In the last week, my tutorial and I went to see the Met Live in HD broadcast of Mozart’s Don Giovanni and met to discuss Zola Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. One of those things is Great, truly Great. And in an odd coincidence, they have a common theme: Why do women fall for Men of Low Moral Standing, or, in popular terminology, why do Rakes get the Girl? None of the students in the tutorial had a decent answer when I asked that, but then again, none of them had any particular plans to be wooed by Don Juan.
Mozart’s opera was fantastic. The music was incredible, of course. But the two male leads were phenomenal—simply amazing. It’s hard to imagine anyone playing either of those parts any better. Amazing voices, and seriously great stage presence. The female leads were adequate. The scene of the Don’s decent into Hell was incredible—I have always loved that part of the opera when I heard it; seeing it with these actors was one of the best things I have ever watched.
The Met has interviews with the singers during the intermission. The interview with the guy who played Don Giovanni (Mariusz Kwiecien) had a clever insight. His take on why the opera was so popular is that women all love Giovanni because he is exactly what ever woman wants. No matter what a woman wants a man to be, Giovanni is that for her. And why do men like the opera? Well, they just like the music.
Hurston’s novel was good; I enjoyed reading it. But, Great Book? Not even close. The plot moves along, and the attempt to capture the vernacular echoes Twain. But I think Ellison got it right when he noted that Hurston’s work (both this book and Moses, Man of the Mountain) “though possessing technical competence, retains the blight of calculated burlesque that has marred most of her writing.” (That is in “Recent Negro Fiction,” New Masses 1941—the part after the comma get quoted everywhere on the internet, it is everywhere mistakenly stated to refer only to Their Eyes Were Watching God and the source is never mentioned—such is the internet.) Both parts of Ellison’s comment seem right—it is technically fine, but in the end, it is a novel which I find very hard to take seriously. It is all so contrived, like some giant morality play in one of those old time theaters where we are supposed to hiss at the villains and gasp at their villainies and cheer the hero when he trods onto the stage to rescue the damsel in distress. And then there is the shocking ending, which is pure contrivance and not terribly shocking, portraying itself as a moral dilemma, that when you think about it is no dilemma at all—Our heroine shoots and kills the man she loves when he becomes rabid and attacks her. Really now. If you wanted to make a real moral dilemma have him attack her without being rabid. But find the moral problem here: Someone you love is rabid and completely crazy. You find a loaded gun under his pillow. You see there are only three bullets, so you spin the chamber so the three blank chambers come first. He later points the gun at you. He pulls the trigger three times. He is about to pull the trigger the fourth time. Should you shoot him before he has time to pull the trigger the fourth time? Really? That’s the best you can do? If I asked a question like that in a tutorial, it would be laughed at for it absurd simplicity. And here we have a book which has Great Book pretensions which has that as the shocking conclusion? Calculated burlesque indeed.
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