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Richard S. Beam

55 A Couple of Interesting Books

3/25/2016

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As some of you may know, I read a lot.  It’s probably an inherited trait from my mother (the librarian, daughter of an English professor), but wherever it came from, it’s true; always has been.  Even when I was most deeply involved in theatre productions, or grading papers, I almost always would spend at least a few minutes reading for pleasure before going to bed at night.  Now that I’m retired, I have a bit more time for just reading (not a lot), but I almost always have a book (sometimes two) going.  Most often, one is just light fiction of some sort, a mystery or an “action” novel.  When I have two going, the other one is usually a bit more “scholarly,” often something related to Shakespeare, the theatre or the Salem Witch Trials, but it could be history, or almost anything which seems interesting.  Recently, I’ve run across a couple of books which I found unusually interesting, so I decided to write about them.
 
The first one is The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built by Jack Viertel, which was, literally, just published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Publication date: 03/01/2016).  Viertel has been involved with helping create Broadway shows for something like 30 years, so he has some credibility, and his approach to taking shows apart to demonstrate what the common features are and how shows tend to fit together I found to be quite intriguing.
 
In the course of creating this “deconstruction” Viertel considers overtures, “I Want” songs, “conditional” love songs, “the Noise,” production numbers, secondary romantic couples, star turns, “11 o’clock” numbers, finales, curtain calls and more, discussing not only what these are, but how they have been (and continue to be) used even in very recent productions which most folks don’t think fit the “classic” model.
 
I found the basic idea fascinating and the wealth of examples is enjoyable, even with shows I don’t know really well.  But, the vast majority of the examples are selected from shows which anyone at all versed in American musical theatre probably knows, at least to some extent.  Of course, as the title suggests, the focus here is on “American,” “Broadway” musicals.  There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it does tend to leave out the whole genre of “non-Broadway” shows, to say nothing of shows from foreign sources.  There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose.  The subject is so wide that it only makes sense to trim it down to stuff which the author knows best, but I do wish that non-Broadway musicals (off-and off-off-Broadway) had been at least represented.  Certainly The Fantasticks has to be considered an American musical of some importance, and there are others of some note which never transferred to Broadway, although shows which made this transfer were included.
 
I confess that I also found that what I interpreted as the author’s idea that there was something profound about his deconstructions and the cute titles he used for the various song elements seemed a bit overdone.  As Aristotle pointed out in The Poetics quite a while ago, there are certain characteristics of all plots and, while there IS a good deal of room for variation, since musical numbers are often tied to major plot points and fulfill certain needs, it only makes sense that certain types of numbers tend to come at certain, more or less, established points.  Hence, while I found Viertel’s “deconstruction” of the musical form quite interesting, it did not strike me as terribly profound.  That’s not to suggest, however, that I don’t recommend this book to anyone with an interest in musicals.  I did find it enjoyable and it did provide some insight into how various people have dealt with the problems of making a musical “work.”  All in all, I found it a pleasant read, if not life changing, but maybe I’ve just done too many musicals….
 
The other book I read recently which I found of some real interest is The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer, published by Penguin Publishing Group (Publication date: 04/29/2014).  Okay, I’m a bit (maybe more than a bit) of a Shakespeare nut, so almost anything which might provide some insight into his plays, is of at least some interest to me.  While this book does get a bit dry at times, I found that it seems to be a pretty well researched study of the daily life of Elizabethan England, with chapters on The Landscape: cities, towns, villages, manors, etc.; The People: what they did for a living, how they functioned, etc.; Religion: this was a time of major change in acceptable religious beliefs which had a real impact on people; Character: racism, sense of history, superstition, etc.; Basic Essentials: language, forms of address, money, science, foreigners, etc.; What to Wear: even clothing was controlled by tradition and law; Traveling: how people got around; Where to Stay: the options available and how one coped with them; What to Eat and Drink: a subject of more concern than one might expect; Hygiene, Illness and Medicine: vital information in time of less than certain knowledge and serious illnesses; Law and Disorder: Elizabethan law didn’t work quite like modern law as we think we know it; Entertainment: while theatre people tend to focus on theatre, there were a lot of other options available.  In short, as the title suggests, if one had thoroughly assimilated the information in the book, one MIGHT be able to survive while living in the Elizabethan era after traveling through time.
 
I do think this book provides some valuable insight into the general times, attitudes and life style of the era which gave us Shakespeare’s play (and those of Jonson, Marlowe, etc.).  It’s really quite interesting, but it isn’t really exciting, unless, perhaps, you know very little about this period and feel the need for some information about the time.  I did enjoy it, but it is, perhaps best taken in smallish doses.  It’s just a bit dry to be considered “light” reading.  On the other hand, it does seem to be well researched and documented.  It is NOT, of course, primarily about Shakespeare and it does NOT have references as to how all of this shows up in Shakespeare’s plays.  I think it’s useful in terms of helping one understand something of the life and times which produced these plays and so it could be of considerable assistance in terms of understanding some of them, but that was the idea behind this, I think: it’s not an attempt to make specific points in relation to the individual plays.  I’d say it was a worthwhile book, but not the easiest read.
 
I understand that Mortimer has also written The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century.  This could also be of some interest (I understand that it’s written in much the same manner) as there is a lot of Medieval influence on the Elizabethan era, although I think I’ll probably wait a while before I take it on.  I need a break from this sort of thing, so I’ll probably see what I can find in the library in the way of a nice, murder mystery. 
 
LLAP
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54  Random Thoughts as Spring 2016 Approaches

3/10/2016

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I think I’ve been channeling by librarian mother the last week, or so.  It probably is an outgrowth of my last posting, as libraries have been on my mind a bit.  I guess that I have come to realize that I really can’t own every book I’d like, although if you’d look at my “office” in the basement level of our home in Omaha you’d probably think that I was trying.  So, I remembered that I spent one summer, many years ago, working part-time in a branch library where I grew up mostly “reading” (organizing) the shelves.  Any librarian will tell you that’s not a lot of fun, but it is necessary every so often.
 
Looking over my collection, I discovered that I have only 88 different books in my “Shakespeare” collection (which does NOT include scripts for single titles [14], or “production books from productions I have worked on), but does include my two copies of the Complete Works.  On the other hand, even with a good deal of “trimming” of excessive duplicate copies of various texts while I was moving out of my WCU office, I do have about 50 feet of shelf space devoted to theatre books (which I don’t want to live without) and about 10 shelf-feet of “production books” (most in binders).  And, that doesn’t start to mention the miscellaneous fiction I enjoy and have collected over the years.  That’s another 30+ shelf-feet, or so.  I guess I have a lot of books.
 
Then there are the VHS tapes (Yes, I can still play them.) approx. 20 shelf-feet of commercially made ones, and the approx. 30 shelf feet of commercial DVDs. 
 
All in all, a LOT of stuff, most of which didn’t get very well organized when we moved in.  I had been planning on sorting all of this out a lot more before we moved, but the whole “move thing” came together a good deal faster than I had expected.  My thought had been that we’d probably stick around Cullowhee for the better part of a year after we retired, so there would be time to do this.  Then, while visiting Maggi here in Omaha, we started to look at houses late that spring just after I retired, found a great house and the owners wanted to close early in July of that year, so we moved towards the end of August.  That made it virtually impossible for me to sort out a lot more of the stuff than I had expected to before we moved because I needed to do some painting, and so forth in the house before we moved in.  That meant that a lot of moving preparation consisted of just throwing stuff in boxes (unfortunately, not always well marked as to contents) and unloading them onto the shelves when we arrived without a lot of organization.
 
This state of affairs has been in the back of my mind since we got here, but I hadn’t made a lot of progress in getting them really organized until the last week, or so.  The textbooks weren’t (aren’t) in bad shape as I was able to pack most of them with some semblance of order and they went back on the same shelves they had been on.  On the other hand, the VHS tapes and DVDs, especially, were quite problematic.  I could, generally, find anything I was looking for without too much difficulty, but Bonnie could not make “heads nor tails” of my “system.”
 
So, I finally decided to do something about it.  That’s where the “channeling” of my mother came in, as this was a lot like working in a library.  I have spent quite a lot of time in the past few days pulling stuff off of shelves, sorting it, mostly alphabetically by title, and putting it back on the shelves (leaving room for expansion as the collection MAY keep growing some).  The biggest challenge has been all of the VHS tapes which we had taped “off of the air” over the years when that was a fairly common practice for “time-shifting.”  There were a lot of those, which made the shelves a lot more crowded than they needed to be, although this category is unlikely to grow in the future.
 
So, while taking them off of the shelves, I had to try to sort out anything which might be worth saving (we had made tapes of a lot of stuff we have since acquired commercial copies of, although we did have a video camera which we used to record various family events, etc., which we’d just as soon not lose).  After getting Bonnie to look through what I hadn’t pulled for saving and adding her “must haves,” I started bagging up the excess “old” stuff.  There was a lot of that, which helped relieve the crowded storage shelves a fair amount.  I guess the “old” stuff will have to go to the dump, as I don’t think they are recyclable. 
 
Then came the process of what librarians call “reading” the shelves.  Now, in a library, that, mostly, means just making sure that things are in the proper order, but (in a library) there’s a basic start already, they just need “touch up.”  I didn’t have any real order to begin with, so it was a big job and involved more bending, lifting and crawling around on the floor than I had done since we moved.  I think our fairly regular attendance at “Aquasize” classes at the local YMCA helped, but I’m still tired.  Still, there’s a MUCH improved sense of organization and I think Bonnie will be able to find videos, at least.
 
The next project, already under way, is copying those “home made” videos to DVD (we have a machine which can do that).  That’s already under way, although it has a good distance to go before completion.  Still, progress is underway and distracts me to the extent that I can avoid getting my blood pressure up from the distressing situation in the current political scene.
 
On a different tack, the weather is getting a good deal warmer here, although we COULD still get more snow.  I remember the late snows in the mountains were often the worst, so I’m not really prepared to assume that spring is really here, although I would be happy not to have to do more snow shoveling.  Even with a (fairly low tech) show blower, it can be a lot of work, and I’d just as soon not have to do it.  We’ll see….
 
Other thoughts… I note that “Pi” Day (3/14) will be soon upon us.  Actually, this is a special one as π = 3.14159 ≈ 3.1416 (or 3/14/16), so we won’t get to four decimal places for another 100 years.  I think that makes it a bit special.  I don’t know how one celebrates Pi Day (do math all day?), but it seems worthy of mention.
 
Of course, March 14th will be followed by the fifteenth, or the “Ides of March.”  Any Shakespeare enthusiast knows that that was the date of Julius Caesar’s assassination by Brutus and his fellow conspirators.  That was 2060 years ago, as I figure it.  Anyway, it also seems worthy of mention, especially since there are a couple of important primaries that day.
 
Speaking of primaries, I’m trying to avoid political commentary in these postings, but I would always encourage folks to study the issues, consider the candidates and vote (or caucus).  Our political system may not be perfect, bit I think it’s better than any alternative I can think of.  It’s important that voters inform themselves and participate.  I don’t think folks really have too much right to complain when the “wrong” candidates are chosen or elected if they haven’t bothered to be a part of the selection process.  We’ll see how it all comes out.
 
All things considered, Bonnie and I are both reasonably healthy and we keep busy with a variety of activities and look forward to the coming of spring.
 
Still, I would encourage anyone reading this, to take a look every so often at the state of his/her book and video collections (assuming that anyone but me doesn’t just have everything in digital format on their computer or iDevice) and make sure that they are in some sort of reasonable order.  You never know, you just MAY need to move it on short notice sometime and a little careful “library” work can make things much easier down the line.  Take it from one who wasn’t that well prepared, it’s probably worth the effort.  Or, maybe I’m still channeling my librarian mother.
 
LLAP
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