dissertation progress

[truepenny]

Five full pages on Equus this morning, and I haven't even really started to dig into my argument.

I notice myself displaying a lot less reluctance and general procrastination when I get to write about primary texts. Which means I'm really only delaying the inevitable rather than working through it. But it still feels great to sit down and bash some literary analysis out.

Also, Equus is an excellent play, although extremely disturbing. I'm not sure I'd have the nerve to see it in performance (although I also know that if I had the chance, I'd probably go), but I highly recommend reading it. But, let me repeat: EXTREMELY DISTURBING.

Comments

[lcohen]

i take it, you've not seen it then?

it is very moving and it really leaves you asking a lot of questions. i don't recall that i felt disturbed so much as thinking really hard and wanting to talk about a lot of stuff. but then i saw it a heck of a long time ago--i might have forgotten part of my reaction.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose I find the basic premise so incredibly disturbing that the play itself doesn't have to do much work in that direction. But, no, I've never seen it performed.

[libskrat]

Would you believe I studied it in high school?

I dunno what they were thinking. Though it certainly is an exceptional play.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Boy. That is so not a play I would teach to high school students. (Even assuming that by some nightmarish concatenation of circumstances I was stuck teaching high school.) I mean, yes, gripping, true enough, but ... Wow.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Sounds intriguing.

Disturbing? More disturbing than American Psycho??

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Equus is about a seventeen-year-old boy who blinded six horses with a hoof-pick.

You make the call.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Nothing I've read so far can beat Bret Easton Ellis's novel.

Although some of the fanfic by those little fanpoodles comes pretty close... & ;-)

All kidding aside, Equus does sound rather gruesome-- not because "Aw, the pretty horsies!" but rather due to the backstory on the boy that's probably what it's all about...

[vass]

Eek.

Even Oedipus in high school gave me the shivers.

Ek! Ek! Ek!

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

That is all.

And yeah, it's disturbing as hell.

[pameladean]

I've seen it twice, once in London; once in New York, with Leonard Nimoy as the psychiatrist. And I think that's enough. It is indeed deeply disturbing. The London production was the first time I'd seen nudity on stage, but that wasn't at all the disturbing part.

I've never read the play, and I don't expect that I ever will.

Pamela

this is probably where y'all decide I'm genuinely nuts, but ...

[ambar.livejournal.com]

That's one of the books I used to keep in the bathroom (others include a complete collection of e e cummings, and Old Possum's book of Practical Cats). I haven't reread Equus in a while, but it said a lot to me about passion and not allowing the world-cookie-cutter to substitute the sterile for the real in my life. (I hope that makes *some* sense. It might make more if I note that I have horses.)

Ambar