1. Bedtime/wake-time goal: 20%
2. Reading goal: 100%
3. Writing goal: 83%
This week's book was The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski.
It's Hamlet, but with a mute boy and dog farm. It was very good, but the fact remains that when I finished it I thought, "Hey, that wasn't as good as Hamlet but at least it was much, much longer" (562 pages). Therefore, my takeaway is that if you're going to rewrite something, you probably shouldn't pick anything widely considered to be in the top 10%. Stick with the junk the Greeks and Nordic peoples made up.
My favorite scene: In Edgar Sawtelle the "murder play" is staged not by an acting troupe, but by trained dogs carrying syringes in their mouths. As good as Shakespeare was, I think this adaptation is probably closer to his original intent.
2 comments:
In all honesty, I have never read or watched an adaptation of Hamlet (or the original for that matter). But dogs with syringes sounds about right.
My dad really liked this book but I totally don't get it. I guess I don't understand the point of re-writing it with dogs instead of ghosts. In fact, if you're already in the market for non-rational messengers from another realm, why re-introduce them back into the noumenal world as dogs? Especially when we're talking about going crazy, while talking dogs is nuts, I think personal hell is more like ghosts that don't leave you alone.
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