I decided that my knowing Shakespeare is deficient and that it is time to correct it. It is a very tall order, but thankfully there is a solution I believe I might be up to. The Hogarth Shakespeare Project commissioned modern versions of many of the Shakespearean plays and I thought that I will read the new versions. My long-standing reverence for Virginia Woolf made my intentions to read books published by Hogarth Press symbolic and attractive. By the way, The Hogarth Press was established by Virginia and Leonard Woolf.
The first step was to get the right books, published by the right people. This has not worked 100% as some of the books were not available and had to be replaced by soft cover substitutes of Penguin. I am happy in spite of the small imperfections of my original plan and as my books arrived the other day I proudly spread them on the table to get into the mood and anticipation of future reading pleasures.
I started with the re-telling of The
Merchant of Venice – Shylock Is My Name by Howard Jacobson. And what an
unexpected pleasure and challenge! Anticipating light reading as the original
is a comedy I found the book a heavy duty intellectual writing with Antisemitism
as the major theme. I, boastfully believed that my English is rather good and
here I find myself going for help to Google or my long not used dictionary to
look up words. Not that I normally do not need or want to do it, but this time
the frequency of the lookup is rather significant. There is hardly a page that
I do not need to look up at least one word. Hm… A humbling experience. Good for
me as well. However, this is not going to be a widely read book. Too intellectual,
convoluted and deep. I am glad that I found out about the re-telling initiative
and I have to thank my Polish literary guru for that. Raf, the mentioned
friend, has already six books that have been translated into Polish. We will
compare the notes soon.
I have not read enough to write about my impressions of the book already, but this will soon come. For now, I think that I would like to read another book of the author. When will I find the time?
