y/n?
― thomp, Wednesday, 27 August 2008 21:22 (seventeen years ago)
I read this biography on a friend's recommendation, w/o being at all familiar w/coward or his work. sort of vaguely knew his name. really enjoyed the book, a fascinating life especially his wartime experience.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71E3GE8KM0L._SS500_.gif
― m coleman, Wednesday, 27 August 2008 21:33 (seventeen years ago)
His collected stories are pretty great. Like some of the plays, but have only read a few.
― James Morrison, Wednesday, 27 August 2008 23:06 (seventeen years ago)
was vaguely aware of the idea of coward long before i could have stated any one thing he'd written.
have been working through the collected edition of the plays at the library. but only the comedies. i couldn't really face up to reading stuff like 'cavalcade' or 'post-mortem'.
this was prompted by a broadsheet review of a revival of 'hay fever' which said something really, really stupid.
he spelt his name 'noël', not 'noel'; should have checked that before i started the thread i guess oh well.
― thomp, Thursday, 28 August 2008 12:51 (seventeen years ago)
oh, here we are�
"Yet the play is more than a laconic trade in devastating one-liners - it presents the then-24-year-old playwright's first masterclass in the art of subtext. When the Blisses' daughter Sorel is accused of never saying what she really means, she retorts: "None of us here mean anything." Spoken in a drawing room, it sounds flippant; if it had been delivered by a Beckettian derelict in a dustbin, it would be taken as the ultimate signifier of the human condition."
yes. yes, it would. yep.
― thomp, Thursday, 28 August 2008 12:52 (seventeen years ago)