Weekly Recap, June 2-June 5 2021

Hi, fellow readers! School is almost over (thank goodness!) and summer reading has begun. As I mentioned in my last post, I have altered my reviewing style for this summer. Instead of writing full-length reviews, I am posting weekly recaps of everything I read. This is the first one.

This week, I finished a book and two plays:

Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki

As the Meiji Era draws to a close, a young student uncovers the tragic past of an older man known only as “Sensei.” Meredith Mckinney’s clean, beautiful translation sweeps over Sōseki’s quiet little story like a searchlight scanning the soft underside of a stormcloud—and damn, what a storm!

“Now I will wrench open my heart and pour its blood over you. I will be satisfied if, when my own heart has ceased to beat, your breast houses new life” (124)

The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman

The town of Laramie, Wyoming, where Matthew Shepard was beaten to death in 1998, bears witness to a group of actor-anthropologists. This play reminds me of The Prom, only without the self-conscious mockery that makes its central action tolerable.

“ZUBAIDA ULA: These are people trying to distance themselves from this crime. And we need to own this crime. I feel. Everyone needs to own it. We are like this. We ARE like this. WE are LIKE this” (61)

Proof by David Auburn

Catherine struggles to protect the legacy of her late father, a mentally-ill mathematician, and publish an elegant mathematical proof. This play was relevant to my own background—my father attended UChicago and Northwestern, where he earned P.h.D. in mathematics—but it is a little too angry to soothe the wannabe-Thomasina Coverly smouldering in my soul.

“CLAIRE: Jesus, you fucking mathematicians: you don’t think” (67)