Clarke and Osborne
May. 29th, 2026 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootFinished Piranesi, an easy lyrical read. Led to a strange dream.
Nuclear man and his wife were so close by. We were all diving into the water, and I tried not to turn my head because he was there, right there! I pretended not to see, didn't turn my head right or left, jumped in, saw a mysterious dark brown/grey cat with a very elegant silhouette like a Siamese, sitting under water. It was perfectly comfortable, nonchalantly swatting at the surface from beneath. I wondered if it was clamping its nostrils shut like a seal would.
Maybe the lustrous visions of Piranesi seeped into my head and pulled me through to some waterlogged world. Hadn't been expecting much from this because I never got into Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell way back, perhaps it's time to try again. I bought Piranesi in a charity shop in North Berwick, crisp and clean as new, unopened. Someone didn't even try before passing it on. By contrast, I also bought Orton's play for Olivier, The Entertainer,. Why? I don't even like Olivier! Now I can't stand Osborne either. This had a badly torn cover over the little hardback,and there on the inside were the old prices for it, 10s 6d knocked down to 8 shillings and 5 pence in pencil. I may just have bought myself a shim. God, this play does not date well, the opening stage directions have defeated me twice. The only chance I have of getting through it is by finding some interesting point in the middle then reading it back and forth from there. If I can be bothered. Because right now, I'm beset with stuff I am either not very good at or just don't want to do, and that's tedious. But not as tedious as John Osborne.
Nuclear man and his wife were so close by. We were all diving into the water, and I tried not to turn my head because he was there, right there! I pretended not to see, didn't turn my head right or left, jumped in, saw a mysterious dark brown/grey cat with a very elegant silhouette like a Siamese, sitting under water. It was perfectly comfortable, nonchalantly swatting at the surface from beneath. I wondered if it was clamping its nostrils shut like a seal would.
Maybe the lustrous visions of Piranesi seeped into my head and pulled me through to some waterlogged world. Hadn't been expecting much from this because I never got into Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell way back, perhaps it's time to try again. I bought Piranesi in a charity shop in North Berwick, crisp and clean as new, unopened. Someone didn't even try before passing it on. By contrast, I also bought Orton's play for Olivier, The Entertainer,. Why? I don't even like Olivier! Now I can't stand Osborne either. This had a badly torn cover over the little hardback,and there on the inside were the old prices for it, 10s 6d knocked down to 8 shillings and 5 pence in pencil. I may just have bought myself a shim. God, this play does not date well, the opening stage directions have defeated me twice. The only chance I have of getting through it is by finding some interesting point in the middle then reading it back and forth from there. If I can be bothered. Because right now, I'm beset with stuff I am either not very good at or just don't want to do, and that's tedious. But not as tedious as John Osborne.
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Date: 2026-05-29 08:08 pm (UTC)Do you do audiobooks? If you're moved to revisit the novel, I might start with the audiobook (Richard Armitage reading). It is fabulous.