In her Ploughshares essay "How to Shop at a Bookstore: An Easy 20-Step
Guide for Authors http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz16940709,"
Rebecca Makkai offered suggestions for visiting writers. A few of our
favorites:
"First, smell it. Look at the new arrivals, lined up like candy. See if,
for just one second, you can remember what it was like to walk into a
bookstore as a reader. Just a reader, a happy, curious reader. With no
agenda, no insecurities, no history of bookstores as scenes of personal
failure and triumph. Wish for a time machine."
"Nervously check how the store seems to be doing. Are the lights still
on? Do the employees look well-fed? Thank God. The world isn't over
yet."
"You cannot afford all seven of the books that have somehow wound up in
your arms. Acknowledge that you will buy them anyway."
"As you cross the street with your bag of new books, remember the first
time your mother took you to a bookstore and told you to pick something
out. To keep, not borrow. You were overwhelmed by choice and wonder.
Remember how you pulled things off the shelf at random because every
book was equally unknown and fresh and promising."
And this about the latest bookish plays coming out, which fascinates me, as a former theater major and veteran bibliophile:
Robert Gray: Silence, Voice &
Books on Stage
Although we write about book-to-film
adaptations often in Shelf
Awareness, bookish theater gets less
attention. So let's change that.
Book-to-musical productions are hot
right now. Matilda
based on Roald Dahl's novel, earned a
dozen Tony nominations this week.
Currently in various stages of
development are musical versions of
Alison Bechdel's Fun Home
Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude
Doyle's The Commitments
and American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis.
It's not just musicals. The London
production of The Curious Incident of
the Dog in the Night-Time
based on Mark Haddon's bestselling
novel, won seven Olivier Awards. The
Royal Shakespeare Company is adapting
Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall
Up the Bodies. William Goldman has
written a new theatrical version of
Stephen King's Misery
even a Théâtre
des Bouffes du Nord production of Michael
Ondaatje's The Collected Works of
Billy the Kid
in Paris.
All giving voice to the written word,
and to the complex silence of
reading. "As a writer of
fiction, it is my job to work through silence,
to enter the minds of my characters,
to create voices for them, to give
them a life that will matter
emotionally and intellectually to others,"
Colm Tóibín
writes in an author's note inserted in
for the stage adaptation of his novel
The Testament of Mary (Scribner).
I saw the production, starring Fiona
Shaw, last weekend at the Walter
Kerr Theatre in New York City.
Both the novel and play are stunning
to me in very different ways, and a
perfect illustration of what happens
when the voice (as well as silence)
in your reader's mind is interpreted
by a brilliant actor on stage. I
had a similar reaction a few years
ago to Vanessa Redgrave's
breathtaking performance in Joan
Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking.
While reading The Testament of Mary,
I'd conjured a woman who was
reflective yet fierce in her
stillness and captivity, entangled in the
web of a developing narrative not of
her own conception, immaculate or
otherwise. Shaw's Mary is more
impatient, unable to rest as she tells
her story while moving objects,
including herself, about the stage.
And we are complicit in that story,
too, witnesses to her confession as
well as traditional portrayals of
Mary. Pre-show, the audience is
invited on stage to explore the set,
with Shaw sitting rigidly inside a
glass box, dressed in the colorful
robes we recall from depictions of
the iconic Madonna in paintings and
sculptures.
As the play opens, however, Mary
wears the drab clothing of a poor woman
and speaks to us in an all-too-human
voice--alternately mournful,
scared, cynical, funny, angry, yet
always piercingly observant. The
voice of a mother who has lost her
son.
"It is written for a voice
Tóibín has
said. "And it is written for an actress' voice.
And I had in mind as I was working a
voice like Fiona Shaw's voice that
would have a huge level of commitment
to loss." Both voices--Shaw's and
the one I imagined as a reader--now
inhabit my mind with equal force.
Earlier this week,
Tóibín learned that even though The
Testament of Mary has earned a Best
Play Tony nomination
it will close Sunday after just 43
performances due to poor ticket
sales.
How did he deal with the loss?
"I think dark laughter might be the best
way to put it," he said.
"And when in doubt, consult Oscar Wilde.... He
has a quote--success is merely a
preparation for failure. Anyone who
works in the arts knows, if you're
writing a novel or a play or
anything, you have to be ready for
someone to say, you're time is up."
Poet and critic Robert Bly, whose
most recent book is Airmail: The
He also noted that "about 30,000
people will have seen the play over a
6-week run by the time it closes,
with a standing ovation every night.
In European terms, that's a huge
success. In Dublin I'd be walking
around with everyone saying, what an
amazing success you've had with
your play."
I bought my ticket months ago, when I
first learned the play was coming
to Broadway. I wouldn't have missed
it for the world. Shaw told NPR
that while she is "on the stage
alone, I suppose what happens is, I feel
I'm surfing the story with the
audience.... I tell this particular
story, and I follow it as I'm in it,
and the audience follow it with me.
So I do feel a great communion, dare
I say, with the audience." This is
how it felt to me, too--her voice,
her silences, Tóibín's
words and, somewhere in there, myself
as reader and then as audience.
Communion. --Robert Gray
This is interesting, as Robert Bly is an amazing poet and writer.
Letters of Robert Bly and Tomas Transtromer
(Graywolf), was asked in a
recent New York Times Book Review
interview to name his favorite
"The best is Birchbark Books http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz16906844, owned by Louise Erdrich, and run by a great
staff that sometimes includes her
family members," he replied.
"The store is near us, and we can walk
there. There is always something
excellent to take home. Just down the
street we have some good used-book
stores. Magers & Quinn
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz16906845 [which also
sells new books] is one.They have had a fine reading series
off and on."
Finally, a brief bit about a book I just finished over the weekend, Me Before You by Jojo Moyes.
Written in something of the same lighthearted prose style as Bridget Jones Diary, Me Before You is a deceptively simple novel at first blush. However, the further into the novel that you travel, the more intense and dramatic the plot becomes. The novel is about a young woman who is leading a somewhat feckless life, working at a cafe because it is the path of least resistence, and she's required to work to help support her family, who only have one other working person, her father, while her mother stays home to care for a disabled parent and her sister goes to college and raises an illegitimate child. When the cafe closes, our protagonist, who dresses like a theater major and is used to being the butt of family jokes because of her clumsiness and outrageous fashion sense, finds a job caring for a wealthy young quadrapeligic man in his mansion. This young man is bitter and cynical, and having lived life to the fullest with trips around the world, mountain climbing and other dangerous sports, he no longer wants to live a limited existence in a wheelchair. Our heroine Louisa Clarke finds herself falling for Will, and attempts to do everything in her power to show him that life is worth living. A Love Story for this generation, Me Before You brings to
life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly
romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love
happy also means breaking your own heart?
I found myself turning pages long after my bedtime, and I also was rather shocked at the ending, which I'd assumed would be the standard HEA. Still, a very satisfying story that will make readers think and evaluate what constitutes a life worth living? A solid A.
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