'The Theory of the Modern Stage' edited by Eric Bentley

'If my readers are not more sophisticated than this before they read this book, I hope they will be afterwards.' An admirable aim for any book and quite possibly justified as these essays by some of the great practitioners of theatre will give a lot to work with.

From Adolphe Appia to Alexis de Tocqueville 'The Theory of the Modern Stage' edited by Eric Bentley covers a range of topics such as the sociology of modern drama, naturalism, the Theatre of Cruelty and much more.  A book to dip in and out with nourishing ideas and experiments.

In such a book you will find statements such as: 'the root of all evil in modern art, and especially in the art in drama, Wagner finds to be the fact that 'modern art is a mere product of culture, and not sprung from life itself.'  

And from George Lukacs:  Man's significance consists only of this, that the game cannot be played without him, that men are the only possible hieroglyphs with which the mysterious inscription may be composed...'  Statements that theatrical types often make which may surprise some but comes naturally to them and their way of thinking.

For the history of theatre (this was published in 1968) it is almost invaluable as a beginning to understand the world of theatre.  And though some ways of doing things become unfashionable and done better this is also the way of things, for as Georg Brandes says: 'what cannot stand the ideas of the time must succumb.' 

'The Making of the British Landscape' by Nicholas Crane

 This blog marks a very special moment as it is number one hundred and so in marking that flag in the sand I give you a book about the country I live in.  For every who reads these blogs you have my eternal thanks and I hope to keep writing another hundred as I have a few bookcases to get through. 

What does a patriot understand about Britain.  Ask a typical one and what will you get?  Maybe a comprehensive account of Britain's history, maybe flag waving.  

Since I live on this island I might as well learn something about it, why it is the way it is, and find out who the hell we are.

'The creation of Europe's largest island was unlikely to have been the cause of celebration.' And we've been causing trouble ever since.  Britain is the balance of Europe's powers making sure that no one nation could achieve overall control.  

We are Europe but separated from it.  An ambiguous cousin not entirely sure they want to be part of the family.  We're independent but not immune from invasion.  We produce some of the greatest geniuses that revolutionised the whole world and once we had the whole world in our hands.  Small dogs with big ambitions.

We were once connected to Europe physically by a place called doggerland, now sunk in the sea.  We had Romans, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Normans all pay a visit, wild Celts and wild animals hung around, the history is one of continual transformation, albeit over many generations.

'Britain's first fieldworker', John Leland of the 14th Centaury, captivated me.  He was on a royal mission to rescue 'bibliographic treasures' from libraries after the suppression of the monasteries and privately as a topographer charted the land he inhabited.  He saw more of the country than anyone else at the time.  He also, for reasons unknown, went mad.  

'He knew he was compiling an unprecedented audit of a remarkable land, but he also knew that it could never be finished.'  It sounded like an idyllic journey, in a Britain that 'was almost entirely green: a rumpled, rustic island sparsely dotted with tiny, intense hubs of urban activity.'  How times change.

Our ancestors had different ideas of life.  They built monuments to their ancestors where 'the stones and the earth would be bequeathed to the next generation.  They were expressions of continuity in a timeless world that gave so few years to the ant-like routines of humankind.'  

Stonehenge, the White Horse of Uffington, St. Paul's Cathedral, Edinburgh Castle, the M5, all expressions of every age making it's mark on an island.  A flags are not enough I need mythology and certainly this book gives much a lot of what I need.  I love Britain.      

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Live long and prosper.

 

  

'The Fabric of the Cosmos' by Brian Greene

 At the turn of the end of the 19th Century scientists thought that science was coming to an end; the quest to understand the Universe was coming into it's destination and all that was left was to mop up the last bits of details to complete the picture.  Then someone decided to look at the Very Small, probably nothing was there but you need to check these things.  Then everything changed.

The world the scientists saw was a world of protons, neutrons and electrons- it was made out of atoms.  With Einstein's yet to be finished revolution of relativity and scientists forced to create a whole new conceptual schema called quantum mechanics the underlying reality of the atomic and subatomic fashioned a entirely new frontier.

It seems that with the stereotype of the scientist as the person with the Answers seems to no longer apply.  Frankly they don't have a clue.  They seem now to be a new type of shaman beckoning us to imagine exotic new landscapes of utter mystery and weirdness that seems, for a change, not entirely made up as it's all backed up by observation and repeatable experiment.  The world we thought we knew and grew bored with it's familiarity now seems profoundly strange and uncomprehending.  Just where the hell are we?

This is where you need a man like Brian Greene, with his book 'The Fabric of the Cosmos', to help guide us through this thicket of wave-like particles and particle-like waves and get to grips with what is going on.

'Is science unable to grasp a fundamental quality of time that the human mind embraces as readily as the lings take in the air, or does the human mind impose on time a quality of its own making, one that is artificial and that hence does not show up in the laws of physics?' is one of the many fruity questions that Greene asks that will make you think and think again and the ready made world we inhabit.  It offers a feast of thinking.

There are many sentences where he casually turns your whole world upside down such as: 'it is far more likely- breathtakingly more likely- that the whole universe we now see arose as a statistically rare fluctuation from a normal, unsurprising, high entropy, completely disordered configuration'.  The creation of a universe something of a commonplace affair, he seems to imply.  It certainly turns a lot of our beliefs on their heads.  

Mostly it's a test of the imagination or a heavy meditation session to read this book.  The size of the universe and our bewilderingly localised part in it certainly makes you forget the pettiness of politicians.  It's hard to care about Nations or Teams winning wars and sports when you look at a star and realise that it doesn't know that it doesn't know that we are here beating each other up and giving ourselves a hard time.  

Greene notes that even the common elements don't add up to much: 'If protons, neutrons, and electrons had been left out of the grand design, the total mass/energy of the universe would hardly been diminished.' This reminds me of the Georges Perec book 'A/void' where he writes, in French, the novel without the letter 'e'.  If it's possible to take out such an important part of a whole product then what else can you get away without?

And the book's packed with this extraordinary stuff that for any student of the universe is good reading providing mystery, inspiration, and sheer fucking wonder that we could find this out.  

Our home is an odd place.  As Greene says:

'Nature does weird things.  It lives on the edge.'

 

  Now it's audience participation time!  If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways:

- by being my patron on Patreon.com

-give a one off donation with Buy Me a Coffee

-Buy one of my literary books

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I can't stress enough how much all this helps me and how in the long run it will help you, so if you can and you want to please support my free content so I can keep on producing my beloved blog.

Live long and prosper.

'China' by Arthur Cotterell

 China.  A vast and complex country with an equally vast and complex history.  What book should you start with to grapple with all that China has been and done?  'China: A History' by Arthur Cotterell should be your first point of call.

Starting in pre-history and ending just after 1945 this relatively slim three hundred page book covers all main events in between trying to grasp what makes China China.  No small feat in either researching or making that research comprehensible to the general reader.  \Certainly, I feel, this book will, or should, be on the history and international politics syllabus for a long time.  As a primer on the subject this is the gold standard.

With a history as long and rich as China's it is surprising that in the West we know so little about it.  All the warriors, emperors, philosophers, poets and inventors' stories haven't travelled very well, which is a great shame as there are plenty to draw inspiration from here.

Take one of my favourite stories in this book, about the Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zi, which I will re-print in full:

'One day the ruler of Chu sent two high officals to ask Zhuang Zi to assume control of the government.  They found Zhuang Zi fishing.  Intent on what he was doing, he listened without turning his head.  At last he said: "I have been told there is in the capital a sacred tortoise which has been dead for three thousand years.  And that the king keeps this tortoise carefully enclosed in a casket on the altar of the ancestral temple.  Now would this tortoise rather be dead but honoured, or alive and wagging its tail in the mud?"  The two officials answered that it would prefer to be alive and wagging it's tail in the mud.  "Clear off, then!" shouted Zhuang Zi.  "I, too, will wag my tail in the mud here." 

The Daoists believed in non-engagement, relinquishing control to be better able to understand the world around them.  But China isn't all wise sages handing down ancient wisdom.  There are also foolish rulers like Di Xin on whom the fall of the Shang dynasty is blamed.  The following anecdote, about lusting after the beauty of Dan Ji, demonstrates this:

'Around her ornate chamber, decked out with the precious stones from the royal treasury, he heaped up mounds of meat, hanging dried joints on all the trees, filled a pond with wine until they could row a boat on it, while naked men and women would appear at the beat of a drum and drink up the liquor like cattle.'

This is just a sample of what is in this book and only a particle of what must have really happened in that fascinating country's history.  There is so much more to explore.

In this book I think I have found a motto for my life that comes from Confucius:

'Love of humanity without love of learning soon becomes silliness.  Love of wisdom without love of learning soon becomes lack of principle.  Love of rectitude without love of learning soon becomes harshness.  Love of courage without love of learning soon becomes chaos.'

Now it's audience participation time!  If you enjoyed this blog and my previous work than you can help support me in a few ways:

- by being my patron on Patreon.com

-give a one off donation with Buy Me a Coffee

-Buy one of my literary books

-Share this blog on your social media

-Leave a comment, you can even recommend me book

-Follow me

I can't stress enough how much all this helps me and how in the long run it will help you, so if you can and you want to please support my free content so I can keep on producing my beloved blog.

Live long and prosper.