George Bernard Shaw--Arms and the Man (1894)

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.)