The Big Question 5/5 The End of the Beginning

Fifteen years of thought and reding led me to the conclusion that I drew in the last instalment. Should I ever run into Petunia (from the first instalment) again. And, should we talk long enough for the subject to come up, I will be ready to pounce like a theoretical puma in a forest of hypothetical trees. Unfortunately, I don’t have several years to wait in the hope of bumping into her so about a week ago, in the interest of rounding off this introduction, I looked her up on Facebook. To my absolute horror, I discovered she had become an English teacher. I would have been happier if she was working developing chemical weapons or testing cosmetic products on animals. I would like to elaborate on her Saul-like conversion to literature: explaining in detail how my earlier, much less though out, defence of literature had sparked a passion for literature in her that was only rivalled in intensity by the unending physical pain she felt at the regret of dumping me. However, she ignored my friend request so I am on very shaky ground.

I am currently burried in reading through Shakespeare and the publishers keep putting out quality book after quality book, so I'm behind on my this year's fiction. But I will try to keep updating this as much as I can.

Until then, keep asking: is literature what makes us human?

Anyway, until the next installment...

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All the Bloody Shakespeare: Love's Labour 's Lost

Imagine this four times over but with letters instead of conversations and Elizabethan hygiene standards. I was quite excited to read Love's Labour's Lost, it starts really well. The king and his three mates all swear off women for three years to pursue academic interests and higher purposes. Oh, and the king makes it law that everyone else has to do the same for ease of plot development. It's all going well until a princess / potential queen shows up with her exactly three friends. There's a lot of potential here, and we see an immediate step up in terms of the quality of writing. You know those nut jobs who think all Shakespeare's plays were written by different people? Well, I almost thought they had a point for a minute. Almost every phrase the king utters is profound and well-composed. This can't be written by the same bloke that wrote Two Gentlemen of Verona, I erroneously posited. Then we get Costard (a clown). Costard has already broken ...

All The Bloody Shakespeare - As You Like It

I think you ought to know, I'm feeling very depressed. As You Like It is Shakespeare doing the equivalent of a clip show. The whole play is filled with the kinds of things that show up in his earlier comedies. We have: • Brothers at odds with each other. • An intelligent female cross-dresser • A clown (Touchstone) making sheep jokes. • Multiple couples in minor confusions. • A Greek god inexplicably showing up. • Lots and lots of weddings. That said, it's much more polished than his earlier plays. The main plot is slow to start and most of the comedy comes from Orlando still be attracted to the woman he loves when she's dressed as a male shepherd. This is also the root of most of the sheep jokes. As You Like It has one thing that's new to Shakespeare, and that's Jaques. Whilst all the bog-standard rom-com stuff is happening, Jaques' only role in the play is to stand back and moan about how rubbish it all is. Jaques is a mixture of Marvin the Paranoi...

Going to work is just awful

See, Bukowski gets it. I've just seen the #thingsIwillmissaboutlockdownhashtag trending. So, I'll say this, I will miss not having to go to work. Look, I know people have it bad. This Covid-19 thing is kicking the world’s economy right in the ass and taking down a lot of good people, both physically and financially. And yes, this post is coming from a place of privilege; because, if I were about to miss a meal I know I’d be happy to get back to work. Over the years, I’ve done some pretty humiliating stuff to make ends meet: from cleaning bottles of piss left by workmen on construction sites to lining up at an agency at 4am in the hope they might send me out for the day. Thankfully, that’s all a while behind me, and right now, in a usual year, I would be marking exams for 14 hours a day seven days a week to top up my meagre teaching wage. So, let’s be honest, work is shit. The average person with an average job, on average, earns below the a...

Thomas Ouphe

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