While I'm stuck at work - literally waiting for water to evaporate - I thought I'd offer a quick note on what I've been up to. Last week I took my chances again on the Fringe Festival and attended The Devil and Billy Markham, a one-man show presenting an epic poem by Shel Silverstein. That's right, the author of Where the Sidewalk Ends and other enduring children's classics wrote a poem about a human blues guitarist trying to out-trick the Devil. No, scratch that. The author of enduring children's classics wrote an incredibly profane and obscene epic poem about an anti-hero out-cheating the devil and god. (yes, you can follow that link to the text, and yes, it is actually very entertaining)
Who knew? Apparently Mr. Silverstein has a large body of adult-oriented work, even larger that that of his children-oriented work. It was very, very strange to hear those words being said with the same lyrical facility I recognize from poems read as a child. As for the play itself, it was a bit of well-played raunchy fun.
And now for literary matters from a different continent. In need of a new subway book (for which the criterion is that it must fit into my pocket), I have decided, once again after four failures, to try and tackle Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. Listen, this shouldn't be that hard - I love Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Tolstoy felt like he was always trying to live up to Turgenev's work, especially this book. But for some reason...I just haven't been able to get into this book enough to read it. Yet. 5th time's the charm, right? Right?
Anyways, I'm posting my subway-reading challenge here in the hopes that doing so will in some way hold me accountable for finishing what I set out to do. We'll see.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I think it would be really nice if you read the book aloud on the subway. That way you could share.
Post a Comment