SO Hamlet dies, does he?

Today we burst in classrooms all over the campus to perform five minutes of Hamlet. Seniors have been HAMBURGERING ( Hamlet Burst In Guerilla Theatre) for so many years now I have lost count. They split into groups, don costumes and themes and pop in everywhere from kindergarten -- where amazement truly sits on the faces of the five year old set-- to BC Calculus -- where other seniors enjoy seeing their classmates in action. Today was a good day. A few tricky moments popped out but overall no blood ( well real at least) and only one slight concussion, sustained by a wild thrashing actor who made brief contact with the window. After decades of seniors marauding as characters in this great play, I wonder if I am tired of seeing Hamlet. Have I watched one duel too many, one "good night sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest"? I guess the answer is no. Each year, the play opens fresh for me since a whole new group goes to Elsinore with me, wades through seven soliloquies, giggles at the innuendos and finishes it off with this day of sharing the Bard with all who come near. That is why Hamlet can work for me; unlike the melancholy Dane who waffles his way through five acts and more than a month of my life, I am steadfast. I love this play.

Welcome 2011

Having been on hiatus from school for the last two weeks, I was able to read several fabulous books that I want to write about over the next few weeks. I read the amazing new novel, Room, as well as A Short History of Women, and Pat Conroy's latest, My Reading Life. I am halfway through Freedom, a massive and excellent novel by Jonathan Franzen. The seniors are reading some wonderful plays this quarter including Death of a Salesman,Streetcar Named Desire, Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and Waiting for Godot. It should be a whirlwind quarter. My plan is to write weekly, so new posts should abound. As my hero Kurt Vonnegut would say, "And so it goes...."

Heart of Darkness -- another trip to Hell

This week we are reading Conrad's masterpiece, although at the end of a long, intense semester, I hope I am not doing this work an injustice. It is such a beautiful piece, but the language is so complex and the ideas Conrad wants us as readers to grapple with are at times unrelenting. As we begin the third chapter of the novel, we are about to meet the famous Kurtz at last. Presented with Satan at the end of Inferno, we are aquainted with evil. However, for me, Kurtz represents a far more disturbing vision. He is man unchecked -- man without restraint. He is the potential for evil in all of us. Conrad cloaks him near death, but the actions that he has taken prior to Marlowe's arrival linger in the mind of the reader. The jungle is the world and Kurtz is alive in it. The resolution to such pure, unbridled meglomania must reside also in the mind of man, because as Conrad so eloquently writes, the mind of man is capable of anything.

A week with Kafka

For this past week, the seniors have read and discussed Kafka's chilling work, Metamorphosis. This tiny novella of three chapters is a masterful indictment of family, corporate greed, and the power of guilt to charm and disarm. Kafka is also a difficult work since it rests on its initial premise that Gregor Samsa awakens after a night of unsettling dreams to find himself changed into a monstrous vermin. This unspeakable horror evokes much discussion. Gregor is a difficult character to identify with on many levels, although his alienation and despair seem to ring true, despite his unlikely appearance. Maybe the very thing that repels us about Gregor, also makes us connect to him. He is hardworking, determined, generous to a fault. He in no way desired the life he led nor the life into which he transforms. Gregor Samsa is an emblem for the alienated man who Kafka would no doubt say is a product of the world in which he lives.
We head toward Africa next week, first with a few days of selections from Mark Mathabane's Kaffir Boy, then to Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Siddhartha and the quest

We have been reading Herman Hesse's great novel, Siddhartha for the last week in World Literature. Hesse's account of the quest for enlightenment loosely parallels both the journey of Gotama Buddha as well as Hesse's own wanderings. In the story, the central figure leaves his life as a Brahmin's son and journeys with the ascetics, then enters into a life directed by materialism and passion. After twenty years of such a hollow existence, he leaves to find his place by the river. He comes to an understanding of time and the duality of life. He learns to listen and feels the power of connecting to all that surrounds him. This novel is an easy sell to high school seniors, who often are feeling the pull of choice. Seniors see the future both with rose-colored glasses and the lens of uncertainty. They even often see the journey as a right or wrong series of choices. One of the messages that Hesse drives throughout the novel is that living in an attentive, conscious state brings clarity and peace. Instead of the automatic pilot we can switch on in our conversations and relationships, Hesse advocates remaining awake and alert to all the voices which surround us. I wish that for my seniors.

Outliers

Malcolm Gladwell's work, Outliers, was one of the books we could choose as an Upper School teacher this past summer for our discussion groups. Since I had read Gladwell's The Tipping Point as well as Blink, I had a pretty good idea of the approach he would use in this book about those rare individuals, the super successful, superior intellectual or phenome athlete. However, my suprise was in the angle he chose. Gladwell's argument bases success on factors such as family ethics, birth month and even year of birth. He compares these outliers to their fellow attorneys, hockey players, even airline pilots with startingly suprising contrasts. For a short read that makes you think more about the intangibles in life, I recommend Outliers. We have just begun Siddhartha, then off to Kafka's Metamorphosis.

Mary Karr's Lit

Outside of teaching five sections of senior and AP English, I love of course to read for pleasure. It seems that summer is ideal, but because of my amazing book club of brilliant women, I picked up Mary Karr's latest memoir, Lit. I read Liar's Club years ago and most of her second work, Cherry. So when Lit was selected, I thought I knew enough about the author to see this third installation as one more part of her sequence to self discovery. I, however, must admit that this book of all three has such powerful images of pain and recovery that as a reader I saw almost too much -- her evaporating marriage, her wheezing toddler, her bouts with depression and the ever-present alcohol. Karr is a fine writer with a love of language that supercedes all. She chronicles relationships with such crisp prose that I left the book feeling I had grown up next door to these memories. And that is the magic of the written word.