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SHAKESPEARE ON TELEVISION “Every single one of Shakespeare’s plays has an organic rhythm of its own. I do not think he understood the five-act system until mid-career, but he had a practical sense of timing and variation, and he was a perfect story-teller. Therefore no commercial programme can ever do Shakespeare properly, because the breaksContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: SHAKESPEARE #3”

“Reading was such a wonderful thing that to have made a life around the experience was almost criminal and it was so fortunate.” Elizabeth Hardwick ** THE CREATOR OF THE WIZARD OF OZ PREDICTED THE INVENTION OF THE CELL PHONE “Baum wrote dozens of other novels and short stories, and he had a knack forContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THE JOYS OF READING”

SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA “Soweto was designed to be bombed –that’s how forward-thinking the architects of apartheid were. The township was a city unto itself, with a population of nearly one million. There were only two roads in and out. That was so the military could lock us in, quell any rebellion. And if the monkeysContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: TRAVEL #2”

FILM AS A RELIGION “A Roman Catholic kid of my acquaintance, on his first trip to the cinema, paused to genuflect in the aisle before taking his seat. A perfectly understandable mistake.” Anthony Lane. “The Coming Passions” in The New Yorker (November 21, 2022) ** OF MOVIES & EROS “when I was fifteen, I rememberContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE:FILM #15”

for APRIL JAMES & JOHN HOOPER ON ACTING AS AN “AWFUL, AWFUL PROFESSION “ When it’s bad, it’s awful. Eighty-five percent of actors in the union are out of work, ( one study says 90%.) There were times when I was out of work for six, seven months. You begin to doubt, to forget whoContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THEATER”

HOW MANY TOMORROWS DID MACBETH NEED? “Then there’s Shakespeare. His antiquated language is confounding to any reader, and such passages as ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…’ well, wouldn’t one tomorrow be enough.” James Reynolds in The Crossett (Arkansas) News Observer (1959)] ** THOMAS JEFFERSON & JOHN ADAMS JOURNEY TO STRATFORD While in England in 1786Continue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: SHAKESPEARE”

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO OPEN A MYSTERY NOVEL? Writers of mysteries who struggle to find the best way to open their books will find two great ideas in the opening two paragraphs of Gideon Defoe’s inspired and very funny novel The Pirates! In an adventure with the Romantics or Prometheus versus a TerribleContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: MYSTERIES & MYSTERY WRITERS”

JOHN GARFIELD “When I asked for an autograph, he said, “What should I write?” “How about ‘Sincerely, John Garfield’? His face fell. “How do you spell sincerely?” Alfred Kazin ** PRESTON STURGES/ HOWARD HUGHES -INVENTORS “You may wish for more detailed view of Sturges’s movies, but Todd McCarthy’s script is knowing and informal; it notes,Continue reading “BITS AND PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: FILM #14”

THE MIGRATION OF BUTTERFLIES & THE SPIRITS OF DEAD WARRIORS “In pre-Columbian times, this migration involved even more butterflies than the mind-boggling one billion that fly to central Mexico today and the insects may have once overwintered much closer to cities such as Teotihuacan and the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan in forests that no longerContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THIS & THAT (BUT MOSTLY THIS)”

“I still remember that adolescent thrill, that sublime discovery of the novel and short story as an utterly free space, where anything might be thought, anything uttered. In the novel, you might encounter atheists, snobs, libertines, adulterers, murderers, thieves, madmen riding across the Castilian plains or wandering around Oslo or St. Petersburg, young men onContinue reading “BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: THE JOYS OF READING”