John Gay--The Beggar's Opera (1728)

The last of the set of four consecutive plays at this part of the list, and a bookend with its fellow early 18th century English play (The Beaux' Stratagem) around the two Hauptmann dramas. The Beggar's Opera is one of the all time biggest hits in the long and illustrious history of the English stage, veritably the Cats of its century. The Modern Library collection of Twelve Famous Plays of the Restoration and Eighteenth Centuries in which I read it includes 20 pages of musical scores covering 68 "airs". I was not quite organized enough to seek out and have the songs to hand ready to play when they came up in the reading, which I assume can be done via the internet, but as literature alone it is quite funny, moreso than I remember from the time I read it many years ago, and much moreso than The Threepenny Opera, which of course is the Weimar era update of the story. The appeal of this was much clearer to me on this occasion. Evidently I was less distracted and I did read it at a leisurely, even languid pace (it is very short) and was somehow more open to the cleverness and wit that is in it.

Gay is an unusual figure in English literature, which does not have a lot of similar one-hit wonders where the one hit is as big and central to the character of its era as his is. Since I first came across it I've always been more amused than I should be by the joke concerning Gay and his producer Mr. Rich, that the success of the play "made Gay rich and Rich gay." Gay only lived to enjoy this wealth for four years, dying at age 47. I cannot find the cause of his death in a quick internet search, though one article claims that he lost most of his money in bad South Sea investments which hastened the decline in his health. If I were at home I would check my copy of the Lives of the Poets, in which I think he has an entry, to see if Johnson says anything about it. Internet explanations of this play note that the depredations exhibited by the lower ranks of the society in it were intended to serve as a mirror for the more upscale audience of the day, which being fairly well-read in the literature of this time I am sure I took as assumed. Other explanations connect the various characters with famous, or once-famous, real life criminals or prominent British politicians of the period, which is not something I would have picked up on.


Some favorite quotations. A brief selection:


Act I, Scene IX: "A Fox may steal your Hens, Sir/A Whore your Health and Pence, Sir/Your Daughters rob your Chest, Sir/Your Wife may steal your Rest, Sir/A Thief your Goods and Plate.
But this is all but picking/With Rest, Pence, Chest and Chicken/It ever was decreed, Sir/If Lawyer's Hand is fee'd, Sir/He steals your whole Estate."


"The Lawyers are bitter enemies to those in our Way. They don't care that any Body should get a Clandestine Livelihood but themselves."


I, X: "And how do you propose to live, Child?" "Like other Women, Sir, upon the Industry of my Husband." "What, is the Wench turn'd fool? A Highwayman's Wife, like a Soldier's, hath as little of his Pay, as of his Company."

I, XIII MacHeath: "Is there any Power, any Force that could tear me from thee? You might sooner tear a Pension out of the Hands of a Courtier, a Fee from a Lawyer, a pretty Woman from a Looking-glass, or any Woman from Quadrille.--But to tear me from thee is impossible!"


III, III Filch: "One had need have the Constitution of a Horse to go through the Business.--Since the favourite Child-getter was disabled by a Mis-hap, I have pick'd up a little Money by helping the Ladies to Pregnancy against their being call'd down to Sentence.--But if a Man cannot get an honest Livelyhood any easier way, I am sure, 'tis what I can't undertake for another Session."


I, VI "Fill it up.--I take as large Draughts of Liquor, as I did of Love.--I hate a Flincher in either."


MacHeath is one of the sexiest characters in terms of raw animal appeal and vigor in the history of English literature. In the course of this brief play alone he is revealed to have impregnated 5 women, and lain with 2 others. One of his lovers, the hormonally overwhelmed Lucy Lockit, attempts to poison her identified rival Polly Peachum. Her reminiscence of their love is titillating for such as will never be thought of in such terms: "But his Kiss was so sweet, and so closely he prest/That I languish'd and pin'd till I granted the rest."


Only nine years until the 300th anniversary. If I were more organized and more in control of my time and finances I might think it worthwhile to make the trip to England to catch a commemorative performance--doubtless there will be one somewhere, I would think. But it is unlikely I will be set up well enough to do this even by 2028.




       




Challenge


1. Richard Powers--The Overstory...................................................455
2. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (movie).......402
3. Kate Atkinson--Transcription......................................................305
4. Robert Heinlein--Podkayne of Mars............................................216
5. Mat Johnson--Loving Day............................................................158
6. Sally Rooney--Conversations With Friends.................................127
7. Terese Marie Mailhot--Heart Berries...........................................106
8. Lisa Miller--The Spiritual Child.....................................................80
9. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah--Friday Black..................................57
10. Etaf Rum--A Woman is No Man...................................................28
11. Elizabeth McCracken--Bowlaway.................................................26
12. Walter Scott--Heart of Midlothian................................................19
13. Wilkie Collins--Hide and Seek.......................................................9
14. Judith Thurman--Cleopatra's Nose.................................................8
15. George Meredith--Celt & Saxon.....................................................6
16. Eric Puchner--Last Day on Earth....................................................5


This looks to be one of our better tournaments. Enough entries were produced that qualification was necessary, albeit at a fairly low level. Some big names mixing it up with modern novels.


Round of 16.


#16 Puchner over #1 Powers


I remember 15 or 20 years ago Richard Powers being promoted as a genius, or at least a budding genius, in the Pynchon-David Foster Wallace vein. His star seems to have faded a little in the intervening years, or else I just don't follow the literary reviews, or whatever has taken the place of them, as closely these days. His #1 seeded book is over 500 pages, and the Puchner book is just 226 and is not clearly bad, so applying my usual metrics he has to get the victory.


#15 Meredith over #2 Dear Zachary


#3 Atkinson over #14 Thurman


I don't know anything about either of these writers. Since they are similar in length I will award Atkinson the win as the higher seed.


#4 Heinlein over #13 Collins


Collins' Moonstone is on the IWE list and as one of that select group of authors generally would have priority when one of his other books made the contest. But Heinlein, the postwar sci-fi writer beloved by high IQ internet commentators (whose Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a former Challenge winner that I found myself unable to get through) has an upset to play.


#12 Scott over #5 Johnson


Johnson has no such talisman against IWE certification, and goes down to Sir Walter Scott.


#6 Rooney over #11 McCracken


Similar to the 3-14 contest a battle of women authors with books of similar length goes to the higher seed.


#7 Mailhot over #10 Rum


A battle of multicultural writers, apparently. Mailhot would appear to be an American Indian while Rum is identified as a Palestinian-American. At 142 thin pages, Mailhot is going to be tough to beat on length.


#9 Adjei-Brenyah over #8 Miller


Quite a contrast in names in this contest between the emergent and exciting and the stale and fading. Adjei-Brenyah's collection of stories clocks in at under 200 pages, shorter enough than its opponent to guarantee the win. The library catalogue lists it under the category of "Fiction--Racism" so I'm going to guess that the author is black.

Elite 8


#16 Puchner over #3 Atkinson


Puchner prevails again by virtue of his brevity.


#4 Heinlein over #15 Meredith


Heinlein pulls out another upset to get by Meredith, who has no less than three novels on the IWE list. I am rather terrified of his eventual approach on the list, since from what I can make out of his work, he is something like a mid-Victorian proto-Henry James kind of writer, only worse. We'll have plenty of occasion to deal with him without delving into his lesser works.


#12 Scott over #6 Rooney


Scott's immunity carries him through.


#7 Mailhot over #9 Adjei-Brenyah


Adjei-Brenyah's book was short enough to have a chance, but in these cases where what I know of the books and authors is about identical, the higher seed wins.


Final 4


#4 Heinlein over #16 Puchner


Heinlein, whose book is pretty short, is able to prevail here on his own.


#12 Scott over #7 Mailhot


The honored Scott, with no upsets to bar him, can cruise unopposed into the final.


Championship


#12 Scott over #4 Heinlein


Midlothian is about 566 pages long, and I was tempted to give Heinlein the victory in the final, but I decided to give it to Scott, whom I have never read, in a thrilling championship between two distinguished figures.

Gerhart Hauptmann--Before Dawn (1889)

So it did not take long to get to another Hauptmann play--apart from Shakespeare with his series of Henry and Richard-titled plays, I believe this is the only time we get standalone works back to back by the same author in the entire IWE list. This was Hauptmann's debut, it premiered when he was 27, which is around the typical age when most of these big time writers achieved their first breakthroughs into the public consciousness. I believed myself to have enjoyed reading it more than The Beaver Coat, though it was a more sprawling, less-tightly constructed play. It was also however less opaque, more indulgent of emotion, and more concerned with the travails of younger people, which in general I guess interest me more even now unless the older protagonist is extremely interesting or amusing. When reading these things, especially if I am under the impression that they are supposed to be good, I mostly concern myself with seeking and trying to understand wherein the quality lies, and do not always (though not never either) trust myself to identify the flaws and failures in such works and declare them as such. I had not read the IWE's introduction to this before reading it and was therefore given something of a jolt when I looked it up after finishing it:

"The reception of Hauptmann's first produced play was 'tumultuous', according to Lewisohn; literary historians agree that it was 'sensational'. Today the play reads like an adolescent effort to be impressive by being shockingly different. It protests a bit too much the grievances of labor, the perils of alcohol, and the righteousness of the Icarians (one of a spate of Utopian colonies in America during the mid-19th century). But it was written by Hauptmann and Hauptmann could already write."


Obviously the IWE editor is revealing some of his own biases here, but his criticisms are all, or mostly, things that did mildly occur to me in the course of reading the play, but that I let pass, and did not put together at all to inform my view of the whole. It was all a little over the top, but Hauptmann was something of a genius, and a German genius to boot, so it must have been in the service of a much grander point. Such was my thought process anyway. I do wonder why the IWE people included this on the program while leaving off The Weavers, which today at least seems to be considered Hauptmann's best and most important play (and also, as it is about textile workers made obsolete by industrial technology, topical). I am pretty sure we are done with him altogether after this.


After being too uncertain of my steps to make any notes on The Beaver Coat, I took a few this time.


Dr. Schimmelpfennig, in Act V, perhaps an early example of what continues to be a defining theme of our own age:


"...humankind is in agony and our sort with our narcotics manage to make things more tolerable."


Both the drunken, newly prosperous peasant woman Frau Krause and the anti-establishment Loth character take swipes at Goethe and Schiller, traditionally thought of by me as the unassailable quasi-divinities of German literature. "Schiller an' Goethe (wildly mispronouncing these names)--a couple of useless ninnies if there ever were away," opined the lady, while later on Loth proclaims to the somewhat dim but nice and earthily alluring farmer's daughter that Werther is "a stupid book...it's a book for weak people." With regard to Zola and Ibsen (whom I said Hauptmann reminded me of in the last post), Loth says "They are not writers but necessary evils...I'm not sick, and what Zola and Ibsen offer is medicine."


The insistent belief in the hereditary nature of alcoholism struck me as strange, not because there is not any truth to it, but because it was presented as an inevitable doom for the inheritor. Thinking back to the introduction, the postwar period out of which this list originated was probably the time, certainly in recent history, when skepticism about anti-alcohol crusaders was at its height, the memory of Prohibition being well within the lifetimes of many adults. I do see signs that these kinds of attitudes may be returning, in tandem with the increase as a percentage of the population of people who come from cultures with strong biases or even prohibitions against drinking.

I thought this was leading to a revelation of some kind of rape which word I cannot make out now (paternal?), incest, or secret pregnancies, and the IWE summary does indicate that we are to understand that Helene was "seduced" by her brother-in-law, but the translation I have (in a 1963 Penguin paperback published in England only of "Three German Plays", including The Threepenny Opera and Woyzeck by Georg Buchner) is unclear to me on this point where Dr Schimmelpfennig says that "Things aren't so far gone that he has actually ruined her, but he has certainly ruined her name by now." I could look up the original online if I wanted to and see if I could make more sense of that statement. I don't know German particularly well, but I know it somewhat, and I had gotten to a point in my 20s where I could read some of Kafka's stories only having to look up a handful of words on the page. But I don't have time to do that now. I barely have any time even to read these books.


Hauptmann died in 1946 at the age of 83, remaining in Germany throughout the Nazi period, so I suppose it is worth looking into how he spent those years. He of course would have been an old man then, and in the introduction to the book in which The Beaver Coat was included, it was claimed that he was "too old" to have relocated to another country. According to Wikipedia he signed a loyalty oath of the German Academy of Literature and applied for membership in the Nazi party (and was rejected). This was not mentioned in the other book. Film versions were made, albeit allegedly heavily censored, of the two plays I have written about here. I put a clip from The Beaver Coat on that post and will see if I can find one for this one. He had a novel rejected for publication during the war on the grounds that it depicted a black character, though a 17 volume edition of his works was printed in 1942 and a tetralogy of novels in 1944, which would seem to indicate that he was in fairly good stead with the regime. He was in Dresden during the firebombing of that city, when he was past 80, and wrote that "I stand at the end of my life and envy my dead comrades, who were spared this experience", which I can certainly believe was a sincere statement. This was noted in the 1950 introduction. He lived in Silesia, the southeastern part of Germany that was incorporated into Poland at the end of World War II. In May of 1946, he was informed that all Germans were to be expelled from Poland, without exception. At this point, he finally became very sick and died on June 6, 1946, before being expelled. The 1950 essay (by a German--I don't have that book in front of me so I cannot remember whether he was personally acquainted with Hauptmann himself) referenced some writings published after the war that were anti-Nazis and everything that happened during these last years, though Wikipedia doesn't list or refer to them. On the whole, one could get the idea that Hauptmann would not have missed much if he had died at age 70, though I don't know whether there is considered to be anything of great value in his later writings. While not as infamous perhaps as Knut Hamsun or Marshal Petain in his end of life Nazi associations, he doesn't appear to have covered himself in much glory, either. Not that I would have either, most likely, if I had been there, but everyone who found himself in that situation is held accountable to some degree, especially if he was a prominent figure such as Hauptmann certainly was.

The Challenge


This draw produced a rather wild Challenge. Matchups will be decisive
.
1. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass...............................................................3,116
2. Howard Zinn--A People's History of the United States..............................................3,019
3. Alice Hoffman--The Marriage of Opposites...............................................................2,115
4. Alice Hoffman--The Dovekeepers: A Novel................................................................1,969
5. Karyl McBride--Will I Ever Be Good Enough............................................................1,042
6. Charles Dickens--Little Dorrit........................................................................................328
7. Michael C. Ruppert--Crossing the Rubicon....................................................................281
8. Karl Rove--Courage & Consequence.............................................................................255
9. Roger Kerin--Marketing, 12th Edition............................................................................177
10. Dr. Joanna McMillan--Get Lean, Stay Lean.....................................................................2
11. Marx & Engels--Collected Works, Vol. 38: Letters 1844-51............................................1
12. Highlights: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Kimmel, Season 4 (TV Show)................1
13. Alcoholism: Analysis of a Worldwide Problem (ed. Golding)...........................................0
14. Richard Chizmar--The Girl on the Porch..........................................................................0
15. Susan Chair Imbarro (?)--Declarations of Independency..................................................0


1st Round


Frederick Douglass gets to sit this one out with a much-coveted bye.


#2 Zinn over # 15 Imbarro
#3 Hoffman over #14 Chizmar
#4 Hoffman over #13 Alcoholism
#5 McBride over #12 Kimmel
#6 Dickens over #11 Marx/Engels


Little Dorrit is not one of the nine Dickens books selected for the IWE list, so it is eligible for the Challenge.


#7 Ruppert over #10 McMillan
#9 Kerin over #8 Rove


Kerin is a textbook in a subject I have a limited interest in studying, but he has an upset card to play.


Round of 8
#9 Kerin over #1 Douglass


Kerin had an allotment of 2 upsets in this tournament.


#2 Zinn over #7 Ruppert


A battle of 600+ page books. My library has Zinn, it does not have Ruppert, which is the decisive factor in the contest.


#3 Hoffman over #6 Dickens


Dickens too falls victim to an upset.


#4 Hoffman over #5 McBride


A mild upset. McBride was a shorter book, but Hoffman had upset in hand for this book too.


Final 4
#2 Zinn over #9 Kerin
#3 Hoffman over #4 Hoffman


Championship
#3 Hoffman over #2 Zinn


This Hoffman, whom I've never heard of, appears to be an extremely popular writer of some approximately mid-list fiction. I have dipped into Zinn before and I cannot say that I am a fan. His approach struck me as disingenuous and not respectful of any accomplishment in our national history that could not be attributed to some oppressed party resisting or overcoming the rapacity of the devils making up the dominant elements of society. Perhaps there are truths in his version of events, and if you are familiar with the opposing narratives perhaps there is good to be gotten out of reading Zinn, though I am not wholly persuaded of this. If he is your introduction to or main lens through which to understand American history, I feel sorry for you.

Author List Volume XVII

Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916) Quo Vadis (1895) Born: Henryk Sienkiewicz Museum, 21-480 Okrzeja, Wola Okrzejska, Poland. Buried: St John's Cathedral, Warsaw, Poland. Museum, al. Lipowa 24, Oblegorek, Poland. Henryk Sienkiewicz Literary Works Museum, Stary Rynek 84, Poznan, Poland. Monument, Aleja Sienkieiwicza, Slupsk, Poland. College: Warsaw


Lloyd Douglas (1877-1951) Born: Columbia City, Indiana. Buried: Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, Los Angeles, California. College: Wittenberg


Nero (37-68) Born: Anzio, Lazio, Italy. Buried: Mausoleum of the Domitii Ahenobarbi, Pincian Hill, Flaminio, Rome, Lazio, Italy. Domus Aurea, Colosseo, Rome, Lazio, Italy.


Petronius Arbiter (27-66) Born: Marseille. Provence-Alpes-Cote-d'Azur, France.


Daphne Du Maurier (1907-1989) Rebecca (1938) Born: 24 Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park, London, England. Buried: Ashes scattered, Cliffs at Fowey, Kilmarth, Cornwall, England. Jamaica Inn Restaurant, Bolventor, Cornwall, England.


Joan Fontaine (1917-2013) Born: Tokyo, Japan. Buried: Unknown.

 

Stephen Crane (1871-1900) The Red Badge of Courage (1895) Born: 14 Mulberry Place, Newark, New Jersey (*****9-28-1999*****) Buried: Evergreen Cemetery, Hillside, New Jersey (*****6-25-1998*****) Stephen Crane House, 508 4th Avenue, Asbury Park, New Jersey. College: Lafayette, Syracuse.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) Remembrance of Things Past (1913-27) Born: 96 Rue Fontaine, Auteuil, 16eme, Paris, France. Buried: Cimitiere du Pere Lachaise, 20eme, Paris, France. Musee Marcel Proust, 6 Rue du Dr Proust, Illiers-Combray, Orleanais, France. Promenade Marcel Proust, Cabourg, Normandy, France.

Plato (427 B.C.-347 B.C.) The Republic (390 B.C.) Born: Plato's Academy Museum, Alkmeonos 1, Athens, Attica, Greece.

Socrates (470 B.C.-399 B.C.) Born: Deme Alopece, Athens, Attica, Greece.  Ancient Agora of Athens, 24 Adrianou, Athens, Attica, Greece. "Death of Socrates", Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York. Prison of Socrates, near Agora, Athens, Attica, Greece.

Richard II (England) (1367-1400) Born: Archbishop's Palace, Bordeaux, Guyenne and Gascony, France. Buried: Westminster Abbey, Westminster, London, England.

John of Gaunt (1340-1399) Born: Ghent, Belgium. Buried: St Paul's Cathedral, City, London, England. Ye Olde John of Gaunt (pub), 53 Market Street, Lancaster, Lancashire, England. John O'Gaunt (restaurant), 21 Bridge Street, Hungerford, Berkshire, England. John O' Gaunt Inn, 30 High Street, Sutton, Sandy, Bedfordshire, England.

Richard III (England) (1452-1485) Born: Fotheringay Castle, Northamptonshire, England. Buried: Leicester Cathedral, Leicester, Leicestershire, England. King Richard III Visitor Centre, 4A St. Martins, Leicester, Leicestershire, England.  Richard III Experience at Monk Bar, 6 Goodramgate, York, Yorkshire, England.

Henry VII (England) (1457-1509) Born: Pembroke Castle, Pembroke, Wales. Buried: Henry VII Chapel, Westminster Abbey, Westminster, London, England. Henry VII Experience at Micklegate Bar, York, Yorkshire, England.

William Hastings (1431-1483) Buried: St. George's Chapel, Windsor, Berkshire, England.

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) Born: Martin's Ferry, Ohio. Buried: Cambridge Cemetery, Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts.

Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721) Born: Main Street (Plaque), Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland. Buried: at sea. Statue, Main Street, Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland.

Juliet Capulet Buried: Tomba di Giulietta, Via Luigi da Porto 5, Verona, Veneto, Italy. Juliet's House, Via Cappello 23, Verona, Veneto, Italy.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1765-70) Born: 40 Grande Rue, Geneva, Switzerland. Buried: Pantheon, 5eme, Paris, Ile, France. Musee Jean Jacques Rousseau, 5 Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montmorency, Val d'Oise, Ile-de-France, France. Museum of Charmettes (House of Jean-Jacques Rousseau), 890 Chemin de Charmettes, Chambery, Savoy, France. Hotel Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Promenade Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1, La Neuveville, Switzerland. Musee Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Moitiers, Switzerland.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Sartor Resartus (1833-4) Born: Arched House, High Street, Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. Buried: Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland. Carlyle's House, 24 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, England (*****06-24-2001*****) College: Edinburgh.

Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) Tristram Shandy (1760-67), A Sentimental Journey (1768) Born: Mary Street, Clonmel, Tipperary, Ireland. Buried: Coxwold Churchyard, Coxwold, Yorkshire, England. Shandy Hall, Coxwold, Yorkshire, England. College: Jesus (Cambridge).

Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919) The Seven That Were Hanged (1908) Leonid Andreev House-Museum, 41 Ulitsa 2-ya Pushkarnaya, Oryol, Oryol, Russia. Buried: Literatorski Mostki, St. Petersburg, Russia. College: Imperial Moscow U. 

March 2019

A List: Rousseau--Confessions............................................................................................165/683
B List: Gerhart Hauptmann--Before Dawn..............................................................................62/98
C List: Coughlin/Kuhlman/Davis--Shooter: The Autobiography of the Top-Ranked Marine Sniper              ....................................................................................................................................65/293


I haven't gotten very far in the Confessions, though it is a classic, and engaging reading to boot. The A-List are the books I bring with me to work, and besides having gone on vacation for a decent part of the last month, I have not had, for various reasons, quite as much opportunity of late (in any area of my life, really) to indulge in my books, so it will probably be several months before I finish this one. I am enjoying the book, however, so I am not in any great hurry to finish it off.


As noted in my last post on Hauptmann's Beaver Coat, I was unable to finish my entry on that play before I left for Florida, however as I do like to go away anymore without one of my old B-list books I made an exception to my rule about not beginning the next book on the list before I have completed the blog post on the one just finished and allowed myself to move on to Before Dawn while I was there, which I wholly expected to finish. However with all of the children--most of whom don't even go to bed early anymore either--needing attention and supervision, etc, I wash only able to get in a couple of sessions alone in the warm sun with the play, which enabled me to finish half of it, and then when I got back home I put it aside again to finish the abandoned post on the other play. But I should be back on my schedule now.


With regard to the C-list, I regretfully confess that I gave up on the Will Self book. I did not want to put in the work that would have been required to read it satisfactorily, and I found I was looking for excuses such as having to do laundry to put off taking it up, which defeats the point of the whole exercise. He comes off as belonging to the class of author where the fault is all on you if you don't like his book, and perhaps that is true, in my case anyway, but that said, I didn't find his intelligence to be either of the enlightening or seductive sort, which is probably a necessity for long term earthly immortality.


Shooter was published in 2005, and appears that it is going to have for its setting the initial invasion of Iraq that culminated in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. I've always felt some remorse for not paying more attention to the American government's myriad wars and other foreign meddlings, since many intelligent people, and most foreign persons one encounters of that description, are borderline apoplectic about them, and consider the generally brain dead American citizenry to have a high degree of culpability for their effects even if it is only on account of their stupidity and obliviousness. I have hung in with the book so far, though I am not able to overcome my literary prejudices. When our Marine narrator states upon his departure from his daughters when leaving for Iraq that "I felt like shit", my reaction is that Tolstoy would have made a lot more out of this occasion. The incessant braggadocio and intra-male conflict-seeking I find a little wearying also, though we admittedly find similar attitudes among fighting men in the Iliad and the Bible and the Norse sagas and other comparable ancient literature, and it is doubtless a beneficial attribute for the warrior to have. Even though Sergeant Coughlin is, certainly by his own account, a great fighter, the top sniper in the army, fearless obviously, a leader, a man who holds other men accountable for their actions, including his ostensible superiors, among other superior qualities, I don't quite feel a great admiration for him as yet. There isn't any common ground, whether of mental outlook, or spiritual understanding or yearning, or anything wherein this could from...But I am out of time and have to post this now. No girlie pictures this month.

Gerhart Hauptmann--The Beaver Coat (1893)

I have been writing about wanting to read more German literature on these blogs for some time, so, finally, here we are. Gerhart Hauptmann was a prolific writer in many forms and the 1912 recipient of the Nobel Prize, though he is mainly famous for his dramas of the 1890s. He is reminiscent to me of Ibsen, though in this country his books are hard to find and his plays rarely if ever performed, while Ibsen and his works remain fairly broadly know. The IWE thought highly of Hauptmann, and called The Beaver Coat "a serious play and a major work of literature." It certainly reads like a serious work of literature. There is a fineness in the dialogue and the construction of scenes, a restraint in the revelation of action, that is bracing enough. I wonder, as I do whenever I come upon such books, why I do not devote a much greater portion of my time, especially now, to reading late 19th century continental authors, who seem to me so invariably sure in their language, their images, their people, their themes. I feel to some extent as if I have come home when encountering one of these books.

The Beaver Coat is not so much difficult to understand as it is easy to be led to different expectations as to where it is going. It is unconventional because the conflicts and the climax and the consequences that the plot would seem to be building towards never materialize, the characters occupying the roles of civic authorities are completely unfocused on what would appear to be the driving dramas of the play and miss them entirely (the beaver coat of the title was stolen from a property owner by a washerwoman for a ragged boatman plying the Spree River near Berlin. The crime is given scant attention by the presiding judge and is unrectified at the end).....


Unfortunately I was not able to finish this post before I went on vacation for about nine days. It seems to me that every year at this time when I go away, my reading schedule is the midst of a string of plays instead of one of the many 1,000 page books this list requires me to read, which would be much more convenient. So I don't remember anything else that I especially wanted to say on the subject of The Beaver Coat. I did not make any notes on it. My edition, which I will talk more about further, includes an introduction by the translator, Horst Frenz, timestamped Indiana University, May, 1951. He notes that Hauptmann "likes to make fun of the law and its ministers...it is almost an obsession with him that policemen and judges are of necessity imbeciles or charlatans." His concluding paragraph reads:


"...Hauptmann does not give a definite conclusion to his conflict. More than once, he has pointed out that true drama has no ending and that a decision is often imposed upon a playwright who finds no clear-cut ending in life, who always sees new variations, new possibilities for breaking off the action. All that is closely connected with Hauptmann's belief that man's inner struggle is more important and more dramatic than the outcome of the struggle, his searching after truth more significant than the truth itself. It is because of this fundamentally new approach to the problem of dramatic structure that the modern English-speaking drama can hardly be imagined without the pioneer work of Gerhart Hauptmann."


I admit in reading this that I thought it carried a lot of characteristically German unnecessary pomposity and grandiosity with it, as if it contained such ideas as have never occurred to anyone who did not pass though a top Gymnasium. The play lingers in my mind to the extent than it does because of the cleanness of the construction and dialogue and because works from the Imperial Germany of 1871-1914 period have a haunted quality about them for me, because of the power and wealth and cultural might of a sudden, freshly created nation/empire in the heart of Europe that was destined to be so short-lived, and whose contemporary influence, so pronounced just a century ago, has shriveled to almost nothing, in my life anyway.

My English copy of this play came in a library bound Rinehart Edition of 3 Hauptmann plays, The Weavers and Hannele also being included, though I don't believe either of these appear on my list. There don't appear to have been many, if any, later editions of this published in the United States. I am well read in the literature published in the Rinehart Editions. Of the specific titles (i.e., not collections) listed in this series, I have read 65 out of 98! For the record, the first five I have not read are The Tatler (Addison and Steele), The Trojan Women (Euripides), The Frogs (Aristophanes), The Menaechni (Plautus), and The Rope (Plautus). Despite the library binding the book is a little wobbly and brittle, but the type and layout, like so many printed series from the immediate postwar years, is ideal for reading.




This is not the only Hauptmann we will encounter on the IWE list, and the wait to become re-acquainted with him will be a brief one.



Challenge Time


This challenge gave us almost nothing to work with.


1. William Kent Krueger--Sulfur Springs............................................344
2. Mo Hayder--Wolf.............................................................................258
3. Rick Perlstein--The Invisible Bridge................................................202
4. Alison Gaylin--If I Die Tonight.........................................................68
5. Joan Wolf--The Counterfeit Marriage.................................................0
6. American Literature to 1900 (ed. Lewis Leary)...................................0
7. Princeton Review--1,027 GRE Practice Questions.............................0
8. T. R. Kenneth--A Room Full of Night..................................................0


Quarterfinals


#1 Krueger over #8 Kenneth


The Kenneth book isn't actually out yet, I don't think. It looks like a genre book, as is the Krueger.


#7 Review over #2 Hayder


I really don't like generic genre novels.


#3 Perlstein over #6 American Literature


Perlstein is a writer of popular histories, which is a genre I actually like. The subject of this book appears to be the transition of the Republican party between the disgrace of the Nixon resignation and the triumph of Ronald Reagan 6 years later, which mirrors almost exactly the first years of my consciousness, though I have no recollection of the Nixon presidency or resignation itself, which happened when I was 4.


#5 Wolf over #4 Gaylin


Wolf's book looks to be a romance novel circa 1980. It qualified for an upset, which I would like to get out of the way here, as I desperately need something readable to win.

Semifinals


#7 Review over #1 Krueger


Did I mention how much I hate genre fiction?


#3 Perlstein over #5 Wolf


Final


#3 Perlstein over #7 Review


This is a big book, clocking in at around 800 pages, but it is really the only choice in this field.

George Farquhar--The Beaux' Stratagem (1707)

After a series of fairly long novels prior to the medium-length Beau Geste, there is now an interlude of four plays, which break down into a couple of pairs in which each set of two could be said to be related in terms of time and place. Farquhar is a name that, through whatever fortunate cause, has survived to some extent even down to our day. The Beaux' Stratagem as literature I would consider on its own an entertaining, but not a great play, though having read at least a dozen plays over the years from this family of literature (Restoration and 18th century English theater) the importance and centrality of this genre in the history of English literature has been strongly impressed on me. And of course as with all plays, seeing a good performance would doubtless enhance the experience of having read the book considerably.

The IWE intro reports that "This was the last play Farquhar wrote; he was sick and in the utmost poverty when he wrote it--for money to pay his creditors--and he died on the night of its third performance." He was around 30 years old at the time of his death. In the 1933 Introduction to the Modern Library edition of Twelve Famous Plays of Restoration and Eighteenth Century--a very useful book to own, as I have had occasion to read nine of the twelve plays in it for the "A" list over the years and at least seven of the entries come up on the IWE list as well--Professor Cecil A. Moore of the University of Minnesota sees Farquhar as a transitional figure between the wits of the Restoration and the broader, more whimsical humor of the 18th century. His final two plays, says the professor, this one and The Recruiting Officer, performed first in 1706, "reveal dramatic genius of a high order." He adds that in Farquhar, "the Muse has now deserted the drawing-room for the country, and that many charmingly fresh types of character have been brought in to replace the endless parade of fops and coquettes." The setting of the play in a provincial inn (in Lichfield) frequented by travelers and coaches and highwaymen does hearken back to Shakespeare a little in bringing the English Midlands back on the stage, though the glories of the countryside and its floral life are absent from Farquhar.

I only took 4 notes on this. I should have written more commentary about my feelings and thoughts as I read it. Perhaps I didn't have any, but that isn't really fair, because the play has a certain charm about it, in part due to its, at this point, real remoteness in time, though the era of Queen Anne was a lively one in English literature, full of vigorous and proud characters, for which I have a more than usual fondness because I think this very interesting period tends to be overlooked now even by people who like Shakespeare or the Romantics or the Victorians.

Act III, Scene III, sample of play's humor:

"Sullen: You're impertinent. Mrs. Sullen: I was ever so, since I became one Flesh with you. Sullen: One Flesh! rather two Carcasses join'd unnaturally together."

Act IV, Scene I The servant Scrub to an impertinent French priest:

"Sir, I won't be sav'd your way--I hate a Priest, I abhor the French, and I defie the Devil--Sir, I'm a bold Briton, and will spill the last drop of my Blood to keep out Popery and Slavery."

In the same scene, Archer critiquing a portrait of the attractive Mrs. Sullen:

"Your Breasts too, presumptuous Man! what! paint Heaven! Apropo, Madam, in the very next picture is Salmoneus, that was struck dead with Lightning, for offering to imitate Jove's Thunder; I hope you serv'd the Painter so, Madam?"

Part of the resolution of the plot comes when the well-born but somewhat broke Aimwell's older brother, who is a Lord,  dies unexpectedly, and the surviving sibling inherits the fortune. While undoubtedly a stroke of good luck for the character, his rather unabashed delight at it comes off as rather strange, given that there was no indication of the dead brother's having been a villain or otherwise bad guy that I can recall.

Here is a link to an old and unfinished post in which I recall a night I spent in the George Hotel in Lichfield which claims to be the same where The Beaux' Stratagem took place, and tell a Farquhar story.  



The Challenge

1. Marcus Zusak--The Book Thief.......................................................................................17,971

2. Dean Koontz--Forever Odd.................................................................................................949

3. The Complete Rhyming Dictionary (ed. Clement Wood)....................................................204

4. Sarah Smarsh--Heartland.....................................................................................................109

5. Shana Norris--The Boyfriend Thief........................................................................................86

6. Real Housewives of New York (season 10--TV show)...........................................................58

7. Daniel Henderson--The Prayer God Loves to Answer...........................................................37

8. Anthony Trollope--Rachel Ray..............................................................................................19

9. Caitlin Kiernan/Kathleen Tierney--Cherry Bomb..................................................................15

10. Dan Hall--Highgate Mums: Overheard Wisdom From the Ladies Who Brunch.................12

11. Laxdaela Saga (trans. Press)..................................................................................................6

12. Dawn French--Me. You. A Diary...........................................................................................6

13. Andrew Sanders--The Short Oxford History of English Literature.......................................4

14. William Harrison Ainsworth--Jack Sheppard.......................................................................3

15. Rev. E. Cobham Brewer--Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction & the Drama, Vol. 1...1

16. The Greek Romances of Helodorus, Longes & Achilles Tatius.............................................0

17. Mary Elizabeth Braddon--Willard's Weird............................................................................0

18. Rev. E. Cobham Brewer--Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction & the Drama, Vol. II...0

19. George Brandes--William Shakespeare: A Critical Study......................................................0

Qualifying Round

#14 Ainsworth over #19 Brandes

I have actually read what is regarded as Ainsworth's best novel, The Tower of London. I don't remember much of it now, but I know I found it readable and even amusing in places at the time.

#15 Brewer over #18 Brewer

This was a tight match, as you can imagine.

#16 Greek Romances over #17 Braddon

I can't find any corroborating evidence that the Braddon book actually exists.

Round of 16

#1 Zusak over #16 Greek Romances

The Greek book is both rare and the three authors make it seem cumbersome. Zusak's qualifying score is one of the highest ever in the history of the Challenge. I even have a copy of this book at my house because my one of my children had to read it in school instead of David Copperfield or whatever early high schoolers used to read. I thought it deserved to escape the 1st round.

#15 Brewer over #2 Koontz

I want no part of Dean Koontz.

#3 Rhyming Dictionary over #14 Ainsworth

Huge score for this dictionary, impressive.

#13 Sanders over #4 Smarsh

#5 Norris over #12 French

#11 Laxdaela over #6 RHONY

#10 Hall over #7 Henderson

#8 Trollope over #9 Kiernan/Tierney

Trollope, whom we have seen so recently, the only IWE author in the field this time.

Elite Eight

#15 Brewer over #1 Zusak

Brewer sitting there with that upset to drop.

#3 Rhyming Dictionary over #13 Sanders

A scrap, but I was swayed by the huge disparity in the qualifying scores.

#5 Norris over #11 Laxdaela

A minor upset.

#10 Hall over #8 Trollope

Trollope a victim of the upset here.

Final Four

#3 Rhyming Dictionary over #15 Brewer

#5 Norris over #10 Hall

Another battle, but Norris escapes again.

Championship

#3 Rhyming Dictionary over #5 Norris

I have no idea whether I will actually try reading this book or not, but I will at least look at it.

February 2019

A List: Jean-Jacques Rousseau--Confessions...........................................9683
B List: George Farquhar--The Beaux' Stratagem.......................................58/73
C List: Will Self--Shark..............................................................................91/464


We read some Rousseau at school, The Social Contract certainly, and some people read Emile. I don't remember whether we read any excerpts of the Confessions or not, though we certainly didn't read the whole thing. When the book back in the mail I was surprised by how big it was, I was imagining it to be about half as long. However, though I have just started it it seems like it is going to be an amiable read, and it's been a while since I've read anything from the genre of 18th-century philosophy, which in its English and French incarnations at least I generally enjoy.


After a series of relatively long novels, Farquhar is the first of 4 consecutive plays coming up the B list. Expect a report of some length soon. Indeed I should have finished this several days ago already but you know...busy with nonsense.


This brings us to the Will Self book. Born in London in 1961, Will Self is the author of 24 books, including 19 works of fiction. He is undeniably a highly intelligent and skilled writer, and I have to admire this to an extent. At the same time I find myself dragging my feet quite a bit when it is time for me to take up his book. For starters, the entire 464 pages appear to be a single paragraph, which seems unnecessarily taxing on the reader to me. There is a Joycean stream of consciousness element to the composition in which the various threads of the story come and go and as my concentration is not that great I frequently get lost for a page or more during these transitions. One of the storylines involves the famous catastrophe/ordeal of the U.S.S. Indianapolis in World War II, and that part is very good. There is a part set in a mental hospital in London that holds my attention somewhat, there is a part involving a sex worker and her young children and Vietnam war protests in 1970-era London that I can just barely follow, and, well, you get the idea. I did genuinely love Ulysses, or many of its various parts and qualities anyway, when I went though it as a 25-year old accompanied by an entire volume of annotations, recollections of the conversations of friends who had recently taken a class on it, and so forth. Perhaps I would not feel the same about it if I took up now without all of these specific associations, though I might, because it still has other associations with a time and an idea of literary culture that I probably would hold in romantic regard anyway. This Will Self book has passages that are like that, that evoke those kinds of feelings, but the structure of it doesn't allow me to leave off and get back in to the story at the point I was before. Every time I take it up it is as if I am starting the whole thing anew, the characters have no solidity for me, certainly no established charm or interest that I wish to explore or draw from. I do feel that I should stick with the book a little longer though.


I need a haircut. I try to go about every six weeks, that is why hair begins to grow overlong on the top and sides.


What accounts for my extreme busyness? Getting an inspection sticker for both of my old cars in January (in my state your birthday dictates when your car registration and inspection are due, and both my wife and I are January babies--January is the worst possible month in this part of the world especially to have to do this) was a complicated and expensive ordeal, though both run well enough that it is worth the expense if I can make it through another year without having to buy a new car, or two of them. Dealing with insurance issues. Various appointments for kids/teenager stuff. I've got one kid doing school online that I have to help a lot. My oldest son got his driver's license. All of these things. And this time of year, the dead of winter, I get very tired, I took a forty-five minute nap today, I never need to do this from April through the Christmas season my energy is pretty good. But this is just late night scribbling for the sake of scribbling... 

Will Self considers the novel to be "absolutely doomed". I would not argue that he is wrong.