3. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
This was a book I had to read for school; I was set to hate it for various silly reasons: this book was a substitution that only my teacher made for Tale of Two Cities (the traditional senior book at my school), we were supposed to read it and understand all its nuances after one weekend, etc. A lot of whiny reasons on my part, let’s just leave it at that.
However, I ended up really liking this book. Essentially, the novel is framed around a woman named Janie telling her friend, Phoebe, about her life. I loved following the epic journey she made through her experiences with love and life in her three marriages, ultimately coming into her own as an independent, strong woman whom you could really sympathize with.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this book, though I thought some of the symbolism completely beat you over the head. It was my first experience with a novel from the Harlem Renaissance period—definitely unique stylistically. It’s a bit of a surprise, but I recommend it very highly.
4. Master Harold…and the Boys, Athol Fugard
This was a play I had to read for school. It might be a little cheap for me to be counting all four plays we read, but they’re all separate works, so *shrug*.
The play looks at race relations in South Africa during the apartheid period and how lingering racism negatively affects the chances for a more equal future relationship. It’s a pretty heavy piece; the ending left me crying—but, then again, books make me cry often enough that that means very little. :P I’d probably recommend it if you’re feeling in a serious turn of mind, but personally, I would never have read it on my own. It just strikes me as the kind of play that’s more interesting in an academic context.
5. Six Characters in Search of an Author, Luigi Pirandello
The second in the four play sequence I had to read for school. Stupid IB kids. *shakes fist*
Anyway, the title is fairly self-explanatory as to what the play is about: six characters in an unfinished play show up at a theater and ask the director to write their story and perform it. It’s in the same line as Camus and Beckett and that whole “existentialist/absurdist/whatever-ist” in-crowd.
I did not like this play, partly because absurdism ticks me off. I’ve never really cared for it because, while absurdism has its appeal, it’s always struck me as the easy way out to say that we’ll never reach the green light, but we keep rowing towards it regardless—blah blah blah, life is pointless, yeah, we get it. But I like to think there’s more purpose in the world than that.
Of course, I also might not have liked it because I had no clue what was going on for most of the play…nah, that can’t be it. Anyway, sorry, but I don’t recommend this play at all.
6. True West, Sam Shepard
The third in the four play sequence I had to read for school.
This play follows the relationship between two brothers, Lee and Austin, who gradually drive one another to insanity through their interactions. The premise of the play has Austin, your conventional preppy Ivy League stereotype, housesitting for their mother while she visits Alaska, in order that he may write an important screenplay for Hollywood in peace; Lee is your typical “desert rat”, who makes his living through stealing and other illegal ventures, drops in on his brother, ostensibly with the intention of robbing the suburban neighborhood on the sly. Everything is turned on its head, though, when the producer Austin is writing for loses a gamble to Lee at golf and promises the commission for a screenplay to Lee instead of Austin; crazy hijinks ensue as the two brothers try to fulfill one another’s roles and, essentially, become one another.
I highly recommend this play. It’s brilliant and funny and insightful, and the film version with John Malkovich is made of win! Seriously, if you haven’t read this before, go now. :D
7. Translations, Brian Friel
The fourth (and final!) play in the four play sequence I had to read for school.
This play revolves around a hedge school in a small town in Ireland and the people who attend it regularly. The most notable of them: Hugh, the drunken schoolmaster; Manus, the lame son of the schoolmaster who helps out with teaching; Maire, the milkmaid and primary love interest of Manus; and Sarah, the sort of mute girl with a schoolgirl crush on Manus. The regular dynamic of the school is shook up, however, when Hugh’s long lost son Owen comes back to town as a translator for a regiment of English soldiers who are there to anglicize the names of Irish towns and geographical stuff for British maps. Of course, as in every story about Irish-English relations, ~drama ensues.
I liked this play, but as I don’t take Latin or Greek, many of the references in that language went over my head; Friel understands this, though, and tends to make it clear what he means even if you don’t know either language. It’s a little disconcerting, also, to have everyone in the play speaking English, even though ostensibly, you have your Irish people speaking Gaelic, your English people speaking English, and a select few (Hugh, Manus, and Owen) able to speak/understand both. Yeah, I know, it’s supposed to send a message about how we’re “all human” and that “fundamentally, we all speak the language of humanity” or whatever, but it’s still hard to suspend belief. I think it’s an interesting read, but also fairly predictable and absurd in terms of how it ends; the ending is supposed to be parallel to the beginning and all that, but I don’t know, I guess it just left me a little unsatisfied.
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