1936 - Eugene O'Neill

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956)

Often blurbs are not very accurate but I would agree that this play is possibly ‘the finest and most powerful play to have come out of America’ and that O’Neil is ‘one of the twentieth century’s most significant writers’ whose ‘true value to the theatre is still being discovered’.  So powerfully & finely wrought are these characters whose drama not so much jumps but punches it’s way out of the book format.  Like George Bernard Shaw there are long descriptive passages of the scene but thankfully without any of the pretense of teaching lessons, developing theories (with demonstration) or any other baggage that weighs down and overshadows the soul.  Emotion reeks all over from every line of speech going from ‘(thickly humorous)’ to ‘(Then disgustedly)’ to ‘(Then appreciatively)’ within 38 words to create what is the metaphoric equivalent to a roller-coaster combined ghost-train.  It has intensity and tension on every page; introspective neurosis and expressive rage on every other.  I have 14 pages left to find out how it ends and the only reason I’m not reading it now is because I am utterly exhausted, mentally, emotionally, & almost physically, from reading the previous three acts; so although I do wish to wait I will not try to attempt finishing it off for the sake of my health.   

How I could cope watching Long Day’s Journey Into Night on the stage I do not know.      

1953 - Winston Churchill

 Winston Churchill once wrote a novel entitled The Inside of the Cup.  It’s an odd book for him to write, set in America involving discussions of faith, odd that is until you realise that it was not Churchill the Prime Minister but Churchill the American novelist who wrote it.  For a while I wasn’t sure.  I knew he achieved the Prize & so why can’t it have been for novels as well as for the charted document of history/ autobiography?  I had no idea there was another famous, at least somewhat well known, Churchill living around at the same time.  

 There must be an idea for a Borges type short story involving a conversation between the two Winstons who talk about power and publishing before one kills the other.  

 What are the chances?      

1921 - Anatole France

How is it that in a short space of time I have collected enough Anatole France books to rival the amount of books I have by Andre Gide & yet more have heard & have been influenced by Gide?  I collected Gide before I knew about Nobel Prizes but I have somehow collected roughly the same amount of France within a few months & still his influence seems to be invisible.  What is the explanation for the silence about France, compared to Gide, when he is still is very much in circulation?  It is very true to think that one Nobel Prize winner remember is another Nobel Prize winner forgotten; but France hasn’t been forgotten so how can he be so little mentioned?   

1948 - T.S. Eliot

There seems to be a problem with the verse plays of T. S. Eliot but where does the faulty element lie?  Is it the attempt at fitting deep & large themes of humanity within comedy drawing room settings?  Is it the lack of action in favor for dense metres?  Is it the pervading Christian ethic & influence that audiences try to overlook & undermine? 

  I like the appealing idea that even in humdrum conversations people can speak natural poetry.  This is probably the crux of the problem: it may be good poetry but is it good drama?  I want it to be theatrically good but how can I defend it if all the characters are talking impenetrably about an offstage event wrapped in obscure abstract ideas?  He certainly took on this challenge in a formidable fashion but what has been the scale of his success?   

Watching A Family Reunion at the Donmar Warehouse was like participating in hypnosis.  The characters talked at length taking me further & further away from the room, it’s objects & furnishings, into a weird space of cosmic moral action.  Reading over some of the lines years later I found that they were starting to make much more sense than when I had first heard them at the performance.  This is partly down to sheer experience where poetry does tend to resonate.  It is also where the real problem of his plays lie.   
  
It is not in the fact that they are badly written for the stage but more in the fact that constant repeat performances & annual revivals are not a part of our culture.  What I mean is that the place where we get the most out of Eliot is in the re-reading, which is an aspect that makes him a great poet, we can re-read his poetry & be surprised afresh.  With the form of the play, as it is, this element of re-experiencing is decidedly lost.   
  
Audiences cannot expect to see any play more than once (except for Shakespeare’s) so if they cannot grasp the meanings the first time it is unlikely they’ll get another chance to do so.  Christopher Fry seems to me to make better use of both the poetry & the theater in his plays but where are his revival of The Lady’s Not For Burning or A Phoenix Too Frequent?  Coming soon I hope.                  

2003-J.M.Coetzee

Foe (1986)

Are writers like waterskaters who write words on the sand to be washed away?  Written with a strong graceful style that is sensitively economical while being in constant flow.  Coetzee has the sturdy descriptive imitation of Defoe that is strangely complimented by the dreamlike narrative where one setting fades into another (which is impressive in light of the fourth part where what could have been jarring becomes appropriately ghostly).  Coetzee compacts a lot into a short space, that deserves comparison to Henry Green, as the story is thick with themes to be intoxicated by, enveloped in. 

Much like Wild Sagasso Sea by Jean Rhys, in style as well as concept, Foe is an adding on extra episodes to classic stories but Coetzee also furnishes some untold tells about a woman called Susan Barton who was Robin Cruso’s desert island companion.  It lends itself almost exclusively to a post-colonial/ feminist reading of what has been a masculine adventure tale.  Apart from the discussion about what is integral to Cruso’s story it also meditates on the nature of story telling, particularly the ethical dimensions on those telling the stories of others, which is symbolised by Friday’s stumped tongue.  

Mesmic prose that will make me reconsider what Robinson Crusoe is, or could have been, exactly about.  

2006 - Orhan Pamuk

The Black Book (1994)

When the question of culture makes up the thematic basis of a book it puts those outside the culture concerned at a disadvantage.  The question of an author’s audience also looms up.  Is Orhan Pamuk a turkish writer writing for turks or an international writer writing for everyman?  The Black Book is at times too exotic to be understood yet somehow it has gone beyond the writer’s own national boundaries making itself be understood on terms that are foreign to it.  

Writing, it has been said I think by T. S. Eliot, is it’s own country irrespective of lines on a map.  The more accessible parts of for those outside the Turkish culture The Black Book, & even more so for those outside the Eastern culture, are those passages about reading & writing, the author’s relationship with his readership, because those reflections are relevant for all cultures that communicate through a written medium.  The discussion of national identities are more fixed in time & place so that those passages are only more relevant to those closest to that time & place represented.  It’s a strange work that poses problems for those who wish to understand other cultures.  It implies that to understand fully another culture you have to be part of that culture.  No matter how understanding a reader might be their reading of foreign book they will always be outside complete comprehension.  Pamuk has managed to write about national problems specific to Turkey, his time & place is integral to the story & not simply a backdrop, but with enough universal human interest to make him a candidate for a global Prize.  

A difficult balancing act that requires more thinking on how he has managed to apparently do it.        

1998 - José Saramago

 

Seeing (2004)

Is there anything wrong with voting for nobody?  Not abstaining or spoiling but keeping the voting slip blank.  This is the premise for Seeing & the answer seems to be that it is only wrong if enough people do it.

  What is wrong with voting for nobody is that if enough people do it nobody gets elected & government is effectively blanked, which for politicians is a tragedy.  

It raises an interesting scenario about what could happen if politics were voted out of the political system.  The politicians panic warning the public that politics is needed to safeguard the interests of the people even if they are not interested in politics.  A state of seige is called for & the government with various leaders of political parties decamp from the city leaving the citizens to live their lives without the law to protect them.  Uniforms are taken off & life continues no more or less worse.  

Politics, it seems, was an ineffectual & unesscarry element in the ordinary life of people.  Politics was there to protect politians.  

Following on Blindness it continues the theme of political blindness in the form of blank voting the first cause of which, for both cases, were never discovered.  The government needing answers & solutions to this widespread mystery try a range of stratagies for discovery.  The actions of the government become more & more dubious until in an emotional scene the police officer following their orders changes his mind about the goodness of their motives.  

The indicment against the government, which here in Saramago’s fable style implies all democratically elected governments, & beaurcracies in general is continual but his faith in people uninvolved in politics is generous for one so cynical.  It is impossible, or vastly improbable, to imagine a scenario like this to really happen in reality or for large cities to unresverdly reject politicians & to be able to live without politics totally; but to be able to live without red-tape, without forms or insurances is a beautiful idea although I feel certain that it would be much more riskier than the world he has presented here.