Christmas reading …

… was great. Unexpectedly so. No snow, of course. Just walked through the rain this morning through empty streets to my empty office – skirting weird amounts of spirit bottles round the glass bins and being kind of relieved when I finally hit on a bus at Josephsplatz - realizing how far, far away I had been …

And I just realized why I started like this – but that’s the next paragraph. First I have to save an observation I made reading “Coriolanus” – which might be the last Shakespeare I will be reading for some time. I had planned on reading it since August because I had then seen the film with Ralph Fiennes -  directed by Ralph Fiennes - and noticed that I found it extremely interesting. But I had to read the play first and didn’t get round to it for some time. I won’t write anything about “Coriolanus”, though, but I just accidentally spilled a theory about comic relief scenes in “Shakespeare” being in fact there to hint on something extremely dark, or vexing, or some kind of uncomfortable truth. But in a way that everybody is free to read the hint or not. And every time I do that – spitting out audacious theories like this – I am uncomfortable with it and am actually setting out to verify them by trying to falsify them. And I was successful in this case, reading the squabble of Aufidius’ “servingmen” AS IF it actually WAS a comic relief scene – which it is, of course! But then I came on this discussion of the benefits of war that may be a “great ravisher” – but peace, on the other hand, is “a great maker of cuckolds” and “MAKES MEN HATE ONE ANOTHER because they then LESS NEED ONE ANOTHER”. And THIS totally played into the feeling I had about this play. It really scrapes the bottom of why “Coriolanus” felt so particularly unpleasant, having almost nothing to offer apart from the kind of naked truths nobody is ever prepared to say right out: We will never be rid of bloody conflict, not because it makes any sense but because we really NEED it. Maybe not me, but somebody always really needs it.

That was that … And now to why I started with my true to live description of my walking to work this morning. I finally read “Red Dragon” and “The Silence of the Lambs” after having now seen both the films with Antony Hopkins as Hannibal, having finally managed to get “Red Dragon” with Ralph Fiennes. And because I find this and the series with Mads Mikkelsen such contradictory adaptations of the same book I got round to reading the books after all and certainly didn’t regret it. On the contrary: Unlike the films, I totally enjoyed them. “Silence of the Lambs” is a great book – and probably unbearably thrilling if one doesn’t know the story already. But “Red Dragon” really is a delight! (It’s the first one. I bought them all, including “Hannibal” and “Hannibal Rising”, because I wasn’t sure which one was first and which ones got into the series. Probably bits of all of them.) This book actually made me aware for the first time what I value most about reading and written fiction. And why I was so obsessed with “realism” once upon a time that I thought: If I’d ever write a doctoral thesis it will be about this. Of course it is about the WRITING – but what EXACTLY? Reading “Red Dragon” I consciously observed for the first time that it is about HOW CLOSE you can get writing to the reality YOU ARE CREATING. Not any kind of reality that actually exists –  which is how we “naturally” define realism - but the fictional reality a writer is able to create and which we re-create reading. So, it may be the worst kind of bullshit imaginable – if it is written in a manner that it is so close to our skin – or kind of goes under the skin – that we are compelled to believe it. Of course I must have experienced this any number of times, and have gotten better at READING like this – but I never OBSERVED it like I did in this case. And this was, of course, behind my fascination with the series. But even though the series really is ABOUT this – as I observed, it is not about the horror but about how to get under our skins with all this “bullshit” and offending human stuff “aesthetically”, without putting people off – it mostly cannot reach the book, especially in a character like Will Graham where everything that is so special about him is actually IN his thoughts. At one point during the third season Lecter actually opens Will Graham’s skull with a surgical saw – naturally to no avail! It isn’t even a powerful metaphor in this case, just heavy-handed. Where Richard Armitage’s Red Dragon is concerned there was a lot more of this incredible detail that could be made visible, and I admired even more the way he committed to this and the amount of detail he managed to get in. It was totally worth it – but a lot of what makes this character so special and kind of unique is in the backstory. I loved Thomas Harris’ obsession with the CHANGING – because I think this really is the way we LIVE – and are not already dead while we are living – even insignificant and nondescript people like myself. (Of course, most of the change is involuntary and unpleasant, and threatening. And this is ALSO in the book.) As to that, Richard Armitage’s Red Dragon is amazing, and Ralph Fiennes’ totally nondescript. They were zero interested in his “becoming” – as in his background, so, in the film, the Dragon never “took off”. In the series he did, and I think Richard Armitage even tried to get as much acquainted with the backstory as he could and to put as much of it in in the only way available to an actor: by putting as much of it into his head when he played the character. It certainly paid off, but we are not able to see it, most of the time. So, even the amazing Red Dragon had to remain a fragment compared to the incredibly graphic reality of the book.

And the best thing about this kind of CLOSE READING – reading as if I could touch the fictional reality with my nose, or my skin, or whatever – is even that I LEARN to read in this way and partially am able to “augment” my own reality in this way, and reading other text in this way. (This is probably why I don’t understand why anybody needs 3D and virtual reality, and why it feels invariably coarse and awkward to me. I always knew that I could do so much better in my head.) I totally noticed this when I started to read “Uncle Vanya” yesterday. It certainly happened BEFORE – when I probably saw a play by Chekhov for the last time between twenty-five and thirty years ago and was SLIGHTLY uncomfortable having all these people spilling their guts on a stage. And this time I felt DISTINCTLY uncomfortable from the moment I started reading. It was late, but even if it hadn’t been I wouldn’t have gotten much further than the first few lines. And it FELT GREAT! I am full of apprehension now – though I still cannot imagine the REALITY of sitting in the theatre and seeing this. Often the reality isn’t half as good as this intense anticipation of what it might be … But, IF I make it, I already know that I am in for a surprise.