Deliver thine snark upon high, prithee to.. uhhmm.. balls?
Written: Feb 17 '09
Product Rating:
Pros: Shakespeare for the unwashed masses told with a colorful hand.
Cons: Briskly told, graphic. Not for children - unless they're on drugs.
The Bottom Line: Jess Winfield's does what he does best - Short and Sharp Shakespeare. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you won't have to put up with chin-beards.
SpookyMonkey's Full Review: Jess Winfield - My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, D...
Something has to be amiss here. You -loathe- Shakespeare. This is quite true. Nothing angers me more than having to read ponsy, self-flagellating, latently perverse and loquacious British prose, except having to watch people on stage performing self-flagellating, latently perverse and loquacious British prose. In tights.
Yet you bought this book? I liked the cover.
So you're taking literature on the greatest literary instrument of contempory history - author of some of the most complex works, most studied and revealing pieces of human nature on earth - and reducing it to a crappy picture with graffiti scrawled on the forehead? It said sex and drugs! Everyone likes sex and drugs! It also said Shakespeare. I'll take two out of three. And I did. Jess Winfield is a noted Shakespeare authority this side of the ocean... as much as that means. I suppose that's slightly more venerated than being an expert on the NFL if you live in China. But at any rate, his involvement and his respect for the bard shines through.
Two narratives take place - Willie Shakespeare Greenberg tries to finish his college thesis while wading through copious amounts of drugs and women of ill repute. William Shakespeare, miles and years away, simultaneously finds himself in mid-life, mid-persecution and mid-the-legs-of-a-whole-lotta floozies. Heresy! To say that Will hath lain his Will willingly? Any more horrible puns like that and I'm kicking you out of my review.
I was able to set aside my distaste for Shakespeare through Winfield's energy and passion for his writing. He's vulgar, perverted and downright cheeky while still retaining the historical perspective. William Shakespeare is a slick-tongued womanizing screw-up, misguided and untracked. Will Greenberg is of similar ilk.
So somewhere, there's a deep message about the relevance of Shakespeare's literature even today? So long as it's a message sans stupid pointy chin beards, it's a message I'm willing to accomodate. Having read enough Shakespeare to appreciate it and grudgingly admit that it's not horrible..
And better than you could do. ..And better than I could do, given... A thousand chimps with a thousand typewriters. Yes - but only because if I had a thousand chimps at my disposal, they'd not be performing such banal secretarial work.
Just say it - Shakespeare was far smarter than you. He's also far deader. Keep up. My reason to read the novel beyond the first page and choke back my baseless resentment for old smelly bards was the lightness and brevity. Jess Winfield's smart and his puns are both quick and horrible - but in a self-aware fashion. He knows he's saying stupid things. He gloats at every groan his knows his readers let slip. He presents Shakespeare to the Hanna-Barbera Ritalin generation.
And you gorge upon it like red bull. Bingo. The chapters are short, the progress is brisk, the author traces the lines of history deftly but not definitively and has a poke at something that is sacred in some circles. He's clearly having fun with the work and I can always appreciate that. If you don't know Shakespeare, you'll still enjoy the book. If you do, there's enough in-jokes and cryptic allusions to cause a few upturned snooty laughs. I hate snooty laughs. I hate snooty tissues. Worth the read? My only real issue is that the book was over before I'd realized what had really happened. At nearly 300 pages, there's enough time to create action and suspense, but that's not the goal here. There's nothing ridiculously complex at work - it's two wrapped stories of self-discovery and timelessness.
Upon finishing, I felt a pang that perhaps the story should have been more convoluted upon principle - Shakespeare doesn't write about fart jokes (or not in words that people who would normally laugh at them are able to understand), so to have things wrap up cleanly came as a surprise. I waited for a massive climax that never came. Interrupted by all the climaxing of the major, minor and miniscule characters of the story, no doubt. Yeah. The last time I read a book and thought "I wish they'd do less drugs and have less sex so I can figure out what's going on", it was written by Hunter S. Thompson. So no false advertising on the cover, huh? I guess I'm getting kicked back to the hedonistic minor leagues. I'm not prepared for this level of debauchery.
Willie Shakespeare Greenberg is not living up to his name. It s 1986, and instead of finishing his thesis on the Bard, this grad student is saying yes...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.