Reading Half the Sky

Currently reading Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women by Nicholas Kristof and Sherry WuDunn. I'm actually liking the anecdotal journalist style, because it's really good for telling stories. Will write more, but so far, one of the most interesting premises is that if developed nations invest in aid, they should do it for women, building schools and giving microloans.

I finished...The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Diaz

2007

Fiction

"As I'm sure you've guessed by now, I have a fuku story too. I wish I could say it was the best of the lot--fuku number one--but I can't. Mine aint't the scariest, the clearest, the most painful, or the most beautiful.

It just happens to be the one that's got its fingers around my throat." p6

"Before all hope died I used to have this stupid dream that shit could be saved, that we would be in bed together like the old times, with the fan on, the smoke from our weed drifting above us, and I'd finally try to say words that could have saved us.

---- ---- -----.

But before I can shape the vowels I wake up. My face is wet, and that's how you know it's never going to come true.

Never, ever." --Junior on his doomed relationship with Lola, the "ciguapa of [his] dreams" p. 327.

Eugene O'Neill

I tried reading The Iceman Cometh right after reading A Moon for the Misbegotten and then quickly skimming through Long Day's Journey into Night to refresh my memory (it has been years since I've read it last), but it just didn't work out. And then I watched the PBS documentary about the playwright, so that made me even more reluctant to read The Iceman Cometh so quickly. Eugene O'Neill's life was no pancake; some popular and re-occuring themes in his work are hopelessness, escapism through alcoholism, and inability or refusal to confront reality--of which culminate in these three plays, which are considered his masterpieces and happen to be semi-autobiographical as well and resound even more strongly of tragedy.

Anyway, reading three in the row is a bit too much for me. It's on my to-read list though.

I finished...A Moon for the Misbegotten

A Moon for the Misbegotten

Eugene O'Neill

1945

Drama

"HOGAN: What I want to know is, what the hell d'you mean by your contemptible trick of breaking down your fence to entice my poor pigs to take their death in your ice pond?

...HARDER is so flabbergasted by this mad accusation he cannot even sputter." (p. 54)

I've been trying to comb through the play to find more quotes, but I haven't been able to find any that can stand by itself alone. The one above is just for sheer comedic entertainment, when a swindler tries to cheat his way out of damaging a neighbor's property.

It's not to say that O'Neill has a terrible sense of style, quite the contrary. He writes it such that everything flows together seamlessly, it's hard to pick out one thing when everything is amazing. His dialogue (from this play and the prequel, Long Day's Journey Into Night) is straightforward without frilliness. However, it's not boring and so minimalistic like that of Hemingway's. It's explosive and colloquial, full of insults like "liar" and "souse," capturing the angry, argumentative Irish spirit his characters embody. He is a master of crystallizing the drunken stupor, the regret and bitterness.

His descriptions of the characters are always very precise--it's like looking at a photograph. For instance, Josie, the main female protagonist who's detailed as a very tall and black-haired farm girl, is furthered rounded out with these vivid qualities, "She is more powerful than any but an exceptionally strong man, able to do the manual labor of two ordinary men. But there is no mannish quality about her. She is all woman" (p. 5). I love the action descriptors, especially the adverbs! I've never seen a production of any of O'Neill's plays, but it would be really interesting to see how the productions interpret the tone of voice, which is usually indicated very specifically.

One last thing about the style--O'Neill always has really beautiful, poetic titles for his plays, always relevant, never prosaic. The words always some how manage to smoothly roll off the tongue and have a lasting ring: A Moon for the Misbegotten, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Desire Under the Elms, The Iceman Cometh, etc.

In AMftM, there are a lot of direct references to the moon. TBC