grab bag

[an exceedingly random post]

Mostly I just want to remind you that two marvelous books go on sale (specifically in the USA) today:

The Definitions, a thrilling dystopian novel by my pal Matt Greene:

And A Long Game, a thrilling writer’s guide by my pal

Elizabeth McCracken

:

But as long as we are here, I’d also like to celebrate the centenary (today!) of the incomparable actress Julie Harris:

Julie Harris as Joan [of Arc, that is] in Jean Anouilh’s The Lark

And today is also Georges Seurat’s birthday!

And Maria Callas’s birthday!

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The death of the playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard has been much on my mind these last few days, and I remain steadfast in my belief that his Arcadia is the greatest play written in the English language in the last 150 years or so.¹

For those of you who like lists, here are twenty² absolutely God-tier English-language³ plays of the modern era, in no particular order, one to a playwright (or, in one case, one to a playwrighting team):

Tom Stoppard, Arcadia

Tony Kushner, Angels in America

Thornton Wilder, Our Town

Noël⁴ Coward, Private Lives

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun

August Wilson, The Piano Lesson

John Guare, Landscape of the Body

Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

Edward Albee, A Delicate Balance

Samuel Beckett, Happy Days

Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, Once in a Lifetime

Elmer Rice, Street Scene

George Bernard Shaw, You Never Can Tell⁵

Michael Frayn, Noises Off

Christopher Durang, The Marriage of Bette and Boo

Neil Simon, The Sunshine Boys

J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Lanford Wilson, Fifth of July

Caryl Churchill, Top Girls⁶

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Word stuff: I stumbled an hour or so ago (not for the first time; I mean: I’ve been online before) upon the odious coinage “smexy,” and I’d like to request that whoever coined it uncoin it asap.

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That’s that for today. I hope that you’ll consider purchasing either or both of those two books I cited above (preorders and first-week sales, as I say often, are crucial to the life of a book) or, of course, requesting that your local library secure copies of them.

Till next time,

B.

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P.S. For those of you who like dogs, a dog.

Sallie managed to whack her tail so hard against a door that we had to take her to the doctor to get her cleaned and taped up. She’s fine. She’s also continuing to enjoy the Library of America John Guare volume, though she prefers Six Degrees of Separation to Landscape of the Body, in part because the violence is largely implied in the former and quite explicit in the latter, and she doesn’t really like scary stuff.

1. By which what I really mean is: since Shakespeare died.

2. Copyeditorial reminder (to copy editors): Whenever a writer writes anything like “here are twenty,” start counting.

3. Ibsen, Chekhov, and Brecht aside, I’m not especially deeply read in non-English plays, so I wouldn’t presume to speak for all the world’s theater. And also because as soon as Chekhov enters the conversation, my number 1 pick (with a bullet) is always going to be . . .

. . . The Cherry Orchard. (The gentleman all the way to the left brandishing the pool cue is Konstantin Stanislavsky himself, and I’d imagine that the actress standing just off center with her hand on the table is Olga Knipper, Mme. Chekhov.)

4. Speaking of Noël Coward (and copyediting): I can’t prove it, but I think that news etc. venues are getting much more attentive to the ring diacritic in Alexander Skarsgård’s name than they used to be.

5. Yes, I might have opted for Pygmalion, or Heartbreak House, or Saint Joan, but decades ago I saw, in Chicago, a production of You Never Can Tell that remains one of the loveliest evenings I’ve ever spent in a theater (so lovely that I think I went to see it twice), and as it’s an underloved (or, at least, underknown and underrespected) play I always like to show it some public love. So: love.

6. I have very much on purpose omitted two plays* from this list that would surely be on a lot of people’s lists, because I believe that though they have kicked off some of the most spectacularly riveting productions I’ve yet seen in this lifetime of mine, they are (paradoxically?) textually on the rocky, or at least wonky, side. Or maybe I’m just being perverse. Or maybe I just want you to guess what they are.

*And, I realize post-publication I should clarify, their authors.