wednesday/books

[landofnowhere]

Either/Or, Elif Batuman. The sequel to The Idiot, and I think I liked it better -- I was generally charmed by Selin's voice. Interestingly I found the setting more recognizably Harvard than in The Idiot, I'm not sure if it's because there was more name-dropping or it was locations I knew better. These books do this interesting thing where the first 2/3 are "Selin spends a year at college" and then the last 1/3 is "Selin travels abroad over the summer", and that's kind of a disorienting arc to have. (And I came out of this book legit concerned about Selin, and happy to learn afterwards that Elif Batuman is now in a happy and stable lesbian relationship -- it's suggested that these novels are very autobiographical.)

Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe. Play-readaloud -- I volunteered to organize this one, without realizing that there are actually two substantially different versions of the text out there -- the 1604 "A text" and the 1616 "B text" (note that Marlowe died in 1593! but the question of which version is less corupt is a matter of scholarly debate. After reading both texts I decided to go with the B text, because it's longer and I thought our group would enjoy the stupid practical jokes, but I suspect the A text works better dramatically, pacing-wise.

Anyway, I hadn't read this since college, and it was fun to do as a group and had some good lines! (It's also occurred to me that I should maybe add Goethe's Faust to my to-read list. Anyone have any recommendations re: translations?)

Ink and Steel, Elizabeth Bear. Recommended by Maya as good fiction about Christopher Marlowe inspired by Doctor Faustus-- also has William Shakespeare, and faeries. I picked this up once before and didn't get far into it, am giving it another try.

Comments

[selenak]

Re: Goethe translations - this is very tricky. There's a flowery Victorian one which manages to bowlderize like mad and completely botches the wit and verve, then there's a 20th century literal one that ruins the poetry, and then there's my personal favorite which was actually written for the RSC who staged Faust I and Faust II (very very rare to stage both) and had playwright Howard Brenton have a go at it. Brenton had someone do a word-by-word translation for him to countercheck, and then made poetry out of it. Now, because this was a version explicitly written to be staged, he cut several scenes in both plays, but it's still my favourite and the best I've found in English, and it's available on kindle. (Published by Nick Hern Books, London.) Importantly, it does keep the wit and the satire and - imo as always - provides a sense as to why for Germans, this is THE Faust, and hardly anyone outside of English literature specialists knows Marlowe's version.

The reason why I know this is that I actually saw it performed on stage, and the way they went into the opening scene, the "prologue in the theatre" (where the director, the poet and the actor/funny person get into a hilarious debate that shows you Goethe had to run a theatre in Weimar as well as being a writer and that the principles remain the same throughout the centuries) was to let the three actors (who later become God, Faust and Mephisto, respectively, which is something the famous Gründgens production did first) just start in their every day clothes on stage while the audience was still filling in, and you could feel that the audience, most of whom probably didn't know the play, were unsure at first whether this was real or the play but just went with it.

[oursin]

Hah: I saw this version at the Lyric Hammersmith many many years ago (some day I will dig out all my old theatre programmes and find out how to update Theatricalia entries....): Simon Callow was Faust. It did the two part thing (afternoon and evening perfs).

[selenak]

Wow, I see Andy Serkis was also in it! In the late 80s, he must have been too young to play anyone but the Student, but today I could see him as Mephisto...

[oursin]

The link to a blog post there is dead: but the post can be found here and has more info and some contemporary reviews.

[landofnowhere]

Thanks, that is super helpful!

[troisoiseaux]

When I read The Idiot a few years ago, I spent much of the book theorizing it would end with Selin realizing she was gay, because the vibes of her relationship with her female friend vs. her largely email-based attraction to her male love interest, and surprised when it did not. I was delighted when I saw that Elif Batuman came out a few years later! Good for her!

[abangaku]

I read Either/Or about a year ago, and had a very similar reaction to you, I think — I liked it better than The Idiot (which is saying something, because The Idiot was my favorite book of the year I read it in), but also definitely had the same concern about Selin that you're talking about here, with an intensity that was kind of alarming. I wrote in my paper journal, the day I finished Either/Or, "I am burning to read the unwritten sequel to Either/Or, because I want it to all be better for Selin.... Selin seemed more real than almost every other fictional character I've come across." I had the sense that Either/Or was less autobiographical than The Idiot, at least, which would be some relief if true, though I'm not sure if it actually is.