Year of the King: An Actor's Diary and Sketchbook

by 

Antony Sher

really liked it

Very good read. Sher is an excellent writer, and the book is sprinkled with his drawings of characters in Richard III and at the Royal Shakespeare Company where the 1984 production in which he played the titular role was staged. The diary covers the period from before he was asked to the opening. It is filled with the usual things that this genre contains: the actor comes to grips with this immense character he or she is playing, wry or despairing accounts of rehearsals, and usually a triumphant conclusion to the process. At one point Sher bumps into Branagh, who is doing his first Henry V for the RSC. It's a mildly entertaining encounter for the omniscient reader. When the Sher book appeared over 30 years ago, he didn't know that Branagh too had been keeping a diary and would shortly release an early autobiography.

Sher is self-deprecating in a charming, unbelievable way. The protagonist of a book like this is not always good company, but Sher manages to seem like the kind of guy you would like to hoist a pint with. He takes a very interesting vacation with his family in South Africa, still (1983) in the grip of apartheid. Sher has an acute, gimlet eye for the telling detail about his homeland. One understands why he felt driven to leave, and how conflicted being there even for a few weeks makes him.

He is also unsparing about the neuroses that are universal in his profession: all of the Richard actors and staff are alternately nervous, terrified, arrogant, humble, you name it. I think when audiences see the finished product they are inclined to think that it arrived in front of them like Athena from Zeus' head, fully formed and gleaming in armor. Not so. It takes a temporary village to make a play, and like any village, it has its good times and bad. Sher's Year of the King is probably most interesting to those of us who work in theatre, but I heartily recommend it to any who attend as a good glimpse at what happens before they settle into their seats and unfold the programs.

 

This is the book by the Chief Counsel for the re-investigation of the Kennedy assassination that the House launched in the late 1970s. Cromwell's structure is scattershot. He doesn't develop a linear understanding of his issues with the Warren Commission (and boy, does he have issues with the Warren Commission); rather, each chapter hits from a different, and in many cases, unrelated angle. Some of it is interesting enough. His take on Oliver Stone's JFK actually heightens the value of the film, while at the same time it demolishes its value as an historical artifact. The big finding from Cromwell's work was the identification of a shot as being fired from the direction of the grassy knoll. Cromwell used up to date techniques to examine sound pulled from a motorcycle cop's open mic. He uses this data to state that there was by definition a conspiracy. He does not exonerate Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin. Nor does he offer an opinion as to the identity of the alleged second shooter. The soundcheck has been re-examined in the decades since the House investigation, and opinion remains divided (insofar as I can determine) over whether or not Cromwell's acoustic team were correct. Cromwell frequently laments the passage of time since November 22, 1963. Even in 1978, when his committee investigated, the intervening fifteen years had dried up witnesses, recollections or even a forensic trail. As he wrote in 1998, the problem was getting worse. Today, nearly 60 years later, the likely truth of the assassination will never be known. A fair read. The conspiracy theory is his most provocative conclusion, but it remains unproven.

 

Perhaps the best book I have ever read about Mr. Jefferson. I am a product of the University of Virginia, which Gordon-Reed and her co-author Peter Onuf argue was the practical expression of his vision of the Republic. It was to provide citizens who were educated in the American ideals of liberty and community membership. Gordon-Reed argues convincingly that Thomas Jefferson viewed the family as the foundation for the Republic. The book's title comes from a self-description used by Jefferson himself in a letter setting out his retirement aims at Monticello. There he hoped to function at the apex of his family, both legal (his surviving children by Martha Wayles), illegal (his children by Martha's half-sister, the enslaved Sally Hemings) and slaves. Jefferson wrote the letter after his resignation as Secretary of State in Washington's administration. For a brief time he was in residence at Monticello, but after less than two years he was back as Vice President to John Adams, followed by two terms as President. It wasn't until 1809 that Jefferson was able to withdraw fully from public life. He spent the last 17 years of his life managing his plantation (poorly), hosting hundreds if not thousands of visitors (very well indeed) and enjoying the love of his surviving daughter Martha and her family, who came to live at Monticello after financial reverses. His grandchildren by both Martha and Maria, who died in childbirth in 1804, were sources of delight and interest. After an abortive attempt to end the estrangement with John and Abigail Adams following Maria's death and a sympathy note from Abigail, the two old comrades mended fences in 1813, beginning an epistolary relationship that is one of the glories of American political theory. Gordon-Reed and Onuf attempted to deal with Jefferson in a novel way. How did he see himself, as opposed to how he was viewed by others? Thus the book is structured in terms of fundamental questions as opposed to linear biography. Jefferson's love of music, for example, illustrates a fundamental aspect of how he viewed relationships. The extended period in Paris changed his concept of self-presentation in terms of the affect of his manners. While he was robustly insular in terms of his nation vis a vis European society, Jefferson used the manners of the ancien regime to distance people from his inner life through a display of courtliness and self-control remarked upon by all who encountered him. Jefferson's sensual appetites for food and wine were also notable, and while his clothes became somewhat eccentric in old age (he dressed for comfort and not to be modish), his clothing materials were always fine. The quintessential man of the people was also a lifelong aristocrat. Gordon-Reed is the chief proponent of Jefferson's second family, denied by historians as late as Joseph Ellis until she demonstrated 25 years ago that he was the only possible candidate as the father of Sally Hemings' children. The Monticello site itself accepted it 20 years ago after tests confirmed male Jefferson DNA in the Eston Hemings line. The claim is still disputed by outliers, one can only imagine why, but the fact that Jefferson maintained a not unusual master/slave relationship with Hemings for 37 years is the central dichotomy after his role as a slaveholder in the paradox that was Jefferson the man. We cannot know the emotional relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, but of course she was not technically free to refuse him. One doubts, however, that his temperament was that of a rapist. His son Madison, who wrote a memoir in 1873, describes a semi-remote figure but certainly not an abusive one to his mother, sister and brothers. Harriet and Beverly, the oldest, were allowed to leave Monticello in their late teens and sent north to freedom. Eston and Madison were freed at Jefferson's death, along with Sally's brother --- the only slave who escaped the wholesale dispersal as the Randolphs attempted to clear Monticello's debt. Martha Randolp gave her aunt Sally "her time", a notion that functionally translated to freedom for her father's companion. She was certainly regarded as such by the resident of Charlottesville, where she and her sons lived until Sally's own death in 1836. Again, Gordon-Reed and Onuf make a convincing argument that Jefferson needed to feel loved. Make of that what you will. What are we to make of a man who decried slavery in the Declaration of Independence and Notes on the State of Virginia and yet kept them for the rest of his life? How can we forgive a man who kept his own children in servitude? Gordon-Reed are less interested in that than trying to understand how he reconciled these things internally, and they propose a way in which Jefferson could convince himself that his world view was consistent. It is the major achievement of the book that they succeed. By doing so they enable us to retain Jefferson as a Founding Father par excellence, but also a recognizable, flawed human being. Race is the central issue in American history. As I write this review the United States is in agony after the murder of George Floyd. Such brutality toward African Americans dates back to 1619 when they were forcibly brought to Virginia. We have not yet solved the systemic racism problem that besets American society, and Jefferson certainly has nothing to offer from his personal life that will assist. And yet . . . Jefferson himself wished to be remembered for the University of Virginia and the Declaration of Independence. In the summer of 2017, UVA students and alumni --- and the better part of our nation --- were horrified by the tiki torch Nazis who descended upon Mr. Jefferson's university to bleat hate, engage in murderous violence and defile the Grounds by their presence. Students linked arms around the statue of Jefferson in front of the Rotunda to protect it from the mob. Faculty, staff and students staged a peaceful counter-protest on the Lawn itself to repudiate white supremacists. The University, his legacy, has evolved over its life to represent the ideals of Jefferson articulated in the Declaration. It has embodied them in ways that he personally could not. If Jefferson survives, he does so in the same way that his University and the United States launched by the Declaration do . . . as a work in progress, with emphasis on the word "progress." Highly recommend.

 

A brief history of the transition from the ancient world to the early medieval. Nixey never fails to hold interest. She has an eye for telling anecdotes that illustrate the larger collapse of classical learning in the face of Christian bullying, either the purely intellectual fulminations of an Augustine or the brutal physical attacks of roaming mobs of "monks." Her outrage over the enormous loss of art and books is palpable. Nixey estimates that 90% of classical books were destroyed, an incalculable loss to western civilization. She provides an antidote to the bromide that the monks saved civilization, correctly pointing out that the books that were saved hardly illustrated the breadth of learning that were hallmarks of Greek and Roman civilization. Nor does she idealize classical philosophers. But she makes excellent points about the tolerance extended to Christians throughout most of the pre-Constantinian empire. Roman officials were usually exasperated by them as much as anything. Nixey demolishes a great deal of the martyr hagiography that the early Church used to fuel its expansion.

I would have liked more discussion about the rapidity of Christian expansion. Nixey assumes that many of the conversions were the result of a populace cowed by the violence directed at temples. Fair enough, but at the same time it still leaves a religious belief system that lasted millennia evaporating in roughly three centuries.

Highly recommended as a bracing correction of the traditional view of Christianity's rise. However, it is too short to provide in-depth analysis. It will leave the interested reader leafing through her bibliography, which I suspect was the goal of this book.

Yet another book about the jeunesse doree in academia. This time it is Cambridge, not Oxford, although Stourton overtly acknowledges Evelyn Waugh once by name and by inference throughout the novel. Francis is Sebastian Flyte without a soul, and James is Charles Ryder without redemption. It uses the Brideshead trope of the outsider desiring entry into what he imagines is a secret club of fascinating people. But unlike Charles (and Julia Flyte), no one attains wisdom. Hell, no one attains anything at all. And I hate to say it, because I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did, "no one" includes the reader. There is no resolution. The Night Climbers simply meanders to a close with a deus ex machina that works as well as that literary device ever does.

The other author to whom The Night Climbers owes at least partial royalties is Donna Tartt. Her The Secret History is a masterpiece of this genre and I would argue, a spectacular literary achievement period. Tartt's book also deals with an outsider seeking to crack into a charmed circle of undergraduates. But she is careful to create the world that brings them together, i.e. classical studies, and peels it back like an onion for half her novel before Richard Papen, her "James", fully understands what actually binds his classmates together.

Stourton simply dumps the night climbing thing in James' lap, and while there is one chapter that skims over it as something these people do, it then disappears as a plot point. Other than that, and as I say, that isn't much, there is nothing at all that binds the group. As a result the characters appear paper thin. Two of the circle are mere blips, so unimportant that Stourton kills one off stage with no more resonance than I just had in this sentence.

The plot MacGuffin is preposterous both in concept and mechanical execution. As in, I didn't believe in it at all, and I will hazard the guess nor does Stourton. That too is disposed of so casually that the reader gets no payoff at all. The shared guilt of The Secret History's characters ruins lives. Here James and Jessica shrug and get on with it. What exactly they "get on with" is never made clear.

There are some very good passages. Stourton can write. The decadence frequently comes across as studied, but he clearly knows Cambridge and The Night Climbers is well enough grounded in place. But the glittering backdrop cannot ultimately distract from the absence of anything in front of it.

Not recommended.

Fan fiction, and bad fan fiction at that. The most common mistake early fan fiction writers made was the creation of a "Mary Sue". In prehistoric Star Trek fan fic, the Mary Sue was usually the female ensign that was brilliant, reserved and beautiful only to the special few who could see past her reserve. This might be Kirk, once Ensign Mary Sue had saved them from attacking Romulans. As fan fic expanded, the Mary Sue included both fangirls and fanboys. Why write fan fic? A lot of reasons, but at least one is that you don't like the way the characters are handled "canonically", i.e. either by the original authors or those charged with them. For example, despite J.K. Rowling's firm objections, there is a flourishing "Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy Are a Couple!" fan fic genre (one of the first things fan fic did was establish a "slash" genre, in which couples were paired. The couples were usually characters who had hitherto been identified as heterosexual, such as Harry and Draco --- the proto slash was Kirk/Spock). So what does all of this have to do with Ms. Vidal's romps through the histories of Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI and their children? She certainly doesn't make the mistake of ridiculous pairings (Louis XVI/Fersen, say). But she does fall into the Mary Sue trap. Marie Antoinette and Louis become her best friends, to the point of adopting Ms. Vidal's attitudes about lots of things, including Roman Catholic Triumphalism. In her attitudes, poorly voiced by her characters, Ms. Vidal makes Pius IX sound like Garibaldi. There are a lot of readers who crush on Marie Antoinette, God knows. As Caroline Weber points out in her highly readable Queen of Style, the last widely acknowledged Queen of France knew how to dress. She was reasonably attractive . . . for a queen. That's not a knock of Marie Antoinette's personal attributes, but a statement of fact. If you look at portraits of other 18th century sovereigns, the bar is low. Moreover, she was generally in the vicinity of Louis XVI, who despite many sterling qualities, looked like a lump in homemade gravy. Marie Antoinette also had one of the great exit lines in history: "Monsieur, I ask your pardon. I did not do it on purpose." Okay, she was apologizing to her executioner for stepping on his toes, but really, what else could she say about her life? Ms. Vidal writes about the Trianon, flowers, music, simple dances a la Anglaise, delicious meals that appear when wanted, etc. as though it appeared by magic and not on the backs of the French peasantry. Was the Queen culpable for this? Of course not. She was a 14 year-old mailed to France as a deal-sealer for an Austrian/French alliance (oops, there's that slash again). It would have required far more will and intelligence that Marie Antoinette ever possessed to ward off bad behaviors. Despite all of this, the evidence suggests that the Dauphine, then young Queen was simply silly, not corrupt. But Ms. Vidal takes all of this and adds the startling twist that Louis was determined not to touch her until he had won her love. In support of this, Vidal instances the idea that Joseph II made a field trip to France in order to see why his sister and brother-in-law were so loved, and then mutters something about how he also passed on some medical advice to Louis. Come on. That's not what happened, and if the author is honest, she knows it. As I said above, Louis XVI possessed many sterling qualities, and I do think Ms. Vidal at least gets the main one right: he was devoted to France. And as such, he knew perfectly well that a good king secures his succession. Ms. Vidal is writing hagiography, not history. The reader might quibble and say, "no, she is writing literature." Well, she can't have it both ways, although as a novel, this wouldn't make it past most community college creative writing classes. I read a lot of historical novels. Most fall into one of a few categories --- the weirdly intimate (Sharon Kaye Penman, despite being highly entertaining, is the champ at this --- "Uncle Dickon?" "Yes, Ned?" "Now that Aunt Anne has developed the consumption, are you thinking of stealing my throne and marrying my sister Bess so that Harry Richmond may not bed her?" Like that), the very weird (Carolly Erickson's The Tsarina's Daughter --- the poor children of Nicholas and Alexandra are a lot of fan fic writer's best imaginary friends (BIFFs!) or the "want to see how much I have read?" ("Yes, I was at the National Assembly today where Mirabeau harangued us all on the Rights of Man, using the same language that the rascally Thomas Paine has used in one of the many pamphlets that are being distributed in Paris as I speak, pamphlets which defame the very purity of the Queen in ways that are unspeakable, because when the Queen disported herself at the small Trianon, she smelled of flowers and little knew that it had been built for La Pompadour or perhaps it was La Du Barry, anyway, La Somebody Who Was Not Marie Antoinette and therefore it is so unfair!" "Resign yourself to the Sacred Heart!"), a genre that Ms. Vidal has cornered. Then there is the unpleasant Catholic Triumphalism. I am Catholic, born and bred, and even I had some trouble following Ms. Vidal through the thickets of the Sacred Heart devotion (the Miraculous Medal shows up in Madame Royale) and the reception of Extreme Unction by the dying Abbe Edgeworth. Ms. Vidal's point is that things had slid downhill since the French Revolution, which was apparently caused by the pesky philosophes, Masons and the Illuminati (along with the nasty Comte de Provence and the Duc d'Orleans). She is sort of the Jim Garrison of the Revolution, coming up with so many theories as to its cause, none of which are remotely historical. All of this would be tolerable if the writing was remotely good. Alas, even there Ms. Vidal drops the ball. The characters thud along, talking to each other as though they were aware of Ms. Vidal in the corner, scribbling down each sentence, and had decided to posture for future reference at Sodality meetings. Here's the deal: you can't keep describing someone as incredibly charming unless you can demonstrate it by the way she speaks and interacts with other characters. In this book, Marie Antoinette finally emerges as someone you would want to know when Ms. Vidal uses her actual answers at her trial. Not recommended.

This is the first biography of her that manages to handle both the featherhead she was for most of her life, and the woman Marie Antoinette became because of the crisis of 1787-88, and the Revolution from 1789 until 1792 and the September Massacres, when her ability to influence the course of events effectively ended. Hardman has written a curious but effective hybrid. His analysis of the alliance between Barnave and the Queen is very interesting. Antoinette had to balance her epistolary relationship with Barnave, which began after Varennes, with the sexual jealousy of Fersen. Hardman dismisses the idea that Fersen had anything to worry about as Barnave and the Queen were only in the same room once after he rode in the carriage with her that brought the family back from their attempted escape. He does think that the Queen probably flirted a bit with him for pragmatic reasons. However, Hardman accepts the idea that the Queen and Fersen had some kind of sexual relationship, and dates it from the death of Sophie Beatrix in 1786, when the Queen decided she did not want more children. Hardman is careful to explain that there will never be a way to "prove" this because the physical evidence is gone. On the other hand, he also makes the sensible observation that no 18th century woman would have entrusted the details of an affair to a letter. The Queen comes as close as possible with her extravagant protestations of love in letters that she never thought would see the light of day. When they did (thanks to a Fersen descendant) the compromising expressions were largely redacted. The unredacted versions have been published in this century, and for this reader at least they settle the question. This is a scholarly book, but Hardman's style is also sprightly, which I didn't expect after reading his biography of Louis XVI. Some of his acid observations made me laugh out loud. So there's that. Of interest to those who find the subject matter so, but the book is unlikely to change anyone's mind about the hapless Marie Antoinette. Either way.

A pleasurable read for me, but I certainly understand people who don't like this book. The plot is a shaggy dog, with constant winding trails that lead in directions that sound promising but ultimately either go nowhere or are unconvincing (the romance between Dorian and Zachery that turns out to be the heart of the book? Meh). But Morgenstern can write. It occasionally reads as though Donna Tartt had decided to take a crack at fantasy, but that's not a problem for me. On the other hand, much like The Goldfinch and The Little Child, The Starless Sea starts with an immaculate first chapter and then takes an inordinate amount of pages to circle back for the "aha!" moment. However, the prose is so seductive that I didn't mind, and it was fun finding the Easter eggs Morgenstern strews throughout the book. I am probably going to reread this in the next little while, because since I finished it two weeks ago I have found myself circling back around it once or twice a day.

Heartbreaking and beautifully written. During Roger Rees' last illness, his husband started sending out updates to their large circle of friends. After Rees died, Elice was encouraged to keep up the custom in order to help work through his own considerable grief. The book collects a potpourri of things --- the above mentioned letters, tributes to Rees at his memorial, letters Elice received from their friends and mementos of their life together. They met in a scene that would absolutely work as a rom-com and never really looked back. Rees was on Broadway in Nicholas Nickleby, and Elice fell in love with him watching the play from the balcony. By the time Rees left for England and The Real Thing they were a couple. The book is funny, charming (Elice is a playwright, and it shows) but also heartbreaking. Elice is never afraid to let the reader know how bereft he is without the love of his life. The thing that saves it from being mawkish (aside from the quality of the writing) is the emergence of Rees as someone it must have been a total pleasure to know. Somewhat self-effacing, talented, funny, sentimental and what more than one person quoted refers to him as, a mensch. The Elice family embraced him as another son, and Rees more than returned their love. It is incredibly moving to see photos of family gatherings with Roger Rees in the middle of a suburban New Jersey Jewish family (he converted). The love he felt for his in-laws is always written all over his face. I teared up once or twice. I recommend it to anyone, whether you are familiar with Rees or not. It will make you want to go back and rewatch as much of his work as is available; fortunately for us, that's a lot.

Hannah Pakula wrote a very good biography of the Empress Frederick, so I thought I would give this a read. Marie of Roumania survives today as the punch line in a Dorothy Parker limerick or as a footnote for those of us into the dynasties of the late 19th and early 20th century. She was the descendant of a Romanov (her mother was the only daughter of Alexander II), a Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (her father was Alfred, son of Albert and Victoria) and she married a Hohenzollern. At 17. Her mother despised the English and wanted "Missy" out of the country; the senior branch of the German Imperial Family was sitting on the throne of the new Kingdom of Roumania, so off the pretty, badly-educated teenager went to marry the jug-eared, dull Ferdinand, Crown Prince. Missy duly popped out six children, one of whom died as a toddler. Three of the others grew up to be world-class pests, while the other two wound up . . . not. Shortly after the birth of her last child, World War I broke out.

So far this could have been the life of Marie Antoinette Lite, but despite the similarities, Missy was temperamentally not cut out for the guillotine. While she was a total loss as a nurse (unlike Alexandra and her older daughters), she also (unlike Alexandra and Marie Antoinette) never tried to meddle in military matters. The goal of the war for Marie was to keep Roumania out of it, or at least for her country not to side with the Central Powers. She achieved her goal when Roumania went in on the side of the Entente. Unfortunately for Marie, Russia shortly succumbed to the Bolsheviks (curtains for many of her Romanov cousins) and Roumania was then immediately surrounded by Austria-Hungary, Germany and a Soviet state that declared war upon the hapless country. She was forced into a humiliating peace with Germany, mass starvation descended upon the land, and there was agitation for the overthrow of the dynasty. Despite all of this, Marie seems to have enjoyed the war. She spent every day zooming out and about, laden with whatever she could find. The Queen swept into field hospitals, peasant villages, wherever she could drive the Rolls, and distributed hope as much as anything. And her people loved her for it, as Marie would always girlishly admit. As Pakula presents her, Marie is the weirdest combination of narcissism and self-knowledge imaginable. At the end of the war, Roumania is being trounced at the Versailles Conference when its government comes up with the brilliant idea of sending Queen Marie off to charm everyone into giving her Transylvania. She blows over to Paris and by glory, Roumania gets Transylvania and a fair chunk of Bulgaria. Every morning while they were doing her hair, Marie listened patiently as her handlers fed information into the royal brain. Full to the brim with historical statistics, Marie donned one of the dozens of Parisian frocks she picked up along the way and set off for a different official's conference room. Only Woodrow Wilson was unmoved, although Mrs. Wilson seems to have become a fan.

It was the high point of her life. Ferdinand died in 1927, and her truly awful oldest son Carol seized the throne. Carol had left town earlier in a sort of proto-Harry and Meghan move, although unlike Harry he was simply wanting alone time with his mistress. Carol had renounced the throne in favor of his son by his legitimate wife, but pretty much as soon as Dad cooled he wanted back in. Once he achieved the throne, he made life hell for his entire family. Marie died in 1938, at least in part because Carol insisted upon only Roumanian doctors as diagnosticians.

The book never really takes off as a biography, because unlike the Empress Frederick, Missy was never an important political player. Pakula tries to inflate her subject's relevance, but . . . on the other, Pakula is a good writer who never fails to hold the reader's interest. 

I was a Benedictine monk for four years back in the 1970s. Nearly fifty years later, I would still rate my monastic life as critical to my formation as an adult. I enjoyed the book although parts of it were extremely frustrating. Maguire never can get a handle on why her subjects pursued the Carthusian vocation. Nor, save in one case, does she come to grips with why four of them left the Order --- or why one stayed in. The endings seem to come out of nowhere, and when she picks up the threads of their post-monastic lives, Maguire and the men themselves become strangely inarticulate. It seems clear that the vocations mattered to them but not why. It does not say anything negative about religious life to accept that there is a psychology behind it that attracts the devotee. Maguire never gives us any insight into the men as personalities. Which can make a kind of sense, I suppose, since the purpose of the hermit life is to die to self. Nor does the Parkminster community emerge with distinction. The young men (they were all young) were pretty much left to their own devices without much in the way of spiritual direction, or at least it appears that way in Maguire's version. The story is interesting, although I do wish she had managed to explain the attraction of a Carthusian lifestyle to people who have no natural religious sympathies for it. Still, if you do, you will enjoy the book. It provides a partial glimpse of a world not often seen by outsiders.