“Chekhov appears to notice everything. He sees that the story we tell in our heads is the most important one…for Ryabovich, his story has grown bigger and bigger and joined in real time the rhythm of life.”
In the last two chapters Wood recalls some of the books that meant most to him during his childhood. He also writes about the significance of leaving England for this country. He says he has made a home in this country, but not quite a Home. And he writes movingly about Edward Said’s essay “Reflections on Exile:”Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious even triumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement. The achievements of exile are permanently undermined by the loss of something left behind forever.
The Nearest Thing To Life
“Nobody wants to fall overboard fully clothed into the ocean anywhere in the world, even close to shore – it’s such a surprise for the body to find itself in this new element. One moment, the man is on a bench in a boat, chatting at the stern rail while rigging his lines and the next he’s in another world, with gallons of salt water, numbing cold, and the weight of wet clothes making it hard to swim.”
Damon Lindelof is writing a serialized story for Nextdraft called Something, Something, Something Murder. "I heard them whispering... I heard them say murder and then the floorboard creaked and they stopped."
Like (Havel's and) Shakespeare’s characters we still crave recognition and love, we still are angered by humiliation and rejection and seek revenge, we still overreact to perceived threat, and we are still capable of great compassion when we see others persecuted, and still feel anger at injustice. And often we use devious and unconscionable methods to attain those emotional ends. In forgetting that literature is the greatest repository of wisdom about our human nature, Foucault tried, all too successfully in many pockets of academia, to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
“How can you, after Proust and Joyce and Kafka and Faulkner, sit down and write a novel?… Answer: you have to. And the you have to is a private cancer, a private tumour of the soul.”
– George Steiner, Paris Review interview
Peter Duffy–THE BIELSKI BROTHERS
“Three men, brothers, saved as many Jews during World War II as Oskar Schindler, and organized a military force that killed hundreds of enemy soldiers, nearly as many as did the fighters of the Warsaw ghetto uprising….In the sixty years since, only a few books have detailed their achievements and hardly a plaque bears their names.”
Most people’s first books are their best anyway; it’s the one they wanted most to write….
Vaclav Havel Down Under David Williamson rocks!
BWW REVIEW: FAMILY VALUES Sees The Woke Women Of ...
Family Values review: David Williamson's new uncomfortable ...
Williamson's rallying cry to the privileged in funny, poignant new play
David Williamson's words are allowed to speak for themselves in this powerful, funny and poignant call to action.DAVID WILLIAMSON. The Trump Card of the Right.
The political parties of the Left often still hold to the
Enlightenment belief that we are rational creatures – that the person
who has the best evidence based argument will win the debate. Sadly, as
long as they do they’ll keep losing. Continue reading
David Williamson Heather Bloom 22 January 2020 One of Australia’s most beloved playwrights, David Williamson continues his 50-year run of success with a return to his 1987 play, Emerald City. Directed by Sam Strong, Emerald City will open Queensland Theatre’s much-anticipated 50th Anniversary Season from Saturday 8th February to Saturday 29th February 2020 in the Playhouse, QPAC. Heather Bloom asked Australia’s most produced playwright about what drives him and how to maintain artistic integrity in a capitalist society.
Australian Stage: Profile of David Williamson
David Williamson Heather Bloom 22 January 2020 One of Australia’s most beloved playwrights, David Williamson continues his 50-year run of success with a return to his 1987 play, Emerald City. Directed by Sam Strong, Emerald City will open Queensland Theatre’s much-anticipated 50th Anniversary Season from Saturday 8th February to Saturday 29th February 2020 in the Playhouse, QPAC. Heather Bloom asked Australia’s most produced playwright about what drives him and how to maintain artistic integrity in a capitalist society.
Australian Stage: Profile of David Williamson