Ripley Underground – 4/5
The second Tom Ripley novel begins with the revelation that we’re about ten or so years on from the first novel, that Tom is now married and living off his “inheritance” from Dickie’s forged will. He’s in London and he’s become involved in an art forgery scheme. Recently an artist whom Tom had been connected with became a lucrative commodity and Tom was able to facilitate the sale of the artist’s work after he died. No one really knew for sure that he died because he went missing from a boat in the Mediterranean. Seeing an opportunity, Tom commissions an artist to begin making forgeries in the style of this artist with the myth that the artist has settled in Mexico in a rural village. They hold an exhibit of the artist in London, where they are approached by an American collector who is convinced that one his paintings is real and the other is a fake. They meet with the collector where Tom plays the artists, attests to the validity of the work, and hope that this resolves the matter. It does not, and of course Tom feels like he has to turn to his old favorite (murder) to deal with the issue. This of course starts a host of other problems.
This novel is fun because while it ties to the first in a few ways, it’s episodic and there’s a new adventure. It’s not just what’s next, but the next adventure for the “hero” of the book. It obviously sets up the sequels in that new adventures can just happen.
Disgrace – 4/5
Disgrace won the Pulitzer when it first came out in 2013. The play is about Amir Kapoor, the child of immigrants who is a successful lawyer in New York. His wife is a white woman who is an artist and has become enraptured by Islam as a possible subject in her work. Her feeling is that since Christianity and Judaism are already so interlaced into the artwork of the West and culture at large, there’s not a reason (to her) that Islam should not also be interlaced, given it’s importance in the development and history of Western culture as well. She also convinces Amir to consult pro bono on a legal case of an Imam who has been accused of preaching anti-Western sentiments. This consultation has happened off-screen and Amir is resentful for many reasons, including that now his name is tied to the case and he becomes a figurehead of it, even though he is not representing the Imam in court. We learn that Amir changed his name when he went to law school, not to Westernize it like his brother has done, but to Indian-ize it. His father was born before Partition and his mother after, so his Muslim name is representative of the newly formed country, but he was worried this would work against him in the US. This obviously comes up later.
The play mostly centers around a dinner party with Amir and his wife, and a co-worker from his firm (a Black woman) and her Jewish husband. In this tense conversation a number of layers are stripped back and everyone’s feelings, ingrained and otherwise, become clearer.
The play is tense and uncovers some interesting truths about how America sees itself, and how the thousands of years of history that predate America (or at least its emergence of a superpower after WWII) have never really reconciled the complex history that came before. New starts tend not to be either.
Copenhagen – 4/5
A brilliant play that came out in 2000 or so by the British novelist and playwright Michael Frayn. The play circulates around a meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in Copenhagen in 1941. Bohr was the adviser and mentor to Heisenberg is presented here as his most brilliant student. The actual meeting’s events are unknown. Even Bohr years later told conflicting versions of what they discussed at the meeting exactly. The subject was of course the development of nuclear energy for use in reactors and weapons. Bohr, who was half-Jewish, would eventually escape occupied-Denmark and make his way to the UK and US where he would help to develop the atomic bomb. Heisenberg was one of the team leaders in Germany’s own attempts. Heisenberg apparently spent the last 30 years defending his actions after the war.
The play takes place in a kind of bardo, with everyone involved now dead and able to discuss their actions. The play then revisits the meeting in 1941 as well as one 15 years earlier when Heisenberg was a students. The play uses Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle as a metaphor about historical reckoning. The principle suggests that in scientific observation, the influence of the observer must also be accounted for, or at least recognized, in the observations. Mostly, it is never fully possible to account for what way the presence of the observer has on what’s being observed. The play also suggests that while this is true for particle observations, it doesn’t work for wave observations where the motion of a wave can be read retroactively etc etc. I understand ideas, not math, so I went with the metaphor.
One central element of the play involves the moral paradox that Bohr helped develop a real bomb that killed real people, and was treated as a hero; while Heisenberg failed to develop a bomb, never killing anyone, and this led to no deaths. There’s a question presented about Heisenberg’s failure to correctly calculate the raw elements needed to create the bomb as possible sabotage, but this is unanswerable.
Agnes of God – 3/5
In this play, we are in a convent where off-stage a young novitiate (Agnes) has recently had a stillborn child. The child was deposed of as well. Now we are with her and a psychiatrist who is trying to sort out the trauma of the experiences that lead to these events, the events themselves, and the state of mind of Agnes. Along with these two characters is a mother superior who knows something, not necessarily the full truth, and she and the psychologist spar about what should and should not be revealed to Agnes.
This is a play that gets at the center of something I think about a lot in reading: how to account for faith and religion (at least as it concerns literary characters) in the face of a more factual and accurate interpretation of reality. It’s one thing for religions to find connections to modern discovery and to deal with those within faith. It’s also one thing for literature to have to adjust to those same discoveries. It’s another of course when a literary character seems unable to reconcile pre-enlightenment understandings of the world with post-enlightenment (and in this case: post-Freudian) understandings.
August: Osage County – 3/5
I am not sure how much if at all I like this play. The play won the Pulitzer and the Tony. The movie came out, and I saw it when I did, and I think some of the acting is so cartoonishly bad I could barely get through it. Screen actors chewing scenery for a more subtle (though still pretty unsubtle) play is annoying enough on screen. Meryl Streep is just plain bad in it, and so is Benedict Cumberbatch.
Anyway, the play begins with the patriarch of a large Oklahoma family, a retired poet and scholar, telling you about his life and the life of his family. We learn he is a drinker and his wife is addicted to pills. His children have mostly moved away and had their own list of failures, or failures-to-launch. Then he proceeds to go on a fishing trip where his boat washes ashore without him. In the days waiting to find out if he turns up alive or dead, the children are called back to the home to sort things out.
The Lion in Winter – 5/5
This is a kind of King Lear story, and I know this because at one point Henry II tells us about King Lear. I would also say that more than King Lear, this is the basic structure of Succession. In the play, Henry is married to Eleanor of Aquitaine. Their marriage, like plenty before them, is a marriage of political exigence. Henry is thinking about succession and would like his son John (the future King John, whom Shakespeare also wrote about play about along with Lear) to take over, even though he is the youngest. His wife Eleanor wants their oldest Richard to be king. Also a problem is Philip, from France, son of Louis in France (whom Eleanor was once married) is also prowling around. Another hitch: Philip’s half-sister Alais, with whom Henry has been conducting an affair is there.
Henry has three possessions that in some combination his heirs want from him: the throne, the land of Aquitaine, and Alais. All three are worthy prizes, and technically all three are Henry’s to give (maybe not the land), and all three Henry wants to keep. But what’s a war among family when it really comes down to it?
