Serendipity
The ever-excellent tilivenn thought I might enjoy this paper on Ben Jonson. So I thought: so I went along. Elegant seminar room, with an Edwardian Renaissance fireplace and an admirable oak table the size of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Round it, fourteen women and one guy. When it came my turn to introduce myself, I gave my library bona fides; then said I'd written a Jacobean revenge procedural starring Ben Jonson. That got a gratifying response-a murmur, with here and there almost a bounce of glee-capped by the presenter, who said, Oh, are you [Nine]? I've read Moonwise!
The paper was on Jonson's last comedy, The Magnetic Lady--which I confess I don't know. A fascinating reading of it. I was listening for story ideas, and got some: gynocracy, smock-secrets, cunning, the Danaides, Ben as jug, his emblem of the broken compass, Thesmophoriazusae. Oddly, I heard a few things that I hadn't known about Ben but had already made up about him. (Love it when that happens.) Oh yes, and Dryden wrote SF. Who knew?
Instructed ships shall sail to quick Commerce
By which remotest Regions are alli’d;
Which makes one City of the Universe;
Where some may gain, and all may be suppli’d.
Then we upon our Globes last verge shall go,
And view the Ocean leaning on the Sky:
From thence our rolling Neighbours we shall know,
And on the Lunar world securely pry.
Afterward, I gave copies of Cry Murder! to the presenter (who said she'd love to have coffee with me) and to the Chair*, who invited me to dinner then and there. Six as of us, over Indian: as lively and brilliant a dinner party as I've known. There was the Jonsonian; her friend from Yale, a Nabokovian; the Chair, a down-to-earth and witty don; a woman who teaches rhetoric through Shakespeare at MIT; and the one guy, a cheerful young fellow who does Old Church Slavonic. I gave them one or two of my party pieces and a sudden fantasy about the Mass Pike singing travellers to its stream: a vision of silver dolphins leaping down the lanes, backed with Arions. At which the Chair blinked, and praised my emblematic, early modern mind.
So behind in my packing. So worth it.
Off to Farthing Party.
Nine
*I said I wasn't a Jonson scholar, and they both said, So? Stoppard isn't a Shakespearian.
The paper was on Jonson's last comedy, The Magnetic Lady--which I confess I don't know. A fascinating reading of it. I was listening for story ideas, and got some: gynocracy, smock-secrets, cunning, the Danaides, Ben as jug, his emblem of the broken compass, Thesmophoriazusae. Oddly, I heard a few things that I hadn't known about Ben but had already made up about him. (Love it when that happens.) Oh yes, and Dryden wrote SF. Who knew?
Instructed ships shall sail to quick Commerce
By which remotest Regions are alli’d;
Which makes one City of the Universe;
Where some may gain, and all may be suppli’d.
Then we upon our Globes last verge shall go,
And view the Ocean leaning on the Sky:
From thence our rolling Neighbours we shall know,
And on the Lunar world securely pry.
Afterward, I gave copies of Cry Murder! to the presenter (who said she'd love to have coffee with me) and to the Chair*, who invited me to dinner then and there. Six as of us, over Indian: as lively and brilliant a dinner party as I've known. There was the Jonsonian; her friend from Yale, a Nabokovian; the Chair, a down-to-earth and witty don; a woman who teaches rhetoric through Shakespeare at MIT; and the one guy, a cheerful young fellow who does Old Church Slavonic. I gave them one or two of my party pieces and a sudden fantasy about the Mass Pike singing travellers to its stream: a vision of silver dolphins leaping down the lanes, backed with Arions. At which the Chair blinked, and praised my emblematic, early modern mind.
So behind in my packing. So worth it.
Off to Farthing Party.
Nine
*I said I wasn't a Jonson scholar, and they both said, So? Stoppard isn't a Shakespearian.