Mrs. Julien Presents

I wanted to read William Shakespeare’s the Taming of the Shrew for a few reasons. Most importantly, it was to see if I could still cope with the text and thus prove my degree in English Lit/Drama is still in here somewhere. But I also chose it for its famous sexism/misogyny, to see how it came across to my middle-aged feminist eyes. I knew the plot, so I’d have no trouble understanding what was going on (or so I thought). Moreover, I have seen two live productions of the play and one of them made an indelible impression on me. It was in 1987 at the Stratford Festival (Ontario) with Goldie Semple as Kate and Colm Feore as Petruchio. When reading the play this week , I could still remember some of their interplay and reactions. It was a truly magnificent production. (I’ve also seen a filmed version with John Cleese of all people, and he was the best thing in it and the one who made the language most accessible.)

For the uninitiated, and how is that even possible, The Taming of the Shrew is the story of Baptista, a man with 2 daughters, both alike in dignity, but dissimilar in temperament, in fair Padua where we lay our scene. Katherina/Kate is the eldest, difficult and irascible; his youngest, Bianca, is a fair and delicate creature beloved by all the men she meets. Baptista is unwilling to let Bianca marry until Kate is herself settled. The ensuing hijinks focus around each sister: Bianca has a number of suitors performing a number of ruses to secure her hand. Kate is “taken on” by Petruchio as a challenge, and a wife, to allow Bianca’s suitors a chance gain their own ends. Petruchio proceeds to comically break Kate’s spirit rendering her a sweet, compliant, and therefore “happy”, wife.

As I started to read, I recalled, possibly incorrectly, that the modern aprroach to the play is to have Kate and Petruchio fall in love at first sight to lessen the sting of the abuse she endures and the obedient wife tropes she eventually spouts. If they are evenly-matched, and Petruchio’s efforts are ultimately well-intentioned to bypass the protective wall Kate has built around herself, it somehow makes it less awful when she is deprived of sleep, and food, and rational treatment. He is capricious in his behaviour to everyone he meets, and I don’t know it that helps exactly, but at least Petruchio is consistent. And Kate is a bit of a pill. They are indeed evenly-matched, if romance is a cage match, and in this case it is.

There was an irrelevant framing device that can be either included or omitted from the play. Its only use to me was as a starting point to accustom myself to the language, a task that would have been simpler, if fewer of the names were Somethingio. As I forged ahead, I knew I was going to be okay when I laughed out loud at this line –

PETRUCHIO: And you, good sir! Pray, have you not a daughter
Call’d Katherina, fair and virtuous?
BAPTISTA: I have a daughter, sir, call’d Katherina.

Some of the idiomatic language was lost on me, but I don’t think it undercut the overall effect of the play and, should I continue reading Shakespeare, I suspect that long dormant parts of my vocabulary will rally to the fore. Being a Shakespeare comedy (and from what I remember based on the story structures of ancient Roman plays which were later also used by P.G. Wodehouse) everyone is pretending to be someone else and trading places. The Bianca plot was actually the most challenging with all of those Somethingios to-ing, and fro-ing and woo-ing simultaneously. Had I been watching the play, which is, after all, the point, it would have been a lot easier to follow.

Who can resist a writer who describes falling in love as someone recognizing your “special secret skill”? Isn’t that lovely? It’s one of the most charming descriptions of love I’ve ever heard.

I purchased this book for my husband for Christmas after we watched one of Birbiglia’s specials. My sweetie hasn’t read it, but I found it extremely enjoyable and I felt it benefitted greatly from being able to hear Birbiglia’s wry and carefully monotone delivery in my head. He’s not exactly a comedian, but rather a raconteur of wonderfully-funny stories. There are not rimshots, just the ridiculous adventure he is relating and making observations on.

The book weaves stories from his life together and builds to a final section which I strongly suspect was drawn almost in its entirety from his lauded one man show Sleepwalk With Me. That is in no way a criticism.

The writing is of a quality typical for this kind of book. Above average, clever, but not earth shaking; in fact, that is my opinion of the book. It bobbed along nicely but wasn’t really entertaining enough for a huge recommendation. Buy it for times when you need something to read in 10 minute intervals.

There is great pleasure in reading genuinely well-written prose and Jonathan Franzen is a writer who delivers exactly that. This is not a self-reflexive, ironic or meta book: Freedom is a good old-fashioned novel which takes its time with character and story. It is a tome. Franzen uses his undeniable prowess to create a rich portrait of his protagonists and their life. As in The Corrections, he creates an entire family’s world and the novels are linked thematically by the aphorism “the only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well”, self-destructive characters, and the fact that no good deed goes unpunished and no altruism is unsullied. As in The Corrections the result is extremely well-crafted, but somehow not enough.

Freedom examines the Berglund family: Walter, the father, is a good man, well-intentioned and frustrated on several levels. Patty is a mother of two who had the financial luxury to stay at home and try to create the family she herself had wanted. She is lost, also frustrated, and ignored by those whose attention she wants, and incapable of giving her full attention to those who crave it. They have a daughter, Jessica, who figures in the story peripherally (and as the ignored sibling that all literary families seem to have). Lastly is their son, and Patty’s golden boy, Joey. He is the product of too much love and indulgence. The family comes together and falls apart (but not necessarily in that order) over the course of the story. It is an examination of their middle class mid-western lives that reaches a kind of crescendo and allows them to move forward. As the story ranges through their lifetimes, Franzen devotes time to each of his major characters and gives each of them a kind of 360 degree portrait. I’m willing to give them a couple of short paragraphs.

Patty is fleshed out in an extended “autobiographical” section in the book. This allows her to be the most revelatory and detailed, but in the absence of the omniscient narrator, also lets Franzen create a full sense of her perspective, but not necessarily a realistic view of her world. Patty is sympathetic, but not likeable, and I strongly suspect that Franzen didn’t like her much either.

Walter chooses to do good works, but must uncomfortably attempt to straddle the line between his desire to help and the extent to which those with power will allow you to do so. He is easily the most sympathetic character.

Joey is an incomplete narcissist despite his own best efforts. We meet him after the damage of his childhood has been done and he is embarking on adult life. He acts in the same manner in both his personal and professional relationships: reckless and remorseless.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible that an extremely well-written book with artfully drawn characters could fall flat, but Freedom does.  Franzen’s downfall is that despite the unquestionable quality of his writing, the product is not equal to the sum of its parts. It became a slog. I was annoyed. It took me some time to figure out why. At first, I thought maybe Franzen needed an editor with a red pen and the will to wield it (don’t we all?), but that wasn’t it. Wasn’t there enough at stake for the characters? This is hardly the first book about Rich People’s Problems, so it is possible to create stories where the reader will genuinely care about the characters’ personal happiness.  In the end, I think that although the reader grows to understand the characters, we don’t like them very much and are not invested in their lives; moreover, Franzen doesn’t seem to have any love lost for them either. Despite this, the writing is so good it almost sustained and carried the book to the end, but eventually it flagged and faltered and left me unsatisfied.

After reading the book, it occurred to be that it could all be seen as a metaphor for the United States and its place in the world. I started to write about that too, but I realised that this is not an essay for a literature class, so I put away my charts and notes and clicked POST.

Should I have gone with Princess Selfrespectra instead?