach reading? Now you can get my novel The Traveler’s Companion in e-book or paperback.

The easiest source is Amazon, but if you’re looking for alternative file formats, try Smashwords.

And to prove that it’s perfect beach reading, here’s a beach scene set in Venice:

lidoWhen Lint and Ricka and Klaus have gone off to the nude beach, I feel a tiny regret at not having gone along, not least because my cowardice has left me just here, lying between Philip and Antonio who are as glistening and uncommunicative as fish at a market stall. I take out my book and start to read but can’t concentrate. I glance again at my companions. Philip may or may not be sleeping, but he has achieved in repose the stillness and symmetry of the effigy on a Medieval sepulcher. Antonio must be asleep. His lips move, and every now and then a murmur escapes them. My eyes travel down his chest, lightly dusted with dark hair, along his narrow waist, to the tiny black swimsuit. He moves suddenly, and I glance away. But he has only shifted in his sleep.

I get up, walk down to the water, and wade in. The water is warm, with a lingering odor of the canals. A hundred tourists and Italian holidaymakers splash around me. I wade out past the crowd and begin to swim until I am rather far out. Around me the sea is a glittering disk with the sky domed above it and, at its rim, a crescent of sand dotted with colored moving forms. I float on my back and let the sun bake my face. Then with slow strokes I make my way back to shore. As I stand up and wade through the crowd, I hear my name called.

“Mark!”

I look around. Off to my left, Francesco stands at the edge of the water. I wave and wade towards him.

“How are you?” he calls.

“Fine, and you?” I shout back.

I have the disconcerting sensation that, like the hero of a children’s story who steps magically into a picture book or a painting, I have walked into a Vogue Uomo spread. If Francesco was beautiful in the lovely setting of his garden, he is stunning here, set against the sea and sand, with the breeze sifting through his honey-colored hair. He seems taller than I remembered, or perhaps it’s just that, in his snugly fitting bathing suit, there seems so much more of him and all of it perfectly shaped and tanned. The rest of us, duller and plainer and all too recognizably human, fade into background detail. I fold my arms across my chest and squint up at him, finding my skinny, pale form reflected in his sunglasses.

He smiles. “A beautiful day.”

“Yes,” I agree. “Are you going swimming?”

He casts a finical glance at the water. “The water is dirty here,” he says making me feel all at once coated in grime. “There are nicer beaches to swim.”

I wonder if he means Lint and Ricka’s beach, then have a quick image of Francesco striding naked down the beach with everyone gazing in hushed appreciation as if royalty were passing.

“Thanks for dinner the other night,” I tell him. “It was really great. Do you cook a lot?”

“Yes,” he seems pleased that I’ve asked. “I like to cook very much. I would like to open a restaurant some day.”

“Here?”

“New York. I love New York. I must convince Adam. He does not want to return to America.”

“Well, it’s a big country,” I say, wondering what I could mean by such a pointless remark.

“Yes,” he agrees. “I love it. You liked to meet Adam?” he goes on.

“Very much. He’s very nice.”

“He is very intelligent. He talks all the time.” He laughs and flutters his fingers against his thumb to indicate constant talking. “Sometimes I just let him talk. He likes to talk. I let him.”

It strikes me as a pity that Adam should have a lover who doesn’t like to hear him talk and wants to go to New York when Adam wants to stay in Italy. But, I tell myself cynically, his other charms must more than compensate.

I’m searching for my next trivial remark when I look up to see Antonio coming down the beach. I start to wave, but he stops and seems to hesitate. Francesco follows my gaze and calls out, “Ciao! Come stai?

Antonio, reluctantly it seems, moves towards us. He nods briefly at Francesco. “Come stai?” They talk in Italian for a few minutes, Francesco smiling pleasantly and Antonio appearing to give brief, unwilling answers. Finally Francesco, with a smile at me, moves off. “We see you soon?” he calls as he moves away.

“I hope so.” I watch his tanned, well-shaped back disappear into the crowd, then turn to Antonio who, I’m surprised to notice, is looking remarkably discomposed. Even with the dark glasses he’s having trouble meeting my eyes, and he may be blushing.

“How do you know Francesco?” I ask.

“I see him, you know, in the city.”

“Do you know him well?”

“No, not at all.”

“I guess that’s a coincidence, that we both know him.”

He shrugs. “Venice is not a large place. You know him well?” he asks.

“I just met him the other night. He’s a friend of—he lives with this guy—a friend of my sister’s.”

“And you like him?”

“He seems very nice.”

“Yes, he is very nice.” He hits the words with a mocking lilt, as if he’s only mimicking my accent again. With his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, any other meaning is impossible to guess. “We must wake Philip,” he says. “He will burn.”

Self-Publishing Journal #6: Print!

Sunday, April 7th, 2013

There is now an actual physical version of THE TRAVELER’S COMPANION, available through Amazon. The cover is (once again) designed by Bruce Goldstone.

You can still, of course, buy it as an e-book for your Kindle or Nook. The Kindle app allows you to read e-books on your tablet, smartphone, or laptop. (I know I’m supposed to like real books best [and I do, I do!], but as a new iPhone owner I’ve lately discovered the convenience of reading books on my phone on the subway.) The book is also available at Smashwords in various formats, including a PDF file.

I’ll also be at the Rainbow Book Fair on Saturday, April 13th. I’ll have some copies of the print edition on sale, and I’ll be reading a short excerpt from the novel, at about 12:30. Come by and see me!

Self-Publishing Journal #5: (Non-)Revision

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

The other day I added a cover photo to the Traveler’s Companion Facebook page. It’s taken from a sheet of paper I discovered in my files when I moved last month. Fragile and water-stained and ready to tear along its folds, it’s a pale-blue xeroxed flyer from Good Friday Mass at Saint Mark’s in Venice, the English version: “Good Friday is to tell us that ‘Christ made himself nothing’ and ‘became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.’ This is the core of today’s liturgical mystery.”

On the back of the flyer, in cramped blue writing, is the first draft of the scene which introduces Antonio in Chapter 6. I don’t have any memory of actually writing it. I don’t even know if I wrote it in Venice or in Vienna, where I spent Easter. Romantically, I’d like to think I wrote it in a café on some hidden campo, a quarto of wine in front of me and the April sun picking out the blue ink on the blue page. But who knows.

In the part I cropped for the photo (click on the thumbnail to see it), you can more or less make out a scene that, in the published version, reads like this:

Taking out a pack of cigarettes, he offers me one.

“No thank you.”

“You do not smoke?”

“Bad for your health,” I smile.

He shrugs. “When the Americans drop their bombs, I think it will not matter.” He offers Philip a cigarette, is refused, then lights one up himself. “Allora, what do we eat?” And he begins to explain the menu to us.

When we’ve ordered, Philip goes off to the restroom, leaving Antonio and me in an uncomfortable silence. Antonio gazes off to his left, smoking pensively. He seems to be trying to forget I’m there. Just as I’ve made up my mind to say something, he says, “You are from New York?”

“Boston.”

“Ah, yes. ‘Please come to Boston.’” And he lapses into silence again.

“You speak very good English,” I offer.

He smiles briefly. “Well, you see I am always with Americans.”

“How do you know Philip?”

“He was here at Carnival. He talked to me at church.” The subject seems not to interest him. “And you?” he asks suddenly.

“I beg your pardon.”

“How do you know Philip?”

“We met in Paris. He’s friends with a girl I’m traveling with.”

“A girl you are traveling with…” he murmurs. “Bene.”

And now he is silent again, so I ask, “Why does your mother want you to be a priest?”

Again the brief sarcastic smile. “Because I speak English too well. Ah, here is your friend.”

What strikes me now is how close this is to the scene I originally sketched. It’s present tense, not past, Richard’s name has been changed, and Antonio’s English is a little worse. The dialogue, particularly around the cigarettes, is handled more fluidly. But otherwise my first take on the scene matches the final one.

This isn’t true throughout the novel. For a long time the first line of the novel was “My sister Judith is a scientist.” Now it’s “Snow sifts by my bedroom window.” And this was part of a fairly extensive rewrite of the opening scenes. (Every revision entails some loss. I miss the way the old first line signaled that Judith would be central to the novel despite her disappearance for large stretches of it.) Most of the final third of the novel went through pretty drastic rewrites, and not much in between escaped rethinking, revision, cutting, expansion, reimagining. If such things interest you, here is a handout I prepared for a creative writing class I taught, which shows three versions of the scene between Mark and his father in Chapter 1.

So if there’s any lesson to be taken from the Antonio scene, it’s not “first thoughts, best thoughts.” Like most writers, I’d be pretty horrified if some of my first thoughts saw the light of day. But, also like most writers, I know the experience of getting it right the first time. (I hope we agree I got it right.) Maybe it’s a mystery, how you can sit down at a café, on a train, in a hotel room, and scribble out a scene that will remain intact while everything around it changes and changes again, even, as in this case, when the stuff around it didn’t exist at the time you were writing.

Or maybe it’s more straightforward than that. The scene, after all, is fairly utilitarian. It introduces one of the novel’s central characters, and what you mostly want to do—instinctively want to do—is make the reader want to know more about that character. So you add intrigue. There’s intrigue in Antonio’s mix of rudeness and hospitality (clearer in the rest of the scene) and, of course, in his line about knowing English too well. You can worry about the logic of this. Would Antonio really drop such a big hint about his personal troubles to a stranger? Is he being so approach-avoidance with Mark because he’s already, within a few minutes of meeting him, attracted? But these things are less important than the psychic snapshot you get. From these sketched outlines the character of Antonio expands. He’s written here in small.

Or maybe it’s love. It’s a dirty secret of writers that sometimes we love our characters. It’s not always predictable which characters you will love, though it probably helps to love a love interest. As I say, I don’t remember writing the scene, but it’s quite possible that, in that moment, a character who was until then somewhat notional—the young Italian love interest—suddenly sprang into confounding (Mark’s word) life. Such moments you preserve.

Self-Publishing Journal #4: Like Me!

Sunday, November 18th, 2012

There is now a Facebook page for THE TRAVELER’S COMPANION. So the novel now has a presence on social media! I’ve also, for the time being, restricted sales of the book to Amazon, meaning I’ve temporarily taken it off Smashwords. I don’t know how interesting the reasons for this are to anyone who isn’t thinking of self-publishing. If you’re curious, e-mail me. But the good news is that pretty much anyone can read a Kindle e-book since, if you don’t have a Kindle, you can download a Kindle app for your PC, Mac, smartphone, or tablet! Thanks to those who’ve bought the book already. I hope you enjoy it. And feel free to post comments on the new Facebook page!

Self-Publishing Journal #3: Published!

Sunday, October 28th, 2012

Only about a week after my original target date, I’ve published THE TRAVELER’S COMPANION e-book. It’s available now at two sites: Amazon and Smashwords. If everything goes according to plan, Smashwords will also distribute it to Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Sony. Both Smashwords and Amazon will let you read a sample before you commit yourself. (I particularly like the line the Amazon sample ends on: “The russet eyes are fixed on mine. ‘Just a drink? Where’s the harm in that?'”)

Smashwords offers the book in various formats. You can download it for your Kindle, Nook, or iPad, or if you’re like my many friends who have so far resisted e-readers, you can download it in Epub format, download Adobe Digital Editions for free, and read the book right on your computer.

At all events, I hope you do buy the book and enjoy it. Feel free to let me know what you think. And if you really like it, write an Amazon review!

Self-Publishing Journal #2: Covered

Thursday, October 11th, 2012

It’s been forever (well, six weeks) since Self-Publishing Journal #1, and the result is that we’re now within 10 days of Launch Date. (Oct. 20th! Gear up your e-readers!) And so, finally, the cover!

This is Bruce Goldstone’s lovely, funny, and alluring cover for my novel The Traveler’s Companion. And I suppose we have to say “cover,” in quotes, since e-books don’t really have covers, per se. But if all goes according to plan you’ll be able to click on this image on Amazon or Smashwords and purchase a copy in less than two weeks.

Stay tuned!

Self-Publishing Journal #1: Cover Me

Monday, August 27th, 2012

As I wrote in my last update, I’ve been thinking about self-publishing my first novel, THE TRAVELER’S COMPANION. This is partially in celebration of having finished (or just about finished) my second novel, but also because I’m fond of it and would like it to be out there, and this seems like a fun way to do it.

Right now I’m thinking of an e-book, but even e-books need covers, so I asked Bruce Goldstone to design one for me. Bruce works with Blue Coyote and designed the haunting postcard for PARADISE and the delightful one for NANCE O’NEIL.

Bruce gave me four beautiful sketches to choose from, which made choice difficult since they were all so alluring. But I do believe the one I chose was the best fit for the book and the audience, and when Bruce is done working on it, I’ll share that one, too.

Meanwhile, you can click on the thumbnails to see two of the other sketches.

Oh, and I’ve also been updating my website, so take a look around while you’re here…

The Latest: Lazy Summer Edition

Sunday, August 12th, 2012

Lately I’ve been cleaning up my website—nothing spectacular, just adding photos, switching out play excerpts, changing a font or two, creating a new banner of photos for the header—and, in doing so, I’ve been forced to pass my home page time and time again and to face down those haunting words, The Latest. Scanning down the column I can see that it’s the latest only in the sense of superlatively late. As in, months go by without my posting anything to it.

Honestly, though, there’s not a lot going on right now. DEADLY MURDER keeps getting produced in various locales, including one somewhere in Siberia. (No, I mean literally. Siberia.) In Los Angeles this spring, I met Alan Shearman, the director of the Portland production, and since I wasn’t able to see it live, he gave me a DVD of their quite impressive staging. The graphic on the left is by Lee Moyer for the same production.

The Athens DEADLY MURDER produced this very fun trailer.

And I’ve just discovered that, in November, there’ll be another production closer to home. Road trip?

A few things, including an intriguing development for DEADLY MURDER, fall into the category of “watch this space”: nothing worth talking about at the moment, but material perhaps for future updates.

More or less in that category are the writing projects I’ve been working on this summer. In June in São Paulo, I finished a fair draft of my new novel, THE HOUNDS OF HEAVEN. (A shout-out to the folks at Livraria da Vila on Lorena in whose lovely and comfortable terrace café I got a lot of work done.) Patient friends are reading and responding to the novel now. You can read an excerpt here.

I’ve also been re-re-polishing the first novel, THE TRAVELER’S COMPANION. This is because I’m thinking of dipping a toe into the chilly but rapidly warming waters of self-publishing. Watch this space. Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt.

Other than that I’ve had a lazy, pleasant summer, teaching our pre-college writing class at NYU, following Brazilian soap operas on O Globo, getting out to see friends and films, and shopping for furniture for the apartment I seem to be buying…

More later (though hopefully not terribly later).

Deadly Murder Productions

Sunday, January 22nd, 2012

Thanks to the Samuel French edition, DEADLY MURDER has started appearing at theatres around the country, including what seems to be quite a fine production at the Lakewood Theatre Company in Portland (pictured, Ty Boice and Adrienne Flagg) and another at Theatre Suburbia in Houston. There’s also a production in Prague right now, and one will open soon in Athens, under the title TA BROMIKA KOLPA (below), a translation, I think, of A NASTY TRICK, a title the play had at one point.

It’s a strange but fun feeling to think that there are all these Camilles and Billys and Teds out there, some speaking in other languages. (What’s the Czech for “a few brisk years in reform school on the fly”?)

Recently, the Greek translator contacted me to ask for a program note, and I rediscovered something I wrote for the 2008 production at Vienna’s English Theatre. Maybe it’s worth reproducing here:

“We love blood. We love murder. We love danger and double-crosses and the moment when the safe, predictable world gives way. Or we love them in a thriller.

“When I began to write DEADLY MURDER, my play CRESSIDA AMONG THE GREEKS, a retelling of the doomed Trojan War romance, had just completed its New York run. It, too, had its share of blood and betrayal and worlds collapsing, but it was a tragedy, and in tragedies things cost. Tragedies, at the end of the night, present you with a bill for the blood and betrayal, and it’s a steep one. Thrillers allow us to slip the cost. They allow us to laugh as we gasp, to feel horror with pleasure, to ride death and danger like a roller coaster.

“Maybe that’s why a thriller seemed like such a good idea after CRESSIDA. Maybe I needed some murder without the cost.

“I’ve always loved thrillers and mysteries. When I was a kid, we came home from school and watched Perry Mason on TV. I whiled away summer afternoons with Agatha Christie. I love Ira Levin’s fiendish entertainments, and the elegant gamesmanship of Anthony Shaffer’s SLEUTH. Writing DEADLY MURDER, I rediscovered the luxurious addictive pleasures of these stories: mysterious strangers, priceless jewels, unsavory secrets, and death not from natural causes. We get a lot of tragedy in the world. We get a lot of blood and betrayal. But tonight we just have fun.”