(no subject)

[skygiants]

One plot I will read without fail every time I come across it is 'probably-doomed people in a desperate situation nonetheless put on a theatrical.' I said this on several other sites as a one-liner and immediately got accurately and pleasingly recced Ferdia Lennon's Glorious Exploits, which is of course the very book that inspired the post.

Glorious Exploits is set after the failed Athenian invasion of Syracuse -- some time after, when the Athenian prisoners imprisoned in the local quarry are just about on their last legs of starvation and desperation. The book opens when Gelon, a Syracusian enthusiast of Athenian theater who's gone a bit weird with trauma and grief (as indeed everyone on both sides of the war has gone a bit weird with trauma and grief), decides to offer extra food to anyone who can recite a few lines of Medea. Then he goes one step further: what if they put on a performance of Medea, right there in the quarry? Actually, they should do both Medea AND Euripides' new weird experimental play, The Trojan Women. After all, the Peloponnesian War is raging, and Sparta could defeat and raze Athens any day now; this might be their only chance to see it.

Gelon is the driving force for the first part of the book, but he's not our boy. Our boy is Lampo, a shitty little guy with a bad leg, bad impulse control, a bad habit of verbally lashing out when he feels low to try to make other people feel lower, and another habit of taking strong, impulsive fancies to people. One of those people is Gelon; they've been ride or die since they were kids, which is how Lampo ends up co-director of this bizarre prison theater project. Another is Paches, an Athenian that Lampo casts as Jason and Helen in the plays, and a third is Lyra, a Libyan slave at his favorite bar.

Let's be clear: the power dynamics in these latter two relationships are explicitly and absolutely fucked; the play, as it comes together is beautiful, but cursed. I've seen various reviews describe this book as a comedy because Lampo is a funny little guy who talks like Someone You Might Meet Down The Pub, and certainly it is often funny, on a prose level. Also it's also about the transformative power of art and how it can force us to recognize the humanity in each other. But it's also About Tragedy; it's about the collective trauma of war and a handful of prisoners desperately reciting Euripides for their life and extra rations while their fellow prisoners starve to death around them, and the book does not for a moment forget this, even as it gradually pushes our shitty little protagonist into an increasingly less shitty shape, towards acts of unexpected transcendence. Good book!!!

Comments

[ambyr]

That cover image is amazing.

[skygiants]

The cover would definitely have hauled me in even if the plot and themes weren't Laser Targeted To My Interests!

[ambyr]

Incidentally, have you read Mary Gentle's The Black Opera? This is not really a book I recommend but it does hit the targeted sub genre.

[skygiants]

I haven't! I tried reading another Mary Gentle at one point -- I don't even remember which one now -- and bounced off the beginning, but this does look relevant to my interests ... what do you anti-recommend about it?

[ambyr]

My thoughts as recorded from partway through, but I think "high on emotion, low on logic" sums it up. Which could be a selling point to many people!

[raven]

I just realised, this is why you (me, all of us) love Symphony for the City of the Dead so much. Desperately making art as the siege closes in - yes. Yes, that.

[skygiants]

YOU'RE ONE THOUSAND PERCENT RIGHT

[sovay]

. But it's also About Tragedy; it's about the collective trauma of war and a handful of prisoners desperately reciting Euripides for their life and extra rations while their fellow prisoners starve to death around them, and the book does not for a moment forget this, even as it gradually pushes our shitty little protagonist into an increasingly less shitty shape, towards acts of unexpected transcendence.

I had previously heard of this book only through a review which thought it fumbled the comedy-to-trauma ratio in the home stretch, so this is very encouraging, since otherwise what I thought of as soon as I heard about it was Tom Holt's Goatsong (1989) and The Walled Orchard (1990), which are also about Athenian theater and the disaster of Syracuse and are very funny to read while they aren't; probably not as directly targeted to your interests, but would still under the circumstances recommend.

[skygiants]

I had no idea that Tom Holt had written anything of this nature; thank you extremely for the recs, I will absolutely be seeking them out.

[sovay]

I had no idea that Tom Holt had written anything of this nature; thank you extremely for the recs, I will absolutely be seeking them out.

You're welcome! I wrote a little about the first one and almost not at all about the second and am sad that I do not have access to either of them right now.

[edit] It looks as though the two volumes have been reprinted in an omnibus under the title of The Walled Orchard (2001). I checked Google Books and they are definitely both in there. I re-read my favorite scene with the protagonist and his wife.

Another entry in this genre

[jesse_the_k]

is John Varley's sf novel, The Golden Globe, part of his Eight Worlds future history where humans are exiled from Earth for the damage we've done. The hero is trying to get back to Luna (whence humanity has been exiled) to play King Lear.

Re: Another entry in this genre

[skygiants]

I've never heard of this either, thank you!!

[ethelmay]

I am immediately reminded of The Mask of Apollo, though I can't recall enough of it to know whether it meets the criteria. Given that the actors are professionals it may well not. (It is among the books that for some reason I am doomed never to remember very well, though I have read it at least twice.)

[sovay]

I am immediately reminded of The Mask of Apollo, though I can't recall enough of it to know whether it meets the criteria.

I am crashing in on this comment to recommend The Mask of Apollo whether it fits the criteria or not. (It does have at least one tremendous performance against the text and the public mood which has affected the way I read the Bacchae for the rest of my life.)

[skygiants]

this is a VERY compelling argument

[sovay]

this is a VERY compelling argument

It is my favorite novel by Mary Renault.

[skygiants]

This is a very good reminder that I've been meaning to get back to historical Renaults, which I haven't read since I was twelve or thirteen and did NOT quite know what to make of them yet.

[blotthis]

(thoughtfully) huh!

[skygiants]

would REALLY be interested in your thoughts on this one if it ever strikes your fancy

[larryhammer]

I should probably on general principles mention Robert Browning's Balaustion's Adventure, which has at its core a young woman who, after her ship of refugees from Syracuse is captured by pirates, ransoms her party by reciting from memory a performance of Euripides’ Alcestis. Making it a person in a desperate situation putting on a theatrical. In a narrative poem.

ETA: Slightly mangled the situation in memory -- while fleeing pirates, Balaustion's ship seeks refuse in Syracuse, then under siege, and it's to the Syracuseans she recites the play in order to get let in.

It is, frankly, the most readable thing Browning published after The Ring and the Book (speaking of which, I suspect that also caters to several of your interests). The sequel, Aristophanes' Apology, has Balaustion reciting Euripides' Herakles but the situation is hardly desperate and the personal application of the play is far less on-point and so less compelling. Also, Browning's version of Aristophanes as a prig is v. annoying for multiple reasons.

(Browning's versions of Euripides are taken straight from the original, not mediated by a translator -- he also did an actual translation of Agamemenon which is frankly unreadable in the worst Victorian manner: overly literal at the expense of English syntax and sense.)

Asking for no particular reason

[vass]

So... you've read the most recent Murderbot, right?

[sophia_sol]

dang this sounds INCREDIBLE what good themes to be exploring in this way!

[qian]

Oh, I've seen some of the buzz about the book, but none of it gave me a sense of what it was actually about or like. Which your reviews always do! I will read this one.