From: Mark Sullivan <
DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net> Sent: 08/08/03 06:57 PM To:
rara-avis@icomm.ca Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: MONKEY'S MASK,
Porter 1994
>
> "Never read anything with a strong lesbian theme
before, either."
Oh, miker, although I didn't recommend this, I can recommend
Sarah Schulman's lesbian crime novel After Delores.
- - - - - - - - - -
Let me second that recommendation. Schulman's a superb
writer, one who's smart and funny. Anything with her name on
it's worth looking at at least once. Good playwright,
too.
As far as "hard-boiled in verse" is concerned ... has anyone
spoken to you about Joseph Moncure March's "The Wild Party"?
It's one of two novel-length poems that he wrote. ("The
Set-Up," which was filmed in the '40s with that axiom who
went by the name of Robert Ryan, I only know by
reputation.)
"The Wild Party" is filled with hard-bitten attitude and
rotten boozy behavior. Sex, alcohol, and death at the end --
plus, in the edition that I read, fascinating Art Spiegelman
illustrations. Is it first-rate poetry? I'm not so sure,
since the resuling book is like an ungodly melding of Eliot's
"Waste Land" and "The Shooting of Dan McGrew." But it *is*
memorable and very much a product of the late-'20s.
Chris
P.S. Also to be recommended -- for those who have the ears
for such things -- is the CD of Michael John LaChiusa's stage
musicalizing of "Wild Party." A fine, fine score performed by
Mandy Patinkin and Toni Colette and Eartha Kitt. A score
that's witty, youch, and not so much reminiscent of Rodgers
& Hammerstein as of Kurt Weill or 1940s Stravinsky.
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