Calvino and Showstopper take 3
Apr. 6th, 2011 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearLast night, I went to Showstopper! for the third and final time (final only because it was the last performance of the run).
Set against the backdrop of the mine closures in 1984, last night's improvised musical followed the fortunes of Sebastien, the illegitimate child of Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill, and was entitled "Why-Aye Mine!"
It. Was. Awesome.
In other news, I also finished If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino.
The opening chapter was written directly to and about me, so uncannily that I was looking for the secret camera as I was reading. I've only read one other book that was written in the second person and, at least to begin with, this one seemed much more effective, as I was very definitely its target audience.
The book alternated the opening chapters of ten different novels with the continuing story of the Reader actually reading the books and attempting to find their conclusions. It started off incredibly meta, with the novel narratives describing how and why they were written, directly discussing the effects of certain paragraphs and images, rather than just telling the story.
As it became obvious that the Reader's search for the second chapter of each novel was only going to lead him to a completely different book, I was intrigued by the variety inherent in such a structure, but also considered that this made it very difficult to invest in any of the subordinate plotlines, as I knew none of them would be finished.
As the book progressed, the narratives got less vague, forming more cohesive storylines, and lessening the sense of connection I had with the Reader, as he became more and more his own person and much less like me. This made the book somewhat easier to read and to follow, but lessened the sense of cleverness that would perhaps have been difficult to maintain over 250 pages anyway.
The Reader's tale took on Kafkaesque qualities, as he travelled the world in search of complete versions of the novels he started, and encountered increasingly strange characters, who only added to the mystery, rather than being able to answer any of his questions clearly.
I had no idea where the plot might actually end up, but realised afterwards that I really should have seen the shaggy dog story ending coming. It was groan-worthy, but also silly and conclusive enough to be satisfying after all that came before, and I loved the very last page, which provided an extremely fitting conclusion to the book.
Overall, it was basically a treatise on the nature of reading and how it is a uniqely solitary and subjective activity (in the group of readers who describe their attitude to reading towards the end, I am Reader Six) - but it was also a very clever exercise in pretension, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Set against the backdrop of the mine closures in 1984, last night's improvised musical followed the fortunes of Sebastien, the illegitimate child of Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill, and was entitled "Why-Aye Mine!"
It. Was. Awesome.
In other news, I also finished If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino.
The opening chapter was written directly to and about me, so uncannily that I was looking for the secret camera as I was reading. I've only read one other book that was written in the second person and, at least to begin with, this one seemed much more effective, as I was very definitely its target audience.
The book alternated the opening chapters of ten different novels with the continuing story of the Reader actually reading the books and attempting to find their conclusions. It started off incredibly meta, with the novel narratives describing how and why they were written, directly discussing the effects of certain paragraphs and images, rather than just telling the story.
As it became obvious that the Reader's search for the second chapter of each novel was only going to lead him to a completely different book, I was intrigued by the variety inherent in such a structure, but also considered that this made it very difficult to invest in any of the subordinate plotlines, as I knew none of them would be finished.
As the book progressed, the narratives got less vague, forming more cohesive storylines, and lessening the sense of connection I had with the Reader, as he became more and more his own person and much less like me. This made the book somewhat easier to read and to follow, but lessened the sense of cleverness that would perhaps have been difficult to maintain over 250 pages anyway.
The Reader's tale took on Kafkaesque qualities, as he travelled the world in search of complete versions of the novels he started, and encountered increasingly strange characters, who only added to the mystery, rather than being able to answer any of his questions clearly.
I had no idea where the plot might actually end up, but realised afterwards that I really should have seen the shaggy dog story ending coming. It was groan-worthy, but also silly and conclusive enough to be satisfying after all that came before, and I loved the very last page, which provided an extremely fitting conclusion to the book.
Overall, it was basically a treatise on the nature of reading and how it is a uniqely solitary and subjective activity (in the group of readers who describe their attitude to reading towards the end, I am Reader Six) - but it was also a very clever exercise in pretension, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
