Rangy Manatee

Listening to Breezeblock from last week on the BBC site.  I do that most of the time I'm on here actually.  It makes a change from my MD walkman which just has Sigur Ros ( ) and Smog's Red Apple Falls on constant rotation.  It's damn warm outside too.
 
I began Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full the other day.  I haven't enjoyed reading a novel like this for a long time.  Ah! It is fantastic.  Again, I've delved into a 600 page opus for no particular reason other than a vague memory of a recommendation.  Last summer I pretty much locked myself in my room for two weeks and read Underworld by Don DeLillo.  I remember really enjoying the book but for some reason I don't remember much about it.  Which is a shame cos it took fucking ages to read.  This year I started Middlemarch (for my course) and Crime and Punishment (for fun) but I didn't finish either.  Middlemarch is hideously long and written in such a fashion where every action is described before, then portrayed, and then commented on after by this high and mighty narrator who takes the piss out of every character because she knows everything (she's the narrator aha!) and therefore she can see they're all being a bit silly really and getting so caught up in everything when really their lives are so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Mimesis and diegesis and all that...
 
Crime and Punishment however, I was enjoying to some degree. But dammit the translation is annoying.  I was really struggling to believe that Dostoyevsky would be so crap with words.  I can't actually remember which translation it is off the top of my head but it's the Penguin edition with a painting on the front called 'The Student' by some dude.
 
So I ditched them and once I've let you into a little of how my Fringe experience is beginning I might go home and continue reading Wolfe.  I was going to try to explain what I like about it (I am a Batchelor of Arts after all) but I don't think I have my literary criticism cap on at the moment (see above).  It's far easier negatively criticising than positively criticising - without gushing.
 
Oh yeah, and Dave Eggers' first novel is rubbish. You Shall Know Our Velocity it's called. And it blows.  Nothing happens, in a bad way.  But I did enjoy A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.  It's really entertaining and funny.
 
So yeah, been in rehearsals for the Edinburgh play and I'll just say that we are having a few problems.  The script isn't finished, the whole second half of our 45 minute (!) play is up in the air. Everyone's trying to pull it in different directions, and we have the person who wrote what we have of the script hanging around while we debate what should happen and in what manner. 
 
Personally, I think we should go comedy.  Go comedy! It's the freaking Fringe.  Doing a comedy is fun, satisfying and continuously enjoyable and if it comes out well WE WILL BE SUCCESSFUL.  Last year proved it.  We just did a nice little comedy play and did it well and we got good audiences and enjoyed it.  However good your melodrama is - it's a student production and basically who wants to pay to see a low budget production with some priveleged toffs rocking back and forward in the corner while they pretend to overdose on drugs cos they're so rock 'n' roll?  No one wants to see that.  Not that that's how it's going but it's just a bit pedestrian and needs a twist to make it interesting. 
 
At the moment, it's just about some vague infidelity on the part of my character which happened before the first part of the play but hasn't been explained and we don't really know what he's like because it hasn't been finished yet, and he is or he isn't bothered about this infidelity, and that may or may not upset the other guy who quite fancies this girl  (or doesn't) and she is or isn't bothered about it.
 
Aaarrrrggghh!
 
Well, there you go.  It's just a bit frustrating because I'm not an experienced actor and I could really do with some idea where this is going. 
 
Right, sunshine methinks.