Adriana Zuniga Zuniga itibaren Turecká, Slovacchia
There are some real whoppers of biographies out there on Darwin (not to mention the autobiographical whopper in the form of his letters), so this short portrait is the perfect choice for normal people. Quammen's prose is zesty as always and he gets to the heart of evolutionary theory, the early 19th century scientific environment, and the extraordinary quirks and gifts of Darwin's personality with an efficiency I appreciated.
Like A Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus is part of a grammar-school-educated Shakespeare's crash-course substitute for a university education. In Errors, he imitated Plautine comedy's plot structure and stock characters, and--in an experiment to see just how much fun the form could hold--doubled the number of comic misunderstandings by doubling the number of identical twins. In Titus, he imitates the violent plots and magisterial rhetoric of Senecan tragedy, and--again as an experiment--doubles the horrors. In the process, Shakespeare produces for the first time some highly rhetorical, mythology-laden blank verse which flows with a new musical subtlety, and also succeeds in creating over-the-top language and grisly tableaux as outrageous and overwrought as a blood-spattered baroque ceiling--in other words, exactly the sort of excess that would appeal to an Elizabethan audience. Is the play intentionally funny? Except for an occasional line here and there, I doubt it. At any rate, if it is supposed to be, it fails. Shakespeare lacked the anarchic temperament necessary to exult in evil for its own sake (as Marlowe so effectively did in the "Jew of Malta"). On the contrary, his early villains are the most convincing when they reveal their vulnerability--La Pucelle's terror at her auto da fe, the deformed Gloster's fear of courtly dalliance--not when they revel in their nihilism. Without at least a little love for chaos, there can be no real black comedy, and, if such a love can be deemed an artistic virtue, it is a virtue not found in Shakespeare's character. (Eventually, he would depict the cold manipulative rage of Iago, but it would take ten years of life and craft to give him the tools to do so.) Although I like this play, I don't believe it is successful. The plot is too mechanical and the horrors too insincere. The Moor's passionate defense of his newborn son--a villain displaying his vulnerability--is the only part of this elaborate bloodbath that touches the human heart.
When he is not in trouble, Reese is allowed to work at a nearby senior home where he is given the job of helping Mr. Hooft, a bed-ridden old man who'd rather be anywhere other than a home waited on by a black teenager. Over time the two share their stories and become friends. Mr. Hooft was also in prison as a child, in his case a Japanese prison where all Europeans living in Shanghai were sent after the invasion of China during World War II. Reese has few people in his life who are on his side. His mother is willing to sacrifice him in order to hang on to her current boyfriend The other inmates at Progress, outside of 'Toon, cannot be trusted. The gaurds are waiting for him to screw up and sure that he will. The warden believes Reese has blown every chance he gave him and does not have much faith in him as a result. Mr. Hooft and Reese's little sister Isis are the only ones who believe he can turn his life around. Unfortunately, Reese's story is all too common in the United States today. To their credit, neither Reese nor Mr. Myers point the blame for Reese's situation at anyone other than Reese. While the deck is certainly stacked against him, Reese knows he must choose how he'll play the cards he has been dealt. Those of us who started life with a better hand would do well to remember that the family we are born into could easily have been one like Reese's.
I tend to always like Ellis' novels. Like I've said in other reviews, I just love the rotting, elitest worlds he crafts. But I think what Ellis does best is take these worlds almost to the brink of parody and then steps back. You find yourself chuckling but so confused abut your laughter because the content is often grim or pathetic. Rules of Attraction is a great nihlistic college fiction. The movie made from it was crap.