Stuff I’ve Been Reading

— An incredible article about the Parkland students who are now rehearsing a production of Spring Awakening, by Isaac Butler (one of the co-authors of the new oral history of Angels in America, which I can’t wait to read). They Don’t Do Sadness is a must-read. It’s so good on theatre kids, and rehearsals, and the bonds that form, what it’s like to pour your present-day life through a fictionalized structure, how cathartic it can be.

— The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe. Somehow, unbelievably, I have never read this. Shocker: it’s as good as everyone says. I am fascinated by those, like Wolfe, who can look around – in the middle of a crazy moment – and see (or at least take a stab at) what might really be happening. On a Wolfe kick. Just read his first collection of essays too, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. He has an extremely aggressive in-your-face style. You NOTICE it. For me, it works, especially in this early material. It makes you feel like you are actually on Ken Kesey’s Day-Glo bus. The “scene” depicted is so unappealing to me it actually borders on the violently unpleasant. The togetherness of it all … it’s stifling. Wolfe senses in the dynamic some of the dangers which would eventually become clear just one year after the book’s publication, when Manson and his merry band of lunatics slaughtered a bunch of strangers. Wolfe can sense what might be coming. At any rate, I’m having a blast with it.

— The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1: 1940-1956. Holy mackerel, this volume is gigantic. And long overdue (total understatement). The Sylvia Plath Estate has had such a stranglehold on actual exploration of this important artist’s work and life. That is now changing. Never fear: Frieda Hughes is in charge! She is not afraid. As of now, all we have had, in terms of Sylvia’s correspondence, is the wretchedly and dishonestly edited volume Letters Home, brought out by Sylvia’s poor mother who – naturally, although annoyingly – felt very defensive. It’s a crazy volume, so filled with ellipses that you know the entire thing is a lie, or at least so sanitized as to be worthless. But when it’s all you have, you dig in, you read it obsessively. But that’s been it. Shocking. But now, here is volume 1 of Plath’s correspondence. Starting with her letters home from summer camp as a child. There’s even a surviving letter to her father, who died when she was young. It’s, frankly, incredible, to read these childish letters, filled with stamp-collecting, poetry, and illustrations, listed out by the editors. Sylvia loved to sketch. It’ll take me forever to get through is, but I am soaking it in.

— The Trial, by Franz Kafka. I spent January to April reading James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, a couple of pages each morning, read out loud. (It’s the only way to go.) That book is one of the reading experiences of a lifetime. It’s shockingly easy once you actually submit to it. It’s not hard at all. It’s not as “hard” as Ulysses often is. Sure, some passages are dense, and you have to squint to figure out what the joke is (because it’s all a joke) … but in general, it’s a very simple book, and the whole point is to futz around with language. That’s it. At any rate, it took up so much time that when I finished it I wanted to take a small break in the fiction department. There are a couple of other BIG novels I want to read, but not now. Hence: Kafka’s slim book. Which I’ve read before. I’ll finish it in the next couple of days. It’s such a perfect representation of paranoia. Of fears of bureaucracy. Of not being “in” on … whatever “it” is.