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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.2834  Thursday, 13 December 2001

From:           Douglas Chapman <Foodrev@aol.com>
Date:           Wednesday, 12 Dec 2001 11:38:10 EST
Subject:        "The Sonnets"

Several months ago, I read about "The Sonnets," a novel by Lennard Davis
on this site.

I bought it and read it. It is an unusual work; though well-written and
readable, it’s  full of the odd assortment of characters any modern work
is obliged to puppet.

It includes all kinds of sexual ins and outs (please pardon the not very
good pun) among staff, students and spouses. It includes a feminist so
over the top that I felt cowed. So cowed that I desperately wanted some
of my feminist friends to read it. Finally, one had the time; she agreed
it was a nutty, not a feminist.

For those who won't ever read it, here's my short comments. It is a
short read. And I might add an easy read.

“Will” teaches English, incl. Shak., at Columbia in NY. A seductive
dark-haired grad student, Chantal, gets mixed up with him. Another
“student” is the fair-haired Christopher. Well, you can get the idea.
The book also has a recognizable “star writer” (the competition for
affection)  in the Dept.  who does nothing but collect Macarthur grants
and Nobels and Pulitzers and discard people like gin cards. A despoiler
who gets all the glory (though he CAN write poetry) and does little
thinking much less work. And is a user of people’s minds and bodies.
He’s despicable.

His fellow prof., Will, is married to “Anne” and has a daughter and a
son.  Will has an affair, bizarre though it be, with Chantal, his
student, then with Christopher (his first male-male sex) after Norman
(the “star writer”) has thrown him, Christopher, away. He loses Anne and
the kids, he goes through all sorts of &*^%#@$%&^* including Chantal
exposing their (consensual!) affair in the nastiest letter I’ve ever
read. Manic-depressive Christopher moves in with him for an extended
affair. Christopher’s sole purpose in life is to make an orrery the size
of the apt.

Blah, blah. Everyone ascends in success. Will keeps falling. Will then
finds out that Chantal and Chris are, and have been, married. They did
this mind stuff to him “for his own good.”

Yeah, right.

He ends up in Italy, alone, confused, broke, fired from Columbia and
says he will start writing.

Makes me glad I left teaching. While I miss the challenge of a good
student, I do not miss the politics that becomes more important than
learning and thought (admittedly, this in not an original thought).

Years ago the old TV series “Police Story” (I think that’s the name)
starring Karl Malden and a very young Michael Douglas aired an episode
in which Maurice Evans played a teacher nearing retirement in a high
school which over the years had become very inner city and
uncontrollable.

To make a long story short(er), Evans’ character kidnapped several
students he thought could be “something better” and chained them to
desks in an old abandoned school. The police eventually found them. And
of course Evans DID break the law.

He withheld bathroom privileges until a girl got her reading done and
answered questions correctly and he did not let a boy eat until he had
read Othello’s assigned speeches and came to the realization that he was
not the only human in history to feel alienated. In this drama, he made
a couple kids actually think.

You could hear dedicated teachers within hearing distance cheering
enthusiastically.

“The Sonnets” does include all the major--and many minor--themes in the
Shak.  Sonnets. But it was, to me, full of contrivance and oddity
carried to the absurd. Still, it’s readable.

Douglas Chapman

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