Camino Real (1953) By Tennessee Williams; Staged at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago (2012)

You can count on one hand, with fingers left over, the number of playwrights of the stature of Tennessee Williams.  He’s written some of the classics of American theater, including A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Glass Menagerie.  But then, he also wrote Camino Real, a critical bomb when it opened.  When Chicago’s Goodman Theatre announced they would produce this play, written in 1953, the year I was born, I couldn’t resist.  Why were they doing this?

When possible, I will read the script of a play prior to seeing it, so I pulled out the Library of America’s collection of Williams’ work and began.  It took me only pages to realize why it was a bomb in the 1950’s.  Although Williams made a career out of characters with delusions, the entire cast of Camino Real, seems other worldly. 

Camino Real translates as the Royal Road.   It is set in an undisclosed town in the middle of tropical nowhere.  The plot, for lack of a better term, involves an American prize fighter named Kilroy, who has had to give up boxing for health reasons.  He left the U.S. on a merchant tub, hated it, and jumped ship.  When he discovers the town square, he gets robbed of everything but his championship belt & golden gloves – therefore joining the other residents at the end of their personal journeys.  The rest of the script is comprised of “Blocks” of how each of them got to this point in their lives.

Critics and biographers have explained that the play was written in “a dark period” of Tennessee Williams’ personal life.  Perhaps, but it reads to me as though “highly illuminated” by hallucinogens of one kind or another might be a more accurate description.

Not so, the stage production.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C90QtYssSa4

The Goodman recruited Calixto Bieito from Barcelona, Spain to direct this staging.  His adaptation is mesmerizing.   While remaining largely faithful to the script, Bieito has crafted this play into a fascinating work, featuring some rather spectacular individual performances – although the hint of hallucinogens remains in the tropical air.  The play runs through April 8^th, see it if you can.

A Palace in the Old Village (2009 in French, 2011 English translation) By Tahar Ben Jelloun

If the setting were North America, his name would be Jose, but it is not, the story is set in Europe, so his name is Mohammed. 

Several weeks ago I read Leaving Tangier, a novel by Tahar Ben Jelloun telling the story of a young man and his sister who had emigrated from their native Morocco to live in Spain. In this book A Palace in the Old Village he tells the story of Mohammed, an everyman character who had left his home in the Maghreb to become a “guest worker” in an auto plant in France.  He brought his family over as soon as he could afford to.  

  

He was a simple man, a hard worker who never complained about anything, and was appreciative of his ability to make good wages in that new country.  He made a good life for himself and his family.  But after 30 years on the job he reached retirement, which was mandatory in France.   This “tirement” however, was something foreign to him. 

He tried going to the plant for several days afterward, offering to cover for men who were absent for one reason or another. He’d volunteer, they need not pay him he explained.  But it wasn’t allowed.  Mohammed knew not what to do with himself. 

Since he had first arrived in France, he had returned to his village in Morocco each summer during the month long summer holiday, showering his distant relatives and childhood friends with presents.  Now, he was making the decision to return to the village for good. 

Using his entire savings, Mohammed built the largest house in the village.  Keeping with the traditions he had grown up with he wanted his entire family, and their families, to live with him.  He knew this would not happen, but at least all of them would spend their summer holidays with him, he thought.

But time had escaped Mohammed.  His children were independent and modern.  He never sought French citizenship, but all of his children had.  

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (2011) By Stephen Greenblatt

This marvelous little work of nonfiction has everything: philosophy, theology, history, atomism, mystery and a large dose of irony.  Among other topics, the reader will discover a several page discussion on bookworms (the insects, not the geeks), a short history on the demise of the Great Library of Alexandria, a discourse on the literary circles of William Shakespeare, an overview of monastic life in the upper Germanic provinces of the Holy Roman Empire, and a short history on the creation of Times New Roman typeface – none of which is the main plot of the book.

The main plot is the story of how Poggio Bracciolini, a Vatican scribe and off-hours scholar, brings back from near extinction the tenets of Epicurean (Humanist) Greek philosophy, by rediscovering Lucretius’ poem On The Nature of Things: and how this book hunter’s find in 1417 helped shape the course of -- the swerve of (atoms) -- the Renaissance.   Author Stephen Greenblatt’s book, carries the subtitle of How the World Became Modern, but I’d like to suggest another:  The Crucifixion, Resurrection and Spread of Humanism.  Amen.

Poggio was a major official in the Vatican bureaucracy, serving five Popes during the 15^th century, two of whom were bounced from office for corruption (or more accurately, for having the wrong set of corrupt allies).  That this man would rediscover and reproduce this then controversial masterpiece debunking the core tenets of western theology is the ultimate irony.  That he did this at a time that the Vatican was routinely burning people at the stake for heresy, adds to the story.

Many of the works of the ancient Greek philosophers were lost during the Middle Ages.   Some works were suppressed as Roman culture asserted its control by purposely abandoning what came before; others because Christianity sought to destroy all history of polytheistic thought; and many others succumbed to natural causes, such as bookworms and fire.   Poggio’s intellectual hobby was to find as many lost classics as possible and translate them to Latin, making them accessible once more.   That many of those finds were at remote monastic libraries, adds to the irony.

This book, while short at 263 pages, is not an easy read.  It also contains 263 Notes (the last of which pertains to Thomas Jefferson’s personal library, which included a copy of Poggio’s Latin translation of On The Nature of Things), and a 27 page bibliography.