Bloody havoc

Tboy has finally gotten around to reading the WashPo's Sunday take on The Persians (which he's not seeing until Wednesday, owing to his Sunday marathon at Theater J and Signature), and he must say he's a teeny bit jealous of Philip Kennicott. 

Kennicott has long been a favorite read--Tboy loves that whole cultural-critic-at-large business, 'cause really, how much fun must it be to just, y'know, ring up the odd scholar to chat about the ancient Persians' familiarity with Greek drama?  (Never mind getting paid for doing it? It's gotta be like grad school, only without the student loans.)

Tboy chortled a bit at the effortless showboating Kennicott shoehorns into the piece: "If one takes [Edward] Said seriously -- and it's not always easy ..."  That's a terrific aside, a look-at-me-I've-read-a-lot passage wedged into several rich, dense paragraphs that prove he has, in fact--and done some substantial thinking about the reading.

That's the critical bit: Showboating or not, within a few paragraphs there are, with apologies to Mr. Albee, some notes toward a definition of tragedy; there's the odd tie-in to current events; there's an anecdote about bad breath, courtesy of an ancient Persian text.  Which anecdote, a paragraph later, turns out to be an ancient Persian way of rationalizing defeat. Fa. Bu. Lous.

All this, and reader-friendly, too. Nicely done, Mr. K.

Comments

[jordan]

Whether or not Said was essentializing orientalism by claiming that such thought and discourse can be traced from The Persians through contemporary literature and scholarship, the more important thrust of his argument--concerning the essentialization of the "Orient"--seems to be one of the main essences of Atossa's dream, cited by Romm/Kennicott. Though it speaks of the sisterlike sameness, it also essentializes the temperament of the Persians and the Greeks, where one submits and the other doesn't, thus paralleling later discourse of the "Occident" being temperate, hard-working and civilized and the "Orient" being exotic, lazy and "backwards." Ironic, ingenious, or par for the course? I'm not yet sure...

[DCeiver]

HILARIOUS. I was reading that article this Sunday at the coffee shop and a) I thought to myself, "Hmmm. Theaterboy will mention this." and b) thought the Said aside was a delicious piece of brinksmanship. Anyway, it was a thought provoking piece, and the only downside was how sad it is that the rest of those Posties wouldn't knew Aristotle's POETICS if I threw it at their heads. And believe me, I'd like to do that.

[heihachi]

I'm not Persian, but when I first read this thread, I thought, well, it's all Greek to me, wtf are they talking about.

Then I read the links. And I understand it a bit better, but only enough to say, well, it's all American to me.

I just wondered if, perhaps, Tboy was doing a bit of shoehorning himself when he wrote:"Showboating or not, within a few paragraphs there are, with apologies to Mr. Albee, some notes toward a definition of tragedy".

Christ, now I have to go read some Albee. Don't you know I read the internet for topic discussion purposes only and not to "get smart"? Jeez. American indeed.