Who is this guy?

Even though I'm certain the movie "Anonymous" is going to irritate the hell out of me, I will see it. Mostly because I will watch just about any Elizabethan costume drama. And because some weird voyeuristic part of me gets a kick out of seeing people get all worked up over the Oxford vs. Stratford argument. This is the century-old debate over whether William Shakespeare as we know him -- the author of all those comedies, tragedies, histories and sonnets -- was a glovemaker's son-turned-actor from Stratford or the aristocratic Earl of Oxford, who merely used the actor's name to shield himself from potential social and political reprisals. The movie tells the Oxford version of the story and will doubtless create endless new arenas for debate, a bunch of new Oxfordians and irritate the hell out of Stratfordians (which includes the vast majority of the scholarly establishment). I only hope longtime Oxfordians get equally riled up because now most of the public is going to believe Roland Emmerich -- a guy best known for disaster pics like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 -- came up with this theory. My position is: I don't really care. I'm a sentimental Stratfordian merely because I like the idea that a schmoe of ordinary birth could turn out to be the greatest literary genius of the English language. I'm also cynical about conspiracy theories, especially those that would require conspiring on behalf of a whole lot of people. (This piece in the New York Times has a great line about the ability of Shakespeare scholars to pull off conspiracies.) But I think the plays are the things -- what matters is that we have this treasure trove of literary genius, not which guy's hand held the pen.

At least the whole tantalizing question of Shakespeare's identity and his legacy, and all the unanswered questions around him, has left us with so much material for so many interesting books, fiction and non. If you'd like to read a Shakespeare biography without signing over a couple weeks of your life, I highly recommend Bill Bryson's. It's part of the Eminent Lives series of briefish biographies by popular writers (as in nonacademic specialists, not potbiolers). The Key West Library has a large print copy which is 240 pages and it concludes with a chapter dealing with the various "claimants," ie. people who are not Shakespeare that people have proposed as the writers of Shakespeare's work. Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World and Peter Ackroyd's biography also come highly recommended, though they're both quite a bit longer than Bryson's. And after reading this ringing Stratfordian defense by Simon Schama I've put in an Interlibrary Loan request for James Shapiro's Contested Will. Shapiro himself has also weighed in on the movie, in a New York Times op-ed.

But what I really like are modern crime novels where a long-lost Shakespeare talisman serves as the MacGuffin.  My favorite is The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber. In that one, the Shakespeare artifact that has mysteriously surfaced after the centuries is a lost play about Mary Queen of Scots. Another that goes directly to the Stratford-Oxford question is Chasing Shakespeares by Sarah Smith. So does The School of Night by Alan Wall though it's less effortlessly entertaining (though highly intelligent) than the previous two. I'm told good things, too, about The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips -- not so much a crime novel as a literary puzzlebox, from the descriptions, but it's got its own lost Shakespeare play, this one about King Arthur.

One thing I have not yet done, the stuff I have not read -- though I really should, if only justify lugging the giant Riverside Shakespeare around with me for the last 25 years -- are the works of Shakespeare. (I have read most of the works of Shakespeare -- I was an English major -- but not in adulthood, which I find makes a big difference in how you understand a lot of stuff they made you read in high school and college. Wasted on the young, as they say.)

Change is in the air

If you're in Key West, you know that we just experienced The Change -- that marvelous moment each late October when the humidity suddenly drops considerably and you think, oh yeah -- that's why we live here. To me, this means reading weather -- more on the back deck than in summer (which is also reading weather, because it's too freaking hot to do anything active, only then it's inside in the air conditioning). Which means, yes, it's always reading weather. But the change of seasons and a couple of upcoming literary events have me thinking about changing up my reading list. And there are some good titles on the way if you want to take part:

1) The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss -- historical fiction set after the Revolutionary War, as the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians duke it out for the future direction of the young country and regular folks are collateral damage to some of the duking. It's the title for the November Book Bites Book Club at the Key West Library so we have lots of copies. The group meets Nov. 10 at the Library.

2) Last Train to Paradise by Les Standiford -- it's going to be our One Island One Book choice for 2012, timed to the Centennial of the Overseas Railway reaching Key West. Les will be coming to talk about the book and we'll have other programs around that time -- there will be lots more information in the future at our One Island One Book blog. Bookmark it!

3) Any or all of the writers coming to the Key West Literary Seminar in January 2012 -- it's an amazing bunch especially if you're into the speculative fiction -- superstars like Margaret Atwood and William Gibson, Pulitzer Prizewinners like Jennifer Egan and Michael Cunningham, new voices like Dexter Palmer and Charles Yu, guys with hot new zombie titles like Colson Whitehead. It's going to be extraordinary. It's sold out, I'm afraid, but there will be free sessions on Sunday afternoon, as always. And the Seminar will post the audio from as many sessions as we can on our ever-expanding archives.

So read, dammit!

Teaser Tuesdays: Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

I've been on an (extremely minor) Shakespeare jag -- without actually reading Shakespeare -- in preparation for arguing with people about the upcoming movie Anonymous. More on that later. In the meantime, here's my Teaser, in accordance with the book meme hosted by Should Be Reading (to play along, go to that blog and post your own link or teaser). I'm just finishing Bill Bryson's Shakespeare biography, which is part of the Eminent Lives series and thus not a giant tome:

"We would know even less about the business and structure of Elizabethan theatrical life were it not for the diary and related papers of Philip Henslowe, proprietor of the Rose and Fortune theaters. Henslowe was a man of many parts, not all of them entirely commendable."

A friend writes ...

Full disclosure: Diana Abu-Jaber is a friend. This is both very cool -- Diana is a smart, kind, generous person as well as an excellent writer -- and kind of fraught. Because when a friend publishes a book and you think, "Gee I should really read that," there's always that lurking fear: What if I don't like it? I shouldn't have worried. First of all, like I said, Diana's an excellent writer. And Birds of Paradise started getting great notices months before it was published, in trades I keep an eye on (Library Journal and Booklist, the ALA's book review magazine). When it was published, last month, the great reviews hit the streets. So last week, I summoned the courage to read it. And it is great. Really great.

Quick plot synopsis: The Muir family of Coral Gables has fractured. Felice, their younger child, has run away from home at 13 and had only rare, sporadic contact in the five years since. She's survived on the streets of Miami Beach by modeling and forming bonds with other street kids. Their son, Stanley, is semi-estranged, struggling to make a go of his organic market in Homestead. Dad Brian is corporate counsel to a developer that is a prime player in the mid 2000s building boom. The novel's main action takes place in August 2005, just before Hurricane Katrina sweeps across South Florida. Avis is a pastry chef who is in an extended state of shock from losing her daughter and somehow unable to connect with her son, despite their shared love for providing food as a vocation.

The book rotates through the points of view of everyone in the family, though Stanley is mostly offstage until the book's finale. This works very well and somehow everyone is (mostly) sympathetic -- I was a bit fed up with Avis, at times, especially in her treatment of Stanley. But I was still caught up, wanting to know what would happen next.

A couple things I particularly appreciated about this book. 1) The characters are real people, not merely metaphors who stand for some national trait or cardboard cutouts illustrating something about society. This, I realized as I was reading the book, is what irritates me in novels that are often held up as Great Literary Works (Don Delillo, anyone?). 2) She gets South Florida right -- you'd expect that, since she lives here, but it's still a pleasure and a relief since this is an area that so many people write about, many of them with only a glancing knowledge of the place. My favorite line from the book: "Increasingly Brian feels that living in Florida is an act of both rebellion and willful perversity -- like rebuilding a house on the train tracks." 3) Characters of varying ethnicities are real people, not merely foils against whom the Anglos to test out their wild and crazy sides. That's another thing that seems to happen a lot in Great Literary Works, especially by white guys. 4) She uses food in a truly literary way, as an expression of character and individuality, not as some gimmick or plot frame. Diana was a panelist at the first session of the Key West Literary Seminar, way back in January, when our topic was food in literature. She was a hit there -- I hope some of the folks who saw her there are reading (and buying!) the book.

Teaser Tuesdays: The Victorians by A.N. Wilson

I'm joining in the bookish meme hosted by MizB of the Should Be Reading blog and posting what I'm reading today. My wordpress skills are not up to the formatting of MizB or Julia, so forgive me. But my reading at the moment, continuing my recent return to giant nonfiction tomes, is The Victorians by A.N. Wilson. It's one of those grabbag compendium popular histories -- I'm only 88 pages in but it seems to jump around a lot. I suspect I'll learn quite a bit by the time I finish though I'm dubious about how much I'll retain. I've read the first two volumes of James/Jan Morris' Victorian trilogy -- Heaven's Command and Pax Britannica -- and the only thing I remember is that the Brits got slaughtered in Afghanistan trying to get through the Khyber Pass.

Anyway here's the random excerpt:

" The Queen had been in effect an only child -- though she had a half-sister she was brought up as a solitary, uncertain of her mother's love and yet monarch of all she surveyed. ... Neither from parent nor from first-born son could the consolations of affection be found, nor the even more deeply consoling qualities of dependability, obedience, affection for her whims."