Today's Quote: Cleverness

Click to enlarge.

From Literary Visions of Homosexuality, edited by Stuart Kellogg, 1983.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)

Today, St. George's Day, is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, and much as I admire his genius, I am loath to repeat the many praises and tributes flooding the intertubes on this occasion.  Instead, I offer my truckbuddies the chance to reacquaint themselves with the entirety of his marvelous oeuvre by way of the spirited efforts of the renowned Reduced Shakespeare Company, who, with typical American gusto, specialize in presenting the Bard's complete works onstage in just an hour and a half - believe it or not.  A sample of their work:






Should anyone care to watch the whole performance, he can do so here, in a somewhat better video version.  It may also be available on Netflix.

The Ant and the Grasshopper

This old queen recommends another:  this past week I've stumbled across some of Somerset Maugham's dramatized short stories - and they are delightful - in a couple of anthologies viewable on Netflix:  Quartet (1948) and Encore (1951).  There's another one, Trio (1950), which isn't available for streaming, but if you like good old-fashioned whimsy with some occasional gay undertones and subtexts, do try them.

Here is a dramatic reading of the story "The Ant and the Grasshopper," which is beautifully acted in Encore.




Note: I tried to be an ant, really I did. But you either have a talent for something, or you don't. I didn't. The hell of it is, I wasn't a true grasshopper, either. Destined to be just a harmless, pointless roly-poly, I guess.

Faulkner Speaks

The University of Virginia has put online its collection of tape recordings made during William Faulkner's two years as Writer-in-Residence there back in 1957-1958.  A very short clip can be heard here, but the collection is worth browsing through, not merely for the wonderful sound of Faulkner's old-time Southern accent - our modern accents down here, though still distinctive, are tainted by half a century of exposure to the daily barrage of television - but the collection also includes many fascinating articles by and about Faulkner and the South of those days, as well as photographs like the ones above and below.

What a marvel that we live in an age when such a collection is available at the touch of a few buttons, in the comfort of one's home; all this was just science-fiction fantasy a few short years ago, and now we take it all for granted.  Mind-boggling when I stop to think about it, what a vast distance technology has progressed in just my lifetime - though human nature has not changed one iota, of course.  It never does.

Looking over this collection brings up many thoughts about matters public and private, current and historic, that I don't really want to take the time to blog about right now, so I'll leave you all to make your own reflections if you're interested in this sort of thing. 

Faulkner at a hunt club in Virginia in 1960; the two men are holding a flask of whiskey.

Out of the closet at last

Well whattaya know . . . come to find out, Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) is gay . . . and lived happily with his parter in New York for 50 years! Man, that's so beautiful, all the way around.

Where's the windshield wiper switch . . . I'm misty eyed over that one.