by Richard Subber | Oct 3, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
bergin makes it worse…
Play review:
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
A 1962 play by Edward Albee
New York: Scribner Classics, 1962, 2003
243 pages
It’s not a feel-good play.
After you start to move again after you finish reading it, probably you’ll end up thinking that your life is better than you thought it was. George and Martha do a pretty good job of proving that hell on earth is possible.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is almost a non-stop exaltation of how to be mean, sad, vicious, heartbroken, desperate, delirious, murderous, inhibited, ignorant, ambitious, empty, and longing, more or less all at the same time.
George and Martha, an aging couple on a rundown college campus, stage their terrible show for the benefit of a young professor, Nick, and his young wife, Honey, in the wee hours of a morning when each of them has something better to do, but isn’t doing it.
None of them make you think of the Cleaver family.
Arthur Hill was George and Uta Hagen was Martha in the first stage presentation in October 1962.
In the gritty 1966 film version, Richard Burton was George and Elizabeth Taylor was Martha.
Both of these productions are slam bang downers, just like the play.
No production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? will make you think of the Cleavers.
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Play review. Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
Really, you see, they didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 26, 2024 | Tidbits
spread the word
The wise one said:
“I’ve started telling everyone
about the benefits of eating dried grapes.
It’s all about raisin awareness.”
Just take some time to think about what’s important to you.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: “Bartleby, the Scrivener”
Loneliness beyond understanding…
by Herman Melville
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 22, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, History, Human Nature, Power and inequality, World history
not everything is vanity
Book review:
The Bombing of Auschwitz:
Should the Allies have Attempted It?
Michael J. Neufeld and Michael Berenbaum, eds.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000
350 pages with extensive notes, bibliography, and index
The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies have Attempted It? is a retrospective, somewhat repetitive but broadly didactic selection of 15 arguments for and against the bombing of Auschwitz, with more than 40 primary source documents.
You’ll learn a lot about the terrible dilemma that the Allies faced—and some of them tried to ignore—during World War II. If the Allies had tried to bomb the crematoria, would Jewish lives have been saved? At what cost to the overall war effort?
Neufeld and Berenbaum offer 15 points of view, but, of course, the questions can’t be answered with full confidence.
Sadly, we can’t re-do the solitary track of history.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Lord of the Flies
Never more relevant…
by William Golding
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 14, 2024 | Tidbits
It’s not a leg…
“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?
Four.
Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
16th American president
Truth isn’t necessarily what someone claims it is. Check it out.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 12, 2024 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
my final future
now then…
The unknowable future
has been around for a long time,
it is,
it will be,
the mystery is what, not if.
I realize new truths.
I’m closer to my future
than I used to be,
I’m closer to my final future.
I think more about tomorrow,
I think more about today.
Sweet futures can become sweet nows,
the nows I can know.
I can choose my next now,
I do not know tomorrow’s future,
I will live it in good time.
May 11, 2024
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are always welcome—just tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Sep 8, 2024 | Human Nature, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
the thin line of future…
another day
…the distant horizon moves closer,
it creeps, of course, or sidles,
there is no romp, nor dash,
one need not notice every day,
it is no rush to change the way
we live enough in each bright hour
to fill our time,
we may look up, forsooth,
and see the thin line of future
shuffling nearer,
seeming clearer,
waiting for the clarion of tomorrow.
June 3, 2024
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Movie review: Same Time, Next Year
all-American adultery, oh yeah…
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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