Wallace Shawn has written a new play, and it’s unsettling to watch. In it, a group of wealthy, middle-aged party hosts reveal their roles in a dystopian future, where political murders, random beatings and censorship are all commonplace. In an essay for The New York Review of Books, Francine Prose reviews the play in the context of Shawn’s other works.
The Future Is Near
Stars and Bodies
Recommended listening: David Naimon interviews Sarah Gerard, author of Binary Star, about “anorexia and astronomy, stars and bodies.” Pair with Alex Norcia‘s Millions review of Gerard’s novel here.
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Monday Links
We’ve got some great stuff in the pipeline at The Millions, starting with a lierary magazine roundtable (part one of which will be up shortly), but before we get to that a couple of quick links:This week at the LBC we’re discussing our winter 2007 Read This! selection, Wizard of the Crow by Ngugl wa Thiong’o. A roundtable discussion kicks off a week that will include a contest, an interview, a podcast, and more.Speaking of the LBC, a past selection, and one of my favorites from among the books we’ve read, Firmin by Sam Savage, has been named a finalist for the Barnes & Noble 2006 Discover Great New Writers Awards. That little rat just keeps on trucking along.And finally, Robert Birnbaum sits down with Richard Ford (again) for another great interview. Thanks to Millions contributor Noah, we had some great coverage of Ford’s most recent book, The Lay of the Land, in November, including a review, a reader question, and a (very brief) interview..
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Buy Debt Without Going Into Debt
David Graeber’s Debt (which was just reviewed in the New York Review of Books) is available at a 40% discount all weekend long.
They’re Watching
Collusion, a new add-in for Firefox browsers, “allows you to see all the third parties that are tracking your movements across the Web.” Of course, who’s tracking you online is one thing, but who’s tracking you in retail stores is quite another.
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“Inspiration and Obsession”
Recommended reading: Joyce Carol Oates writes about “Inspiration and Obsession in Life and Literature” for the New York Review of Books.
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A Great Career
Back in May, our own Sonya Chung reviewed All That Is, the first novel in 35 years by A Sport and a Pastime author James Salter. For another viewpoint (courtesy of the LRB), check out James Meek’s assessment of the book alongside Salter’s Collected Stories.
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Wild night
On Monday night Cheryl Strayed, also loved as The Rumpus‘s “Dear Sugar” advice columnist, was celebrated at Housing Works Bookstore. Tiffany Gibert gives us the scoop in the latest installment of #LitBeat.
Might Not Our Eyes Adjust
Shall I compare thee to a wormhole? No, this essay on astrophysics and poetry coupled with a poem for Stephen Hawking is most definitely more lovely. Kalpana Narayanan wrote an essay for The Millions on physics, grief, and Paul Murray’s Skippy Dies that may pique your interest.
When Harold checked out, it was down to Wally. After Wally, who?
This, from the NYRB review of the play, by Wallace Shawn, in question…
“Little by little, the harrowing details of life under the current regime begin to emerge. There are frequent elections and a rapidly-growing “Program of Murdering” that’s been put into place because “it attracted an awful lot of voters,” especially in rural areas. The characters bicker politely about how many lives are being lost as a result of the Program. Annette asserts that the Program is necessary, unavoidable:
It’s like something one does behind one’s back, so to speak—like something slightly unpleasant that one does with one’s ass once a day or so without paying it really a lot of attention…I’m making an analogy between dropping some waste into the toilet, you see, and dropping a few small bombs onto certain targets, you know, dropping some rather small bombs onto certain people who pose a threat to us, all rather casual, and then you wash your hands and return to the table, and there you have your Program of Murdering.
Annette is quick to reassure Tom, who idly frets about the challenge of being sure that the right individuals are being murdered; later Ted mentions that school children are being trained to target “people who represent a serious danger.”
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“But what makes the play even more chilling is the historical moment in which it is being performed. Evening at the Talk House was first staged in 2015 at the National Theater in London. That was before Brexit, before the election of Donald Trump, at a time when the drama may have seemed more like a reminder of a disturbing reality (the drone program, for example) than an account of where the brutalization and demagoguery now set in motion might lead.”
…is eerily chilling for the spin it attempts to put on Shawn’s obvious message(s), which are not a matter of Shawn’s “uncanny prescience” (to paraphrase Prose’s tone) but about the *NOW* of when Shawn wrote the piece, just as Orwell’s 1984 was about 1948. The way Prose underplays the drone program (ie The Murder Program), in a parenthetical aside, is an almost a pitch-perfect enactment of the horrors which “Evening at the Talk House” theatricalizes.
But I’ve seen that defensively-distancing effect before, with audience members tittering at passages, being performed by Shawn, in readings that clearly aren’t intended to be funny… or “confirming”… for the target audience at all. Even in the most intelligent auditors, these days, a self-protective incomprehension too often kicks in, when needed, and the audience takes on the ironic duties of the damning performance itself.
“Living theater” indeed.