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Gerhard's Reviews > Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition

Angels in America by Tony Kushner
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it was amazing
bookshelves: 2023, gay-interest, poetry-plays, favorites

'Americans pay high prices for maintaining the myth of the Individual: We have no system of universal health care, we don’t educate our children, we can’t pass sane gun control laws, we elect presidents like Reagan, we hate and fear inevitable processes like aging and death.'

Kushner wrote the above well over a decade ago.

Why are we still looking up to America as a global hegemony?
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Reading Progress

November 24, 2021 – Shelved
November 24, 2021 – Shelved as: to-read
August 5, 2023 – Started Reading
August 5, 2023 –
18.0% "LOUIS: I wanted a dog in the first place, not a cat. He sprayed my books.
PRIOR: He was a female cat.
LOUIS: Cats are stupid, high-strung predators. Babylonians sealed them up in bricks. Dogs have brains.
PRIOR: Cats have intuition.
LOUIS: A sharp dog is as smart as a really dull two-year-old child."
August 5, 2023 –
21.0% "BELIZE (With an edge): All this girl-talk shit is politically incorrect, you know. We should have dropped it back when we gave up drag."
August 6, 2023 –
30.0% "LOUIS: Power is the object, not being tolerated. Fuck assimilation. But I mean in spite of all this the thing about America, I think, is that ultimately we’re different from every other nation on earth, in that, with people here of every race, we can’t— Ultimately what defines us isn’t race, but politics."
August 6, 2023 –
36.0% "HOMELESS WOMAN: Oh yeah. In the new century I think we will all be insane."
August 6, 2023 –
41.0% "PRIOR (An awestruck whisper): God almighty. Very Steven Spielberg."
August 6, 2023 –
50.0% "ALEKSII ANTEDILLUVIANOVICH PRELAPSARIANOV: The Great Question before us is: Are we doomed? The Great Question before us is: Will the Past release us? The Great Question before us is: Can we Change? In Time? And we all desire that Change will come."
August 8, 2023 –
58.0% "HARPER: I never met an angelologist before.
PRIOR: It’s an obscure discipline.
HARPER: I can imagine. Angelology. The field work must be rigorous. You’d have to drop dead before you saw your first specimen."
August 8, 2023 –
67.0% "BELIZE: Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cow-spit streamers in the wind. And voting booths.
ROY: And a dragon atop a golden horde.
BELIZE: And everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion."
August 8, 2023 –
70.0% "BELIZE: Well I hate America, Louis. I hate this country. It’s just big ideas, and stories, and people dying, and people like you. The white cracker who wrote the National Anthem knew what he was doing. He set the word “free” to a note so high nobody can reach it."
August 8, 2023 –
73.0% "HANNAH: An angel is a belief. With wings and arms that can carry you. If it lets you down, reject it."
August 8, 2023 –
79.0% "ANGEL: The Body is the Garden of the Soul.
(Hannah has an enormous orgasm, as the Angel flies away to the accompanying glissando of a baroque piccolo trumpet.)"
August 8, 2023 –
83.0% "ANTARCTICA: I I I do not weep for them, I I I weep for the vexation of the Blank Spaces, I I I weep for the Dancing Light, for the irremediable wastage of Fossil Fuels, Old Blood of the Globe spilled wantonly or burned and jettisoned into the Crystal Air—"
August 8, 2023 –
87.0% "LOUIS: Yeah but. Remember back four years ago? The whole time we were feeling everything everywhere was stuck, while in Russia! Look! Perestroika! The Thaw! It’s the end of the Cold War! The whole world is changing! Overnight!"
August 8, 2023 – Shelved as: poetry-plays
August 8, 2023 – Shelved as: gay-interest
August 8, 2023 – Shelved as: 2023
August 8, 2023 – Finished Reading
August 11, 2023 – Shelved as: favorites

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Comments Showing 1-5 of 5 (5 new)

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message 1: by N (new) - rated it 4 stars
Aug 08, 2023 05:15PM

N I was lucky to have seen the stage production live starring Nathan Lane as Cohn, and Andrew Garfield as Prior. It was excellent!


message 2: by Gerhard (new) - rated it 5 stars
Aug 09, 2023 12:24AM

Gerhard NamLitFollows wrote: "I was lucky to have seen the stage production live starring Nathan Lane as Cohn, and Andrew Garfield as Prior. It was excellent!"

Wow, that must have been such an experience! It actually showed here in South Africa at the State Theatre in Pretoria once upon a time, but the only version I’ve seen is the HBO mini series. It is incredible how well it reads as a cohesive piece of literature, far quicker than watching it, but I think hugely difficult to stage. Kusher says he favours a ‘minimalist’ approach.


message 3: by N (new) - rated it 4 stars
Aug 09, 2023 03:30AM

N I love the HBO miniseries. Streep gives one of her best showcases of her range. She’s the reason I watched it. Yes the staging I saw was minimalist. Very stark, with harsh neon 1980s lighting.


message 4: by Philip (new) - rated it 5 stars
Aug 09, 2023 09:34AM

Philip I had the treat of seeing both parts individually on Broadway first time around. No words for the monumental perfection of this work of art.


message 5: by Gerhard (new) - rated it 5 stars
Aug 09, 2023 11:41AM

Gerhard Philip wrote: "I had the treat of seeing both parts individually on Broadway first time around. No words for the monumental perfection of this work of art."

Wow, Philip. What an experience! Rereading this now it is quite incredible how prophetic and timely it remains.


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