A Bright Ray of Darkness

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This book is astounding in its ability to capture the visceral realities of being onstage and performing, particularly Shakespeare. The writing is fantastic, and the narrative and the characterisation are so true to life yet distant enough to be fiction. I wish I had a dollar for every self-indulgent, white, male, narcissistic, misogynist protagonist I’m supposed to find sympathetic because they’re an “artist. William is determined to tell the truth and shame the devil, but the teller of the tale always holds the reins of our sympathy, which may explain Hawke’s decision to narrate this story in the first person. A bracing meditation on fame and celebrity, and the redemptive, healing power of art; a portrait of the ravages of disappointment and divorce; a poignant consideration of the rites of fatherhood and manhood; a novel soaked in rage and sex, longing and despair; and a passionate love letter to the world of theater, A Bright Ray of Darkness showcases Ethan Hawke’s gifts as a novelist as never before.

It's about an actor (well, duh) performing Shakespeare ( Henry IV) on Broadway as he is coming off a divorce to a big-time pop singer.Quando stare su un palcoscenico ha il potere di snudare i sentimenti come un infallibile siero della verità; quando assumere un ruolo significa incarnarlo, recitare coincide col diventare sé stessi; quando mettere il sale sulle ferite serve ad attraversare il proprio dolore fino a raggiungerne l’origine. Well written with some extremely heterosexual scenes, but that doesn’t detract from the plot as they are infrequent and mostly flashbacks.

The consensus, he begins to hear, is that he must relinquish his unearned sense of specialness and stop trying to make sure everybody likes him. Like himself, the protagonist is a movie star struggling with marriage to a rock queen while he begins rehearsals for "Henry IV", his first Shakespeare play on Broadway. See our Remarkables Archive list for what is no longer in print, but which we are happy to track down.I kind of wish he weren’t a well-known actor because that gets in the way of him receiving the well-deserved literary admiration people have for, say, Jess Walter and Steve Toltz, whose books I would put on the same shelf next to this one. He is the author of Rules for a Knight, The Hottest State, Ash Wednesday and A Bright Ray of Darkness. Oder noch besser als Theaterstück; es wäre der Wahnsinn, vor allem wenn man die Inszenierung des Theaters tatsächlich auch so umsetzen könnte. At least some of it is autobiographical, since this circles around a production of Shakespeare's Henry IV in which 32 y.

And I only remember two actors from that movie -- Robin Williams as the teacher standing on the desk and the kid who ultimately offs himself at the end (tall, thin, dark haired, and most certainly not Ethan Hawke). Hawke rodea, desciende y se mete en la piel de sus personajes, adentrándose en las entrañas del teatro, donde un actor en apuros, tal vez reflejando al propio escritor, busca la vid de la redención y se abre camino para convertirse. Realistic characters, and a depressing close-up of a self-centred actor sitting on the self-destruct button, and his journey of self-discovery while his life implodes. It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance. La rabbia e l’ardore lo sostengono, insieme a un desiderio confuso di riscatto e di rivalsa che lotta contro la tentazione di lasciarsi semplicemente andare a fondo.I heard a great radio interview with Ethan Hawke last year around the time this book was published and made a mental note at the time to give the book a go. Der Hauptcharakter ist ein Filmstar, der mit Anfang 30 alles zu verlieren scheint: Seine Frau (ein Mega-Star) droht mit Scheidung, er wirkt verloren in einer Theaterproduktion und verliert sich fast selbst in der Dunkelheit. The actor and director, who made his screen debut at 15, has published several books during his acclaimed Hollywood career, and he recently produced and starred in a spectacular TV adaptation of James McBride’s “The Good Lord Bird. This is a really magnificent audiobook narrated by the man himself - truly entertaining and engaging, I loved listening to him, but - and it’s a big but - the book is brimming with toxic masculinity and cringey sex scenes. Hawke’s novel is auto-fiction (I’m presuming) about a movie star who has cheated on his rockstar wife, faces the public fallout from same, is about to make his Broadway debut (in Henry IV) and is in a spiralling existential crisis entirely of his own making fuelled by drink, drugs and self-sabotage.

This guy has more Yoda-figures in his life than most of us have Chewbacca-figures on our hardwood floors (rug burn joke). I could live the rest of my days without reading another woe-is-me, pretentious, downward-spiral novel written by a white, cis, hetero man. This reads like Kerouac fan fiction, the kind of crap that only got published because the author is famous. This recycled gossip is tiresome, but what’s most irritating about “A Bright Ray of Darkness” is that it’s really good.When William arrives at his New York hotel, the front desk greets him: “Wow, look who it is, Hester Prynne herself. Recognizing the elements of his life that were always just puffs of fantasy is an excruciating process — harder than getting stabbed to death eight times a week. And then there’s the play, in which he’s to act the part of Sir Henry Percy (known as Hotspur), a role Hawke himself played on stage back in 2003. From the rehearsals to performances to the teardown, we see William in the show and learning in life.