Uncharacteristically, I am at a loss for words: I avoid plays as I get too involved watching the audience instead of the stage. (Perhaps because I’m convinced that I will always write it better—a craven lie.)
Perhaps "delightfully well" as an alternative, in that the nature and extent of your wellness bring you delight?
As an observation, though, if they disagree that you are delightful—enough so to actually challenge you when you claim it—perhaps we choose not to care what their opinions on the subject may be.
Also, he has a point about the being dead thing. I say this because I've had the same exact thought, so it must be An Important Thought.
Finally, I know what you mean about tics and rituals. I live in dread at the thought that that's all my writing comprises these days.
Also finally, did you know that Kurt Vonnegut despised semicolons? That may or may not be a point in their favour from where you are looking. Also, he, too, was a writer with most recognisable tics and rituals, but I'll grant that a good number of them were very attractive to the undergraduate reader that I was then.
I look forward to your discourse on semicolons, which I love. I had a supervisor once who was terrified of writing; she called semicolons "grown-up punctuation." Sallie has exquisite pillow-arranging skills.
I haven't advanced enough as a person to get involved with plays. But your thoughts about Edward Albee had me reflecting on how I now only give a canonical modern poem serious consideration once I've discovered a 'perceptive' audio performance that speaks to the text. Recently I changed my mind about Auden's "Lullaby" after listening to historian/screen talent Simon Schama read it for the 'Poems That Make Men Cry' series. I'm sure I had to read "Lullaby" in a college course, and it left me flat. But the virtue of Schama's reading is that he so passionately invests his skills as a TV orator into a work he's clarified as a voice coherently adoring the beloved. I admire Auden's readings of his own works too, which are characteristically arid and patrician. Schama does differently; I'd say better. His reading's on Youtube. Find the text on the Webs.
Thanks for clarifying that it's spelled, "goddam[n]."
Adore Madeleine Sherwood (although it's imperative to check the spelling of her name, every time). And gosh, I remember the 1970s, when my parents had tickets to the American Film Theatre movies, went to downtown Chicago to see them, and came home with these glorious printed programs (particularly the one for Luther, with Stacy Keach). What I wouldn't give to still have those programs today... not to mention the ones that they handed out (handed out!) at big 1960s movie events like My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and (erp!) Camelot. But like every middle class boy's baseball cards, they got tossed out.
It seems All Over has had its day. It sounds ghastly. But what hasn’t had its day is how much I enjoy your Stack.
Those guys at the opera with their scores? Oh man, they used to bug me: it often summoned up notions of superiority, oddness, and an off fetishisation of the score. Why not just watch and listen. What may be fine in one’s own home reading-the-score-wise is not always right at the opera house.
But, the point that pierced my reading was your section about staleness, self-parody, and shtick along with need for an editor. For what it’s worth, I don’t experience your writing as falling into those all-too-ready (I’ve got a lot of - - -s going down this morning) traps. But I do my own. And, man, it chills me to my heart. And I’m not even a writer, I just write on S/stack.
So, in the midst of the difficult with Mr Albee and the camp with Bette Davis (I think Skeffington is maybe the worst thing ever…and while she can do no wrong, and indeed while a mate and I went [he went on to become a drag artist and I went on to become a leatherman at the opera, a presence almost as ubiquitous as people with scores at the opera] through whole weeks while at school talking like her, and well…actually being her, talking about ‘the letter’ and tremoring like her Queen Elizabeth, it is just an unbearable movie) your point about the role of editors is wonderfully made.
I’m glad your critique went the way it did—those line reading stage directions are a bit much. One of the first things they teach you as a playwright is to avoid directing your actors from the text, and he’s indulging.
Being word-perfect on the lines is a point of pride, though.
Uncharacteristically, I am at a loss for words: I avoid plays as I get too involved watching the audience instead of the stage. (Perhaps because I’m convinced that I will always write it better—a craven lie.)
But not just AI—for I do, in fact be, therefore BI—adore em dashes as I be.
Hooray for footnotes and for parentheticals -- especially yours.
Thank you
I was hoping you would read it and enjoy it! ❤️
thx for the bit of Bette
1) That photo of Dewhurst and Tandy makes _All Over_ look like a laugh riot - whatever happened to truth in advertising?
2) Why does Albee always look like he's looming over his casts, a vampire contemplating which one looks the most delicious?
Re: Mr. Skeffington all I can only say, "Oh, Job!"
Re dead or having died: I'm amazed how many people, having asked me how I'm doing, say "oh, really? Are you?" when I say "delightful!"
Apparently, I should be saying "delighted". To be delightful apparently means to bring delight, and saying it is like giving oneself a nickname.
As they say on LinkedIn these days: Thoughts?
Those people, I must note, are more or less correct.
Perhaps "delightfully well" as an alternative, in that the nature and extent of your wellness bring you delight?
As an observation, though, if they disagree that you are delightful—enough so to actually challenge you when you claim it—perhaps we choose not to care what their opinions on the subject may be.
“Delightfully well” is good!
Albee'd? What had you reject "Albeed"?
Also, he has a point about the being dead thing. I say this because I've had the same exact thought, so it must be An Important Thought.
Finally, I know what you mean about tics and rituals. I live in dread at the thought that that's all my writing comprises these days.
Also finally, did you know that Kurt Vonnegut despised semicolons? That may or may not be a point in their favour from where you are looking. Also, he, too, was a writer with most recognisable tics and rituals, but I'll grant that a good number of them were very attractive to the undergraduate reader that I was then.
Oh, I’m extremely familiar with Vonnegut’s remarks on the subject of semicolons, which manage to be both dimwitted and offensive. So it goes.
Delightful. What a construction, indeed—and by that I mean the entirety of the caption in note 2, in all its glorious meanderings!
I eagerly await the musings about "em dashes as an alleged tell of ChatGPT-generated text," should they come to pass.
'How do you tell the difference between shtick and style?'
Nice!
I look forward to your discourse on semicolons, which I love. I had a supervisor once who was terrified of writing; she called semicolons "grown-up punctuation." Sallie has exquisite pillow-arranging skills.
I haven't advanced enough as a person to get involved with plays. But your thoughts about Edward Albee had me reflecting on how I now only give a canonical modern poem serious consideration once I've discovered a 'perceptive' audio performance that speaks to the text. Recently I changed my mind about Auden's "Lullaby" after listening to historian/screen talent Simon Schama read it for the 'Poems That Make Men Cry' series. I'm sure I had to read "Lullaby" in a college course, and it left me flat. But the virtue of Schama's reading is that he so passionately invests his skills as a TV orator into a work he's clarified as a voice coherently adoring the beloved. I admire Auden's readings of his own works too, which are characteristically arid and patrician. Schama does differently; I'd say better. His reading's on Youtube. Find the text on the Webs.
Thanks for clarifying that it's spelled, "goddam[n]."
Adore Madeleine Sherwood (although it's imperative to check the spelling of her name, every time). And gosh, I remember the 1970s, when my parents had tickets to the American Film Theatre movies, went to downtown Chicago to see them, and came home with these glorious printed programs (particularly the one for Luther, with Stacy Keach). What I wouldn't give to still have those programs today... not to mention the ones that they handed out (handed out!) at big 1960s movie events like My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and (erp!) Camelot. But like every middle class boy's baseball cards, they got tossed out.
Would the New Yorker write Albeeësque?
I wouldn’t be at all surprised.
I love semicolons.
It seems All Over has had its day. It sounds ghastly. But what hasn’t had its day is how much I enjoy your Stack.
Those guys at the opera with their scores? Oh man, they used to bug me: it often summoned up notions of superiority, oddness, and an off fetishisation of the score. Why not just watch and listen. What may be fine in one’s own home reading-the-score-wise is not always right at the opera house.
But, the point that pierced my reading was your section about staleness, self-parody, and shtick along with need for an editor. For what it’s worth, I don’t experience your writing as falling into those all-too-ready (I’ve got a lot of - - -s going down this morning) traps. But I do my own. And, man, it chills me to my heart. And I’m not even a writer, I just write on S/stack.
So, in the midst of the difficult with Mr Albee and the camp with Bette Davis (I think Skeffington is maybe the worst thing ever…and while she can do no wrong, and indeed while a mate and I went [he went on to become a drag artist and I went on to become a leatherman at the opera, a presence almost as ubiquitous as people with scores at the opera] through whole weeks while at school talking like her, and well…actually being her, talking about ‘the letter’ and tremoring like her Queen Elizabeth, it is just an unbearable movie) your point about the role of editors is wonderfully made.
I’m glad your critique went the way it did—those line reading stage directions are a bit much. One of the first things they teach you as a playwright is to avoid directing your actors from the text, and he’s indulging.
Being word-perfect on the lines is a point of pride, though.