Why I Wrote Two Plays About Phaidra

Your faces, I don't understand them. At night I stand at the back of the theater. I watch you suck in sex, death, devastation, hour after hour in a weird kind of unresisting infant heat, then for no reason you cool, flicker out. I guess for no reason is an arrogant thing to say. For no reason I can name is what I mean. It was a few years ago now I gave you a woman, a real mouthful of salt and you like salt. Her story, Phaidra's story, that old story, came in as a free wave and crashed on your beach. I don't understand, I could never have pre- dicted, your hatred of this woman. It's true she fell in love with someone wrong for her but half the heroines of your literature do that, Helen, Echo, Io, Agave, all of them.

So, Phaidra – a work in motion, surpassing her, surpassing itself - disappears again and again into Phaidra after Phaidra, but in this so-called second version. I wrote it to show how that feels. Phaidraless world. Her great soul withdrawn, the story goes through its tricks in a weak voltage of vicious reactions and bad piety, which I hope will amuse you but this fact remains, there is no shock in it anywhere except Aphrodite. Aphrodite is pure shock. When she comes onstage in the prologue and tells you about a few simple stitches she is going to take in the lives of Phaidra, Hippolytos and Theseus, you feel the salt of absolute cruelty sting your face. That needle flashes in and out of living skulls. I guess by the time I came to write the prologue (I usually write the prologue last) I had pretty much given up on saving Phaidra, the real one. But there is a residue of her gone down into Aphrodite's anger. It is sexual anger. Or is all anger sexual? Remember (if you saw the first play) the advice Phaidra gives to her pale groaning husband when he confronts her about the boy:

Phaidra: Instead of fire – another fire, not just a drop of cunt sweat! is what we women are – you cannot fight it.

Read the rest of this article > Why I Wrote Two Plays About Phaidra

The Splendid Corpse of Byzantium

Today, the very name of Byzantium is known to many readers only thanks to W.B. Yeats, who used it as a blank canvas on which to project his poetic fantasies.

The title of "Sailing From Byzantium" (Delacorte, 336 pages, $22), Colin Wells's smart and accessible new history, pays homage to Yeats's famous poem, "Sailing to Byzantium," which makes "the holy city" a metaphor for the eternal realm of art:

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Read more > The Splendid Corpse of Byzantium

Books > A personal view of Beirut

In Abraham Firestone March's book, "To Beirut and Back: An American In The Middle East," published in May, the former Dover resident writes of his time as a naive but aggressive businessman in a place, time and culture that intrigued, irritated and sometimes terrified him: Lebanon and the Middle East during the 1970s.The book includes his family's travels through Canada, Greece, Germany and finally to Lebanon. While there, he was robbed and kidnapped during a civil war. He left the country in 1974 because of financial trouble but returned a year later.

March's story starts with his excitement, determination and admiration for the beauty of his surroundings. But fear of the unknown was also an underlying emotion. With Lebanon now in the crossfire of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah fighters, March, now living in Germany, agreed to a question-and-answer session via e-mail.

Read the interview at > A personal view of Beirut

Mexican vacation turns into horror among 'The Ruins'

Scott Smith's latest novel, "The Ruins," really grows on you.

When two couples head to Cancun, Mexico, to celebrate graduating from college with a three-week vacation, they're looking forward to nothing but lazy days on the beach. On a snorkeling outing to Cozumel one day, they meet Mathias, a friendly German tourist who winds up hanging out with the Americans on the beach at the end of each day. A few days later they are joined by a trio of young Greek men also on vacation. The Greeks don't speak or understand English - but that's not a necessary skill for drinking buddies to bond.

Mathias confides in his new American friends - Jeff, Amy, Eric and Stacy - that his younger brother, Heinrich, is missing. Heinrich had met a girl on the beach and told Mathias he wanted to join her at the archeological dig where she was working a few small towns away. He told Mathias if things went well, he might not be back in time for their return flight.

But yes, please go on and read the rest of this book review at > Mexican vacation turns into horror among 'The Ruins'

'Google,' 'Unibrow' Added to Dictionary

Google added to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary as a verb > 'Google,' 'Unibrow' Added to Dictionary Need tips on how to groom a unibrow or soul patch? Just google it. Or get a mouse potato to do it for you.

If you're still lost, grab the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary for a definition of those and about 100 other words that have made their way into its pages.

But be warned: you might come across a drama queen (a person given to often excessively emotional performances or reactions), an empty suit (an ineffectual executive), or a himbo (an attractive but vacuous man _ think "male bimbo".)

Bee cool: Spellers show great izzat

Hey, everyone is into spelling bees these days, including MLB.com.

These were the words that had to be spelled in those final rounds, and this is how they are used in the form of a baseball sentence: Left Field

Now, wouldn't you like to bee cool?

Enhance your vocabulary! Hmm?

Starbucks gets bookish

If Barnes & Noble can sell coffee, it stands to reason Starbucks can sell books.

And that’s just what chairman Howard Schultz aims to do by the end of the year. While short on details, he said the work of popular authors would be featured, in much the same way the company has been selling selected CDs. Add a plan to make proprietary content downloadable to customers through the in-store WiFi network, and you’ve got even more reasons to go to Starbucks.

I do wonder if Schultz will now anoint bestsellers, as Oprah does. Anyhow, enjoy coffee and reading (your favorite authors, books, magazines, whatever) at your nearest Starbucks, if none exists in your area, enjoy the same at any other coffee shop!