Staging Governance Friday, Dec 8 2006 

books and teaching thisgaudygildedstage 5:12 pm

I recently finished reading Daniel O’Quinn’s Staging Governance: Theatrical Imperialism in London, 1770-1800, the last of the three books I’m reviewing for a journal. In sum, it’s an interesting book that definitely adds to our current understanding of the effects of colonialism on London society in the late eighteenth century. As with the other two books, however, I’ll save the usual review stuff for that essay.

What I’d like to write about here is how reading this book has helped me think a bit about my approach to teaching. As I read the introduction to O’Quinn’s book, I was struck by a phrase he uses in the following sentence:

Charting and adjudicating the limits of social interaction, the theatre, perhaps more than any other form of cultural production, offers a glimpse of how change swept through a culture in the midst of fundamental social transformation both at home and abroad. (12)

First, I want to say that I totally agree with the general sentiment of first part of this statement: due to its reconstruction of social life for the stage, the theater is indeed uniquely able to comment on socio-political change and transformation in any historical period. The whole point of the theater is, in a way, to offer such mapping and judgment. Martin Esslin’s An Anatomy of Drama makes this argument succinctly and convincingly. (I teach Esslin’s book from time to time — it’s profound and accessible at the same time, if that’s possible.)

But I am also struck by the fact that “charting and adjudicating the limit of social interaction” is what literature more generally does in a given culture. Here’s how I would rephrase O’Quinn’s construction:

artistic texts (literary and non-literary, canonical and non-canonical, written and visual) chart and adjudicate the contours of cultural and political debate.

In many ways this is a great summary phrase for how new historicist and cultural studies scholars view literary texts. So, due to my training in those perspectives, I’ve long thought about texts in this way, but reading O’Quinn’s book has crystallized these particular words — chart and adjudicate — for me, helping me focus my preexisting ideas and think about them more productively.

Literary texts chart contemporary debates by delineating the sides of a particular debate and showing us where the points of agreement and disagreement lie. They also show us the limits of debate — what can be imagined and what cannot; what can be published and what cannot; what can be written and what cannot; etc.

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The History Boys: A Review Wednesday, Dec 6 2006 

movies thisgaudygildedstage 7:47 pm

Nicholas Hytner’s The History Boys was named one of the year’s ten best films by the National Board of Review. PJ and I missed our opportunity to see Alan Bennett’s play when we were in London in 2004 — couldn’t get tickets — so we were not going to miss our opportunity to see the movie while we were in New York last week. A bit of an Angophile, I’m a sucker for English movies — such as Billy Elliott, Kinky Boots, Beautiful Thing, Get Real, Priest, Howards End, and Maurice — and movies about England — Notting Hill and Gosford Park, for example. So, it’s not surprising that I really liked The History Boys. I agree with the NBR — it’s one of the year’s best.

Here’s the trailer:

The History Boys is about a group of sixth-form boys in the early 1980s in a town in the North of England preparing for the Oxbridge entrance examinations, which means that they are attempting to gain entrance into one of the colleges of Oxford or Cambridge. These boys are randy, athletic, and ambitious, as are their teachers. The headmaster is only concerned with results and, seeing this as an opportunity to put his school on the map, hires a special tutor, Irwin, to help the boys with their history. Irwin, who is played by the dashing Stephen Campbell Moore (Bright Young Things), happens to be only a little older than the boys themselves, a fact that, along with his teaching to the test — he teaches the boys that style is more important than substance, that presentation is more important than truth, because style and presentation will help them make an impression — complicates his relationship with them.

Also complicated is the boys’ relationship to another teacher, Mr. Hector, played by Richard Griffiths. Hector believes in knowledge for knowledge’s sake and teaches the boys a wide range of topics: World War One era poetry, song lyrics to old Rogers and Hart songs, entire scenes from Brief Encounter, and improvisation in French where the improvisation takes place in a brothel. The common theme to most of these academic pursuits is their underlying homoeroticism, which is further reflected in Hector’s tendency to grope the genitals of the straight boys while giving them rides home on his motorcycle. Despite this groping, the boys generally like Hector until this admiration is challenged by their need to ace the entrance exams and by the vision of the world taught by Irwin.

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Hard: A Review Tuesday, Dec 5 2006 

books and teaching thisgaudygildedstage 10:41 pm

New York City was the perfect (and somewhat obvious) place to read Wayne Hoffman’s new novel, Hard, which is about the crackdown on gay sex in various venues in NYC in the late 1990s. I finished reading the novel over the weekend. It’s a great read that raises lots of interesting questions about gay liberation and sexual politics without forgetting to entertain its readers.

Hard by Wayne HoffmanThe novel centers on Moe Pearlman, who is known for giving the best blow jobs in the city. He practices his skills in this activity every chance he gets: at sex parties, in the backrooms of bars, in adult theaters, and at home with the various men he’s met online. Moe is also a graduate student and a would-be journalist. In part, the novel focuses on the love lives of Moe and his two best friends, Gene and Aaron. Moe has long been attracted to a man he sees in a diner window. Gene, Moe’s ex-lover who also happens to be HIV+, moves to New York at the beginning of the novel; the closeness of their friendship causes friction in Gene’s new relationship with Dustin, who can’t seem to get over his jealousy of Moe. And Aaron discovers that his new love interest is moonlighting as a prostitute.

The novel is also about Moe’s antipathy for Frank DeSoto, a gay activist who is behind the mayor’s crusade to close down the gay sex venues. Frank believes that gay men must stop indulging in promiscuous sex due to the AIDS crisis; he therefore aligns himself with more conservative, anti-gay forces to try to force gay men into celibacy. If Hard has a villain, it’s Frank DeSoto.

But one of the best parts of Hoffman’s novel is that, while the novel clearly opposes Frank’s ideology and methods, it avoids simply demonizing him. Over the course of the book, we see why Frank has adopted his current views. We also see his faults and hypocrisies. I like that Moe is not simply right and Frank is not merely wrong. Indeed, Hoffman draws each of his characters as fully developed (albeit fictionalized) people. They have realistic problems, to which they generally find realistic answers, if they find answers at all.

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New York Museums Monday, Dec 4 2006 

museums thisgaudygildedstage 6:22 pm

PJ and I went to three museums while we were in NYC last week: the Guggenheim, the Met, and MOMA. Each of these is, of course, world famous. As I’ve written before, I love going to museums and even have favorites. MOMA may now be on that list.

The Guggenheim Museum

The Guggenheim is, of course, famous for its distinctive architecture and spiralling exhibit space. The main exhibit while we were there was a collection called “Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso.” My previous experience with Spanish painting is visiting the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid and the Museu Picasso in Barcelona. While visiting the former, I fell in love with the seventeenth-century painter Diego Velazquez, so I was excited to see that the Guggenheim was showing Spanish art, including a few works by him.

One of my favorite paintings in the Spanish exhibit is Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s Four Figures on a Step, which was painted sometime around 1655-60:

Four Figures on a Step

According to the description that accompanied the painting, the woman lifting her veil is, in doing so, indicating that she’s a prostitute. The older woman with glasses is probably a procuress. The placard audio guide also suggests that the little boy’s torn pants and exposed buttocks is meant to suggest his erotic allure for male patrons as well. The description did not mention the male figure on the left, but he too is presumably “for hire.”

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New York Plays: Brief Reviews Sunday, Dec 3 2006 

theater thisgaudygildedstage 3:43 pm

PJ and I saw three Broadway plays and one off-Broadway play while we were in New York this past week. I’ll briefly review each of them here. On the whole, I’d say that we enjoyed our theatrical experiences, but I was surprised by which one I enjoyed the most and which I enjoyed the least.

While this is my first experience with Broadway and off-Broadway theater, I have seen several excellent productions in London. In 2004, for example, PJ and I saw productions of Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, Suddenly Last Summer starring the incomparable Diana Rigg, and the Globe Theatre’s production of Measure for Measure, starring Mark Rylance. This past summer we saw Juliet Stephenson in The Seagull at the National Theatre, an outdoor production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the wonderful musical Billy Elliot, all of which were quite good. (We also saw a laughably bad production of The Merchant of Venice in Oxford this summer, but I think it’s best not to reflect too much on it!) So, I was excited to finally have the chance to compare English theatre with what New York has to offer. Ultimately, I’d have to say that England comes out better in the comparison.

playbill

The Vertical Hour

One of the first things PJ and I did in NYC was see David Hare’s new play, The Vertical Hour, starring Julianne Moore, Bill Nighy, and Andrew Scott. It is currently at the Music Box Theater. Here’s the “official” summary of the play:

Nadia Blye (Julianne Moore) is a young American war correspondent turned academic who now teaches Political Studies at Yale. A brief holiday with her boyfriend in the Welsh borders brings her into contact with a kind of Englishman whose culture and beliefs are a surprise and a challenge, both to her and to her relationship. David Hare’s new play, about the interconnection between our secret motives and our public politics, seeks to illustrate how life has subtly changed for so many people in the West in the new century.

What this summary doesn’t say is that the play is also about the Bush Administration’s war in Iraq, an exploration of the ethics of invading a country in order to “spread democracy” or to end a dictator’s violent oppression of his people.

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Athenian Muppets Take Manhattan Saturday, Dec 2 2006 

travel thisgaudygildedstage 10:23 pm

PJ and I are back from New York. All I can say is, so that’s what everbody’s been talking about all these years! Like just about everyone else, I too love New York! I’ll have several posts about our trip in the coming days, but I thought that I would start with an overview of my thoughts about visiting Manhattan for the first time.

Times Square at NightI’ve taught about New York for years now. The texts in my GLBT lit course often revolve around New York as one of the most important havens for gay people throughout the twentieth century. It’s a shame that it’s taken me so long to get there. I’m definitely provincial, the son of working class, conservative parents who never really instilled within me a desire to travel to places like New York or Paris or wherever. One of the things that I like about being with PJ is his urging that we travel and see places. I’ve tended to be a homebody, but I think I’m increasingly gung-ho about going to major cities and experiencing more of the world. In the past decade, I’ve come to love London, Madrid, Washington DC, and San Francisco. I know I’ll never be a New Yorker, and I realize that one trip to the city is only a small taste of what it has to offer. But New York is now on the list of cities I love. It was everything everyone said it would be: wonderful, vibrant, commercial, tawdry, busy, noisy, expensive, and fabulous.

We had three full days in the city. Our hotel was about two blocks from Times Square, so we saw the theater district every day. We saw many of the usual tourist sites: Rockefeller Center and the Christmas Tree, Radio City Music Hall (though we didn’t go in or see the Rockettes), the Empire State Building, Macy’s Christmas window displays, the U.N., St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Grand Central Station, the World Trade Center site, and Battery Park.

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New York, New York Monday, Nov 27 2006 

travel thisgaudygildedstage 8:16 am

PJ and I are off to New York today. We’ll be there until Friday. This is my first trip to the Big Apple, so I’m both looking forward to it and feeling nervous about it — new things and places always make me nervous.

I’ll be taking a break from blogging until the weekend. I hope to have a lot to post about when I get back!

 

The Last Time I Saw You: A Review Friday, Nov 24 2006 

books thisgaudygildedstage 3:45 pm

I wanted to break through all of that. I wanted to tell and hear and you wanted to tell me too and so you did. I was the only one who heard, the only one you told and though you tried to forget I didn’t. I can’t. I won’t for both. A secret is a thing that we hold dear. This secret is the thing that holds us, dearie, still.

So says the narrator in “Aspects of the Novel,” one of the internal monologues cum short stories in Rebecca Brown’s new collection, The Last Time I Saw You, published by City Lights. Brown’s narrative voices hold on to the secrets of their pasts, holding onto their memories long after relationships have disintegrated, even when the accuracy or even truthfullness of those memories is questionable at best. The Last Time I Saw You is an innovative and captivating read. I highly recommend it.

Last Time I Saw You

I bought the book in Philadelphia earlier this month. I’ve been looking for a recent lesbian-authored text to teach in my next Lesbian and Gay Lit course. I have to admit that, although I had seen Rebecca Brown’s name before, I hadn’t read any of her works. The Last Time I Saw You is Brown’s 11th book. From what I’ve read online, The Gifts of the Body, a 1995 novels about a home-care worker who assists people with AIDS, is her most famous work to date. Reading The Last Time definitely makes me want to check out her previous work.

In each of the 12 stories, we observe the narrative voice’s viewpoint, often involving lost love. All of the stories are great, but a few stand out to me. The first one, “The Trenches,” is an engaging monologue about the innocence, if that’s even the right word, of childhood and its loss as one grows up. Indeed, the question of whether “innocence” is even the right way to describe the narrator’s childhood is the kind of questioning that Brown revels in throughout this collection. For her, identity, memory, and even love are unstable qualities, intangibles that can only be grasped at and never fully held or possessed.

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What Do I Want to Be When I Grow Up? Tuesday, Nov 21 2006 

academia and books and queer culture and teaching thisgaudygildedstage 11:05 pm

Recently, I started reading Wayne Hoffman’s novel, Hard. Since I haven’t finished it yet, I don’t want to review it or even write too much about it now. But it’s raised a couple of issues for me that I thought I’d record and reflect on here.

The novel is (partly) about Moe Pearlman, a New Yorker who is on a crusade to preserve his right/opportunity to engage in promiscuous sex in various venues as a conservative mayor (in league with another crusading gay man) works to shut down all of the bathhouses, sex clubs, and adult theaters where Moe indulges his desires. So, in sum, it’s a book about the ethics of gay sexual freedom in an age where AIDS still exists but in which its power to frighten gay men and restrict their sexual activities seems to have waned.

My first thought about the book is how it obviously responds to Larry Kramer’s Faggots, a 1978 novel that criticizes 1970s gay male promiscuity. Even a cursory search demonstrates that Kramer has a vexed reputation in the gay community. He is often dimissed as simply anti-sex. In reviewing Hard, Christopher Bram explicitly compares these two novels and repeats the usual criticism of Kramer and his novel. I have to admit that I love Faggots and now teach it annually in my GLBT Lit course. It’s definitely not a simple novel, nor is it simply anti-sex, in my opinion.

Thinking about the relationship between these two novels made me think about teaching Hoffman’s novel as a response to Kramer’s. I think these two books would work well together, with Angels in America spliced in between. Teaching these three works together would raise interesting issues about sexual freedom, responsibility, relationships, and AIDS, just to name a few. The biggest drawback might be that each of these works is a little long, so it might become difficult to schedule them without taking time away from the lesbian authors I’d also want to teach in the class. (But that’s not an issue I have to think about now.)

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Darkly Dreaming Dexter: A Review Sunday, Nov 19 2006 

books thisgaudygildedstage 11:11 pm

I’m still reading the final book for the review essay I’m writing, but that hasn’t stopped me from reading books for fun too. This past week I read Jeff Lindsay’s 2004 novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter. I first became interested in the book because of the new Showtime series. Even though the series is really good, I can’t watch it — it gives me bad dreams. But I can totally read about the subject matter without much ill effect.

The novel is about Dexter, a lab technician for the Miami police department, who also happens to be a serial killer. He’s a “good” serial killer: he’s good at it and he only kills people who commit murder and get away with it, usually other serial killers.

I love that this novel (and the series) turns the typical detective novel on its head. The detective is not a police officer or a little old lady who enjoys gossip or a fussy Belgian; he’s a killer who’s been trained by his foster father to channel his dark energy for good. (I should say that I love these sorts of novels; it’s kind of like my fascination with watching documentaries about snakes: I hate snakes, I know I’m going to have nightmares after watching a snake documentary, but if I see one on tv I can’t help but become entralled by the horror. That’s what reading really bloody contemporary crime fiction is like for me!)

Over the course of the novel, Dexter meets his match, the ice truck killer who kills and dismembers prostitutes and leaves a special calling card: he drains their bodies of blood before dismembering them. Seeing him as an artist, Dexter is torn about whether he should pursue this killer and stop him or join him. Overall, this novel is fast-paced, the characters are drawn well, and it’s suspenseful and engrossing; I could hardly put it down. I really liked it.

Since it is now a series, I do want to compare the two just enough to say that the series, which is based on the book, is not an exact adaptation. That would have been little more than a made for tv movie. Here are the opening credits for the series; I think they’re brilliant. They make breakfast seem so disgusting!

The series adds characters and subplots while subtracting other elements, most notably a real sense of Dexter’s love of killing and mental instability. In the novel, he suspensefully totters on the edge of the rules his foster father made for him; on tv, he’s a likeable good guy who lives by a fairly clear creed. I like the series and wish I could watch it without any side effects, but I think they lose something by making Dexter, played wonderfully by Michael C. Hall, so likeable.

The book is both more suspenseful and more straightforward than the series. It’s not quite as good as Patricia Cornwell‘s first couple of Kay Scarpetta novels, but it’s definitely a good read, if you’re into that sort of thing.

 

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