From Publishers Weekly
"Get thee to a nunnery!" Hamlet advises Ophelia. "Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?" Sex and sin are much on Slavitt's (The Cliff) mind as he retells two of Shakespeare's plays?Measure for Measure and Romeo and Juliet?to explore timeless patterns of attraction and deceit. The two novella-length pieces, "Luke's Book" and "Lorenzo's Book," not only use Shakespeare's plots, but also employ Machiavellian storytelling that subverts the original story with a new twist. "Luke's Book" transplants the Renaissance Vienna-set problem play to a town in the American West named Hotdog, a place that offers just the minimal services: a bath, a drink, a decent meal, supplies and a whorehouse. Luke (Lucio in the original) narrates a twisted plot involving the nun Isabel, who is told that she can save her brother's life if she consents to sex with a town official who has mounted a campaign to outlaw extramarital affairs. In "Lorenzo's Book," Friar Laurence of the original becomes a Medici-like schemer; Romeo is a boor and a dolt; Juliet an unformed child whose hold on the male mind is a mystery; Rosaline a political schemer and illegitimate daughter of the Friar; her Prince a wimp and the Friar himself true neither to the church nor to the women he claims to love. Employing contemporary vernacular, this pair of devilishly clever "divertimentos" ponders, with Lorenzo, the age-old problem and paradox: "How is the double man to be true to himself?" in a text that doubles as intellectual exercise. (Apr.) FYI: The author is a classics scholar whose translations include Aeschylus, Seneca, Virgil and the Psalms of David.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The prolific Slavitt, equally at home with quirky mainline writing (The Lives of the Saints, 1989. o.p.), academic send-up (The Cliff, LJ 8/94), poetry, and Latin translation, here offers up a "Pair of Shakespearean Divertimentos." The first sets Measure for Measure in the emerging Western town of Hotdog, NM (a new "Vienna"Aget it?). Lucio is Luke, a wisecracking philosophical Easterner just arrived on the scene as Duke outlaws the local brothel, takes off, and reappears in religious garb that fools no one; meanwhile, Claude (Claudio) is arrested for fornication. The second piece relates Romeo and Juliet through Lorenzo, a cynical and venal priest, with Juliet cast as a Lolita (sort of) and Romeo "that galoot, that oaf, that ape." Both treatments are wryly irresistible new versions of Shakespeare's originals. How much a knowledge of the two plays is necessary for appreciation is open to debate, but you'll never see the plays the same way again after this. Highly recommended.ARobert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
