Recent reading
Jan. 24th, 2025 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxRead The World Only Spins Forward by Isaac Butler and Dan Kois, an oral history of Tony Kushner's Angels in America which chestnut_pod recommended after I'd posted about watching the 2017 National Theatre production, and now I want to go back and rewatch it with the new context from this book, especially the development/thought process behind scenes as they ended up in the final version of the play, and the chapters made up of different actors who have played the same roles talking about the characters. REALLY good book, both in content and in how the snippets of interviews (and articles, etc.) were woven together into a coherent whole— occasionally in ways that were very funny (e.g., "interrupting" a quote from Kushner about how he guesses Louis is the character most like him with quotes from multiple other people going "yeah 100% Louis is Tony") and sweet (e.g., when a quote from the OG Prior, Stephen Spinella, about wanting to play Roy Cohn "someday" was followed by an article announcing that he'd been cast as Cohn in the 2018 Berkeley Rep production). The reoccurring theme of way that audiences have reacted to the show in different cultural moments - there's a quote from Kushner describing how it felt like a "rock concert" when they performed both Millennium and Perestroika the day after Clinton was elected; this book was published in 2018, so there were a lot of quotes from the 2017-18 revival's cast about how things hit differently given both U.S. and British politics - itself was just, oof, reading it in this particular cultural moment.
In Moby Dick updates: I'm about 45% through; I switched audiobook versions since there was some sort of recurring glitch with the first one that seemed to be an issue with the recording itself rather than with Spotify. Particularly enjoyed the most recent chapter (Ch. 54) for the dramatic second-hand tale of near-mutiny and also the surprise reference to Mackinac Island. (Yes, Melville, the Great Lakes ARE basically an ocean, thank you so much for noticing!)
chestnut_pod recommended after I'd posted about watching the 2017 National Theatre production, and now I want to go back and rewatch it with the new context from this book, especially the development/thought process behind scenes as they ended up in the final version of the play, and the chapters made up of different actors who have played the same roles talking about the characters. REALLY good book, both in content and in how the snippets of interviews (and articles, etc.) were woven together into a coherent whole— occasionally in ways that were very funny (e.g., "interrupting" a quote from Kushner about how he guesses Louis is the character most like him with quotes from multiple other people going "yeah 100% Louis is Tony") and sweet (e.g., when a quote from the OG Prior, Stephen Spinella, about wanting to play Roy Cohn "someday" was followed by an article announcing that he'd been cast as Cohn in the 2018 Berkeley Rep production). The reoccurring theme of way that audiences have reacted to the show in different cultural moments - there's a quote from Kushner describing how it felt like a "rock concert" when they performed both Millennium and Perestroika the day after Clinton was elected; this book was published in 2018, so there were a lot of quotes from the 2017-18 revival's cast about how things hit differently given both U.S. and British politics - itself was just, oof, reading it in this particular cultural moment.In Moby Dick updates: I'm about 45% through; I switched audiobook versions since there was some sort of recurring glitch with the first one that seemed to be an issue with the recording itself rather than with Spotify. Particularly enjoyed the most recent chapter (Ch. 54) for the dramatic second-hand tale of near-mutiny and also the surprise reference to Mackinac Island. (Yes, Melville, the Great Lakes ARE basically an ocean, thank you so much for noticing!)
