The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet

Happy 2011!

2011-01-15T00:13:00.000-08:00

Many thanks to author Joseph Skibell for naming The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet one of his favorite books of 2010. I met Mr. Skibell at last year's Wordstock, Portland's annual literary festival, where he was on a historical fiction panel I moderated. I loved his novel A Curable Romantic, a brilliantly written magical realist peek into the world of Sigmund Freud. The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet also made Top-Ten lists for bloggers Ryan G of Wordsmithonia and Trisha of Eclectic/Eccentric.

I suppose it's a testament to how rarely I update this blog that I'm offering New Year's greetings two weeks into January. I've been working on my next book (a historical novel about Restoration playwright Aphra Behn) and it's hard to shift gears long enough to work on something else, even a blog post. Author Tom Spanbauer once described to me the process of working on a novel as "going away into another world for a while," so that even when you are not writing, part of your mind is always elsewhere, in the book. And while I know writers who thrive juggling several projects at once, for me it would be sort of like trying to maintain two part-time jobs, one in Tokyo, and one in London.

So at the moment, my head is stuck in Suriname in 1663 (before becoming a playwright, Aphra spent some time in the West Indies and Antwerp as perhaps the worst spy in His Majesty's secret service). But I do have some thoughts that I want to put down soon about Alexander Fodor's 2007 film Hamlet, an experimental, rather surreal version of the play I saw recently, in which the character of Horatio is a woman, and explicitly portrayed as in love with the prince.

Oh, and I just realized that I never posted here the link to the essay I wrote for Salon last year about my godfather, Herb, to whom The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet is dedicated. He was the first person to ever tell me about the mysterious "Mr. W.H." and that Shakespeare's sonnets were written to a man. The recipe for his prize-winning saffron cake is included at the end of the piece, so enjoy!

Multimedia Updates!

2010-07-29T00:13:00.000-07:00

Peabody Award-winning radio host Dmae Roberts interviewed me last week for her "Stage and Studio" program on KBOO. We talked about Shakespeare, growing up in the theatre, and how I got started writing The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet. I had a wonderful time meeting her, and really enjoyed our talk. If you missed the show, don't despair! You can download and listen to it at the website here.

There's also a new review to report. Margaret Donsbach at HistoricalNovels.info says "The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet is a bawdy, madcap riff..." She continues:

Not just Hamlet but the other plays of Shakespeare and especially the sonnets are whipped like meringue into this soufflé of a novel: As-You-Like-It-like disguises and misidentifications, Falstaffian tavern-keepers, larks (not nightingales) driving lovers apart at daybreak, and just a hint of tragedy.[...] Even Shakespeare might have approved. The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet is an homage to him, although (or perhaps because) the playwright himself is dissolved into a mist of his characters.

And, as promised, here are some more pictures from the show at Boxcar Theatre in San Francisco with the GuyWriters. Thanks to photographer Michael Grove for sending these! And thanks again to my brilliantly talented "Ruff Trade Boys" for bringing my novel to life! They are:

Aaron Tworek and Brian Martin as Hamlet and Horatio.

Michael Vega and Brian Martin as Guildenstern and Rosencrantz.

And of course, our director and narrator, Donald Currie:

And now to the tango!

Putting on a show in San Francisco

2010-06-05T00:24:00.000-07:00

Home at last after my whirlwind 2-week road trip down to San Francisco for my event with the GuyWrit ers, a gay men's literary networking organization that includes not only poets but also many fantastic playwrights and actors active in San Francisco's underground and experimental theatrical scene. The group's co-founder, actor and director Donald Currie, was one of The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet's earliest fans, reading the very first draft of the novel in manuscript. (Donald is one of my original "fairy godfathers" and has been a close family friend since before I was born, when he and my parents were members together of the Gestalt Fool Theater Family, a 1960s "commune and radical performance group" that deserves its own blog post, so I won't say any more about it now.)

Those familiar with Donald Currie's recent projects may be unsurprised to learn that what began as a relatively modest "staged reading" of sonnets and scenes from the novel ended up becoming a madcap over-the-top one-act play, with actors, wild costumes (Oh so many handsewn ruffs! Talk about the pricking of my thumbs!) props, and culminating in a bawdy dance routine set to sonnets 144 ("Two loves I have of comfort and despair...") and 129 ("The expense of spirit in a waste of shame/Is lust...").

The house was packed (hardly a feat at the tiny Bo xcar Theatre, which only seats about 50) and they went wild at the finale as Donald sang while I stripped down to thigh-high boots, fishnets, and a leather bustier and tangoed with each of the "Ruff Trade Boys"(actors Michael Vega, Adam Simpson, Brian Martin, and Aaron Tworek), who ended by lifting me up into the air, showgirl-style.

I'm still amazed that we were able to pull the whole thing together with only a week's rehearsal, and while it was one of the most stressful things I've done recently, I also can't remember when I last had so much fun. Thanks so much to Donald, to the brilliant and outrageous actors, to Ben Pither for running tech, to David Wilson for the gorgeous promotional photos, and to GuyWriters and Boxcar Theatre.

Here are some rehearsal and post-show snapshots. Alas, there was no video and few pictures taken of the event itself, so we shall just have to remember Walter Benjamin: "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be..." and contemplate the essential ephemerality of the live theatrical experience. If you were in the audience and have clips or pics, please send them to me at contactmyrlin@gmail.com and I'll post them here.

Romeo and Hamlet

2010-05-05T03:47:00.000-07:00

Looks like I'm not the only one out there who thinks the Prince of Denmark might have crossed his garters on the other side--GayFest NYC opens tonight with the U.S. premiere of the play "Romeo and Hamlet," a "comedy about marriage equality" featuring a romance between the titular characters. (Funny--Mercutio, not Romeo, is the one in that play who's always pinged my 'dar.) Congratulations to the cast and crew, and break a leg!

Speaking of the theatre, I've been too busy preparing for my upcoming show in San Francisco (tonight's task: finish sewing ruffs!) to post much lately, but I do have some recent media to report since my last update. First of all, The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet got a couple more great reviews from gay papers. Richard Labonte of the Q Syndicate calls it a "...comically giddy re-imagination of Hamlet’s younger days..." and says "even readers unfamiliar with that theatrical mainstay... can enjoy Hermes’ bawdy narrative." And Nathan Tipton of Lambda Literary says the book is ".. deft, witty, and eye-opening..."

I also did a Q&A for Popshifter with my friend, author Jemiah Jefferson. You can read it here: "More than Shakespeare Slash."

And last but not least, I've been on a Blog Tour. This is like a book tour, except that I don't actually have to travel--they just send my book to various bloggers, who review and discuss it amongst themselves. Actually, it's sort of more like a virtual book club than a reading tour. Some choice quotes:

Monday April 5^th Raging Bibliomania: "Sometimes when reading a book, it becomes apparent very early on that is going to be a tremendous reading experience. Such was the case with this book. I had a very hard time peeling myself away from it for even a moment and was very saddened to have to finally turn the last page."

Tues April 6 Wordsmithonia: "Myrlin A. Hermes has a way with words that I could only dream of one day being even close to possessing. She picks each word carefuly and has fun with them, she is a master wordsmith in every sense."

Weds April 7 BookNAround: "It's probably best for a reader to have some knowledge of Hamlet before reading this but those without that grounding might still find the romance and the tragedy of friendship, true love and loyalty appealing as well."

Monday April 12 Eclectic/Eccentric: "What a beautiful book! Hermes has created something tragic, beautiful, and moving with this novel, entirely worthy of the Shakespearean play it is based on."

April 15 Write Meg: "Hermes captures feelings of uncertainty, joy, selfishness, obsession and jealousy with a truly creative and artful pen. Her novel is a treat for fans of historical fiction and, most especially, lovers of classic tales retold. Fans of Hamlet will definitely appreciate the book in a different way than the rest of us . . . but for the rest of us? A rollicking good time."

GuyWriters April Newsletter...

2010-04-02T15:30:00.000-07:00

Here's the April 2010 GuyWriters newsletter, with info about my upcoming San Francisco reading. I love the GuyWriters (a fabulous gay men's writing group) and am honored to be their first-ever featured female author! This event is going to be WILD and I hope to see you there!

GuyWriters Newsletter
APRIL 2010 - National Poetry Month

In This Issue
Poetry Open Mic
Gay Straight Alliance Benefit
The Lunatic, The Lover, and The Poet

Join Our Writing Groups!

GuyWriters hosts three writing groups -- one each for poets, prose writers and playwrights . Led by experienced writers, the groups meet monthly to create and review new work, attend readings, and discuss opportunities for getting your work out to the public. They are a lively and helpful way to advance your writing career. Please contact the group facilitators for more information:

Contact:
Poetry: Jay Siegel,jjsiegel25@yahoo.comProse: Eric Rose,
guywritersprose@gmail.comPlays: Alan Quismorio,alan@asianamericantheater .org

Facebook

GuyWriters is on Facebook. Please join us and connect with other gay writers from across the country.

GuyWriters Poetry Open Mic featuring Dan Bellm

GuyWriters will be celebrating National Poetry Month with an open mic poetry reading at Books Inc. in the Castro on April 6 at 7PM. Members of the GuyWriters poetry group will read original work, as well as poems by their favorite poets.

Featured reader for the event is Dan Bellm. Bellm is the author of three poetry collections: "One Hand on the Wheel," "Buried Treasure" and "Practice."

The reading will begin at 7:30 PM, with sign up for the open mic beginning at 7PM. Everyone that signs up to read will get five minutes. Read some of your original work or share some poems by your favorite poet.

Books Inc. in the Castro is located at 2275 Market St.
GuyWriters Presents a Benefit for the John O'Connell High School Gay Straight Alliance
The GuyWriters Prose Group will present a reading at John O'Connel High School on Sunday, April 18, from 4pm-5:30pm.

The reading will feature authors Melinda Lo and Chuck Forester. All proceeds from the event will benefit the high school's gay straight alliance.

The event will also feature readings from the John O'Connell High School Gay Straight Alliance and members of the Guywriters Prose Group: Eric Rose, Gabriel Lampert, Dennis Stratford, Vince Meis, Doug Henderson and Pete Kane.

The John O'Connell High School Theater is located at 2355 Folsom Street. Parking available; enter on Harrison Street between 19th and 20th.

Admission is a $5 to $10 sliding scale. No one turned away for lack of funds.
"The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet"
GuyWriters, Myrlin Hermes team up for gay Hamlet
Myrlin Hermes.
A one night only and only in San Francisco literary event! Guywriters is hosting its first woman writer, Myrlin Hermes, in a literary reading/theatrical event at Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma street, on Sunday May 23rd at 6:00pm.

Myrlin has written a brilliant queering of one of the western world's cornerstone works, Hamlet. "The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet" is a dazzling piece of reimagined history, and Donald Currie, one of the founders of Guywriters, is directing a theatricalization of passages from the novel, performed by a group of very hot, very talented actors. These scenes from the novel will be woven into readings of the text by Myrlin, who is something of a combination Shakespearean scholar and Lady Gaga. This event promises to be something unlike any literary reading you've ever been to, and is not to be missed.
SexRev: The Jose Sarria Experience!
This thrilling world premiere musical celebration of America's first queer activist is written and directed by John Fisher, and stars GuyWriters co-founder Donald Currie.

José Sarria started as a drag performer at SF's famous Black Cat Café in the earlty-1950s and rose to fame and popularity as the city's first openly gay public figure. He ran for supervisor in 1961 and went on to form the Imperial Court System as Her RoyalMajesty, Empress of San Francisco, José I, The Widow Norton.

SexRev utilizes a non-linear approach to the presentation of Sarria's life, drawing on camp, sketch comedy, and opera parody to tell the story of Sarria's enormous impact on gay entertainment and LGBT politics. Many people don't know that Sarria ran for SF Supervisor a decade and a half before Harvey Milk appeared on the scene; that he has always been at the forefront of gay politics; and that his influence has made possible so much that we accept as basic queer rights. But SexRev is first and foremost an entertainment, an experience for its audience, the wittiest play since John Fisher's Medea, The Musical.

The show will run from April 14 to May 2 at Mama Calizo's Voice Factory, 1519 Mission St. between 11th and Lafayette.

Visit the Theatre Rhino Website for more information.
GuyWriters is a Member of the Intersection Incubator, a program of the Intersection for the Arts, providing fiscal sponsorship, incubation and consulting services to artists.

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Seattle reading report

2010-03-20T00:56:00.000-07:00

I'm back from Seattle, where I had a wonderful reading at the University Book Store (thanks to Anna and the helpful staff there). About 30 people turned up to see me and my valiant harper, Molly, including a few old high school and college friends I hadn't seen in years. In that spirit, I thought it fitting to close the reading with an experimental piece I'd first had the idea for while sitting in English class in high school, flipping through the back of the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Called "Index of First Lines," it is exactly that--a poem about poetry, composed entirely of initial lines of "canon" poems--in alphabetical order. Ironically, even though I didn't actually "write" a word of it myself, I think it's one of my most personal pieces, even referring to my own actual birthday in one verse:

Pray thee, take care, that tak'st my book in hand,
Redoubted knights, and honorable Dames,
Remember me when I am gone away,
September twenty-second, Sir: today
She sang beyond the genius of the sea.

The poem was was published in Winter 2005 issue of the Notre Dame Review, so I'm not sure about the copyright restrictions, or I'd put the entire thing up on my website. (And yes, I am aware of the irony of fretting about copyright over a poem entirely pilfered from other sources!)

The only trouble with the University Book Store was that their relatively early closing time of 8:00 meant that the Q&A session after the reading had to be cut short. Which was too bad, because I was having fun chatting with the obviously knowledgeable Shakespeareans in the audience! I hope those who were asking questions (or didn't get the chance to) will join my Facebook group or send me an email at contactmyrlin@gmail.com. I love hearing from fans! It's always a pleasure to discover that someone else is a literary geek in all the same peculiar ways you are. (And besides, I feel vindicated for all those times I was rejected by people in publishing saying they thought the manuscript was brilliant, but that "readers" out there wouldn't "get" it.)

I got one such fan email last week through the website from fellow Portland author Dana Hanes, whose thriller novel, Crashers, is coming out in June from St. Martin's Press. He also put up a review on his blog, in which he calls The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet "...a roller coaster ride through English lit!" and says: "It's fabulous. Hermes obviously had a lot of fun crafting this tale..."

Thanks, Dana! And thanks also to Cannon Beach Books for recommending the novel to him!

Latest 'Lunatic' news...

2010-03-08T17:59:00.000-08:00

Hello to all the lunatics, lovers, and poets out there. Sorry I haven't updated in a while--I've been preparing for a few upcoming events, including a staged reading/cabaret performance with San Francisco's GuyWriters in May and an appearance at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I'll give more details on these readings as they become available, so watch this space.

Coming up a bit sooner, I'll be in Seattle on March 16th at 7:00pm, reading at the University Book Store, 4326 University Way NE. Molly Bauckham of Fremont's own Dusty Strings will once again be providing musical accompaniment on the Celtic harp. Everyone had a wonderful time at the Powell's launch, so I hope if you're in the Seattle area, you'll come by to see us take the show on the road! Here's Molly performing her own interpretation of "Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind" from As You Like It:

YouTube - "Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind"

The Week in Reviews:

Zachary Stewart of TheaterMania.com gave The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet its most glowing review yet! Calling it a "remarkable book," he says:

Myrlin Hermes delivers the kind of wit, creativity, and verbal eloquence which is rarely seen in contemporary novels in The Lunatic, the Lover and the Poet...Hermes blends history with fiction and makes nimble use of Shakespeare's characters for her own story with a shameless audacity comparable to Tom Stoppard (the author of another Hamlet variation, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.)[...] Like Shakespeare, the author's love for language and its possibilities shines through on every page. Hermes is truly a master of the bawdy double entendre.

James Piechota of the Bay Area Reporter also praises the book, calling it a "a great gay adventure," if "more than a little quirky..." It's great to get a rave from the largest and oldest ongoing LGBT newspaper in the country!

Less enchanted was Brent Hartinger of AfterElton.com. Though he says "This book is terrifically well-written, " and that it has "...more than a touch of genius..." he found the shifting POV "distracting" (the first reader I've heard who hasn't loved Lady Adriane's scenes!) and felt like "the author and her Shakespeare-aficionado friends were sharing a conversation that I only half-understood."

But my favorite response to The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet last week wasn't from a media outlet, but a Facebook message from a fan, Mary Logan. Mary is a high-school English teacher and knows Hamlet backwards and forwards, so it really meant a lot to me that she loved my interpretation! Mary not only wrote an amazing review on Amazon.com, in which she calls the book a "..marvelously crafted gem.." she also left a comment on the YouTube video, and even emailed my editor, Rakesh Satyal, to thank him for publishing the book! Mary has also created a desktop wallpaper and a Firefox Persona (like a "skin" to customize your browser) based on the novel's cover art! You can find the links to download them on my Facebook group.

I knew writing this novel, and especially during the long struggle to find a publisher for it, that it wouldn't be for everyone; but that the one reader in a thousand, or a hundred thousand, who "got" it would love it passionately, and maybe it could become, if never a New York Times bestseller, at least a sort of "cult classic" in certain circles. So thanks to Mary Logan, and to fans like her, for justifying my obsessive perserverance with what seemed for so long like a crazy little dream.

Book launch report and review roundup...

2010-02-14T16:37:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who came out to Powell's Books on a drizzly Thursday night for my reading and book launch party! We got quite a decent crowd, actually--about a 50/50 mix of strangers and friends/relatives, some of whom I hadn't seen in years. I'm sure the glowing review in the Sunday Oregonian helped with the turnout. Some choice excerpts:

"What if Shakespeare didn't realize he was Shakespeare, falling into his own story before he understood it was a story? [...] Hermes' counterversion of the "true" tale of Elsi nore is based on a deep and perceptive reading of the conflicts and mysteries inside the play. [...] Hermes writes with insight and understanding about the passion of a man for another man, and of the difference between phys ical a nd emotional satisfaction. [...] She's imagined, most entertainingly, ho w such an astonishing artist might have come to be."
--The Oregonian

The critic who reviewed the book, Bob Hicks, enjoyed it so much he even showed up to the reading at Powell's and introduced himself. I was happy to be able to thank him in person--it's so gratifying, as an author, to know that there are readers out there who "get it"--not only on the Macro level, i.e., what I'm trying to say about Shakespeare by writing a book like this, but also get all those little in-jokes and references I threw in for my own amusement.

M ead Hunter also turned up, after posting lovely reviews of the book both to his blog and the Powell's website, praising its "dazzling sleight of hand" and "many rhapsodies." I'd only met him once before, at Wordstock, but recognized him right away, because he looks exactly like Gwenn Seemel's portrait of him.

Also in attendance were several old friends, including illustrious playwright and critic Steffen Silvis, my theater advisor at Reed, Professor Kathleen Worley, and my dear friend author Jemiah Jefferson, all of whom were early readers of the novel in manuscript. Another friend who has read more drafts than I can count, Molly Bauckham, provided beautiful incidental harp music during the reading, then broke out the sprightlier dance tunes during the after-party. Thanks to the staff of the Benson Hotel, who took care of our small but lively crowd who stayed to finish off the champagne!

More blog reviews this week:

Amy Steele calls the novel "...a witty romp of a tale..." awarding it 4 out of 5 stars, and concludes: "It’s such an original concept and Hermes carries it out well. Particularly for fans of Shakespeare, The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet is a winning read ..."

Misfit Salon says "If you are a Shakespeare fan in any measure, The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet by Myrlin A. Hermes is certainly worth reading. [...]Hermes undoubtedly knows Shakespeare inside and out...[but] you need not be a Shakespeare scholar to enjoy this entertaining, multi-layered book."

Books are Like Candy Corn calls it "...a joyous ride, and one I suggest you take regardless of your sexual orientation" and gives the book a grade of A.

And the Literary Omnivore gives the book 4.5 out of 5 stars, concluding "...this prequel to Hamlet is filled with clever references, witty wordplay, and the marvelous Lady Adriane, carefully manipulating Horatio and his love for both Hamlet and herself. If this seems remotely up your alley, give The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet a try. It won’t disappoint."

Book Launch info...

2010-02-10T03:19:00.000-08:00

I've been gearing up for my book launch party this week, by which I mean displacing nervous energy by inventing last-minute craft projects (souvenir bookmarks! hand-stamped invitations! tiny programs full of Shakespeare quotes!) and shopping for thigh-high boots. Perhaps at some point I should get around to figuring out which passages I'm actually going to read!

The launch is this Thursday, February 11th. It starts at 7:30pm with a reading and booksigning at Powell's (with special musical accompaniment by harper extraordinaire Molly Bauckham) followed by a champagne toast and reception from 9-11pm at The Benson Hotel. (Champagne and snacks provided; no-host full bar available.) I hope to see you all there!

Booklist Review

2010-02-04T15:32:00.000-08:00

My publicist alerted me to a new review out from Booklist (warning: subscription required). It's the trade magazine for the American Library Association, and so particularly important for getting a book ordered and recommended by librarians. Fortunately, the review is great!

Did Shakespeare write all of his plays? Who are the dark lady and the beautiful young man of Shakespeare’s sonnets? Was there a threesome involved? Is Hamlet mad or just pretending? This witty, erudite, and decidedly sexy novel stands all of the usual questions about Shakespeare on end. Horatio, a scholar, catches the eye of the beautiful and flamboyant Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. At the same time, Horatio also becomes involved with his patroness, the dark Lady Adriane. When she hires him to write poems about his love for Hamlet, it sets a chain of surprising events in motion. Combining famous lines of dialogue and plot from several plays, Hermes manages to create both a moving story that stands on its own, and a giant in-joke for Shakespeare lovers. At times, the Shakespeare references threaten to overshadow and bog down the story being told, but in the end, the characters she’s created are strong enough to carry the novel.
— Marta Segal Block

There's some other big publicity news in the works, but for the moment, I should keep it under my hat--don't want to jinx anything before it's all confirmed. And of course, I'm getting ready for my Powell's reading and book launch after-party at the Benson Hotel on February 11th. I'll be posting more about it soon, so watch this space for details.

Was Hamlet gay? The textual evidence...

2010-01-18T03:12:00.000-08:00

I am hardly the first one to suggest that there might be more going on than meets the eye in Shakespeare's most famous tragedy. In 1881, a scholar named Edward P. Vining published a book, The Mystery of Hamlet, that took such evidence as the prince’s rejection of Ophelia and excessive attachment to Horatio, as well as a painstaking examination of the text, to present the theory that “Prince” Hamlet was actually a princess—a girl being raised as a boy for political reasons. This interpretation was used as the basis of one of the earliest filmed versions of the play, a 1920 silent German production starring Danish actress Asta Nielsen as a cross-dressing female Hamlet in love with Horatio. This interpretation, mind you, did not require changing the existing text of the play--only playing what was already there with a different subtext. (For more on the history of women in the role, check out this recent article by my very kind blurber and sometime pen-pal, Charles Marowitz.)

Of course, these days, another theory dares to speak its name about why the prince might prefer the company of his schoolfellow. Could Hamlet be gay? Shakespeare had certainly written about male romantic love before. Whether or not you take Shakespeare's sonnets as biographical evidence of an actual homosexual affair, they clearly present a vividly imagined portrait of a poet named Will's ardent infatuation with a young man with “a woman’s face” whom he calls “the master mistress of my passion.”

Prince Hamlet speaks of himself using similar gender-bending language, confessing to Horatio, “Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice and could of men distinguish, her election hath seal'd thee for herself. […] Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, as I do thee.”

You are the choice of my soul, my heart’s core, my heart of heart? Heady stuff for one “straight” man to be declaring to another! And indeed, the prince’s next line, “Something too much of this,” is usually played as backing away from the confession of the paragraph before—a sort of Elizabethan “no homo.”

But an actor and director could just as easily choose to play the line the opposite way--as admission that his feelings for Horatio are “too much” and transgress the boundaries of mere friendship. Compare Shakespeare’s language here to that in Sonnet 20, lamenting that Nature had made his master-mistress a man:

And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick'd thee out for women's pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure.

Might this phallic “one thing” be the same “something too much” that keeps Prince Hamlet from happiness with the partner preferred by his heart and soul?

In Act 3, Hamlet calls Horatio “Damon dear,” a reference to the tale of Damon and Pythias, two Greek gentlemen so famously devoted to one another that each was willing to sacrifice his own life to save his friend’s. (But sodomy and pederasty among the ancient Greeks and Romans was common knowledge in Elizabethan England, and the subject of many a bawdy joke.

There may be a double meaning, then, in Horatio’s declaration “I am more an antique Roman than a Dane,” as Hamlet lies dying in his arms. The brokenhearted scholar, like Romeo, means to drink from the poisoned cup and follow his beloved into death. It is only after Hamlet begs him “[i]f thou didst ever hold me in thy heart…in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain/to tell my story,” that Horatio relents, and is spared Romeo’s fate.

Might there be a similar tale of star-crossed lovers hidden between the lines of Hamlet? I think it’s at least one possible reading of the play. And the enduring greatness of Hamlet is that it has in it enough ambiguity and mystery to sustain countless new productions and re-interpretations.

Battle of the Bards

2010-01-17T20:22:00.000-08:00

I've entered the "Battle of the Bards" contest over at Good Books Inc.. It's basically sports betting for literary geeks, pitting Shakespeare's plays against one another in a brackets system. Twice a week they'll post the contenders and people vote for their favorites to determine a winner. There are some great prizes, too, so get your picks in before January 18th. After the contest closes, I'll post my predictions here, along with my own personal favorites in each match-up--not always the same as my choice for the popular pick!

Page 69 Test

2010-01-07T22:47:00.000-08:00

I recently ran across the idea of The Page 69 Test -- a sort of critical bibliomancy by which you are supposed to determine the quality or character of a book by reading page 69 (in some variations, it's page 99). Since I just received the finished copies of The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet in the mail, I quickly turned to those two pages, imagining readers in bookstores doing the same. Luckily, both of those pages, while not giving away any major plot spoilers or climactic moments, are pretty good windows into the novel as a whole, and hint at intrigues to come. I've reprinted them here:

Page 69

"Home" proved to be a wing of the Danish embassy, where Hamlet led me upstairs from the dark official chambers and reception halls to a luxurious but sparsely decorated sitting room. The walls were wainscoted with elaboately carved oaken panels, but hung with neither portraits nor tapestries.

"We needn't wake the servants," he whispered, opening a cupboard to remove a pot of brandywine and a pair of silver goblets. "They'll just breed gossip. If you stoke the fires, I shall pour."

I nodded, glad for this occupation. The hearth coals were still smoldering, buried in the ash, and quickly I kindled them back to life. From this flame, he lit candles and set them in their stands. We pulled a pair of armchairs near the fire, and Hamlet served up the wine.

"Now that we are alone--" He dragged his chair a bit nearer to mine, his eyes glimmering mischievously. "We must discuss which role I am to have in your play."

I gaped in confusion. "My lord, I thought you said your father..."

"Aha!" He held his index finger up, stopping my tongue with a gesture. "I said my father would not hear of it. And so he shall not, if we are careful. I must adopt a new name--play the role, in fact, of a player playing a role." He made it sound like some delightful game, not a conspiracy to deceive the king. Treason, of course, to think of it that way.

Page 99 is from one of the handful of chapters set in Elsinore. In this scene, Queen Gertrude is arguing with Claudius, her lover--to whom, we learn, she was handfasted at 16 before she broke off the engagement to marry his brother, Horwendil Hamlet. In my version of the play, the two royal brothers are identical twins, calling into question the reliability of Prince Hamlet's "Hyperion to a Satyr" comparison.

Page 99

Her father had laughed at her objection to the switch. "Why, I cannot see a hair's difference between them, except that one is to be king!"

She had convinced herself it was the truth--if she had come to love a face, she could learn to love it, she thought, on whichever gentlemen it might appear. Two men could not be closer than sharing the same womb. So she had returned Claudius's letters and turned all her charms instead upon his brother.

"And within two months--two little months!--I lost my wife, my father, and my crown."

"I could have refused to marry him and angered my father and been shut up behind the convent walls, and now I would be a nun instead of queen. I could have taken poison--I had the vial in my hand--and I would be dead. But instead, I am queen. These were my choices. This way, I thought, I could at least be near you. We have had a life together, even in pieces. And I have had the worser time of it, I think, than you--for I have had to be his wife."

Her voice is shaking. What is it with these men, these Hamlets? Her husband, her lover, her son--each of them looks at the world through the same eyes, orates over the same neurotic, self-absorbed obsessions, seals his letters with the same signet-ring. Each one more proud, ruthless, and stubborn than the last. And to each of them is she bound less by her own desires than by the inexorable, painful pull of destiny.

Her son had been a frail child. Born too soon, he had not been expected to live out his first day. The midwife took one look at the bluish creature she had whelped and sent word to hire a gravedigger. "A pity too," she sighed. "It would have been a boy."

Oh, and the fifth sentence on page 65?

" 'At this rate you shall have to have a deity lowered ex machina at the end, as the Romans did, to set the plot to rights.' "

Which I think is as good of a random sentence from the book as I could have hoped.

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"Elementary, my dear Watson! Er...no homo."

2010-01-05T02:21:00.000-08:00

My agent Mitchell sent me a link to this recent news story, about how Andrea Plunket, who holds the copyright to the Sherlock Holmes stories (more on this claim later) has threatened to revoke the rights for the sequel to Guy Ritchie's film unless he tones down the "homoerotic subtext." Plunket is quoted as saying:

"It would be drastic, but I would withdraw permission for more films to be made if they feel that is a theme they wish to bring out in the future. I am not hostile to homosexuals, but I am to anyone who is not true to the spirit of the books."

I had to roll my eyes at the thought that apparently Ms. Plunket had no problem with seeing Holmes addicted to cocaine and Freudian analysis, transported to the 1980s, or battling the Joker with Batman--but gay? Now that would be against "the spirit of the books!"

But aside from your standard po-mo "Death of the Author" Roland Barthes theory and intellectual justifications for pastiche, slash fan-fiction, and the entire genre of intertextual fiction from Tristram Shandy through Wicked (with, of course, a brief plug for my bookalong the way) I didn't really feel like I had enough to add to the discussion. My only real questions about the story were: 1)Isn't Sherlock Holmes in the public domain yet? 2)Could Andrea Plunket really withdraw permission for more films? and 3)Who is this Andrea Plunket person anyway?

So, like any good Holmes fan, I did a little internet sleuthing. And the answers I discovered were: 1)Sort of, 2)Not really, and 3)Ohmygod, you wouldn't even believe.

Andrea Plunket seems to be an Orly Taitz-type character, whose convoluted claims to the Holmes story, passionately asserted on her website and in the media, are legally questionable at best. A Hungarian-born socialite, she has no connection to the estate of Conan Doyle, with whom she is engaged in frequent litigation over rights to the stories---litigation she has always lost. Her attempts to trademark the name "Sherlock Holmes" have been similarly denied.

Plunket's claims stem from her deceased ex-husband, Sheldon Reynolds, a television producer who had developed a Sherlock Holmes series in the 1950s starring Ronald Howard (not Opie, but the son of "Ashley Wilkes" Leslie Howard). He purchased the rights to the stories at a bank auction after one of Conan Doyle's heirs defaulted on a loan.

Fun fact: after her divorce from Reynolds, Andrea became the mistress to Claus von Bülow, the accused wife-murderer upon whose trial the film Reversal of Fortune was based. (Andrea Plunket's role in the film was played by Christine Baranski, which may tell you all you need to know about her.)

Attempts by the Conan Doyle estate to recoup the more than $100,000 in legal fees they have accrued battling her in these frivolous lawsuits have been unsuccessful, as Plunket claims she cannot afford to pay. The 40-acre Catskills estate--complete with tennis court, heated pool, and hot-tub---where she now resides with her fourth husband, Shaun Plunket (himself the heir presumptive to an Irish barony) and operates an upscale Bed-and-Breakfast, is in held in her daughter's name. "I'm just the babysitter," she claims.

A good synopsis of the entire mess can be found in the archives of the hilarious Grumpy Old Bookman blog (now sadly defunct).

At any rate, the battle between Ms. Plunket and the Conan Doyle estate, the legal system, and the hopes of Holmes/Watson slash fans everywhere can't go on for much longer: the work is already in the public domain in the UK and Canada, and the last U.S. copyright is set to expire between 2016 and 2023.

Art Book Hamlet project

2010-01-04T22:13:00.000-08:00

I had an email today from Mary Heebner, a Santa Barbara artist who was kind enough to send me a link to her art book version of The Tragic History of Hamlet. Not just another "illustrated" version of the play, it is a true translation of Shakespeare's text into another mode of language entirely--a series of gorgeous dreamlike images created by a palimpsest of text, collage, and paint.

Though Heebner focuses primarily on the women in the play, I really love her interpretation of the character of Prince Hamlet as well--an androgynous sylph-like figure, often shown nude and half-shrouded in mist. This page shows one of my favorite speeches in the play, and the figure of the prince here reminds me of a scene early on in The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet, in which Horatio and Hamlet first meet on the banks of the Elbe river, in Wittenburg. The prince (having been bathing in the river, against the rules of the University) is nude, and the nearsighted Horatio at first mistakes his fair and slender figure for a woman.

Heebner has also done illustrations for a couple of bilingual editions of Pablo Neruda's poems, published through Harper (which is how she came to read an advance copy of my novel and contact me). Check her out!

Portland Monthly Magazine

2009-12-29T03:18:00.000-08:00

"How does one translate a life into verse? How does one capture beauty in human form? How does one evade death? According to Myrlin A. Hermes’s The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet, one way is through the pen—or rather, the quill. [...] Hermes seduces the reader’s imagination with twisted trysts, highbrow humor, and gender mix-ups—all lusciously Shakespearian in construct and wit."

-- Veronica Martin, Portland Monthly Magazine

Thanks to Portland Monthly Magazine for a lovely review of the book! It will be appearing on newsstands in the January issue, but you can read the whole thing now on their website.

Was Abraham Lincoln gay?

2009-11-15T20:30:00.000-08:00

Though he offered no definitive proof that our sixteenth president preferred the fellas, author Keith Stern made quite a compelling (and hilarious!) argument for it in his one-man show at Powell's the other night, promoting his new book, Queers in History. He also showed how Lincoln's biographers downplayed, excised, or excused his relationships with men, even going so far as to invent (or at least presume without evidence) female sweethearts to explain heartbreaks described in his letters, conveniently ignoring his recent separation from his longterm male "roommate," etc. Hold off on calling Lincoln our "first gay president" though--his predecessor, James Buchanan, also makes an appearance in the book.

Local author (and dear friend) Jemiah Jefferson and I had volunteered to help Keith with the "audience participation" portion of our floorshow. We joined him afterwards for a celebratory cocktail, and found him to be as charming and witty in person as in his encyclopedia. As might be expected, the audience questions had run the gamut from enthusiastic to skeptical, and I gave my opinion that even if not all of the 900 entries in the book could be definitively "proven" to be homosexual, it was still important to remember to ask the question, and to bear in mind the lengths that biographers in earlier ages may have gone (consciously or un-) to ignore unthinkable realities obvious to the modern eye.

Take Shakespeare (page 414 in Stern's book). In Sonnet 144, he lays out his romantic dilemma in as plain a language as one could ask for:

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.

In Sonnet 20, he calls this fair angel "the master-mistress of my passion...A man in hue all hues in his controlling,/ Which steals men's eyes and women's souls amazeth."

Yet throughout history and even today, some scholars tie themselves in knots to explain that the poems were in fact written to his son Hamnet, or to Queen Elizabeth, who was "considered as a man," or that, despite the line "..my name is 'Will'" in Sonnet 136 and various other forms of self-identification scattered throughout, the sonnet cycle represents an entirely theoretical affair--an early work of fiction, not a memoir.

That's part of the reason why I wanted to explore the story of Shakespeare's sonnets not in a historical context but in an explicitly fictional one, presenting it as a potential emotional backstory to these characters, Horatio and Hamlet. My goal is not to argue an absolute historical truth (i.e., Shakespeare was gay!) but to present as valid a potential subtextual reading--an interpretation of their relationship that at the time could not have been conveyed explicitly. In my novel, Horatio--who is directed at the end of the play to tell Hamlet's tale--plays the role of the lovesick poet, and Prince Hamlet, the bard's masterpiece, is the impossibly fair young man he promises to make immortal through his poetry. The mysterious Dark Lady of the sonnets--the most compelling Shakespearean heroine who never speaks a line--is the reader of the work, who seduces each of them in turn. In a way, The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet might be said to take place entirely in Shakespeare's subconscious mind--or rather, those pieces of his mind that have been left behind for us in his work.

Charles Marowitz and Recycling Shakespeare

2009-11-03T13:06:00.000-08:00

I've been corresponding lately with director/critic/playwright Charles Marowitz, who was kind enough to provide a blurb for The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet. Marowitz is perhaps best known for his work with Peter Brook at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and for his radical "collage" adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, collected in The Marowitz Shakespeare and discussed in his book, Recycling Shakespeare, which was enormously helpful to me when working on my critical thesis for my Creative Writing MA at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Marowitz expressed surprise to learn that I had found his book so helpful. As he put it: "In my eyes, it is a book directed to actors and directors who have a Shakespearean bent and, I would have thought, useless to imaginative novelists." But, as I explained, by the time I went to London to study with Andrew Motion, I had already completed an early draft of The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet. My work in graduate school--and the program's usefulness to me in general, I now believe, was primarily in allowing me to put what I was writing into a theoretical and literary perspective. In that, Recycling Shakespeare was crucial, "giving permission" to me to do the sort of work I'd already been doing, by showing a context and precedent for taking these sort of liberties with Shakespeare's text.

In Recycling Shakespeare, Charles Marowitz characterizes Shakespearean audiences/productions in four categories. "Conservatives" wish to "preserve the integrity" of Shakespeare--which usually means faithfully duplicating their original experience of the play and reinforcing their own assumptions/expectations about Shakespeare. "Moderates," Marowitz says, "are prepared to accept a change in period or a shift in emphasis, so long as the basic structure and spirit remains intact." Radicals "eagerly applaud the innovations--the startling reinterpretations which enable Shakespeare's work to deliver new sensations..." Finally, there is the "Lunatic Fringe," for whom "there are no limits to the transformations that can be made to the Collected Works. Restructuring, juxtaposing, interlarding, collating one work with another; modern vernacular mixed with classical idiom...commingling Star Wars and the Wars of the Roses..." (Recycling Shakespeare, 16).

By this definition, even plays such as Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Lee Blessing's Fortinbras can be considered as "Lunatic Fringe" productions of Hamlet. And, taking this idea even further, even a novel such as mine can be considered as a non-theatrical "production" of the play. After all, no one goes to Hamlet to find out what happens--a production of the play is all about what subtext and backstory the actor and directors are bringing to the text, and that is what The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet provides.

I am under no illusion that I have discovered "Hamlet's secret" or the "one true meaning" of the play--any more than any given production of Hamlet invalidates or contradicts any other--but my interpretation is as valid as any other director's, and my reading of Hamlet's bisexual tendencies doesn't involve as much "reading against the text" as you might think. I'll explain in further detail in another entry.

Also: RIP Claude Lévi-Strauss, age 100, anthropologist and grandfather to the Post-Structuralist movement. Many of Derrida's most famous (or infamous) essays were essentially extended prose-poem jazz-riff reinterpretations of Lévi-Strauss's ideas.

Visit to Ashland

2009-10-21T12:46:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a 4-day trip down the coast to northern California. On the way, we stopped overnight in Ashland, Oregon, and I had a very friendly meeting with Bill Rauch, director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He's directing their production of Hamlet, opening on February 26th, exactly one month after The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet is released. He's very excited about the novel, and so we discussed setting up a reading or event in Ashland to coincide with the season opening of the festival, and related festivities.

It was also fun just to chat with someone else who's been so steeped in the text of the play that we could "geek out" about it--throwing out half-a-line here or there, confident that the other person would know the end to the speech and its context, or talking about the differences between Q1, Q2, and the Folio. Since there is no "definitive" text of Hamlet, every director, in essence, "rewrites" the play by choosing which version to use, what parts to cut, etc. Bill said he and the actor playing Hamlet have spent at least 80 hours going over the various editions of the play to create a unique conflation of the various texts of Hamlet to use in their production. It's going to be a modern-dress version of the play, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing it! I'll write more about our conversation later.

It's the tail-end of the season now, and there were only a few plays running, but we did get a chance to see Macbeth in the Angus Bowmer theatre.

While I thought the actors' performances were excellent, some of the production details struck me as being a bit over-the-top. For example, when Lady Macbeth first appeared, costumed in a sweeping full-length scarlet gown, I thought "hmm, that's a little 'on the nose' for her character, isn't it?" The effect was more "Lady Macbeth Costume" than clothes worn by a Scottish noblewoman, wife to Macbeth, if you get what I mean. Then, in the next scene, she appeared in another long scarlet gown, then a third. By the time she and her husband appeared in matching scarlet-and-black robes, I wondered if they were going for Camp--if this wasn't so much a production of Macbeth as a "production" of "Macbeth" and this quality was intentional. After all, the play itself is pretty over-the-top, as the sets piled high with bodies seemed to underscore. The guy at the box office described it as being "better than the movie!" and it did seem to have a very cinematic sensibility, streamlined and fast-paced (only 2 hours long) with dramatic music underpinning certain scenes, soundtrack-style.

One thing I did notice, however, that I'd forgotten since I last saw/read Macbeth was how thematically important the survival and escape of Banquo's son, Fleance, is to the play. This was on my mind, because I've been in contact lately with New Zealand author Tania Roxborogh, whose novel, Banquo's Son is a sequel to Macbeth that tells the story of how young Fleance goes from witnessing his father's murder and fleeing for his life to fulfilling the witches' prophecy that Banquo "shalt get kings, though thou be none." The novel has hit the New Zealand bestsellers list and she's currently seeking an American publisher, so hopefully, we'll get a chance to read it over here soon!

We stayed at the Arden Forest Inn, a lovely place a short walk from the theatres with a sprawling garden. The hosts, Bill and Corbet, presided over a lovely salon at breakfast (which, because their kitchen was undergoing renovations, was held in the well-appointed library). It's quite a "literary" place--the same weekend I was there, they were hosting playwright E.M. Lewis . We talked about the possibility of hosting an "after hours" reading at the Inn for some of those scenes in The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet that might be *ahem* inappropriate for a family-friendly bookstore. I think it sounds like a lot of fun--watch this space for more details.