Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare

This play is just fun. To those of you who complained about having to read Shakespeare in high school (of which I was one): You probably only had issues with the plays because you only had to read them once. Like all the Bard's works, this one gets better with each subsequent reading.

I should know. I've now had to read it something like 187 times.

Because I'm acting in it.

That's right. Under my nom de théâtre, I will be making my actorial debut as Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night, directed by the fabulous Jonatha Kottler, running at the Adobe Theater in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from January 15 through February 7.

This production has eaten my life.

And it is one of the most fun things I have ever done.

So if you're in the vicinity of Albuquerque in the next month, please, come support this incarnation of local theater with an absolutely delightful cast -- I'm not just saying that because I'm part of it -- and say hi after the show. I'll probably write something here about the experience, being so literary and all, during or after the run, when I feel I can properly process and evaluate it.
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Update: We have a poster and everything! Look!

The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss

Art is one of those funny abstract concepts that resist definition. We want art to be something grand, something glorious, something that no one but an artist can create. We want art to be something so simple that it cannot help but be greater than its parts -- brighter than just paint on canvas, words on paper, movements of dancers. Yet we want art to be something bigger than ourselves, something that has touched the divine in humanity and brought pieces of it back to the world on slabs of stone.

And yet, we cannot say what, exactly, makes art art.

Whatever art may be, though, I know it includes The History of Love. This is the kind of book that inspires me to write, to create, to find that spark in me and share it with the world. It is beautiful. It is masterful. But it does not stand apart from those who read it. It is not elusively aloof or ineffable. It touched me deep. And that, more than any definition of style or technique or category, is art.
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And at the eleventh hour, I conclude the inaugural year of Alone at the Microphone. No stragglers left over for the new year, none left behind to be filed in the wrong section of Blogger's archive. (Well, except for one. But it has good reason.)

Thank you to all of you who read, follow, share, comment on, enjoy, and support this blog. It's been a project good for my soul. And I'll keep it up so long as I keep reading. But knowing people are out there in several states and countries checking in, wondering what I have to say or what I'm reading... well, that's what really keeps it going.

Guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr. May you find at least one book this year that changes your world.

The First Law, by Joe Abercrombie

In the post on The Name of the Wind, I discussed the RPG test for certain stories. And I read this trilogy by Joe Abercrombie just because the commenter Ultrablam wrote, in response to that post:

"Well, you've brushed me off a couple of times about it, presumably because it represents fifty-eight thousand tons of reading in paperback, but if you want fiction that passes the RPG test with flying colors, you've just gotta read The First Law series by Joe Abercrombie."

Now, book recommendations are often like life advice from your great aunt. But Ultrablam, who is writing his own RPG (which you can read about here), knows what he's talking about. So when he said these books passed his own RPG test, I listened.

I'm not in the business of reviewing books here, but these three -- The Blade Itself, When They Are Hanged, and The Last Argument of Kings -- are awesome.

Because of how I found out about this trilogy, the RPG test was constantly on my mind when I wasn't reading them. They were too good to think about anything else while reading. But I had to discuss with Ultrablam why he thought these books would ruin the curve for all the other books taking the RPG test. Yes, they were awesome. Especially for the characters, which, well, make an RPG what it is. But the stories themselves would, in my opinion, make for poor games for any group larger than two players, simply because the characters spend so much time apart. The number one rule in my RPG experience is: Never. Split. Up. Not only do bad things happen, but the rest of your gaming crew gets left out of huge chunks of the action.

Turns out Ultrablam's personal RPG test is different than mine. Where I look at whether the story itself could have been born of a group of geeks sitting around a table eating chips and fruit snacks, Ultrablam looks at whether the world of the story -- the geography, the cultures, the populace, the politics -- would be conducive to a good RPG.

In that model, The First Law would make for a kick-ass game.

I'm not revising my model for evaluating certain books for RPG quality. But the theory is under evaluation. Because as a role-player, all I ever have to focus on is the development of characters and interactions within a given world. It's the easy part. But the great GMs of the world (like Ultrablam himself) have to be the Universe. They have to create the world for the characters to move around in. And that lends itself to a whole different style of evaluation.

The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread, by Don Robertson

Just as Morris Bird III wouldn't take too long to voice his thoughts, neither (for once) will I.

Sometimes it takes a kid to tell us what we already know, but are all too often sure to forget or to ignore. Be brave. Be courageous. Make mistakes. Make big old, crazy, why-the-hell-not mistakes, because they might not be mistakes after all.

And life sure wouldn't be much of a Big Adventure if we didn't take that rebellious step once in a while.

Irish Renaissance, by Richard Fallis

Once again (how does this seem to happen?), I have fallen behind on my book-blogging duties. So for this book, at least, my comments will be cut short. It only becomes a duty when I fall behind and the unwritten posts hanging over my head become a stress. So out with the old, in with the new!

Irish Renaissance marks the end of the Ireland-themed run of books. I'll be reading more, without doubt, but without the feeling of necessity that came with the Mitchell application.
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When all the history of Ireland and Irish literature is put aside, when the politics of the authors and the publishers and the theaters is sifted through, what comes through is that the Irish have a simply incredible collective literary consciousness.

And I love its style.

If you talked to me at all during that application process -- perhaps it came through in some of my posts, too -- you heard about how much I was impressed with and moved by Irish lit. Its simplistic-seeming yet incredibly elaborate technique. The concentration of politicization and opinion on the island, and the way it burst forth in words. The way movements created new styles of writing, of expression, of creativity.

So the title of Irish Renaissance is far from presumptuous. The book explores in very great but still comprehensible detail this unique conjunction of time, place, and spirit that has given the world an Irish voice.

Irish Stories & Tales, edited by Devin A. Garrity

The short story really is a beautiful art form. But I've already said so enough on this blog.

Almost each of these stories amazed me for being at the same time remarkably simple and notably complex. You get out of these stories what you bring to them -- and the more you understand the social situations in Ireland at the time of writing, the more import these stories carry.

I wonder, though. What would Mark Twain have written had he been Irish?

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce

I wrote before that there was going to be a theme to the books I was reading. That theme should be pretty clear. (Ignore the Palahniuk book.) Well, the great big reason was that I had applied for the Mitchell scholarship to Ireland, and I decided I better be damn well prepared if I should get an interview.

I didn't.

And that's ok. It's always somewhat crushing to put so much effort into a single channel, only to have it come to naught. But the Mitchell people sent out the nicest form rejection letter I've ever read, and were very prompt about the whole process -- all of which, as an applicant, is incredibly well appreciated.

The thing is, I don't feel as though the whole application and preparation process came to nothing. I'm still considering one of the graduate programs I discovered. I've read more Irish literature, and more about Irish literature, in the last couple months than I ever had before, and there's some fascinating stuff. So at the very least I've discovered a love of a national literature that I had not yet explored.

Or, it might yet be that this process will change my life in more concrete ways.

It could be that I end up applying for, and being accepted to, this graduate program, and I up and move to Ireland. Or it could be that this literature affects my writing, and even that it affects my life.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first James Joyce work of any length I've read. It certainly warrants future readings, as I'm certain there are layers only discoverable after the initial once-through. I can understand why Joyce is so often labeled the best or most significant writer in the English language in the twentieth century; but, what makes a writer so good in my book is that he speaks to me.

And Joyce does. I don't dog-ear pages. But I did one in this book. The page with the line: "The end he had been born to serve yet did not see [...] beckoned to him once more and a new adventure was about to be opened to him."

I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Where I'm going. What my purpose is. Nor do I think there is, or should be, only one answer. But maybe some new adventure is about to be opened to me. Or maybe I'm about to open it.

Maybe it will have something to do with Ireland, or with Irish literature. Maybe not. But either way, Portrait is the kind of book I will carry in my soul wherever or however I end up.