The Huntington's Fences: what's great about August Wilson, and what isn't

In the first act of Fences, the main character Troy Maxson (in a big performance by John Beasley) radiates everything that is great in August Wilson's plays. He's enraged at the white world that denied him his chance to play baseball professionally. He's a dictatorial father who demeans and brutalizes his son Cory who dreams of playing pro football -- Troy doesn't want his son dreaming of anything other than a steady job. Troy himself is a steady wage earner (a trash collector in Pittsburgh) who loves his wife (or seems to). I felt as if Wilson had put everything he had into this man.

The second act crumbles into an odd melodrama. Troy reveals to his wife that another woman is about to bear his child. And he's not sorry. He demands that she and the rest of the world accept this fact, and him, and still love him. He throws Cory out of the house -- Cory can't take it any more.

I wanted the flawed hero of the first act to show us in the second act, to prove to us, why we should love him, why he really is heroic. He didn't do that. Instead, Troy makes a complete mess of his life and his family's. Troy dies near the end of the play, and I suppose that's supposed to absolve him. But all it does is prevent us from blaming him, which is what we want to do.

For a substantial and interesting review of Fences and August Wilson, read Thomas Garvey's article at Hub Review.

The Boston Globe's review (Doc Aucoin) was admiring but thin.

Loved Jame's Joyce's "Dubliners," even with its mundane passages

On my sometimes long drives to and from my new work location (Marlborough, thirty miles each way), I have started to listen to books-on-CD. The CDs come from the Watertown Public Library. The first book I listened to was James Joyce's Dubliners (published in 1914). I last read these short stories in college.

This was a a Caedmon CD. The stories are clearly and artfully read by a variety of Irish actors and actresses.

I was moved by many of the stories (I didn't get to The Dead, deciding that would be better read in a book than listened to). The small domestic dramas kept me listening, and imagining scenes from my life. They're pretty good listening for driving on the Massachusetts Turnpike. Here are the last lines from Eveline, in which a young woman, after much agony, has decided to go with her lover to Argentina to start a new life. Her life in Dublin is miserable, stifling, and yet she finds herself held by it. Here they are, at the station to take a steamer and begin their trip. He calls to her:

"Come!"

No! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy. Amid the seas she sent a cry of anguish.

"Eveline! Evvy!"

He rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.

I played the scene over and over in my head for days -- Eveline gripping the iron railing. The better Dubliner stories have that power.

Yet, I was surprised by how pedestrian some of the stories were, and how bland and drab some of the writing was. Some of it is cliched. Here is some text from After the Race:

The car ran on merrily with its cargo of hilarious youth...Rapid motion through space elates one; so does notoriety; so does the possession of money. These were three good reasons for Jimmy's excitement. He had been seen by many of his friends that day in the company of these Continentals...The dinner was excellent, exquisite. Ségouin, Jimmy decided, had a very refined taste. The party was increased by a young Englishman named Routh whom Jimmy had seen with Ségouin at Cambridge. The young men supped in a snug room lit by electric candle lamps....

A cargo of hilarious youth -- these are cliches. You find them here, and sprinkled around some of the other better stories. It's sort or reassuring in a way -- even James Joyce occasionally passed off the mediocre as finished work.