The Course of Love: A Novel, Alain de Botton

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"We seem to know far too much about how love starts, and recklessly little about how it might continue."

I've been following Alain de Botton's career since How Proust Can Change Your Life. I think he's absolutely brilliantly insightful and has really made it his life's work to show us how philosophy and the arts can speak, if we listen, to the very everyday challenges of being human. I also always have the sense in his work that he truly believes to understand is to feel compassion - for oneself and others - and I think that's tremendous.

So I was excited to read his latest book, The Course of Love. It is subtitled "A Novel," but it is really more of a handbook to the complexities of married love, interspersed with fictional episodes illustrating the various points. A bit like taking a seminar on relationships and watching video segments.

What de Botton advocates is approaching love and marriage, raising children, and ultimately one's life, from a perspective that is more Classical than Romantic:

"Maturity means acknowledging that Romantic love might only constitute a narrow and perhaps rather mean-minded aspect of emotional life, one principally focused on a quest to find love rather than to give it...."

"Melancholy isn't always a disorder that needs to be cured. It can be a species of intelligent grief which arises when we come face-to-face with the certainty that disappointment is written into the script from the start."

He talks about the almost inevitable disappointment that one has not, looking back, achieved greatness. Cynicism, he says, is too easy. Instead, de Botton urges use to find "the prestige of laundry."

"There is valor in being able to identify a forgiving, hopeful perspective on one's life, in knowing how to be a friend to oneself, because one has a responsibility to others to endure."

"The courage not to be vanquished by anxiety, not to hurt others out of frustration, not to grow too furious with the world for the perceive injuries it heedlessly inflicts, not to go crazy and somehow to manage to persevere in a more or less adequate way through the difficulties of married life--this is true courage; this is a heroism in a class all of its own."

Orlando, Virginia Woolf

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I'm working my way slowly through Woolf, mostly chronologically, but in this case, I jumped ahead to Orlando. There are people who really, really love Woolf (on www.goodreads.com, for instance). I struggle. In Orlando I admire her psychological insight and thoughts on topics such as the value of obscurity, the subjective compression and expansion of time, the socially constrained role allowed to women. She often dazzles me with her prose ("orgulous" swans) and ecstatic, vibrant visions of Nature, but I have a very different sense of what a story is, and it comes up clearly in Orlando.

There are several points in this narrative that spans 300+ years in which Woolf in the narrator's voice excuses herself from relating the particulars of a conversation, and she passes over these noting that often what is said on these occasions is insignificant. Contrast this, however, with how Jane Austen handles similar social gatherings - for Austen the story, the revelation of character, is in the dialogue and mannerisms, sometimes the sillier the more revealing. Woolf tends to sweep over particulars as irrelevant to the big, important questions that interest her.

It is widely noted that Woolf's inspiration for Orlando was her relationship with the colorful aristocratic Vita Sackville-West, but for me Orlando the character remains vague, bizarrely detached from human relationships - there is a husband who seems more fairy tale than real and promptly disappears, an infant who no sooner is born than drops out of the story. Orlando has next to no friends, takes no interest in the changing times and displays little curiosity. The intoxication - like other Woolf heroines on my reading of them - is within one's own mind where enormous questions are posed ("Life? Love? Poetry?") and different answers tried out and discarded as insufficient.

I might be able to write this off as a difference in taste except that Woolf seems so miserable to me. Reviewers occasionally call Orlando a "romp," or words to that effect, but I just see the sadness, the loneliness, the frustration. Orlando spends a large part of the second half of the book in search of a semi-articulate desire for "Life and a lover," only to find lovers (except in the form of her absent, fantastical husband) disappointing. Life then. One of the things that fascinates me about stories about immortality is that they almost have to tackle the question of what is worth doing with a life. Orlando composes a lengthy poem she eventually manages to publish, but I think the "life" question remains open.

As perhaps it should, except that it is so easy to leave the question open, and that is no help to anyone actually engaged in finding an answer. At this point in my life, if I was going to take a stab at it, I think the answer is partly turning inward - because external goals turn out to be ephemeral - but only in order to settle the tumult inside, because I think what's really required is to look outward again from a place of centeredness, to take a genuine interest in the lives, petty though they may be, of others, to feel and act out of compassion, to pursue an intellectual and/or artistic work requiring one's highest faculties. It seems to me that Woolf's mental casting about - she uses the metaphor of the sea - keeps her perpetually wrapped in a cloud of philosophical and Romantic abstractions, and that, for all her insight, she fundamentally disdains other people because they are selfish, or fallible, or their concerns are simply more prosaic. Again, the contrast with Austen.

I do have to say that A Room of One's Own, made a huge impact on me when I read it, and when you read Orlando there is no doubt this is the same author. The idea of making Orlando a woman with a man's prior experience and perspective of the world is utterly brilliant and revolutionary genius.

7/11/16 afterthought:
My friend, who is far more knowledgeable about Woolf, explained to me that Orlando is an experiment in biography, an attempt to get at the essence of a person without being tethered, as normal biographical projects are, to dates and setting, as these could be seen as incidental to discovering, or showing, who a person really is. I admit this turns my reading of Orlando inside out - what I had taken for foreground is background and vice versa. I'll have to rethink my response to the book and give some thought to Woolf's intriguing theory. My gut response is that while the "facts" of a person's life are not sufficient to tell us who they are (born x at y to z, died x of y), what is important are the choices they make, the habits, the proclivities and pursuits, their relationships, and these are all very particular and detail-based. For me, I think, as a reader, a biography is an attempt to walk in someone's shoes, to try understand the world from his/her perspective, and that requires "grounding."

If you have a moment, please visit Jessica's blog at: http://alreadytoldtales.blogspot.com/ where she writes her thought-provoking retellings of classic fairy tales.

The Hollow Crown Disc 1: Richard II, William Shakespeare

Ben Whishaw as Richard II

I loved this production of Richard II. The play has never appealed to me greatly because Richard is such a complicated likeable/unlikeable figure, but this production absolutely made it work. Whishaw is phenomenal in the role of Richard. He has a shy quality, and a showman quality, and a martyr quality, but can turn in an instant and lash out with spite. Richard tends in the play to use language comparing himself to Jesus, and Whishaw gave you all of that, but also picked up Richard's nastiness and over-the-top theatricality. I've never been so aware of the many distinct facets of character in this role. In the "Making of" DVD extras, Whishaw mentions that he and director, Rupert Goold, talked about Michael Jackson, and I never would have thought of that comparison, but I think it's brilliant because they captured that quality of never being off-stage...even in how he sits and moves, Whishaw's Richard is always performing.

Rory Kinnear was also notable as Bolingbrook (the future Henry IV), because he brought a surprising restraint and moral uprightness, sometimes an unexpected gentleness, to the role. One had the sense he was a good man, trying to do the right thing, and getting in over his head.

David Suchet as the Duke of York

Whishaw's performance makes him the star, but a surprising amount of the heavy-lifting in the play, I think, goes to David Suchet's fantastic performance as the Duke of York. He's so good, you don't even notice how good he is, because he makes it look easy. He makes it sound as if he's speaking plain English. Patrick Stewart also comes in briefly to knock John of Gaunt's "England" speech out of the park. It's just a pity his character isn't around longer.

The other knockout feature of this production for me was the portrayal of two conflicting worlds (see also Henry IV post) between Anglo-Saxon medieval England and Richard's elaborately refined environment he's created for himself. There is a brilliant, brilliant juxtaposition at the trial-by-combat scene in which we move from knights on horses to Richard's tent decorated with flowers.

Find The Hollow Crown on Netflix, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or iTunes: rent it; buy it. How often do you get to the chance to binge-watch the Shakespeare History Cycle??! I'm kicking myself that I didn't know this series aired in 2013. My only consolation is that it would have killed me to wait until 2016 for The Hollow Crown: The War of the Roses (Henry VI Pts 1-3 plus Richard III with Benedict Cumberbatch!).

The Hollow Crown trailer on IMD.com

The Hollow Crown Disc 2-3: Henry IV, William Shakespeare

Jeremy Irons and Tom Hiddleston

The more I think about these two plays together, the more they puzzle me. I don't have a good feel for the "shape" at all. When I think of the Henry IV plays, I think of them as having three big through-lines: Hal's relationship with Falstaff, Hal's relationship with his father Henry IV, and Hal's relationship with Hotspur.

The relationship that seems to get the most attention in this 2013 version is the Hal/Falstaff, and the arc is one of disillusionment. After a jolly introduction, Tom Hiddleston plays a serious Hal, quick to take offense, dismayed to discover his companions are no better than they are. Case in point: 1 Henry IV Act V scene iv in which Falstaff presents the dead Hotspur to Hal and Lancaster as his own handiwork.

FALSTAFF: ...There is Percy:

Throwing the body down
if your father will do me any honour, so; if not, let
him kill the next Percy himself. I look to be either
earl or duke, I can assure you.
PRINCE HENRY: Why, Percy I killed myself and saw thee dead.
FALSTAFF: Didst thou? Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!

Simon Russell Beale as Falstaff

I've previously seen this treated as absurd - another case of Falstaff being outrageous - and Hal easily and willingly gives up his claim to killing Percy. In this version, it was a much more serious matter: Hal had "won" Hotspur's honor, exchanged honor with him by killing him in battle, and to give this up hurt. The lie was a personal injury, an example of how his dearest friend would stab him in the back if it meant personal advantage. In the end, of course, Hiddleston's Hal forces a laugh and allows Falstaff's false claim to stand, but it is a bitter moment. There's a similar point in 2 Henry IV in which Hal overhears Falstaff insulting him. I've seen this played good-naturedly - Hal revealing himself and confronting Falstaff with his own statements - but Hiddleston's version also treats this seriously. Hal is very offended and it's another blow to their, by this point, tenuous relationship. The Falstaff, Simon Russell Beale, is one of the best I've seen. I think he absolutely nails this role, possibly definitively. I think where they really got it right was a bit in which Hal confronts Falstaff after the Gadshill robbery and the two of them start circling each other, laughing and trading insults, like two boxers performing for a crowd: I think that's the Hal/Falstaff relationship perfectly.

I'm not a huge fan of Jeremy Irons as a Shakespearean actor - I think he tends to play the emotion rather than the details of the text - and I think this may be why the Henry IV/Hal conflict of the two plays didn't work for me.

Joe Armstrong as Hotspur

The Hal/Hotspur also didn't work for me, particularly, I think, because they made a choice to play Hotspur "realistically" as a rough and tumble soldier/thug, so his quick temper and reputation worked, but it was hard to picture him waxing lyrical, as he does in the text, about "plucking bright honour from the pale-faced moon." I would really, really like to see Hotspur as "the hero" of the piece, right up until near the end, so that the audience is right there with Henry IV in wishing this was the prince, and then the exchange happens where we see the value of Hal and the folly of Hotspur after all. One of the things that is difficult about this particular relationship is that Hal and Hotspur have no scenes together until the final battle, but I think this means as a director, as an actor, you have to play their scenes as if they are, in fact, very conscious of each other, thinking of each other, constantly comparing themselves mentally. At any rate, in this production, Hotspur came off as brutal and rather unlikeable, while Hal was charming from the start, so there wasn't much ambiguity to be resolved.

What I did get from this production was a vivid sense of two worlds in conflict: the rowdy, golden glow of life in the streets, and the grim, dour court obsessed with plots and civil war. And Hiddleston makes a striking Hal - he looks like a prince visiting among mortals - and it made me think of lines actually in Richard II where Richard complains that Bolingbrook (on his way to becoming Henry IV):

...Observed his courtship to the common people;
How he did seem to dive into their hearts
With humble and familiar courtesy,
What reverence he did throw away on slaves,
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles
And patient underbearing of his fortune,
As 'twere to banish their affects with him.
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;
A brace of draymen bid God speed him well
And had the tribute of his supple knee,
With 'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends;'
As were our England in reversion his,
And he our subjects' next degree in hope.

and it occurred to me that Hal really loves England - I mean the people - and understands them in a way that Henry IV does not or has lost. Everyone is worried that Hal has fallen away from his princely role, but he is, in a way, coming to know his future kingdom. I think this is important, the way that it is important for Superman to love Lois Lane (possibly the first time that comparison has been made), or the Gnostic Jesus to love Sophia: God incarnate loves the fallible, all too human, world. That's tremendously beautiful and moving to me, but then is under-cut if the rest of the story is one of disillusionment and revulsion.

What does Hal learn from his time in Eastcheap? I think that's the question of the Henry IV plays, and this production seemed to say: "That a king has no true friends." I'm not sure that's how I'd tackle it. Or perhaps it is not what Hal has to learns as the fact that he is able from the start to find value in Eastcheap that shows he will be a good king.

The Hollow Crown Disc 4: Henry V, William Shakespeare

Tom Hiddleston as Henry V

There is good Shakespeare and bad Shakespeare, and I think the difference is whether the director/actors are fighting the text or working with the text, and to be fair, in my time in theater I have done both. One tip-off is how much "extra-textual" (or intra-textual) material gets put in. To me, that indicates the director and/or actor is struggling, trying to communicate a vision or emotion in spite of the text instead of through it.

There is A LOT of extra-textual material in "The Hollow Crown: Henry V" (2013), from the framing device of Henry the Fifth's funeral - which is ahistorical, since Henry V died in France and only his bones were transported back - to additional shots of Henry riding a horse, shooting a long-bow, sailing on a ship, etc.. I can let some of those go as visual filler behind the Chorus, but there are also "meaningful" moments - glances exchanged (because they have no lines), or a bloodied scrap of cloth in the hands of the boy who "grows up" in the last moment of the film to become the Chorus.

Kenneth Branagh as Henry V

I have the 1989 Kenneth Branagh Henry V seared into my brain, so it was very interesting to watch a completely different version of the same play. Although even calling it "the same play" feels somewhat misleading - all movie versions of the play will almost certainly cut lines, but the 2013 Tom Hiddleston included a great many lines Branagh cut, and cut a great many lines Branagh included, so that one has the strange sense of watching a kind of "inverse" version of the text. The Hiddleston version cut all of the "Upon the King," soliloquy, which still amazes me, and dropped the entire traitor plot with Cambridge, Scroop, and Grey, which I think is also a great pity. One of the things you lose is the sense that France is coming after Henry, if Henry doesn't move against them.

What the 2013 version does give you is a probably more historically accurate picture of Henry's army straggling back toward Calais and a sense of doom going into Agincourt. Hiddleston delivers his "St. Crispin's Day" speech to a small group of his top lords while the commoners are standing in formation elsewhere, and it is a quiet speech in comparison to Branagh's. Branagh pulls out all the stops with a musical score, moving among his men and gathering them together in rousing camaraderie that makes you want to stand up and cheer. It's easier to see how Branagh's band of brothers carries the day against the odds.

Act V scene ii

Hiddleston, whom I liked as Hal, felt flat and humorless to me as Henry V, which is probably more historically accurate, but much less fun to watch. I particularly missed this in the final "wooing of Kate" scene, where the dominate feeling was "This is an arranged match and we might as well make the best of it." This is when I want to see Hal come back. It is an odd scene, for Henry to excuse himself as being a soldier, unable to speak of love. Surely, surely the Hal of Henry IV has more brains and imagination, but Hiddleston took these lines very seriously, playing a soldier king who looked exceedingly uncomfortable and out of his element.

What I came away with was a History Play about a particularly ugly, bloody period of time. If they hadn't been fighting in the mud at Agincourt, they probably would have been fighting in the mud at Shrewsbury again, or somewhere else: a king's strength, a man's worth, is defined by his ability to outlast his opponent in a primitive and barbaric form of warfare. Perhaps this was the point that fit with the theme of "the hollow crown," but it was depressing rather than inspiring. It seems such a waste for Hal and all he claims to have learned from his past experience.

I had a follow up thought about some parts that got cut, chiefly the "traitors" scene (Act II scene ii) and the Welsh, Irish, and Scot captains at Harfleur.... I keep thinking about Henry IV's injunction to his son to "busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels," at that part of the traitors scene is to show that if he doesn't do something, 1) France is coming after him, and 2) he'll spend his kingship defending himself from treasonous uprisings the same way Henry IV found he had to. And I think the importance of the captains at Harfleur is showing the animosities (and occasional comedy) of the various parts of Britain, but united under Henry and his cause. The weirdest part of the traitor scene is Henry's condemnation of Scroop:

But, O,
What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop? thou cruel,
Ingrateful, savage and inhuman creature!
Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,
That knew'st the very bottom of my soul...

It goes on. The sense of betrayal is powerful and personal, but it doesn't really connect up to Henry IV does it? If this had been Poins, or Poins had been Scroop, it would make complete sense, but who has been so close to the king in friendship who was not in the Henry IV plays? I suppose a friendship that emerges in the time period between Henry's coronation and the events of Henry V, but it feels like such a lost dramatic opportunity.

Kings of the Earth, Jon Clinch

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"The telephone was the old fashioned kind with a dial, rotary phones they called them, and the numbers under the dial were either worn away from use or obscured by dirt. He figured the second. Either way, in the absence of the numbers a person would need to count in order to make a phone call. Graham guessed that such a telephone probably didn't get much use, considering. It was a conduit to a world that had no business here."

Two words I came across in other readers' comments were "Faulkner-esque" and "rural Gothic." I think both sum up the experience of the book very well. Clinch took the basics of a real-life case of four brothers who lived together on a farm in upstate New York and blended it with history from his own family to create a fascinating glimpse of a small knot of people "left behind" by the modern world. "I don't think Lester's family ever knew about the depression or recognized they'd gone through it," their neighbor, Preston Hatch, relates. "It was all the same to them."

The book is organized as a series of narrative reminisces from different characters in different styles and jumps back and forth among the 1930s, 1950s, and 1990s, which was fascinating - there's that "delayed decoding" thing again that I love. You ended up with an in-depth look at the family from multiple perspectives at key points in their lives. Clinch is clearly most interested in the three brothers, but I found myself wanting to know about their youngest sister who makes a break with her past and yet remains tied to it. I have to admit I was looking for something more - a tall order, possibly unfair in such a terrific book - but I kept waiting for An Event, or A Revelation, until I finally figured out one wasn't coming. In this sense, I feel like Clinch may have stuck too close to his original story, but his priority seems to be showing the facets of this hidden, backwater, rural world rather than using it as a setting for a more plot-driven story.

It's beautifully written (that's the Faulkner part) and compelling in its pathos and ugliness. Absolutely worth reading.