it’s not just laziness but it is partly, I guess. I won’t go into detail about exercise, pain, meal-planning, and cooking, extra laundry, coping with Matt’s finances (and mine) but— I started a new book. I know I know I promised (myself) not to, but I bought it a long time ago and never read it (Richard told me not to, but he’s not always right for me).
A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) by Amor Towles (b.1964) is a lovely read, with a history of Russia in microcosm and a long narrative about a protagonist I really like, the eponymous gentleman. You may have read it already since we have similar tastes, so I won’t dwell on it. I mention it because it is one of the reasons I have been so dilatory about writing my (so-called) “daily blog”.
So what would you like to think about?
BIG MISTAKE: i picked up another file folder to choose a subject for a blog but I got embroiled in Tips and Targets, many of them obsolete but at least one of them a collector’s item. I found a 1959 piece by Robert Brustein (b.1927), billed as a young critic., now known as “an American theatrical critic, producer, playwright, writer, and educator”. I can’t throw that one away. He founded, among other things,the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, near the Bunting Institute (Radcliffe) where I had a Fellowship for a year (1989-90) . I had occasion to have a correspondence with him. My fellowship project was to write a play based on Alice James’s diary (sister of novelist Henry and psychologist William). I did write it and i received two staged readings, one in Boston and one in Cambridge, with professional actors. I finished it about the same time that the “American writer, filmmaker, philosopher, teacher, and political activist”, Susan Sontag (1933-2004), had a play open on Broadway, Alice in Bed (1991). (It closed after four nights.) The setting and the set-up and the use of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland were similar to mine. Mine was better.
I never say anything that cocky but I still think I’m right. I wrote Robert Brustein to tell him about it and sent him my script because I guess I thought we were neighbours. Well, he read my script and wrote me and agreed with me. Yes, he said my play was better. BUT—her name was Susan Sontag.
That’s how it goes - went.