Golden Handcuffs Review (which I'd not heard about until this evening) has extracts from The Abyss of Human Illusions by Gilbert Sorrentino. His son Christopher explains the background to the work, completed "little more than a month before he died".
The current issue also features two chapters from let me tell you, a novel by Paul Griffiths, also known as a music writer. He explains that the novel is "a narrative in which the Ophelia of Shakespeare's Hamlet tells her story in her own words – literally, in that she is restricted to the 481 different words she speaks in the play (including both quartos as well as the First Folio text). Where other characters from the play speak, they are similarly confined to the words Shakespeare gave them."
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Rosncrantz and Guildenstern are Dead comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteCan you explain?
ReplyDeleteI'm only familiar with the movie of R&G Are Dead, but like Griffiths' novel it is an offshoot of Hamlet, and like Stoppard's work, the characters speak their Hamlet lines. There's not too many other offshoots of plays I know of, and so it fairly natural for Stoppard's work to come to mind. Which isn't to pre-judge Griffiths work at all.
ReplyDeleteShould have said some of the characters only speak their original Hamlet lines.
ReplyDeleteOf course, just testing.
ReplyDeleteActually, I have an aversion to theatre and have never seen either Hamlet or Stoppard.
You should watch the film, though- well worth a look. Very rarely been to plays, myself.
ReplyDeleteDear Steve and AK, Thanks for the interest. I saw the Stoppard play when it was quite new, and certainly it made an impression. So, of course, has a lot more over the years. But I think what I've done isn't quite like anything else.
ReplyDeleteThanks more generally to you, Steve, for what you say and for what you net from the net.