Bright Young People by D.J. Taylor

[Son] Matthew furious said if we invited people of this sort to the house we must behave decently & give them their drink (bought by Babe [Plunkett Greene]). He said he had thought of not coming down - & it was our faults for having such people & that we must have known perfectly well they would drink unceasingly. [Husband] A. & I protested, that we had known that they would have sherry before dinner - but had no conception that the drinking of Sherry - Brandy & Whisky would never cease. He appeared to think that we ought never to have consented to have [daughter] E.'s friends & that it was all our own fault. A. got very angry about E. & I tried to explain to M. that having seen nothing like it - & it was impossible to realise what these sort of people were & how they would behave - after all E. Gathorne-Hardy - wretched creature is a gentleman.

-Excerpt from the diary of Dorothea Ponsonby (mother of Bright Young Person Elizabeth Ponsonby), as printed in Bright Young People

In my first year of college, I went through an Evelyn Waugh phase. I discovered Brideshead Revisited*in the stacks and subsequently went back to that section of the library so frequently that I daresay I could lead you to it today (assuming they haven't shuffled things around). Later on, I fell in love with Wodehouse, and somewhere in between I read a magazine article (presumably in Vanity Fair, as it's right up their alley) on the Mitford sisters. From those three sources, I had learned everything I knew about London's Jazz Age.

And who would expect you to know much, really? It's not World War II (not yet) or one of those other eras where at least a handful of facts are fairly common knowledge. In America, common knowledge about the English Jazz Age is...nothing, at least as far as I know.

I'd never had any particular interest in the period, either - yet, for whatever reason, when I stumbled upon Bright Young People at the library, I was intrigued. I guess there's just something about the beautiful and the damned, if I may steal phrasing from our own Jazz Age.

It is quite a cast of beautiful people. The women are fiery and the men dandyish. Everyone drinks to excess and speaks in an over-the-top fashion that, frankly, I love. They throw wild themed parties and absolutely flummox their parents (see the excerpt above). They fritter away money and sleep through the afternoon.

They are floating along in the wake of World War I, which killed and wounded so many of their slightly older countrymen. They can only float for so long, as it turns out - both the economy and the entry of England into World War II hasten the demise of the Bright Young People. By that time, some have become successful - Waugh, perhaps most notably, along with fellow novelist Henry Green and photographer Cecil Beaton. Others - like Elizabeth Ponsonby and Brenda Dean Paul - met tragic ends. And one - Unity Mitford - became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Really.

D.J. Taylor does an excellent job making sense of an abundance of material. He's quite an erudite writer - he sent me scrambling for the dictionary to look up suzerainty and echt. He tells the stories - or at least parts thereof - of quite a number of Bright Young People, which has left me curious to know more - if not more nonfiction, then perhaps some of the novels I've overlooked, like Green's Loving or Waugh's Vile Bodies. If nothing else, I have the 2003 film Bright Young Things (based on Vile Bodies) heading to me via Netflix. No better time for it, I reckon.

I think it is worthwhile to note that, while I found this book quite interesting, I have very little interest in today's pseudo-celebrity culture. That is to say, I admit to being a bit starstruck, but I am perfectly happy knowing nothing of those people who are famous for no discernible reason. It makes me wonder if I would have found the Bright Young People quite so glamorous if I had been their contemporary. Or perhaps it just reveals that the Z-list of today need to be a bit more ambitious and interesting - why no mock weddings? That was a sure-fire headline for Elizabeth Ponsonby.

Up next: I'm reading contemporary non-genre, non-YA fiction for the first time in a while, if my memory serves - American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. So far, so good.


*I loved the 2008 film adaptation, by the way. Perhaps not as faithful as the the 80s miniseries, but Ben Whishaw was quite devastating as Sebastian Flyte.

NaNoWriMo

I'm nearly finished with Bright Young People, and I'm enjoying it pretty thoroughly. One section I found particularly striking was entitled "The Books Brian Never Wrote," concerning the literary non-career of Bright Young Person Brian Howard. Brian planned to write a novel. Then, a German diary. That was scrapped for a philosophical meditation, which in turn was replaced with an idea for another novel. He did manage to produce a book of poetry, which was followed by...nothing. Brian, who at first explained away his lack of productivity (his genius needed to "mature slowly," he reasoned), became concerned. As author D.J. Taylor explains:

By this time, ominously enough, the neurosis about not writing anything had reached such a pitch that it began to produce pieces of writing about not writing. "About Writing," a sketch from this period, finds a nonwriter called "Russell" explaining to a friend that he has just downed a glass of brandy "because of the terror of trying to write." Everything, Russell gravely explains, from money, the consciousness of not keeping up one's position as a clever young man and the necessity of not disappointing one's father, is driving him to write a book. [...] "A novel! Heavens. A novel is a story. I can't make up a story. I can't live other people's lives. I can't live my own." And so incriminatingly on.

I suspect many of us, like Brian, have ideas for books in our heads that we would write if only the stars would properly align. Lucky for us, next month is National Novel Writing Month (link goes to the official website), commonly known as NaNoWriMo. Here's how it works: Sign up to participate at the website. Then, write 50,000 words in the month of November (about 1,666 words a day). If you can do that, you "win."

Easier said than done is a bit of an understatement here. I am a terribly slow writer, and I've never written any fiction longer than about 7,000 words. Nevertheless, I signed up. I'm hoping that a deadline imposed by someone other than myself will encourage me to buckle down and write. Not necessarily write anything good, mind you (apparently if you try to edit, you'll never make it). I think it will be fun. Good, old-fashioned, potentially crazy-making fun.

So if you have an idea for the Great American Novel in your head - or even the Great American YA Fantasy Novel - why not sign up? Remember Brian Howard: the book is never going to write itself. Might as well give it a try.

Hamlet Follow-up II: A Critics' Roundup

I meant to do this earlier - in the interest of completeness, here are links to several more reviews of the current production of Hamlet on Broadway.

From The New Yorker: The production is "barn-burning;" Jude Law is "a sensation, if not a revelation."

From New York: The production "practically wills itself into a state of torpor;" Law's Hamlet "may be the first in danger of blowing away in a stiff wind."

From Time Out New York: The production "has plenty to thrill and hold your attention;" Law is called "Yoga Hamlet," based apparently on both his wardrobe and flexibility. (Okay, also: "he holds court at the center of his scenes with an intensity, intelligence and awestruck wonder that puts most Hamlets [the reviewer has] seen to shame.")

From Entertainment Weekly: The production is "refreshingly straightforward" and "understated;" Law "gives a strong, confident performance."

I find it really interesting to see the different perspectives. Although most of the reviews are pretty mixed, I think the Times one was the harshest.

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

In 1911, the cohort of South American explorers, along with the rest of the world, was astounded by the announcement that Hiram Bingham, Dr. Rice's old traveling companion, had, with the aid of a Peruvian guide, uncovered the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu, nearly eight thousand feet above sea level, in the Andes. Although Bingham had not discovered an unknown civilization - the Incan empire and its monumental architecture were well documented - he had helped to illumination this ancient world in remarkable fashion. National Geographic, which devoted an entire issue to Bingham's find, noted that Machu Picchu's stone temples and palaces and fountains - most likely a fifteenth-century retreat for Incan nobility - may "prove to be the most important group of ruins discovered in South America." The explorer Hugh Thomson subsequently called it "the pin-up of twentieth-century archeology." Bingham was catapulted into the stratosphere of fame; he was even elected to the U.S. Senate.

The discovery fired Fawcett's imagination. It undoubtedly stung, too. But Fawcett believed that the evidence he had gathered suggested something potentially more momentous: remnants of a yet unknown civilization in the heart of the Amazon, where for centuries the conquistadores had searched for an ancient kingdom - a place they called El Dorado.

-The Lost City of Z

Percy Fawcett disappeared in 1925. Accompanied by his son, Jack, and Jack's childhood friend, Raleigh Rimmel, he had ventured into the Amazon to look for the ruins of an ancient city - a place he called Z. Fawcett was a veteran Amazon explorer, well known for his seeming invulnerability to the many dangers of the area. His final journey and disappearance were covered extensively by newspapers all over the world, and subsequently innumerable, often ill-fated expeditions were launched to find him.

And yet, until The Lost City of Z was published earlier this year, Fawcett's story had faded into to history. I always find it fascinating how something that at one point would have been common knowledge can gradually become a bit of trivia. More fascinating still, of course, is the idea of living in an age where there were blank spots on the map. There are still uncontacted tribes in the Amazon, but those pockets that are isolated from the outside world have certainly grown fewer in number since Fawcett's time. Fawcett lived in an age when more was unknown, and thus the possibilities were limited only by one's imagination. It's worth noting that Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, in which an adventurer discovers dinosaurs living in a remote part of South America, was said to be based partially on Fawcett's expeditions.

In 2009, I think we've left very few stones unturned (not a lot of places left to hide living dinosaurs, in other words). The world, more accessible than ever, grows smaller. For instance, author David Grann, following in Fawcett's footsteps in an attempt to ascertain his fate and/or to discover if Z actually existed, spends time with a tribe who, although they maintain many of their traditions, also have a television powered by a generator. Things have changed a lot since 1925.

Grann intersperses the story of his own journey with the story of Fawcett's life: his early travels, his experience in World War I, his family life, and that last expedition. Both narratives are compelling. Fawcett lived a remarkable life; each of his journeys is harrowing as well as utterly absorbing. (Fair note to those with weak stomachs: there are a great number of maggots & other creepy crawlies involved.) Grann's story also grabs one's attention, because he is the man who may solve the mystery, and because one quickly realizes that, despite the modernization of some areas, the Amazon is still a very dangerous place.

In the end, no matter what Grann found (which, of course, I'll leave to you to discover), Fawcett's story is a sad one. Sure, no one put him or his party in danger against their will, but they went into the Amazon with good intentions and sufficient preparation - if anyone could have succeeded at the time, it was them. Jack and Raleigh were quite young - in their early 20s - when they disappeared. Jack wanted to be a movie star (and in the photo Grann provides, he looks a bit like Cary Elwes in The Princess Bride, though it could just be the little mustache). One can't help but think about the hole their disappearance left in the lives of those they left behind - Nina Fawcett, for one, never gave up hope that her husband and son were alive, and consulted with mediums to bolster her spirits. (Fawcett himself also believed in otherworldly phenomena, and some today believe that Z was more of a metaphysical state of being. Cults have been started based on this idea. Seriously.)

Even though the story is tragic, I nonetheless enjoyed The Lost City of Z wholeheartedly. I looked forward to cracking it open every day during my morning and afternoon subway commute. There's just something about great non-fiction* - to read something so extraordinary and know that it really happened. I find that it is a great reminder of the complexity of people, and the breadth of our world.

Up next: I've abandoned Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Sorry, DFW fans - The Lost City of Z was a reminder that I don't want reading to be a herculean task for me. So, while browsing at the library, I found Bright Young People by D.J. Taylor, a non-fiction account of London's Jazz Age. It's an era I know little to nothing about, so I imagine I'll learn something!

*Some of my favorite non-fiction mysteries/crime stories: These books are very well-known, and deservedly so. If you haven't read one, I would get to a library or bookstore posthaste.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote: The granddaddy of them all. A terrible tragedy, beautifully told.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt: I remember this book being quite the craze when I was a child, but at the time I was too young to read it. I finally got to it in the last couple of years, and I can say its popularity is well deserved.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson: The terrifying story of one of America's most prolific serial killers, set against the magical atmosphere of the 1893 World's Fair.

I'm always looking for more books like these, incidentally. If anyone knows of a good one, let me know.

In Medias Res: The Lost City of Z

Explorer John Hanning Speke

I don't normally post about books until I've finished them, but I decided to make an exception for The Lost City of Z by David Grann. I'm enjoying it so much, and so many passages are standing out to me, that I know I won't be able to get to all of them when I write it up. So, I decided to share one now.

Perhaps the most vicious feud was over the source of the Nile. After [John Hanning] Speke claimed in 1858 that he had discovered the river's origin, at a lake he christened Victoria, many of the [Royal Geographic] Society's members, led by his former traveling companion [Richard] Burton, refused to believe him. Speke said of Burton, "B is one of those men who can never be wrong, and will never acknowledge an error." In September of 1864, the two men, who had once nursed each other back from death on an expedition, were supposed to square off in a public meeting. The London Times called it a "gladiatorial exhibition." But, as the meeting was about to begin, the gatherers were informed that Speke would not be coming: he had gone hunting the previous day, and was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. "By God, he's killed himself!" Burton reportedly exclaimed, staggering on the stage; later, Burton was seen in tears, reciting his onetime companion's name over and over. Although it was never known for certain if the shooting was intentional, many suspected, like Burton, that the protracted feud had caused the man who had conquered the desert to take his own life. A decade later, Speke's claim to having discovered the Nile's source would be proved correct.


I was going to ask if anyone else wanted a Burton & Speke movie, but it turns out there already is one. And a novel! Brilliant. That story just blows my mind.

PS - This book is totally making me want to become an explorer. Just an FYI.

Roger Ebert: "Books do furnish a life"

Roger Ebert is one of my favorite film critics. I remember being 10 or 11, coming home from my early Saturday morning horseback riding lesson and flipping on Siskel and Ebert. A few years later, I got an a 1987 edition of his movie yearbook from Goodwill. I used to skim through the reviews, mostly of movies I'd never seen or sometimes even heard of, particularly looking for the no-star reviews. Ebert really excels in his skewering of the worst: his review of North is a great example. I often disagree with him, but I love the way he writes.

Ebert is also a lover of books. His recent blog post on his book collection is great. He has 3000 or 4000 books, he estimates. Amazing. Suddenly, even with the boxes of books I have at my parents' house, I feel like a minimalist.

Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

"You never told me all this before," I said, by way of explanation. "You all have divided America into kingdoms, is that right?"

Pam and Chow looked at Eric with some surprise, but he didn't regard them. "Yes," he said simply. "It has been so since vampires came to America. Of course, over the years the system's changed with the population. There were far fewer vampires in America for the first two hundred years, because the trip was so perilous. It was hard to work out the length of the voyage with the available blood supply." Which would have been the crew, of course. "And the Louisiana Purchase made a great difference."

Well, of course it would. I stifled another bout of giggles.

-Club Dead

Let's see, where did we leave off in the adventures of Sookie Stackhouse? She'd just survived a massacre in Dallas, and she was not psyched about Bill revealing his more animalistic, bloodthirsty side there. Also, some craziness went down with a maenad. Club Dead picks up only a few weeks later.* Bill is acting secretive and spending a lot of time on the computer (...), and Sookie is feeling a little put out. Then Bill leaves on a mysterious assignment...and disappears.

Bill is gone for pretty much the whole book, which worked out better than I might have expected when I started the series. I've grown a bit disenchanted with Bill.** Instead, we get the always awesome Eric, who comes to Bon Temps to lay out the situation with Sookie once he realizes Bill's disappearance is serious. This results in Sookie heading up to Jackson, Mississippi, where she plans to use her telepathic abilities to pick up leads on Bill's whereabouts. Sookie, accompanied by capable werewolf Alcide Herveaux*** heads to Club Dead, a local vampire/shapeshifter/werewolf haunt. Naturally, events unfold in a way that leave Sookie triumphant but in pretty rough shape. Again. Poor thing.

I found Club Dead a lot more enjoyable than Living Dead in Dallas. The plot was more engaging, even if Bill's computer project ended up being a bit of a McGuffin. I liked the new characters - particularly Alcide, but I was also intrigued by Russell Edgington, the king of Mississippi. I liked the ambiguity of the ending, which leaves me ready to read the next book.

Up next: I've made it a bit farther in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, but I have to confess I'm finding it a bit of a slog. When I read a sentence like, "Kundera here would say 'dancing,' and actually he's a perfect example of a belletrist whose intermural honesty is both formally unimpeachable and wholly self-serving: a classic postmodern rhetorician," I feel like I'm being poked in the brain. Repeatedly. I'm not calling it quits (yet), but it's slow going.

So, to spell myself from DFW, I got The Lost City of Z by David Grann from the library. In case you've missed the press on this one, it's about a journalist's quest to uncover the fate of a long-lost team of Amazonian explorers and learn about the ancient city they set out to find. Only a few pages in and I'm already finding it pretty riveting.

*I actually wish Charlaine Harris would space out the books in time a bit more, as when you realize that prior events have happened so recently, you feel as though you should still be hearing more about their ramifications. This was better handled here than in Living Dead in Dallas, though.

**Particularly given some of the stuff he gets up to in Club Dead. Bill is getting pretty sketchy, you guys.

***Although it is never stated, you have to imagine that Sookie is loving that moniker, considering she laughed herself silly over the ordinariness of Bill's name.

Hamlet Follow-up

A disappointing review from the New York Times today. I totally agree that Jude Law's Hamlet was energetic, but I guess I did not see it as such a negative. To me, he seemed like someone who had lost interest in controlling his impulses. Someone filled with anger and disgust and accordingly starting to spin out of control. Although I have no doubt that the reviewer is much more knowledgeable about theater than I am, I confess I don't understand his feeling that "It is hard to understand the distress of Hamlet’s friends and family when he feigns madness, since the prince, in this case, appears to be as he always was: sarcastic, contemptuous, quick-witted and mad only in the sense of being really, really angry." Really? I didn't get that at all. While watching the play, I distinctly remember thinking that he must have been so different prior to his father's death/mother's remarriage. He seemed pretty far gone to me*. Again, though, at this point Jude Law is my definitive Hamlet, so perhaps I will gain more insight after seeing another actor's interpretation.

Also, what is up with the snide comments about the "Pradaesque" wardrobe? I liked the simplicity of the costumes and, as I mentioned in my previous post, the cool tones. Alas.

On a more positive note, here's a story from NPR with lots of video clips. Not a review proper, but right now I'm a bit Hamlet-obsessed, and I like to have something to balance the rain on my parade that is the Times review. Still curious to see what The New Yorker says.

*And isn't the idea that the madness is feigned, as the review suggests, pretty ambiguous? I thought one could lean either way: this page from the RSC gives some input on how various actors have interpreted it (note the distinction between the decision of this particular company - feigned madness - and the critiques of different Hamlets). My impression is that just because Hamlet has lucid moments and at times is playing up the madness, it doesn't mean he has it together. However, it's safe to say that I'm probably a bit out of my depth.

Adaptation: Jude Law in Hamlet

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing,
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to her,
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have?

-Hamlet, Act II scene 2

I am a lucky girl indeed. On Saturday I was fortunate enough to score a ticket to the latest Broadway production of Hamlet, starring Jude Law. Before I get down to the particulars of my impressions, a little background.

On Hamlet: I read Hamlet my junior year of high school, for fun (I think we've established that that's how I roll). I remember it quite specifically because I tried to base an essay on it before having finished reading. Needless to say, my interpretation was slightly...off. The only film adaptation I'm sure I've seen in its entirety is the Ethan Hawke one, though I've seen substantial parts of both the Kenneth Branagh and Mel Gibson versions. I also thoroughly enjoyed the Canadian tv show Slings & Arrows*, the first season of which revolves around a production of Hamlet. I'd never seen Hamlet, or indeed any other Shakespearean play, on stage prior to Saturday. It is my favorite of his plays.

On Jude Law: I discovered Jude Law about the same time I discovered Hamlet, to the best of my recollection. It may not surprise you that the same girl who was reading Hamlet for fun would also come away from Blockbuster having rented Wilde, a biopic of author and legendary wit Oscar Wilde. Jude Law costarred as Wilde's petulant young lover, Bosie. He made enough of an impression that I remembered him when renting Gattaca, in which he most ably broke my heart. By the time The Talented Mr. Ripley was released, my admiration of him was well known among my friends. My affections cooled as his tabloid image overtook his work, although I continued to see many of his films. Yes, I saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. In the theater. What of it?

To make a long story short, I am far from being unbiased.

I loved it.

Where to begin? At the beginning, perhaps, when, prior to the start proper of the play, Hamlet emerges for a moment, broods, and retreats back into the wings. I was already drawn in by the time the soldiers emerged and hunkered down to wait for the ghost. How can you resist a play with a ghost? I mean, really.

Ghost aside, it's really amazing how alive this play feels. It was written over 400 years ago, and has been adapted innumerable times. How many Hamlets have there been? I think in watching it, I was keenly aware of how many choices had been made, from direction to acting to scenery, costume, and lighting. Shakespeare gives one a lot of leeway, in terms of stage directions.

The lighting, to pick one of many options. Amazing. I mean, I'm going to be honest, lighting isn't usually the first thing I notice. I couldn't help but observe, though, the way the light streamed across the stage sometimes, like sunlight. Or how a cooler light made Hamlet look quite pale as he drew his last breaths in the final act. I also loved the wintry gray and blue palette of the wardrobe. And the set - wow. Majestic. The space was used in very inventive ways - particularly the one large door upstage, which could be opened to reveal greater depth - allowing, among other things, the beautiful, snowy (yes, snowy) "To be or not to be" soliloquy (You can see the snow in the photo above, in which Hamlet is trying to educate Ophelia on nunneries, and especially on the virtues of getting to them). I also thought the reversal of expectations during the closet scene (putting the eavesdropping Polonius downstage, thus having the audience share his view of Gertrude and Hamlet behind a gauzy curtain) was inspired.

Onto the actors! Aside from Jude (yes, we're on a first name basis), the cast is largely unknown to an American audience. However, cross-referencing my Playbill and IMDb, I discovered that I'd seen quite a few of them before on British tv: the cast features of alums of Doctor Who, Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, and even Lost in Austen (Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who plays Ophelia, was Amanda Price's roommate). I thought the cast was solid overall, with Ron Cook (Polonius) as a particular standout. Reading a few British reviews, I noticed there was some criticism that Claudius (Kevin R. McNally) was not menacing enough - and indeed I didn't find him particularly menacing, but I thought his choices were valid. I think I would need to see another adaptation to make a better assessment.

Last, but not least, the melancholy Dane himself. What a task an actor tackling Hamlet faces. I can't even imagine memorizing the lines, much less imbuing them with emotion - especially given the rigorous demands of this play. Jude Law does an amazing job. He's really quite dazzling. He provoked the audience to laughter many times - scuttling like a crab, to name one memorable example. I wouldn't have thought that I would laugh so many times during one of the great tragedies.

Then there are those other moments, when he is overcome with grief and flirting with self-slaughter, as he calls it in the first act. I chose the quotation from Act II, in which Hamlet is reflecting on the speech of one of the players, quite purposefully - Jude does that "broken voice" beautifully. His voice is often thick with emotion, perhaps at no point more notably than when the ghost appears in the closet scene (shortly after he has killed Polonius). There is a moment in which his mother, who cannot see the ghost, stands shoulder-to-shoulder with him. This vision of his parents reunited, one living and one dead, completely overwhelms Hamlet. It's really quite stunning.

An additional note: I swear that, during the "To be or not to be" speech, I couldn't hear the second "to be." I have to assume I misheard, although I thought I was listening quite keenly. None of the (British) reviews have mentioned a revision, and surely someone would make note of a revision like that (American reviews will be out later this week, I assume, as the play officially opens on the 6th). It made an impression, though, however erroneously formed on my part. There is a fantastic video that shows quite a few snippets of the play as well as interviews with Jude and director Michael Grandage. His phrasing in the "To be or not to be" there is totally different from how I recall it. (I heard "To be...or...not.") Bizarre, I know.

I'm not going to lie, I'd love to go again, and to hear that speech another time is just a small part of it. The applause when the curtain fell was thunderous and the ovation was immediate, so clearly I was not alone in my appreciation. On my way out, I heard a couple of women complain about the blocking - not in my wheelhouse at all, but if that's something you're aware of, I suppose there could be objections of some sort? It didn't mar my experience, to be sure. I am terribly curious to read the New York reviews. Amazingly, this is perhaps the most timely post I have ever written; to actually review something at the same time it is being professionally reviewed. I assume the professionals will have a slightly more balanced ratio of erudite criticism to gushing about Jude Law. I hope there's a little gushing, though. If the man hasn't earned a Tony nomination, then clearly I lack all capacity to evaluate theater. Which may be. Ha.

One last thought: David Tennant (of Doctor Who fame) also played Hamlet quite recently, in a production that featured Patrick Stewart as Claudius. Thankfully someone at the BBC had the presence of mind to film it, and it will be aired on PBS this coming spring. I think David Tennant is just as talented as Jude, but they are very different actors, and I'm keen to see his interpretation.

*I would be terribly remiss if my post did not contain a link to the first season's theme song, "Cheer Up, Hamlet."

Land of Lincoln by Andrew Ferguson

For a century or more, generations of Americans were taught to be like Lincoln - forbearing, kind, principled, resolute - but what we've really wanted is for Lincoln to be like us, and this has never been truer than the present day. Lincoln hasn't been forgotten, but he's shrunk. From the enormous figure of the past he's been reduced to a hobbyist's eccentricity, a charming obsession shared by a self-selected subculture, like quilting or Irish step dancing. He has been detached from the national patrimony, if we can be said to have a national patrimony any longer. He is no longer our common possession. That earlier Lincoln, that large Lincoln, seems to be slipping away, a misty figure, incapable of rousing a reaction from anyone but buffs.

Or that's what I had assumed, anyway. Then one wintry morning a while back I fetched the local paper from the front stoop and saw a headline: "Lincoln Statue Stirs Outrage in Richmond."

-Land of Lincoln

On an April evening 144 years ago, Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre. He had been enjoying a comedy called Our American Cousin. Booth, an accomplished actor who knew the play well, purposely timed his shot to a laugh line. The wound was not immediately fatal. As Booth jumped down to the stage (allegedly shouting Sic semper tyrannis - Thus always to tyrants) and made his escape, people gathered to tend to their fallen leader. He was eventually moved to the boardinghouse across the street, where the bed in which he lay was far too small for him, as most beds of that time would have been. The doctors in attendance knew there was no hope, but nevertheless continued to try to relieve his pain (particularly the swelling). Lincoln died the next morning.

It was a climatic moment in history, seemingly more appropriate to Shakespearean drama than American politics (no accident, given Booth's career). And yet, along with the Civil War itself, it happened quite a long time ago. People generally seem to remember Lincoln fondly, which is undoubtedly tied to his martyrdom in death. Many people don't think of Lincoln at all, I would imagine. So it may come as a surprise that he has the ability to rile some up.

Andrew Ferguson discovered as much when he picked up the newspaper mentioned above, and later traveled to Richmond to talk to the people protesting the placement of a Lincoln statue in their city. People had placards ("Jefferson Davis Was Our President"). They sang "Dixie" - a song that Lincoln enjoyed very much, actually. No mention as to whether or not they knew that. Lincoln may have died well over 100 years ago, but the memory of his actions as president was still fresh to these protestors.

I could spend an entire review just on that first chapter of the book. Like Ferguson himself, I'm a bit of a Lincoln buff. I'm far from an expert, but he's someone I generally enjoy reading about*. I wrote the paragraph on Lincoln's death from memory (though I did have to double-check that it was Ford's Theatre and not Ford's Theater). In college, I took an entire class on the Civil War and it was hands-down my favorite class. A book on Lincoln in modern life is right up my alley, but I daresay it's an entertaining read for anyone who enjoys learning about different parts of American society.

Ferguson discovers that Lincoln means many things to many people. Even the buffs express their love differently - the collectors, the scholars, the impersonators (they call themselves presenters). He travels through the Midwest, visiting many sites that were meaningful in Lincoln's early life, and tries to understand Lincoln in how he is interpreted at each place. He tries to rediscover the Lincoln he loved as a boy, and who is more unknowable than ever.

Although I admire Lincoln greatly, I do feel in some way for the skeptics, who are chagrined at what they perceive as hero-worship of a man who was undoubtedly controversial while in office. I feel like it's common knowledge at this point that it's incredibly oversimplified to say that anyone was fighting for or against slavery exclusively during the Civil War. Perhaps I'm wrong, and everyone thinks that The Great Emancipator had just been looking for an opportunity to free the slaves. That every Union man was an abolitionist and every Confederate was a slave owner. I hope that we as a country know that things were not nearly so clear cut. Books like Ferguson's remind me of that famous quotation by William Faulkner: "The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past."

Up next: I've started Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace, but as it's bit dense, I wouldn't be surprised if I took a break to read the 3rd Sookie Stackhouse book.

*Further reading:

Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. Similar to Ferguson's book, but broader in scope. Horwitz examines the way the Civil War is still being fought today, from Confederate flag controversies to reenactments. I loved this book when I read it a few years ago.

Manhunt by James Swanson. The definitive book that charts the immediate aftermath of the Lincoln assassination. I felt like it really pulled me into the period - like an old-time episode of 24.

The March by E.L. Doctorow. A beautifully imagined fictionalization of Sherman's march through Georgia.

March by Geraldine Brooks. Not to be confused with Doctorow's book, March tells the story of the patriarch from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and what he endures before coming home to his family. It won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize.