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Short Story Project's Spring Performance: "Stylites Anonymous" on Stage Directed by Olivia Facini, based on Maureen McGranaghan's award-winning short story.

My short story "Stylites Anonymous" is receiving a theatrical presentation next Friday, April 24, in NYC, directed by Olivia Facini at P&T Knitwear as part of the Short Story Project.
www.eventbrite.com/e/short-stor...

“Enthusiastically he set out for the metaled road…” Our good friend the metaled road gets so many mentions, I feel it becomes a character. In the musical, it would definitely have its own song. #satantangotogether.

"Because only that which has been conceptualized can happen."

Delayed finish for me due to some unexpected events here on the homefront, but...wow. What to make of that? Is the doctor pulling the strings? From within the narrative (since he's part of it)?

#satantangotogether

I've been doing that one too. My first Naipaul.

Irimiás returns, remarkably (with another dramatic entry). "Button your coats, on with your hoods and hats, hold on tight, and feel free to turn your back on the great hope of your future because if you don't you'll get the full force of this filthy rain in your faces..." Apt. #satantangotogether

I think I'm going to adopt this line when broaching the tricky subject of payment!

Great sentence--and for these people certainly true. There are other hours of the day/night that are worse for me.

"The low hum continued, no nearer, no further away..." Futaki and now Sandor can hear it.

"...above the marshy lifeless ground, a white transparent veil was billowing in a particularly dignified fashion."

Heavenly Vision? Hallucination? IV (chapters descending)
#SatantangoTogether

"...the old tower...still had a certain grandeur about it as well as an air of timeless vigilance, vigilance having been part of its original purpose." I wonder about this vigilance... What is the context for all of this? #SatantangoTogether

"...the whole 'manor'...had a silent, desperate feel to it, because though the higher reaches of the building were still uncovered, it was clear that within a few years it would surrender to the ruthless advance of the vegetation." Like the spiders. #SatantangoTogether

A little like Molly's monologue at the end of Ulysses. But are everyone's dreams running together? I lost track of whose mind was whose in the last pages.

Yes, it's an old story... just dispiriting to watch it play out.

I have the black cover, which is missing that passage.

Good point. I could see that happening.

Oh wow--that's interesting. Just a few pages--and this is one of them! Thanks for looking into it. Wondering at what point in the translation and/or editing process those passages got edited out.

The landlord seems to get it too... Going his own way? I think science probably should study his supernaturally active spiders. 🤣

Mrs. Halics' brightly colored butterflies are another odd burst of color in this gray world, in the wake of Irimiás' departing red tie and yellow shoes. Hallucination? Futaki alone seems sane in this departure, though he was the first to commit everything to Irimiás. #satantangotogether

When I finished the chapt on Saturday, I felt I couldn't keep reading if Irimiás just runs off with all these people's money. Hoping to be surprised, though I can't imagine this is going to end well, regardless. #satantangotogether

I don't seem to have it. There isn't a paragraph that begins that way. It's the ND edition from 2012. Very odd. The first mention of Mrs. H is when she's peeking out from behind the handkerchief with keen curiosity later in chapt.

I cannot find this passage...

Yes, a man is looking back on his childhood amidst his mother and aunts. He plays himself as a child too, and it works, perfectly, the way he briefly enters his own memories. Only theatre can do that with past and present, in my opinion. One of its strengths, amidst the genres.

We've come back to him after 130 pgs. Not sure why he starts with him either. Maybe because he's less eccentric than some of the others, more the everyman?

Again, Irish drama occurs to me, this time Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa, in which the sisters dance just before the act break. Similar abandon (and joy), though in Satantango, it verges on maniacal. (And then everyone lapses into "peaceful snoring" and spiders take over.) #satantangotogether

They dance the Satantango at the end of Part I! Halics, that flat tire of a man, cuts quite a figure "in his unique moment of glory with his demonic caperings around the puffing and whooping figure of Mrs. Kráner." What an image. Good for him.
#satantangotogether

And this cast is really suffering from stasis...subject to the spiders, real and metaphorical. Covered in webs, forming fast around them. #satantangotogether

"Fortunately...as long as he stayed open and people shifted from place to place, the spiders couldn't 'go around wrecking the place': even they weren't capable of 'covering anything that moved in cobwebs...'" So much subtext: spiders moving in at first sign of stillness (stasis). #satantangotogether

"Dizzy, he leant against the wall of the bar...and just stood, stupid and drained under the pitiless power of the rain seeing but not understanding the unstable world around him until...he suddenly noticed he was sober again." Futaki--yet emblematic of everyone in this book. #satantangotogether

This is great.

I somehow doubt that the arrival of Irimiás and Petrina is going to "put an end to years of 'wretched misery'..." But it's something to look forward to. Meanwhile, the landlord keeps turning up the heat so that Mrs. Schmidt will take off her clothes. This is quite a crew. #satantangotogether