I haven't been able to get to it until now. As I noted before in the earlier posting, I like Shaw. He seems harmless enough to me in 2017, but that obviously cannot be true, since all authors worth reading must be dangerous in some way. Arms and the Man spoofs romanticism, or the romantic mindset, but in a fun rather than seething or contemptuous way, I think. Here is a note I wrote about it in 2001, Lincoln's birthday to be precise, which was a later reading after my initial one, dated March 5, 1999:
--Much more impressed with the play the second time around, the conflict between ideality and "reality" is quite clear really, I'm not sure why I wasn't "struck" by it before. I think it seems apparent that Shaw is skeptical of the idealists, though I think he understands the need for these feelings--in his society I believe he felt their aims--and people's energies--were often misplaced.--
That doesn't say much. One ought to be able to say something intelligent about a work one likes--the point of the exercise is otherwise lost. I like that all of the characters in this, as well as in other Shaw plays, are willful and individualized protagonists whose personas impose upon each other (with the possible exception of the servile Nicola, who is however so aggressively dedicated to his servility that it achieves a kind of force in itself).
My edition is a Penguin paperback proclaiming itself "the Definitive Text". It contains just the single play though it seems to belong to a broader set of "The Penguin Shaw". The last copyright date is 1958, but it looks to be of a much later date than that, 80s or even possibly early 90s. The publisher's price was $3.50. Probably not the 90s then. I noted that I bought it in Concord. The used book store we used to have in town must still have been open then, though it did not last much longer.
This is my edition, but not my book. Someday soon I hope to have the technological capacity to take and post my own photos again.
A few favorite quotes to mark the occasion:
RAINA: ...But they don't know that it was in this house you took refuge. If Sergius knew, he would challenge you and kill you in a duel.
BLUNTSCHLI: Bless me! then don't tell him.
SERGIUS: You have deceived me. You are my rival. I brook no rivals. At six o'clock I shall be in the drilling-ground on the Klissoura Road, alone, on horseback, with my sabre. Do you understand?
BLUNTSCHLI: ...Oh, thank you: that's a cavalry man's proposal. I'm in the artillery; and I have the choice of weapons. If I go, I shall take a machine gun.
PETKOFF: We should be most happy, Bluntschli, if it were only a question of your position; but hang it, you know, Raina is accustomed to a very comfortable establishment. Sergius keeps twenty horses.
BLUNTSCHLI: But who wants twenty horses? We're not going to keep a circus.
Bluntschli is obviously, like Caesar in Caesar and Cleopatra, the Shavian alter ego in this play.
This is going to be a hurried report, as I want to post before I leave on a trip so I can take my next book with me. If, unlikely though it is, I have some time with the computer one evening while I am on that trip, I may write a supplement to this post.
The first appearance of Shaw in the program. He will appear many more times, five by my reckoning, which is not as many as Eugene O'Neill will have, but I think it safely puts him ahead of every other playwright besides Shakespeare.
As I grow older I find Shaw more amusing. His plays tend to follow similar patterns, mostly arranged around puncturing bourgeois pieties and other aspects of the collective mentality of those classes, but he is quite funny and his writing is clear and fairly unique, to me, I don't think anyone else really writes like him (maybe Wilde has some similarities) or they would be just as celebrated.
I read this back in March, 1999, both before I had children and when I was a very earnest note-taker and marker up of books in the full expectation of developing into a literary man myself. I am not going to claim that my notes revealed any accurate insights, but I am astounded by how much I noticed, or tried to notice and how attentive I was to word choices and trying to articulate the intent of gestures and actions...
OK, I am not going to be able to finish this tonight. There will be a supplement forthcoming with the rest of the post. This is kind of cheating on my self-imposed rules, but I don't want to put off starting the next book for almost two weeks....
The Challenge
1. Iron Man 3 (movie)...........................................................................................................3,663
2. Kate Andersen Brower--The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House...1,955
3. Kelly Link--Get in Trouble..................................................................................................125
4. Sarah Morgan Dawson--A Confederate Girl's Diary............................................................80
5. Ocean Vuong--Night Sky With Exit Wounds.........................................................................51
6. Sarah Bradford--Lucretia Borgia..........................................................................................50
7. Natalie Diaz--When My Brother Was an Aztec.....................................................................37
8. Flash Fiction Forward (eds. Thomas and Shepard)..............................................................28
9. Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebleed Wristlet (eds. Link and Grant)........................................4
10. Camille Rankine--Incorrect Merciful Impulses.....................................................................3
11. Salil Tripathi--The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and its..............3
12. Danez Smith--Insert Boy........................................................................................................2
13. Ron Davis--Forbidden Fruit: Indecent Relations..................................................................1
14. Xao Seffcheque--Ja-Nein-Viellicht Kommt Sehr Gut (record)...............................................0
15. Solmaz Sharif--Look...............................................................................................................0
16. Juan Martinez--Best Worst American.....................................................................................0
Round of 16
#1 Iron Man 3 over #16 Martinez
No library recognition for Martinez's book which did just come out a month ago.
#15 Sharif over #2 Brower
A somewhat stunning upset. Sharif's short poetry book is actually at my library. Incredible.
#3 Link over #14 Seffcheque
Seffcheque is undoubtedly an obscure figure, especially in the English-speaking world, but what was he all about?
According to 3 of the 11 comments on this video, this song was big in Montreal in the early 80s.
#4 Dawson over #13 Davis
#5 Vuong over #12 Smith
#6 Bradford over #11 Tripathi
#7 Diaz over #10 Rankine
#8 Flash Fiction, etc over #9 Lady Churchill's, etc
In all of these instances the winning book had received the imprimatur of having been acquired by a library--in numerous instances just one--while the loser had not.
Round of 8
#15 Sharif over #2 Iron Man 3
#8 Flash Fiction over #3 Link
#7 Diaz over #4 Dawson
#5 Vuong over #6 Bradford
I had really wanted to have a battle of the Sarahs, but it wasn't meant to be.
Final Four
#15 Sharif over #4 Vuong
Vuong's poetry offering is even shorter than Sharif's, but he is only available in Dover, while Sharif
has been embraced by four libraries, including my own public one.
#7 Diaz over #8 Flash Fiction
Championship
#15 Sharif over #7 Diaz
Diaz's book was a shorty too, but was only available in one college library in-state (Southern New Hampshire University).
This Challenge was notable for the number of diverse authors and modern books, what everyone is counting on to be the future of literature. I suspect that if Shaw were around today, he would be something of a multiculturalist champion, at the snooty upper end of the scale anyway. It seems to me that if someone (the new person rising from a traditional outgroup) had the stuff to pierce urbanely through conventionalities and other nonsense, he (Shaw) respected them well enough, though not everyone saw him in such an enlightened light.
(The italicized notes I have added to the post because the last sentence made no sense to me for several minutes when I read over it again. Also the real Shaw in his time probably would have been no more of a multiculturalist than the general run of his kind, though if raised in ours he might have been adaptable. I do believe he had had to have some respect for (other) iconoclasts, provided they were clever.)
