"Yet because she didn't conceal herself the conversation was never real: it was the conversation of people imitating writers having a conversation."

#TheBard_ProblemPlays #MeasureforMeasure_2025 Day 8, Jan.2- Act II s1 from line 112 "ESCALUS. I think no less" to end of scene, ESCALUS. Come, sir. [Exeunt]

Thank you! I am re-reading the Penguin UK edition 2020.

#TheBard_ProblemPlays Day 7, Jan. 1, 2026- New Year's Day (day off) CASSIUS. I am fresh of spirit and resolved to meet all perils very constantly. Act V s1.99 Folger edition of Julius Caesar

#TheBard_ProblemPlays Week 2 begins Jan. 2- It has sometimes been argued that Shakespeare was becoming bored with comedy's conventional happy ending in multiple marriages. Perhaps this is a parody of a comic ending. RSC intro. #MeasureforMeasure_2025

#rachelcusktogether The circularity of the hotel returns to another Cuskian theme: non progression in life, back to Outline: 'she l...asks herself whether they are running towards something or away. If she looks long enough she sees... they are simply running around in circles.' [from Outline]

"...old houses that had been thoroughly refurbished with modern conveniences, and I wonder whether the same principal might be applied to novels; and if so, whether the blunting or loss of our own instinct for beauty was responsible for it." 37 #beautifulinconveniences

"A degree of self-deception, she said, was an essential part of the talent for living." 34 soduku:literature = porn:artfilm theaters #RachelCuskTogether #Kudos FINALLY getting good.

I am hoping it means worn binding or yellowed pages, rather than angrily-underlined in pen (yep, still not-yet-recovered from a long ago used book, bought online.)

I just posted the page guide & a link to our site. Yay for a new year of reading! www.joiedevivre9.com/nyrbwomen26....

“We must not make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape, till custom make it Their perch and not their terror.” #TheBard_ProblemPlays

ESCALUS Let us be keen, and rather cut a little, Than fall, and bruise to death.  #MeasureForMeasure_2025 II,1,5-6 Shakespeare (Arden) #TheBard_ProblemPlays Magistrate Escalus and Constable Elbow meet in Measure for Measure, woodcut, early 17th century. The Granger Collection, New York

#TheBard_ProblemPlays #Measureformeasure_2025 Day 6, 12/31- Act II s1 to line 111 "ANGELO. Hoping you'll find good cause to whip them all. [Exit]"

#rachelcusktogether 'I was actually glad [that Pilot was dead], because it felt like without him we were going to have to admit what we truly felt.' Pilot is a guardian of the status quo. In Cusk's writing, dogs become containers or feelings, situations. Take them out and something changes.

How's #Discuss_DeWitt_2025 Loved the Gould rumination: what you can do physically is not the thing that's interesting. 158 I re-read the Chad section- how does a person cope with that kind of inconceivable situation? 154-6

#TheBard_ProblemPlays #Measureformeasure_2025 Day 5, 12/30- Act I s5 ISABELLA. And have you nuns no further privileges? to ISABELLA. Good sir, adieu. [Exeunt]

#rachelcusktogether Engrossed by the story of Pilot's death - but I did make myself stop before the family aftermath. The way the airplane neighbour feels such a strong identity with the dog, that the dog is a surrogate him. Cusk's dog stories are for me some of her most powerful writing.

DUKE. And liberty plucks justice by the nose, The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum. . . . When evil deeds have their permissive pass And not the punishment. Act I s4 #TheBard_ProblemPlays #Measureformeasure_2025 14 years let slip- 4 seems very short. Seems.

Started Rivers yesterday and already on p.160- intriguing tales of two children in different lands at different times, facing similar isolation and identity questions. Loving it so far! Yes, I'd love to read Ferrante together- read the first many years ago & have been collecting her work...

#TheBard_ProblemPlays #MeasureforMeasure_2025 Day 4, 12/29- Act I s4 DUKE. No, holy father, throw away that thought. to DUKE. If power change purpose, what our seemers be.

"provisional manliness, like a soldier in an uniform" cusk gets to the heart of a character in a flash when she wants. when she doesn't, she lingers and lingers. #rachelcusktogether

Also: what is it with Faye and strange men on planes? This one is a bore so far. Relieved to also read THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY by Elif Shafak with my neighborhood book club these days. In addition to MEASURE FOR MEASURE #TheBard_ProblemPlays

I LOVE HELEN DEWITT - just got The English Understand Wool (2022) for Xmas from my son. Now I have all of her novels except most recent (that Ann mentions here). Read The Last Samurai twice a few years ago- a perfect novel.

Just read in another novel (Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai): "It is harder than you might think to stop leading an existence." Amen. After so much intense purpose, retirement has to be disorienting for Faye's neighbor on this flight. #rachelcusktogether

CLAUDIO. From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty: As surfeit is the father of much fast, So every scope by the immoderate use Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue, Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, A thirsty evil, and when we drink we die. Act I s3 #TheBard_ProblemPlays Remorse?

#TheBard_ProblemPlays #MeasureforMeasure_2025 Day 3, 12/28- Act I s3 CLAUDIO. Fellow, why dost thou show me thus to th'world? Bear me to prison, where I am committed. to CLAUDIO. Come, officer, away!

How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what days seen! What old December’s bareness every where! Shakespeare, Sonnet 97 #BookWormSat #ShakespeareSunday Harlem: NYC Blizzard 27 December 2025

Reality crushes Fanny's dear memory of her childhood home in Portsmouth. III,9 #MansfieldPark Austen asks: better to be physically comfortable as a servantile relation in a safe, luxurious Mansfield Park? or free in a poor, crammed, chaotic hovel with indifferent parents & too many siblings?

#rachelcusktogether His well-worn stories told through 'the genial mask of the raconteur' 'The skill, I saw, lay in skirting close enough to what appeared to be the truth without allowing what you actually felt... to regain its power over you' This is what the narrator does too, in a different way

FIRST GENTLEMAN. Heaven grant us its peace, but not the kIng of Hungary's! Act I s2 #TheBard_ProblemPlays #Measureformeasure_2025 "peace...Hungary's" plays on the notion of a 'hungry peace', during which jobless soldiers struggled to feed themselves. RSC note.

#TheBard_ProblemPlays Measure for Measure Day 2, 12/27- Act I s2 LUCIO. If the duke with the other dukes come not to composition with the King of Hungary, why then all the dukes fall upon the king. to POMPEY. Here comes Signior Claudio, led by the provost to prison, and there's Madam Juliet. [Ex.]

#StevieSmith #poet #novelist

I'm reading the somber Mansfield Park for the first time- and loving it as a culmination of the Austen universe of women biding their time in the 19th century patriarchal world. Mary Crawford is definitely kin to Elizabeth Bennett, Emma and Jane Fairfax! #Austen_250 #NeelMukherjee #TheGuardian

The memory is sometimes so retentive,so serviceable, so obedient--at others, so bewildered & so weak--& at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control!--We are to be sure a miracle every way--but our powers of recollecting & of forgetting, do seem peculiarly past finding out. #MansfieldPark #Austen

#Measure for Measure and text inconsistencies From the #RSC introduction to 2d edition.

DUKE. ...I love the people, But do not like to stage me to their eyes: Though it do well, I do not relish well Their loud applause and aves vehement, Nor do I think the man of safe discretion That does affect it. Once more, fare you well. Act I s1 #TheBard_ProblemPlays MFM

#TheBard_ProblemPlays Measure for Measure: Day 1, 12/26/25- Act I s1 Location. Vienna DUKE. Escalus. ESC. My lord. DUKE. Of government the property to unfold Would seem in me t'affect speech and discourse, to ESC. I'll wait upon your honour. [Exeunt]

#NYRBWomen25 #Teffi Memories - Chapter 6 "So what if they’re writers! You’re not going to see inside them and on the outside they’re no different from me. Ri-ight?"

#RichardIII_2025 The latest on Richard III- #Shakespeare #Legitimacy #DNA www.youtube.com/watch?v=96ag...

I like the description of this photo in relation to Cusk's work: 'solarisation' (sounds astrological like 'transit'); 'it involves exposing a partially developed photograph to light at an early stage of its processing' = a good description of these books. 'halo-like outlines' = yes!

#Memory is all we have at the end of the game

Really loved this book; Outline now feels like a prelude to Transit.

Need to re-watch excellent biopic of #Lee Miller directed by esteemed cinematographer Ellen Kuras starring Kate Winslet. Like your cover better than mine!!

For a moment everyone stared, mesmerised, at the row of weeping, incandescent children. 'A little row of martyrs,' Gaby said, amused. 'I give up,' Lawrence said, sitting heavily back down. 250 #RachelCuskTogether #Transit Reminded of other children's tears in Gaza, USA, Israel, Sudan....

'You read, you take the consequences' #RachelCuskTogether #Transit Applies to a kid's diary, this book, anything written by a human being.

#RachelCuskTogether Day 80 "It was another year before their father moved out of the house, but if I had to locate the moment when the marriage had ended it would have been then, on that dark evening in the kitchen, when he wasn't even there." I find the word "locate" an interesting choice.

"A very wet dark day. ... By the way, I'm rejected by the Times once more.... ...we are still far from getting our [suffrage] rights." 1918 Apr 10 #Diaries of Virginia #Woolf

"They were so carefully and beautifully wrapped that the sight of them had caused me to feel a disproportionate sadness, as though what lay beneath the wrapping was not some toy or game but innocence itself, the innocence of good intentions..." 229 #RachelCuskTogether #Transit #Innocence