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After eight years or so, I have now read Orwell in Spain so that I could finally return it to gramarye1971 during my very brief stint in DC last week. I don't regret the long wait -- as always, Orwell is timely and never moreso than when he's talking about situations that are messy, complicated, unwinnable and un-abandonable.

Orwell in Spain includes the full text of Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's book about the Spanish Civil War, as well as various contextualizing letters and articles he wrote while there and on returning.

I first read Homage to Catalonia back in 2011, and, unlike most of the things I wrote in 2011, my review of it from that time still pretty much encapsulates the things I would say about it now. What sticks with me more, this time, is how Orwell talks about the ragtag Marxist-anarchist battalion he accidentally ends up in as the only time in his life that he's ever had the chance to see the ideal of absolute equality, abolition of hierarchy, collective action, in practice, and how it convinced him it could be put into practice, that it was a realizable dream and one worth fighting for -- about how he was miserable and hungry and cold all the time and achieved absolutely nothing and still.

But of course context is important. And though Orwell is very determined to try and be fair-minded, and to encourage his readers to treat him as biased and to come to their own conclusions, the most interesting thing about the contextualization provided in Orwell in Spain is how it shows how much he was driven by his concern for his friends who were in prison, and his goal of raising some kind of outcry among international Socialists for their release. He writes reviews and articles, many of which are not published because they do not accord with the party line of What We Should Feel About Spain; he argues endlessly and demands receipts from everyone who publishes an account of what happened during the street fighting in Barcelona that doesn't accord with his lived experience; he returns consistently and desperately to the topic of his superior officer, who is probably still in jail, Situation Unknown.

And then the superior officer gets out of jail, and the next bit of writing included in the compilation is from several years later. This may be fiat on the part of the editor of Orwell in Spain, but it very much serves to emphasize that the personal is political. It's not that I don't think Orwell cared about the truth generally, because I do think he did, but also it's got to feel much more important to scream when you know it's going to immediately and directly impact the people you care about.

(no subject)

I just got back from seeing The Revenger's Tragedy at Theater@First in Somerville with aamcnamara and genarti (plus bonus encounter sovay); there is one show left and it is tomorrow and if you are in the Boston area and have the time to go, you should!

Relevant facts:

a.) I love The Revenger's Tragedy. I first read the play in my Jacobean tragedy class in college; I have seen the film, which stars Christopher Eccleston and Eddie Izzard and is set in post-apocalyptic Liverpool, at least four times and no doubt will see it again sometime in the not too distant future.

b.) This version is not set in post-apocalyptic Liverpool. It is set in a circus. The Duke is the ringmaster and evil brothers Supervacuo, Ambitioso, and Junior are all clowns fighting for the clown crown. (Oldest brother Lussorioso is a lion-tamer.) This allows for a lot of truly magnificent physical comedy, as a pair of clowns with painted-on smiles attempt to murder their older brother, badly. It also means that every so often during a scene break someone will come out and sing "The Daring Young Man On The Flying Trapeze" or apologetically juggle.

c.) Because I have seen the film four times, I remembered many of the most important plot elements, including the incest and the secret identities and the poisoned skull. I had, however, forgotten several others that got cut out of the film, including the part when Vindice, our hero protagonist, through a convoluted series of events, gets accidentally hired to murder himself while his brother Hippolito desperately attempts to keep a straight face.

d.) "Everyone was great," said genarti after the show, "but the MVP was Hippolito's face journeys." It's true. They were consistently beautiful.

e.) We were warned there might be blood spatter if we sat in the first row, so we sat in the third like the chickens we are, but we did see some beautiful arcs fountain across the stage during the Grand Guignol finale.