"But, I tell you, if one is born and one dies! To be born, Monsignor: did you want to be born? I did not. And between one case and the other, both
"But, I tell you, if one is born and one dies! To be born, Monsignor: did you want to be born? I did not. And between one case and the other, both independent of our will, so many things happen which all of us wish had not happened and to which we resign ourselves reluctantly.
"What can I do if France can't produce any good theater and we are reduced to putting on Pirandello plays which you have to be lucky to understand
"What can I do if France can't produce any good theater and we are reduced to putting on Pirandello plays which you have to be lucky to understand and which are written in a way never to please either critics or actors or public."
Surely one of the best modern works of theater....more
"Is it—I'm not certain—possible to love someone if your first interest is the use you can make out of him? Doesn't the gainful motive, and the guilt a
"Is it—I'm not certain—possible to love someone if your first interest is the use you can make out of him? Doesn't the gainful motive, and the guilt accruing to it, halt the progression of other emotions? It can be argued that even the most decently coupled people were initially magnetized by the mutual-exploitation principle—sex, shelter, appeased ego; but still that is trivial, human: the difference between that and truly usinganother person is the difference between edible mushrooms and the kind that kill: Unspoiled Monsters." (22-23)
Only the third and final part of what is now known as Answered Prayers was published in Truman Capote's lifetime. La Côte Basque came out in Esquire magazine in 1965, and instantly turned Capote—a celebrity through the success of his writing—into a social pariah. It is not hard to see why. Capote envisioned Answered Prayers as his magnum opus—a towering chronicle in the vein, if not the spirit, of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. Unlike other great sagas, this was to be a roman-à-clef; yet the veil was hardly there, and the persons depicted, if not actually by name, knew precisely who they were. Capote's society friends were shocked, then, to find themselves and their dirty secrets so blatantly exposed. Whether or not Capote miscalculated the implosive effect that La Côte Basque would have, the full novel never materialized. There is some speculation about its existence in the first place—perhaps Capote never completed the other chapters (although some claim to have had other chapters read to them by Capote). What is left, or what was made, of the sprawling chronicle that Capote envisioned is published here as Answered Prayers (with the exception, I have since learned, of some previously unseen manuscript pages. In short, the incomplete novel, which includes two chapters prior to the one published in Esquire—Unspoiled Monsters and Kate McCloud—raises more questions than it can answer. It is a lively, living, messy work, at times endearing in its honesty. There is brilliant storytelling with some cruder attempts at shock thrown in. All in all, it is unforgettable. The story of Kate McCloud is especially great and haunting; it stands on its own among the many sub-stories told throughout Answered Prayers. I won't rate the overall work; it wasn't finished by Capote, and wasn't meant to be judged as it now stands....more
"If there is one thing rottener than another in a pretty blighted world, one thing which gives a fellow the pip and reduces him to the condition of an
"If there is one thing rottener than another in a pretty blighted world, one thing which gives a fellow the pip and reduces him to the condition of an absolute onion, it is hopeless love." (75)
I was ill and did what I always do when I'm feeling under the weather—I turned to Wodehouse. Thankfully, I still have some works left to read, even if I am slowly beginning to reach the end of the man's splendiferous oeuvre. The Adventures of Sally is an interesting novel, noticeably different in tone from much of Plum's other work. It is more serious; or, differently put, it is less light-hearted. There are real struggles here—there is heartbreak and failure, which is not all redeemed by the end of the novel. An adjective actually came to mind that I don't think has ever suggested itself before while reading Wodehouse: bleak. Perhaps it was my own state of illness that picked up on and amplified this. All the same, there were good parts to the novel, and I enjoyed it in end.
"'I've missed you dreadfully,' she said, and felt the words inadequate as she uttered them. 'What ho!' said Ginger, also internally condemning the poverty of speech as a vehicle for thought." (257)
"Would I were lying stretched out in my comfortable bed, Mr. Barrell, just wasting slowly, painlessly away, keeping up my strength with arrowroot a
"Would I were lying stretched out in my comfortable bed, Mr. Barrell, just wasting slowly, painlessly away, keeping up my strength with arrowroot and calves-foot jelly, till in the end you wouldn't see me under the blankets any more than a board. [...] Oh no coughing or spitting or bleeding or vomiting, just drifting gently down into a higher life, and remembering...all the silly unhappiness...as though…it had never happened."