The writing teems with brilliance and virtuosity, but also with deep humanity and insights into the human condition that remain as true today as in 1904. What impressed me most as a reader was what scared me most as a playwright. Not only does Joyce create remarkable characters in all their contradictions, but his book expands to encompass the physical and psychological backdrop of an entire city. Ulysses could be said to be devoid of minor characters, because he brilliantly conjures entire lives for people who appear only fleetingly. Such expansiveness is the privilege of fiction: secondary worlds can be explored that are not pivotal to the narrative but inform it by being the common bedrock from which the characters spring.īut a play cannot sit down and digress too overtly from its central preoccupations. Playwrights enter an unspoken pact with their audience, but also a silent duel. ![]() An audience will follow a playwright anywhere once they are being propelled forwards by the engine of curiosity. ![]() If they get ahead of the playwright the spell is punctured. The taut sting precariously holding a play afloat loses its tension, and all drama dies.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |