The Playboy of the Western World by John Synge

The Playboy of the Western World (1907)
Riders to the Sea (1904)

Two Dramas by one of Ireland's Premier Playwrights

"And that enquiring man John Synge comes next"-W. B. Yeats

John Synge (Dublin, Ireland, 1871 to 1909) is most famous for his drama The Playboy of the Western World.     The title of the play has become an international cliche.    (There is good article on his life, work and influence here).    He was a co-founder of the famous Abbey Theater and an associate of many of the literary greats of the period.

In his day his plays were considered quite daring in their content.

I am very glad I decided to read both of these works.  The Playboy of the Western World would probably take at the tops two hours to preform on the stage and Riders to the Sea  under thirty minutes.

The Playboy of the Western World is set in County Mayo on the western coast of Ireland.   This is what "western world" means.   The action takes place in a pub.,   The central character, the playboy, tells the patrons of the pub that he is on the run because he has killed his father.   The atmosphere of the bar is beautifully done down to the wild looking publicans daughter who is quite taken with the young playboy.   It turns out that he is only pretending to have killed his father to give himself status.   

I loved the dialect and the vocabulary  used in this work.   I think done well it would be beautiful to hear.    It also brings home how important having a good story to tell was in Ireland and the role of the pub in Irish life at the time.   

Riders to the Sea is a brief one act drama.   It is set in the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland.   These rugged islands became the last refuge for many Catholics during the invasion by Cromwell.   A great many of the residents make their living from the sea.   The most important character is an older woman, Maurya, who has lost her husband, her father in law, and five sons to fishing accidents.   They went to the sea and never returned.  This is a profoundly sad work.   

You can easily find these works online.   I read them both via dailylit.com.   They are very much worth the time it takes to read them.   I think you need to read both to get an accurate understanding of the work of Synge.

The next drama I post on will be Miss Julia by August Strindberg, followed by The Countess Cathleen by W. B. Yeats.   

Mel u

Two Vision of Heart of Darkness-Is it deeply racist or a powerful exploration of the roots of racism?

A Follow Up Post 

"An Image of Africa:   Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness"  by Chinua Achebe (1977, Massachusetts Review, 1977, 10 pages)


 Culture and Imperialism -Two Visions in the Heart of Darkness by Edward Said   (1993, 9 pages)

Edward Said versus Chinua Achebe

My Prior Post on Heart of Darkness-

"Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist."   Chinua Achebe

And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot. (from Achebe's essay)


"Heart of Darkness cannot be just been treated as a straightforward recital of Marlow's Adventures, it is a dramatization of  Marlow himself, the former adventurer in colonial regions, telling his story to a group of British listeners in a particular time in a specific space..,.what Conrad does is to show us what Marlow does is contingent, acted out for a set of like-minded British hearers, and limited to that situation"-Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism -Two Visions in the Heart of Darkness

This post is kind of a follow up to the really great very insightful comments that were made on my brief post on Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness.    In my post I said, which I now concede was not accurate, that Heart of Darkness is often now simply dismissed as a racist work.   In fact it turns out, as I learned from research stimulated by the comments of Amateur Reader, it is the debate over this issue that has in fact increased the readership for Conrad.   If he were alive today, Conrad would owe his critics a share of his royalties!   This issue has, I think, a larger culture import as seeing Conrad as racist opens the door to an attack on the whole notion of a literary canon if we concede this very high status work is racist to the core.   

I think Edward Said is right and Chinua Achebe is wrong.   (I will assume here that readers of this post-assuming there are any, of course!- are familiar with the racial slurs and terms used in Heart of Darkness.)   I think where Achebe misses the point of the work (I know it sounds very arrogant to say that but if I said it is Said who is wrong it would also sound arrogant) is when he says that Conrad in The Heart of Darkness provides us with no way to step back or outside of the account of Marlow of Africa.   I think Amateur Reader hit it on the head, as usual, when he said "Marlow is a world-class ironist. Is he indulging in received ideas, or parodying them?".


As Said remarks (almost wrote as Said said) this is a narrative for an audience of English business men, people that Marlow needs to please.   I found the further Marlow went into the Congo the more ironical he became.    This is in part because he has no frame of reference to deal with his experience directly so he must distance himself from it with irony.    Marlow wants his story to be exciting and to be what his audience, his bosses, want to hear.   


One of the interesting aspects of Heart of Darkness which I think does show orientalising elements in the book is in the treatment of the Africa woman who was the mistress of Kurtz, per Achebe.   (It is also interesting that Achebe uses a loaded term like "mistress" to describe the woman, why cannot she simply be as a English woman would, be a girl friend or even a wife?)   


In Orientalism (see my post on this book for some background on the concepts) Said says the European saw-and still see-non-European women as sexually exotic, almost like temple prostitutes.   This is how the woman in Heart of Darkness comes across.   Marlow wonders what amazing things she has done to captivate Kurtz.


There are a lot of good points in Achebe essay.   To me one best point is kind of an attack on "liberals" readers of Heart of Darkness who with the best of intentions say Africa is just a backdrop for Marlow to display his attitudes and have his vision of the horror of the darkness.   He says the fact that Conrad could use a whole contitnent and especially the Belgian Congo as  backdrop show his deep seated sense of European superiority.   


I think the failure of insight of Achebe and others who see this book as racist is their inability to step back from the narrator.   I think by the fact that Conrad frames the narrative as he does he is explicitly setting up a "step back" frame for his readers.    




Fred in his very insightful comments said he did not see the justication for this remark I made in my first post


"The narrator of the story does make use of degrading racial terms for the people of the areas, describes them in a fashion that show he things less of their cognitive capacities than he does of Europeans, and sees their very darkness as indicative of an evil quality within them."


Achebe's essay has lots of examples of this including suggestions that the narrator sees the speech of the natives as babbling not a full language.   


I know this may seem a harsh remark, but I think part of the reason Heart of Darkness is often called a racist work is the need of teachers to have something to say about the book that a broad range of students can relate to.   




As always I greatly thank those who take the time to comment on my posts.    If you think I am wrong on something, just tell me otherwise I will presist on in my error.




Please feel free to share your thoughts with us 






Mel u

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and "Two Visions in Heart of Darkness" by Edward Said

Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad (1902)
"Two Visions in Heart of Darkness"  by Edward Said (1993)

Orientalism and The Heart of Darkness

A Follow up Post on Racism in  The Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness is one of Joseph Conrad's (1857 to 1924-born Poland  but considered an English writer) most famous works.   It is considered a very high status canon work but of late there has been a tendency to attempt to dismiss it as racist   (Of course we have big questions lurking in the background here-can we like and admire a work of art whose values we do not approve?)    I am really not inclined to post a lot about the style or the story.   The prose is impeccable.   It cries out to be  read slowly.    

The story is set in the Belgian Congo, seen of some of the most horrible abuses of colonialism.    The narrator of the story does make use of degrading racial terms for the people of the areas, describes them in a fashion that show he things less of their cognitive capacities than he does of Europeans, and sees their very darkness as indicative of an evil quality within them.    The narrator in Kenzaburo Oe's short story about an African American pilot taken captive by rural Japanese during WWII does the same sort of thing.    Does this mean Oe is a racist?   

I really thing the best service I can provide readers of this very powerful story is just to advise them to read Edward Said's treatment of that question in his book Culture and Imperialism.     

Here is a link to Said on Heart of Darkness.   For background information on the operative concepts of Edward Said see my post on his big book, Orientalism.


Mel u

How The Two Ivans Quarrelled by Nikolai Gogol

How The Two Ivans Quarrelled by Nikolai Gogol (1834, 75 pages)

A Marvelous Comic Story by the

author of Dead Souls

Prior Gogol Post

Russian Literature 

How The Two Ivans Quarrelled is the lead story in a wonderfully done collection of short 19th Century Russian comic stories How The Two Ivans Quarrelled and Other Russian Comic Tales (translated by and with introductory notes by Guy Daniels) published by One World Classics.


I have previously posted on stories by two new to me writers whose stories I really like, Ivan Krylov and Mikhail Saltykov, included in this book.    I hope to read more of their stories.    Krylov's collection of fables and short stories sold more copies than any book in 19th century Russia besides The Bible.   Saltykov wrote very funny and biting satires on Russian society, he was one funny high level Czarist tax collection officer!   I also read and posted on Tolstoy's Ivan the Fool.


In his very interesting and educational essay Guy Daniels says Gogol (1809 to 1852-there is some back ground information in my prior three posts on Gogol) is was one of the inventors of the comic short story and that Why The Two Ivans Quarrelled is "perhaps the best, and certainly the first, masterpiece of its kind".  


I really liked How The Two Ivans Quarrelled.   The two Ivans start the story as best of old friends.   They own adjoining estates in rural Russia.  Both are small land holders and own a few serfs but they still do work on their estates themselves.   


I really liked how Gogol made use of small details to bring the characters to life.    One of the Ivans is single and in a semi scandal he has a woman that comes and visits him periodically and stays a long time.   I thought OK he has his younger beautiful girl friend but no she is a woman his age shaped like a barrel that keeps him totally in line.   


One day the two Ivans are visiting and one of them offers to buy the other's shotgun.   The fall out terribly in negotiations over the price of the shotgun.   The falling out is so bad that one of the Ivans, in an hilarious scene, sneaks over on the others properties and destroys one the buildings.   The two men end up filing formal complaints on each other with the magistrate.   One Ivan even brings a complaint on a pig owned by the other.   It turns out the complaint is for a capital crime and if found guilty the pig can be sentenced to death.   At first the owner says his pig is innocent and he will never allow him to be  killed.   The judge in a move worthy of Solomon says "why don't you just solve the problem by turning the pig into hams and could you give me a few of those wonderful sausages your lady friend is famous for making?"


The more serious of  the complaints of the Ivans drags on in the courts for years.   In the mean time the Ivans get older and all of the pleasure seems to go our of their lives.   What they really enjoyed doing was just hanging out with each other and enjoining the  pleasures of life as a small landowner  in rural Russia.    Both men have lost the most important, maybe the only important, relationship in their lives but both are too stubborn to make the first move even though everyone urges them to make up.


I really enjoyed read this story.   Recently I saw the classic movie by Roman Polanski (with Sharon Tate)  The Fearless Vampire Killers.   The atmosphere of that movie seems very like that of the story.  


I commend totally One World Classics for publishing How the Two Ivans Quarrelled and Other Comic Tales.   It is well produced on quality paper with a crisp easily readable font.   


In the interest of full disclosure, I was given a copy of this and other books by the publisher


The next Gogol I read will be his drama The Inspector General (on which the Danny Kaye movie of that name was based on).






Mel u

Welcome to All Book Blog Hoppers Aug 19 to the 22nd

Welcome to The Reading Life


Follow Me and I will Follow you Back

I have been an on and off participant in The Book Blogger Hop hosted by Jennifer of Crazy for books for a long time.   I have found it to be a great place to discover new to me blogs and meet some great book bloggers.    

My blog and my reading focuses on an ever evolving collections of reads but for now I am very into South Asian Short Stories, Japanese fiction, classics, Katherine Mansfield, Flannery O'Connor, Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf.   I also read a wide variety of short stories and review an occasional carefully selected new work.

My blog is the home of Irish Short Story Week centered around St Patrick's Day.   I am open to book blog events.  

Every week Jennifer poses an interesting question for us-here is this weeks question:


This  week Jennifer asks us to tell everyone what the longest book we have ever read is-


If you include multi-volume works then it is Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.   For a single volume it would be  Clarissa

I will follow back all who follow me-just leave a comment letting me know you are now a follower

Mel u

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

 The Pearl by John Steinbeck (1947)

A Moving Story by a Nobel Prize Winner

A Link to the Classic Circuit John Steinbeck Schedule

It has been a long time since I have read anything by John Steinbeck (1902 to 1968-California, USA).   When I saw the next Classic Circuit would be devoted to Steinbeck I felt I should read a new to me one of his works.   (I am a bit late submitting this post for which I apologize to the Classic Circle Managers and readers.)    Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for his most famous by far work, The Grapes of Wrath.     He received the Nobel Prize in 1962 for the body of his work.    He was a very productive writer mostly focusing on the lives of the poor in the USA during the depression years of 1930 up until 1940 or so.   

The Pearl is set in on the Pacific Coast of Mexico just south of California.   The central characters of the novel are Indians with few cash resources.   The novel lets us see very clearly the racial and economic divides of the society.   The Indian live primarily from what they can harvest from the sea.  

A child is bitten by a scorpion and his parents take him to the local doctor.   When the doctor see his patient and his parents he is basically insulted and disgusted that he has been called on to treat an Indian boy.   He asks if the parents have any money to pay his fee.   When he sees they do not he refuses to treat the boy and shows he is quite racist.   


The father can think only of one way to get the money to help his boy (it is sort of treated in passing but it is a very macho society where pride can get in the way of doing what is best for your family or even yourself) and that is to find a valuable pearl.   The Pearl is about what happens when he does find a very valuable pearl.  It does not bring them the happiness they thought it would, really quite the opposite.   


The Pearl is told almost as if it were a folk tale.  It has a powerful message on how one should seek happiness.   You really have to read it to get the moral behind it and I do not want to spoil the plot of this short novel.


I want to quote briefly from the end of the story so you can get a feel for the prose and the overtly moralistic quality of The Pearl.


"The people say that the two seemed to be
removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had
come out on the other side; that there was almost a magical protection about them. And those people who had rushed to see them crowded back"


I enjoyed reading The Pearl.   There are a lot of good reading ideas in the other posts for the Steinbeck edition of the Classics Circle.


Mel u

Waiting For Mahatma by R.Narayan

Waiting  for Mahatma by R. K. Narayan  (1955, 137 pages)

A Very Powerful Political Novel

Gandhi Comes To Malgudi

Indian Literature Posts


The Reading Life R. K. Narayan Project


I think it took a great deal of real courage to write and publish Waiting  for Mahatma in 1955.    The novel, set largely in his fictional city of Malgudi India, begins around 1939 and ends in 1947, just before the partitioning of India.    


So far I have posted on 31 of Narayan's (1906 to 2001-India)  short stories and four of his sixteen novels.    (There is background information on him in my prior posts.)     Waiting  for Mahatma centers on a young man named Sriram who lives with his grandmother.   He is in love with and wants to marry a young woman who is involved with Mahatma Gandhi's movement to achieve Indian independence and this draws him into becoming  active himself.


Big news comes to Malgudi.   Ghandi is coming for a speaking engagement.    The town leaders are thrown into a frenzy of planning.   It is decided that Ghandi will stay in the mansion of the wealthiest man in Malgudi.   When Ghandi arrives, he decides that instead he wishes to stay in the home of a street sweeper.   This produces great turmoil and debate but there is no going against the word of Ghandi, at least publically.   One of the very interesting things in the novel was seeing that not every one revered Ghandi even though everyone is supposed to.    Sriram's grandmother saw him just as someone who would get her grandson in trouble, and she was sure right on that.   Others thought he was working behind the scenes with the British to get himself made the Emperor of India.    It was a bit amazing and shocking when Ghandi appears as a character in the novel.   Narayan makes seem human and more than human.   Just the few speeches he makes show an almost transhuman wisdom.   For example he told the Indians for them to become independent with their hearts full of bitterness to each other was worse than staying under the British.   Narayan lets us feel we know a little bit like what it must have felt like to be in Ghand's  presence.   


There is just a huge amount in this novel.   Reading it for sure deepened my meager understand of Indian history.   Sriram ends up in prison and we endure this time with him.   When he gets out of prison he does not know if WWII is over or if India has become independent (the time of his release is early 1947).    Narayan ends the novel (he is brilliant at ending his fictions-not an easy thing to do) in just a shocking event that took so much sheer nerve to include in his book.


This novel is beautifully written.   I was interested in and liked all the central characters.   Maybe the character of the girl friend of Sriham could be a bit more filled out but maybe not.    The grandmother is just a marvel.   You can tell she is just one step away from calling Ghadhi a pompous fraud but she always catches herself.   


This is a really good novel.   I totally endorse it  for all and see it as must reading for those into literature about the era of the British Raj and the struggle for Indian Indepence.   Narayan brings cosmic events down to the streets and homes of Malgudi in a brilliant and loving fashion.


The next of his works I will read will be The Financial Expert.


Please share your experience with Narayan with us.   


Mel u