OPENING K-NIGHT!

I am. Excited. Why? Because the theatre around the corner from my house ( www.theatrememphis.org ) is putting on a production of Much Ado About Nothing!!!! Aka, MAAN. This was my first high school play, actually, and it has remained my favorite Shakespearean Comedy. Ever. I still have my script. You have the eternal couple of Claudio and Hero, those starstruck lovers without the feuding families or death (well, almost). You also have the two famous bickerers: Benedick and Beatrice (!) who feud constantly and have to somehow be reigned in by the rest of the cast (any ideas???). You also have the plot of Don Pedro, the prince, bringing in his rebellious, conniving brother, Don John, whom he captured from a small coup that occurred immediately before Act I. Don John is determined to bring down his brother in all aspects of life. And plus, he's extra rebellious because he just got beat. All of these reasons, plus a pair of bumbling, drunk idiots for comical relief (as if we needed any) that just serve to get in the way but end up having the solutions to every problem!!! It's a great thing.

Plus, every film version of MAAN that I've seen (the Shakespeare: Retold (modern) version and the Kenneth Branaugh version) has been very well done and I've fallen in love with both. In fact, as soon as I heard about the production around the corner, I watched the Retold version in celebration!!!! Plus, in the Kenneth Branaugh version, it has Kenneth Branaugh (well, of course), Robert Sean Leonard (Dr. Wilson in House), AND Denzel Washington!!!!!!! WHAT!!!! He's awesome. He plays Don Pedro. LOVE. There is a nudish scene in the beginning, so beware, but besides for that, it's awesome!!!

In case you were wondering, I was the Messenger. Yeah, that's right. A girl playing a guy's part. Take that Shakespeare. It opens July 16! I'm excited.

The Scarlet Pimpernel. Swoon.

Ok, This is less of great literature but while I'm procrastinating A Brave New World I'll write about a book that makes me swoon. The Scarlet Pimpernel!!!!! It's rather good! You see, I watched several film versions first which made me want to read the book which was provided to me by that little used book shop on Mt. Moriah (they are so sweet). Ian McKellan was in one of the versions! Shakespeare points! It was written in 1905 by Baroness Emma Orczy and it is practically timeless. The time period it is set in is French Revolution era (aka. The Bloody Revolution). It is the tale of a mysterious gentleman who rescues the French aristocrats who do not deserve death even though they are admittedly pompous and arrogant. Meanwhile, French native Marguerite, married to Sir Percy Blakeney, is having trust issues in her marriage. You will never guess who the Scarlet Pimpernel is!!!! This book is like the English version of the Three Musketeers - both are not very valuable as literature and both are good reads. Except the Three Musketeers will always be better. It's true. I love this book! It's a good, fast read. I give it 30 stars!!!

By the way, if the name "Scarlet Pimpernel" sounds familiar, and you don't quite know why, it's probably because Bugs Bunny did a parody called " The Scarlet Pumpernickle!!!"

O Brave New World, That Has Such People In't!

1984 was good, but if you ever wanted a bit more Shakespeare in it, go for a Brave New World! Really, really good. Someone asked me to choose between it and 1984, and I couldn't. Because they are essentially the same thing but different and both equally well written. Wonderful Dystopias!!!

This is one of those novels with an awesome character list because each name has like 5 meanings!!! Maybe I exaggerate, but they are really awesome.

John Savage - (The most basic, simple name in the English language describing his character)(Explains itself)

Bernard Marx - (First name meaning Brave Bear, very ironic) (And Marx. Just Marx.)

Helmholtz Watson - (After "Herman von" who believed in science's civilizing powers) (a common Brit name)

Lenina Crowne - (After Lenin, the one and only) (She had something about her that acted as a "crown" and drew people to her)

Mustapha Mond - (After, I believe, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk - founder of the Republic of Turkey and Kemalism, which promotes secularism and scientific progress) (Mond is the root for the world?)

Fanny Crowne - Just a name that is ordinary, I think. Symbolizes the common masses?

Henry Foster - (Henry Ford, obviously) (William Z. was an American Marxist)

Linda - Means "pretty," which is ironic because eventually she is anything but, and it is one of the things she mourns

Popé - Indian leader in 1670ish. Like those uncivilized people, he mixed his indian beliefs with Christian ideaology.

That's it for characters! Yay!

Yes! New look!

Sorry, the little tab at the top said "New options, want to try them out?" I just couldn't resist.

Alright. The Stranger....by Albert Camus. To be honest, I liked The Plague better. Well, que sera sera, it's a groundbreaking book. It is his first, after all. He also wrote "The Myth of Sisyphus" the same year. Well, you've heard my lectures on Camus and his absurdity and The Stranger is exactly the same. According to the back of the book, he was thrust into a "senseless murder." Does the word senseless sound familiar? Because it is absurd. This man does things like murder, love, attends his mother's funeral, makes promises, and all with a complete lack of feeling. Except perhaps towards the dog. But we'll get to that later. First, for a motif.

HEAT - While this guy was burying his mother, he kept mentioning the oppressive heat. They made the traditional walk from the nursing home to the church and it was hot. Very hot. There was this old man who, they said, was almost engaged to his mother despite their ages. He was very old and yet honored his mother enough to walk the distance. He cut corners of fields and struggled along, only to collapse at the church. According to the nurse, " She said, 'If you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too fast, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church.' She was right. There was no way out." Also, on the beach, he killed a man because he got crazy with the heat, it seems. That was his defense and it says " The sun was the same as it had been the day I'd buried Maman, and like then, my forehead especially was hurting me, all the veins in it throbbing under the skin. It was this burning, which I couldn't stand anymore, that made me move forward." Interpret it how you will, it seems to be the impulsive burning of the senseless world when confronted with a decision: to mourn, which he didn't, to kill or move on, which he chose to kill. When he is moved to prison, he does not feel heat, and on the day of his trial, the entire room burns because another major decision is to be made: death or no death.

This novel is all about the Absurd Man, who is a STRANGER in the world. Stranger, get it? He gets used to everything and feels nothing. He turns to regular pursuits and feels no pleasure in them but does them because they are expected of him. He gets used to prison, for goodness sake.

2 things I want to touch on before I close this novel for good:

1. There was an old man at the apartments who had this old dog that he hated. After his wife died, he got a dog to kick around. Every evening they would go on a walk and kick and mumble and yell and swear up and down the street. Pobre perro. It ran away. The old man was distraught. He was lonely. He was used to his wife, he was used to his dog, and he missed the previous life simply because he was used to it. Just like Meursault got used to his life before prison and missed it. Simply because he was used to it.

2. Meursault, upon his trial and other circumstances, simply wanted over and over to explain himself, which he never really got an opportunity to do. The prosecutor and defense attorney gave their speeches and did their dance and probably got a drink after. But he never got a chance to defend himself. Camus likes to point out not only the senselessness of the universe but also the senselessness of the government, but more specifically, the justice system. Camus harped on it a lot during The Plague (the injustice of the justice system was part of the human plague).

Alright, as for a review? Recommendation? I really didn't like it. Want a real good overview of absurdist theory in something? Read The Plague (Le Peste) for a novel and The Guest (L'Hote) for a short story and The Myth of Sisyphus for an essay. And please read a short biography or context something before or after reading! It will make more sense! He was depressing for a reason!

The Right Field.

Yes, very soon I will write reviews on The Stranger and The Scarlet Pimpernel (swoon) and I'm currently reading Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller and A Brave New World. Remember Ceremony? I read the first four pages. I realized it was going to be exactly like Beloved. Blast. So I'm procrastinating reading it for now.

Anyhow, I realized the past couple days something which I've known for a bit now. Of course, I need to actually delve into the field, but now I know that I'm in the right field. The past couple days I've visited Harding University and have been visiting major seminar things and Honors College seminar things and drawing up my schedule. When I looked over the requirement sheet for Non-Licensure English Majors and looked over my requirements and the pick-four-classes-from-this-section section. I got excited. I will be taking Brit Lit this fall and of the four specialty classes I'll probably be taking Shakespeare! Literary Theory! British Novel! and this new class on Feminism/women in Literature from a professor who just defended her dissertation - which was a series of articles on Jane Austen. Yay! I'm so excited! And since I'm an Honors Scholar, we get to do (and actually are pretty required to do) these Honors Contract things that let us attend normal classes, but drop some of the more normal and mundane requirements in exchange for an extra paper or project that is of a different skill set or more suited to our field or something. That Shakespeare class is hereby CONTRACTED!!!! My new phrase. You like?

No, but I'm very excited. Actually, my "academic advisor" and I (she's a professor in my field - English) drew up my schedule for this fall, carefully avoiding some gen eds I might AP out of or take in an international program, and came up with a satisfactory schedule. Then she paused and said "You don't have any English. Do you want some English?" I said the equivalent of "Def Yes!" and dropped speech in favor of Brit Lit. I'm already starting my core requirements! The rest of my schedule includes intermediate Spanish, Communication/Critical Thinking, Honors New Testament, and and hour-and-a-half statistics class at 7:30 in the morning. But you know what? Since all of my other classes are on MWF, after that class and chapel on Tuesday and Thursday, I'm off scott free!!! To study, of course.

Le Peste - The Plague.

You realize, you could make a great parody called Le Pesto? About the terrible decline of pasta?

Well, my readers, all 2 of you, today is the day we begin examining Albert Camus, and it won't be the last cause I really need to read The Stranger next, which is actually on my list. Anywho, a rundown on someone who is becoming one of my favorite authors:

Albert Camus: Awesome. Is he a nihilist? Existentialist? Absurdist? A conglomeration of all three? Possibly. To give you a clue of his basic philosophy, he once wrote an essay on Sisyphus: The greek legend who was eternally condemned to roll a boulder up a hill only to have it fall back down when inches from the top. That pointlessness, that imposed, deliberate cruelty, is what he called ABSURD. And he pretty much based his work off of it. He was French Algerian and wrote novels and plays and short stories and essays and articles. He ran the underground newspaper during the French occupation and continued to write to the people once they had attained their freedom. I love the first article he writes to France after the German occupation: "Combat Continues." He loved both Algeria and France and hated the conflict between them. This exile because of combat becomes the theme of many of his works including his short story The Guest. In fact, the theme of exile haunts The Plague up and down.

LE PESTE:

Themes. Now the wonderful thing about Camus is that he is very straightforward and obvious in a duh-are-you-listening-now sort of way. He wants you to get the point. And that is why picking out themes is so easy.

EXILE: Now, in the exile the bubonic/pneumonic plague comes and visits a little French Algerian town and they are forced to quarantine the town, effectively EXILING it. Now, is anyone thinking AP essay? It says that the first thing that the people were exiled from was friends and relatives, hope and peace, the future, and the outside world. Suddenly, the town was diseased and no one wanted to go near it though everyone in it wanted to go out. Hey, could disease be a symbol? Hope is also a big deal in the novel, for while the town was mostly exiled from it, the last remnants of hope made them survive and keep on fighting. If I knew this book better, and about 3 months ago, I would've written about it one the AP exam.

LOVE: This is very weird. Camus writes about love in a way that comes out differently in every case. Over the whole town, an apathy fell over love and marriages in general and everyone just figured that if they died, they died and it didn't matter until the quarantine lifted. There were two distinct couples that were separated - man inside the town, woman outside. In Rieux's case, he decided to stay in the town and work ceaselessly to rid the town of it. In his friend's case, I will find the name later, he worked and connived to sneak out of the town to be his sweetheart, then on the eve of his escape, he realized that he needed to help and would lead an empty (absurd alert) life outside the quarantine if he did not sacrifice himself. Guilt led him back. How did this all end? Rieux's wife died because she went away for her health and died just a few weeks before the quarantine lifted. Ironic? Absurd alert. The guy who was going to chicken out got nervous before he met his girl, but it all ended up really well. She just swooned all over him.

So, the fickle man was rewarded while the constant man was punished. So much for a fair universe. Oh yeah, absurdity.

Alright, well, ABSURDITY is a philosophy where the universe is unfair to the point of absurdity. Absurdity, in case you are not getting a clear picture, is ... "tragic, meaningless irony. Usually the inflictor of this tragedy is nature, life, the universe, or some other superior source. Camus states his definition of absurdity: 'Perhaps this notion will become clear if I hazard this outrageous remark: the absurd is sin without God'." Yes, i did just quote my own paper on Camus. And I did get a C on it but that's not really any fault of the reasoning itself (citing error). Can you quote yourself? Anyhow, according to Camus, there is a absurd cycle with several steps. First, you live a totally pointless, absurd life. Next, you realize that your life is absurd and become all depressed and junk. Third, you realize with some sort of joy that yes, your life is absurd, but it really doesn't matter anyhow because everybody's life is absurd!!! Yay!!! Okay, that's the simplified form, but it works for the book. Rieux ends up running the full scale of the cycle from a fairly pointless life, to a life of ceaseless work that runs in circles cause the plague never lets up, to skinny dipping. It's true. Now, the Spaniard and the old guy counting beans have realized the absurdity of life and fully embrace it. Love the old guy counting beans. According to the Spaniard, the ultimate goal in life was to find peace which would eradicate humanity's "plague." Peace could be found through the path of sympathy. Sadly, there is a man who never quite realizes his plight. He is the Sisyphus, but instead of rolling boulders, he is writing a book. Not really a book, cause he only ever got to one sentence which he tirelessly went over again and again to perfect the sentence. Because if he could complete this Sisyphean task, he would somehow get his wife back. He was so dismal in the end, that he burned his manuscript. Shortly to the end, he was full of hope because he had just thought of something else and the burning really didn't matter because he had memorized it and all. And then, he died. Absurdity indeed. There is more to the novel, but I think I will leave you with mere quotes because no one writes like Camus.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. ( He mentioned wars in the stupidity category.)

All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't waste your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done.

In short, we returned to our prison-house, we had nothing left us but the past, and even if some were tempted to live in the future, he had speedily to abandon the idea - anyhow, as soon as could be - once they felt the wounds that imagination inflicts on those who yield themselves to it.

Hostile to the past, impatient of the present, and cheated of the future, we were much like those who men's justice, or hatred, forces to live behind prison bars.

Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.

But there was also darkness in men's hearts, and the facts were as little calculated to reassure our townfolk as the wild stories going round about the barraks.

For there's no denying that the Plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments.

Can one be a saint without God? (please see above)

I can say I know the world inside out, as you may see - that each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free from it. And I know, too, that we much keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breathe in somebody's face and fasten the infection on him...All the rest - health, integrity, purity (if you like) - is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter, The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.

Among them I can at least try to discover how one attains to the third category [healer]; in other words, to peace.

Alright, I'm almost done with The Stranger (which is actually on my list) and I am going out of town on a road trip to my sister's wedding so I'll hopefully be able to finish it within a day! I also picked up 3 books today from second hand book shops (I love those!). I got The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy (I've watched all the film versions!), Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (which is actually on my list as well) and 95 poems, a collection of poems by e.e. cummings. I'm pretty excited. I love that guys. Alright, sorry it took me so long and hopefully I'll return to blogging next Tuesday or Wednesday!

Literature.....? Maybe.

Alright. I saw a movie tonight. Which is NOT a book. Or at least, it was based on a book, but not really literature. BUT. I saw the very cheesy looking Juliet's Wall movie. I know, I don't see movie's in theatres a lot and definitely not chick flicks really, but Ashley wanted to go and I guess I like that girl...

As some may know, I am an affirmed, positively, definitely ANTI-Romeo and Juliet. I mean, it's about on par with Lord of the Flies for subtlety, other plays of his are better written (I think), it's kinda cheesy itself (What light from Yonder Window breaks???It is the east!!! And Juliet - drumroll- is the sun!!!!), aaaaannnd Shakespeare stole the stinking plot from those Italians. Argue Ecclesiastes as you may, but it is on a list of offenses. Come on.

But I'm okay Juliet now. I still think Romeo is stupid, but I'm okay with Juliet. Why? Because I'm a sucker for chick flicks but also because she has turned into this incredible symbol. It is a symbol for true, go-chase-after-her, throw-caution-to-the-winds love. Thousands of women and men have written to her, asking her for direction in love. She has become the patron saint of love. Way to go, Shakespeare. I guess I'm a fan of her now because there is a hopeless romantic inside of me that really really lacks that chasing courage in some cases but also wouldn't mind being Juliet, come what may. It's that kissing in the rain thing.

And yes, Artie, it is a girl thing.