Thursday, August 25, 1994

No Exit and Three Other Plays

by Jean-Paul Sartre

"No Exit," translated by S. Gilbert.  Three strangers, locked in a room.  Can't really say anything about this brilliant allegory without revealing too much.  It should be very widely read.

"The Flies," translated by S. Gilbert.  A reworking of the Orestes/Electra story.  I liked it better than Euripides'.  Sartre made the characters multi-faceted and real; he also added Zeus as an adversary of Orestes who feeds on remorse.  Orestes' refusing to repudiate his crime, create his own freedom and deny Zeus & nature, was very existential, I thought.  Plus, perhaps, the killing could be identified with the workers' violent revolt which creates their own justice maybe.  Anyway, a great, complex play, that also works as an anti-Nazi or anti-occupation message.

"Dirty Hands," translated by Lionel Abel. It was about an intellectual who yearns to act for the Communist Party, and is manipulated by them to such an extent that the man he is supposed to kill sees it all and even tries to reveal it to him.  There’s a great, well-crafted argument scene about the process of power-taking and political machinations between the intellectual (Hugo) and his target (Hoederer).  In the end, Hugo is convinced he acted for the right reasons, despite the party's re-writing of history.  Like Sartre’s Orestes, he too refuses to repudiate his crime and makes his own destiny.  A great, great play.

"The Respectful Prostitute," translated by Lionel Abel. It’s a short, very chilling, scathing attack on American corruption and racism.  I don’t remember it from my previous reading as being this powerful, but it is – a nasty little piece of work.

[read twice]

five stars

Monday, August 22, 1994

The Paths Of the Perambulator

by Alan Dean Foster

The fifth Spellsinger book.  A huge improvement over the last one; and maybe I expected too much from a fantasy series about magic anthropomorphic animals. The only sketchy parts for this one were two places where the humor bits were predictable.  As for the rest, the book was imaginative, funny and extremely entertaining.  (I would like just a little more realism in the characters' actions, more motivations than humor… but that’s a minor complaint.)

Saturday, August 20, 1994

The Moment Of the Magician

by Alan Dean Foster

Look, I don’t mind that ungulates are non-sapient in one book and intelligent in the next, or that the race of the police changes, or that the social standing of rodents changes --- but when most of the plot or dialogue serves only as comic effect, it makes the reality of the characters, their dialogue, disappointing. I’d like more of the starkness of the original book; this series is getting more and more cartoony. Still an intriguing main plotline, though.

two stars 

Thursday, August 18, 1994

The Day Of the Dissonance

by Alan Dean Foster

The third Spellsinger book.  Still contradictory and jumpily written, although the idea behind the plot was fantastic.  Hugely enjoyable and readable - I read this book and its predecessor on the same day.

 [read twice]

The Hour Of the Gate

by Alan Dean Foster

The second Spellsinger book.  Not the most well-written or consistent series, but great fun.

[read twice]

three stars 

Tuesday, August 16, 1994

Spellsinger

by Alan Dean Foster

A young musician finds himself in a rough sword-and-sorcery world of anthropomorphic animals. I'm not used to books with narrators that, while hooking to one character's perception (Jon-Tom's) in general, are omniscient; so that bothered me a bit. And it was redundant in a few places. But it was very well crafted, if not incredibly brilliantly written, and inspiringly imaginative. A good series to get into.

[read twice]

four stars

Thursday, August 4, 1994

Sweet Myth-tery Of Life

by Robert Asprin


The tenth Myth Adventures book.  It wasn't richly comic, but it had the same great cast of characters, same impending-doom plot, and same examination of real life, as the other nine books.  Enjoyable, and made me look forward to reading the next one as well.

three stars

Monday, August 1, 1994

The Devil And the Good Lord And Two Other Plays

by Jean-Paul Sartre

"The Devil and the Good Lord," translated by Kitty Black. I loved it. Goetz is one of the inscrutable characters of literature: why does he act the way he does? Is he pretending to be Good just to do Evil more? But though the play is enigmatic, the message is clear. It doesn't matter if God is alive or dead, if we try to do absolute Good or total Evil. No matter what, we're all equal in that we're buffeted by the winds of fate regardless of what we might want to bring about.

"Kean," translated by Kitty Black. Apparently based on a Dumas play. I don't really know what to make of it. It's a fine comedy and refreshingly (for Sartre) non-communist, with a happy ending. It seems to be a satire of class relations and antiquated gender relations, with a little bit of Shakespearean object-of-desire switching thrown in for comedy. On top of that, it's a comment on the artificiality of almost all relations in life.

"Nekrasov," translated by Sylvia & George Leeson. It was a very cunning and biting farce on politics, journalism and the nature of man. A swindler pretends to be a Soviet official/defector: the consequences are far-reaching, realistic, and work to further the causes of the powers that be, despite what Georges, the crook, wants. Another great play.

four stars