“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
You Can Listen Here After four years away from him and in spite of his actions, by the end he reclaims my sympathy. After four years of not reading or teaching this play, and of not listening to the voice of its lead, and in spite of Hamlet being a killer and guilty of acting so badly towards Ophelia, and of having lost his better nature for much of the play, I cannot turn on him. […]
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You Can Listen Here In the winter of 1989, overwhelmed by work, I prepared Hamlet one day ahead of my classes by reading the play while listening to Paul Scofield’s version on Caedmon tapes — stopping, rewinding and restarting a small tape recorder in a back room whose big window looked out over snow and woods. I wore headphones. One small light shone on the desk. Sometimes, to rest my eyes and to let go […]
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You Can Listen Here This image remains insistent: sometime early in 1969 during his first year in office, a state dinner was held at the White House. The President was either still at the dinner or had again gone into seclusion in the Lincoln Bedroom to read books about de Gaulle and Churchill, his two salient heroes (well before Watergate he had begun to isolate himself more and more). Later that night his daughter Julie looked down […]
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You Can Listen Here It comes down to bodies. A black body , usually a man, dead on some forsaken street. A blue body, often white, holding the gun that put him there. Wait. A blue body , white or black, dead on some forsaken street. The killers, all colors, dead themselves or gone. Wait. I have been sickened by the violence used by some police officers and departments. I have been sickened by the murder of police officers. Wait. […]
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