E.M. It is not wit...It is truth. The paper is not the point."
VIVIAN. It isn't?
E.M. Vivian. You're a bright young woman. Use your intelligence. Don't go back to the library. Go out. Enjoy yourself with your friends. Hmm? (15)
Atlantan Margaret Edson's only play to date (and based on this profile in the NY Times, probably her last play) was much acclaimed when it was first produced in New York 1998. Since, it was revived to great reviews in 2012, starring Cynthia Nixon of Sex and The City fame. Clark Cloyd told me of taking one of his classes when he was at Lovett to an Atlanta production that stunned him in ways he hadn't expected. I haven't taught this in many years, mainly because I don't think I did it well back then. I had to grow up some. We'll see if that's happened. This is maybe not the way you might have thought we would begin the reading in the class—a play about the last days of a middle-aged English professor (I'm not giving anything away: Vivian lets us know right away:"It's not my intention to give away the plot; but I think I die in the end" [6]). But I thought let's start at the end and work our way backwards. What did the wise one once say? There are two certainties in life—death and taxes? I haven't yet found a text about taxes, though no doubt one exists.
So:
1. Reaction to the first twenty pages? What jumped at you, struck you, in particular in these pages? In fact, what line or lines jumped out at you and why?
2. The narrative voice of this is novel, to say the least. Vivian Bearing is our host: there is no fourth wall as she addresses us, acknowledges her role in the action, and says right off the bat, "They've give me less than two hours" and "then: curtain" (6-7). Maybe this is a cute device—though soon you'll see there's little that's very cute in the play. So what do you think? Why this approach? And to what effect?
3. Vivian Bearing: how would you describe her, characterize her? Is she likeable? Something else?
Write a couple hundred words answer these three questions. And take a look at the scene from the Mike Nichols/Emma Thompson film from 2001 of Vivian and her mentor E.M. Ashford:
See you all tomorrow.
1. I think that the opening monologue sets the scene in a wonderfully creative, powerful way. The breach of the barrier between reality and the play that occurs when Vivian begins to talk, house lights still on, to the audience. The audience members (and I, as a reader) are immediately drawn into her story. She begins with the greeting, “Hi. How are you feeling today? Great.” (5), not waiting for a reply to the question as so many people do (including Jason, as we see later in the play). The last lines of the first page are simultaneously funny and profound: “I am waiting for the moment when someone asks me this question and I’m dead. I’m a little sorry I’ll miss that.” (5). What drew me into this play is just that—its ability to be both deep and funny. It is the perfect blend of light and dark, the humor softening the death enough to make it palatable and, I think, enjoyable.
ReplyDelete2. I think that the demolition of the fourth wall makes the play even more provocative, even more moving. By erasing the barrier separating the audience from the characters in the play, the audience becomes a part of the play and is thus more moved by Vivian’s story. She is addressing us, we are not birds watching her life—or should I say death—play out but rather members, involved in the action. Breaking the fourth wall is a technique that is often done very badly in plays and can come across (at least to me) as unprofessional and out of place in the story. However, in this play it adds to the story rather than detracting from it. The play would not be nearly as good as it is if this technique were not used.
3. I like Vivian Bearing. She is businesslike, to-the-point, very intelligent, and generally a caring person. She devoted her life to teaching, which shows that she wants to help others succeed. As a seventeenth century poetry expert, she has an extensive vocabulary and knowledge of poems that can articulate ideas and emotions differently, and in my opinion more effectively, than dialogue in a play can. She is smart and observant, which makes her a great narrator. She is also lonely and stoic, woman who is not used to being comforted and pitied. This makes her situation that much more powerful because she isn’t the kind of woman people usually feel sorry for and she is clearly uncomfortable being cared for—she would much rather be alone with a poem and her fantastic brain.
1. The flashback scene with Vivian and her professor struck me as particularly important to the thematic development of the play. The central idea in that scene, the concept that the professor is trying to impress onto Vivian, is that life and death are separated only by a comma. They aren’t worlds apart, as the exclamation mark would indicate; they are only separated by a pause. I don’t think this is particularly poignant, but I get the feeling that punctuation is going to be a recurring theme in this book. This prediction is also informed by the semicolon in the title, which is clearly an intentional reference to the Donne sonnet in question. The introduction scene in which she discusses various greetings also jumped out at me. It’s incredible how much information about Vivian’s character we are able to glean from that one page of monologue. We learn that she’s highly analytical, observant, and darkly humorous. And yet, none of this information comes from a third person description of Vivian; the writing is much more subtle and requires inference from the reader.
ReplyDelete2. The narrative voice of the story certainly sets it apart from any play I’ve ever read. The narrator, Vivian, seems both omniscient and out-of-the-loop. She can navigate between time periods and see into her future, yet her view of whether or not she will die seems hazy. It’s interesting to me that the play starts with the end then proceeds as a retelling of action that has already transpired. I’ve heard that stories that proceed in this fashion tend to be theme-driven, as opposed to plot-driven, since all the action has already been revealed. I look forward to seeing if that is the case in this play.
3. I abhor Vivian Bearing. In fact, my dislike of her made the passage difficult to read without annotating furiously and sarcastically. She represents everything I hate about academia: arrogance, self-importance, and ignorance of other fields. She treats everybody with little to no respect, constantly spouts her own accomplishments, and compulsively tries to impress her own immense value and importance onto those around her. Her ignorance of other fields is nicely summarized with the quote, “Is anyone doing research on cancer?” During her flashback to her college days, she reveals that she was too burdened by her intellect and enlightened mind to even interact with her fellow students, who were too far beneath her to even register. However, I’m keeping an open mind going forward and hoping that she demonstrates some redeeming qualities.
Don't hold back, Emma. I'm glad you're responding to her as viscerally as you are. Vivian is not warm nor cuddly. I wonder if she couldn't be to get to her position in academia...
Delete1. The lines where Vivian explained that the play would contain irony and humor, and then the line when she explained that in the end she would die stood out to me. It showed that the play was going to make a direct connection to the audience. She already told us the end result, so we can look for meaning in all of scenes that occur before her death because we know what is coming. It was also a clever way to infuse Vivian's knowledge of literature into the play and show that her interest in literature will likely be an important factor throughout. Also, by sharing that she would die quickly, the play seems like it will able to avoid the more overdone route of a person trying to make their life meaningful before it's too late.
ReplyDelete2. Vivian is a very sharp character. By allowing her to speak directly to the audience, we can hear her thoughts, which seem to often contain clever insights. This approach truly centers the play around her. It allows for her to connect the past to the current situation easily, which she has already done by sharing the scene with her professor. The effect of this connection with audience draws you closer to Vivian. Even if her personality is quirky and possibly frustrating, by seeing the world from her perspective, we empathize more with her. We can make discoveries at the same time as her, and hear her commentary.
3. I would not call Vivian likeable. Although at the moment she is going through trauma, she speaks to other people with an air of self importance and condescension. When the technicians were trying to do their job, she just spouted off facts about herself. I understand that when Vivian shared all that knowledge she may have been in a fragile emotional state, and she could have been trying to show her importance to the world, but to the technicians she must have seemed out of touch with reality and conceited. However, she is driven and intelligent. Already we can see that she worked tirelessly to become successful and knowledgeable.
1. So far I like it. It’s very different from anything else I’ve read mostly because it’s a play and the main character is talking at me. What struck me most was Vivian’s reaction (or her lack of reaction) to her diagnosis. It was really interesting that while Dr. Kelekian was saying all the long cancer-related words, Vivian hardly seemed focused on the meaning of what he saying, more on the words themselves. She didn’t seem to take what he was saying seriously, or maybe she did but it was easy for her to accept. “I should have asked more questions cause I know there’s gonna be a test,” [12] says Vivian after her doctor has finished diagnosing her and left. Maybe she is going for a grim kind of humor, but I don’t think so. She’s taking things almost unnaturally lightly, she has a unique perspective on her life and her death.
ReplyDelete2. I think one of the main purposes of this type of narration is to characterize Vivian Bearing. The play seems to be completely about her because no other characters seem like they will be important except for E. M. Ashford but only because of the effect his words had on Vivian. Because the play is only about her, it is important for her character to be thoroughly displayed, and to do that, this kind of narration works best.
3. Vivian Bearing is almost excessively intellectual, she seems alone but doesn’t appear to be lonely, she is proud of her career, and she seems unafraid of her upcoming death. I don’t like her that much but she doesn’t bother me too much either. She seems really unaware of other people like she didn’t remember her student Jason at all, and during all her interactions with other people she is babbling to the audience with thoughts that mostly concern her academic career. If she naturally doesn’t have any want or need to form connections with people I don’t have a problem with that as long is it doesn’t hurt people who expect to be able to have a relationship with her.
1. What I really loved about Wit thus far is simply how it is written. Vivian introduces herself bluntly, yet with the sort of invariable familiarity that so many talented story tellers practice. Yet, this feels much less like a story and much more like her own internal monologue, which she is generously sharing with us simply because she doesn’t really care what we think. So far, I am very much enjoying myself, especially because of the various expressions of (darkly) humorous dramatic irony. She’s having much more fun listening to her own thoughts than she is giving any attention at all to the doctor telling her of her own death. I’m particularly attached to the first page, in which she describes to us the humor inherent in asking someone, “How are you feeling today?” when they are very obviously not doing well, “I am waiting for the moment when someone asks me this question and I am dead. I’m a little sorry I’ll miss that.” The humor is dry, the text is succinct, and I am lucky enough to be able to read it.
ReplyDelete2. This approach to the text makes it feel fairly personal, as well as impersonal simultaneously. She sounds much more like someone telling you a story, than simply hearing a story being told. She is the important part, and Vivian seems much more real than nearly any narrator I’ve read before. It evokes a sense of presence, as though she is reading the book along with you, and adding little observations about herself as she goes. It will, I think, make her disappearance at the end much more impacting. Not only a story will end, but the story teller herself, and I can’t imagine that it will feel anything but silent.
3. Vivian is, unapologetically and invariably, herself. She is herself, and one does or does not like her as they choose, but she will not change just to humor someone. Regardless of the possibility of offense, she says what she thinks, as she displays in her “Doubtful, ‘Really?’” when she is informed that a student received A’s in the three hardest classes the school had to offer. She acknowledges her own mind, though not in a humble, courteous way, filled with compliments to anyone willing to recognize it: she knows she’s smart, and has utterly no hesitation about flaunting it in a matter-of-fact sort of way. Vivian revels in dissecting words and text to look for hidden meanings, digging through the doctor’s speech as he informs her of her terminal illness, “‘Insidious means undetectable at an-‘ ‘Insidious means treacherous.’ ‘Shall I continue?’ ‘By all means.’” Thorough to the point of missing the point, she favors her own exploration than Kelekian’s attempted explanation. She is, perhaps, attempting to cope with real-life danger using her well-honed literary analysis skills. She is comfortable with that. In these ways she sets forth her first impression, describing a very solid and (seemingly) easily summarized individual: curt, clean, rigorous, and self-possessing. Whether you like her or not is entirely your fault, and I doubt she’d care either way.
Erin, hold that thought about whether or not she would care about what we thought. I get what makes you say that. Of course perhaps by not caring Vivian is where she is when the play begins: alone.
ReplyDeleteI think what jumped out at me the most was how for a person who prides herself on being a “doctor of philosophy” and of Donne nonetheless, doesn’t seen have lived yet. When she describes her accomplishments, they’re all ones of the professorial variety. She has no family, no one to tell of her illness. She is someone who spends every day searching through Donne’s work yet she hasn’t grasped its purpose, being not only to inform of the meaning of life and death but to express in urgency how fleeting it is. The professor she herself idolized couldn’t even get her out of the library...and now it’s too late. That’s what struck me the most: her character’s seemingly incomprehensible ignorance about the very topic she considers herself an expert in.
ReplyDeleteI think that this approach has something to do with her having no real family or friends to speak of. She has no one for us to watch her connect with so that leaves us, the audience to be her confidant. Part of this character’s central vein is that she is alone. She has lived a life of that won’t be remembered beyond her contributions to a very specific niche of analytical literature. If what we consider life are the connections we make to other people and the ways we affect them and make them feel, then this woman is going to die without having really lived. I suppose that’s why the audience plays this role for her, because there’s no one else to do it.
I do find her likable, but not quite in the sense of me ever wanting to know her personally, but that’s probably because it feels as though I do already know her. She reminds me so strongly of one of my mom’s friends, it’s uncanny. Vivian, like many other academics, is wrapped up in her very particular field of study to the point at which nothing else exists. Cancer...death? They’re no big deal when the hypothetical encounters with death Donne describes are there for her to analyze. I wouldn’t call her self centered, but her work has become the focal point of her life, and it would seem as though the rest of the world merely exists as backdrop. I can say that I like her because she reminds me of people I deeply care for, but at the same time, she’s wasted her life studying death when all this life is going on without her, and I have very little sympathy for that considering her focus of study was very literally on the meaning of life and death.
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ReplyDeleteThis play reads beautifully. The dual narratives- her battle with chemotherapy, written in the medical vernacular, and her acceptance of her death, revolving around the English language canon reflect the struggles we all face in our day to day life: the physical and the mental. This phenomenon is exemplified in the text on pages 8 and 9, when Doctor Kelekian and Vivian talk over each other, involved in their own worlds on how to grapple with the discovery over Vivian's cancer. But the focus of the play, how to stand resolute in the face of death with as little as the spoken word, a mere breath, drew me in. Most books I have read about death, or have it as a overarching theme, are predictably sad, dismal, and oppressive. But the humor throughout the play adds fresh life to the discussion. Death is unfortunate, to be sure. But as Professor Ashford says, “Life, death. Soul, God. Past, present. Not insuperable barriers, not semicolons, just a comma.” If life and death are so connected, shouldn't one be able to laugh at death as one does at life?
ReplyDeleteI believe this approach is used to help us connect and get closer to Vivian. We are placed inside her head, no barriers separate us from what she thinks, feels, experiences, remembers. This additional broken barrier may help remind us that we might not be so distant from Vivian's fate. I do not think this effect is cute. Rather, I find it scary. Despite the humor buried beneath the language, Vivian seems rather frank with us. She doesn't have an agenda. She is laid bare. We are at her whim to what we take out of this play; she has complete agency. To this effect, I feel as though I am watching a jump scare scene in a horror film, and I know something bad is going to happen, but I can't close my eyes. Vivian's death will not be distant. It will be close and personal.
Vivian is admirable. She describes herself as uncompromising; she has impeccable scholarly standards and demands the “full dose every time.” She entertains herself and the audience in the face of death, and never abandons her skill with the English language. She shows us that death doesn't take away who we are in life.
A jump scene in a horror movie. Interesting, Stuart. I'm curious to hear you say more about this tomorrow.
Delete1. I loved the whole opening monologue, but what most stuck out to me about it is the line, "I was dismayed to discover that the play would contain elements of . . . Humor" [6]. Vivian is almost satirizing herself and her stern, professorial manner. She is somewhat serious about this distaste, but also recognizes that it's funny. She's making a joke about disliking jokes, right after discussing that she regrets the irony in it. Throughout the monologue she blends the seriousness of her situation with some humor. Maybe she does this to set us at ease and not out of some persisting positivity and optimism she keeps up despite having terminal cancer, but either way this demonstrates both awareness of herself and an ability to keep up some level of good spirits in pretty dire straights.
ReplyDelete2. This is very much about one character. It's about her death. Vivian is already a bit of an imposing, hard to approach figure. When you put her in such a hard to approach position, stage four ovarian metastatic cancer, it's hard to connect. Breaking the fourth wall pulls the audience in in a way that wouldn't be possible without doing this, and fleshes out the character of Vivian Bearing past the severe academic.
3. Vivian is not very approachable, but I find her likeable. She is very clearly confident and self-sufficient, to the point that she could be seen as arrogant. She does, however, seem to recognize her own faults. As I said before, she seems to satirize herself, and is unafraid to remember E. M. Ashford's criticism of her paper. Vivian is proud of herself, but she recognizes her own sense of self importance and makes fun of herself some for that.
1. What jumped out at me was her response to being diagnosed with cancer. She had a very underwhelming reaction which was really different from what's portrayed in the media. Typically someone finds out that they have cancer and they're hysterical and can't stop crying or something a bit more expressive, but Vivian simply has to sit down, the same reaction she has when her professor tells her to write her paper over again. I think this almost made me a bit disinterested but honestly now that I think about it, her response was kind of relatable. It made me think about times when I've been told some really bad news and my reaction either never hit me, or it hit me later when I least expected it to.
ReplyDelete2. I think her approach reciprocates how she's feeling in the moment and how fast everything is happening for her. There's really no time for her to really think about anything. It's either: choose this option or you die. I think her approach to Vivian's life makes the play seem less dramatic and more realistic. I also think this is a representation of who Vivian is as a person: very straight to the point, blunt, serious. She hates the fact that humor was being considered being put into her play and critically analyzes everything. I think the way everything is so abrupt is a really nice way of portraying ideas in a really overwhelming, fast paced situation.
3. I guess echoing my response to the previous question, I'd say she's a very critical and analytical person who's constantly contemplating and examining her circumstances and reflecting on what this all means. She's very thoughtful and puts things in perspective, not only for herself, but other people, picking their brains and putting herself in their shoes. I wouldn't necessarily say I like her (only because I haven't read that much about her) but I also wouldn't say I dislike her. She's a very neutral person, constantly thinking and judging.
1. I think Wit did an amazing job of pulling me in with its dark humor. On the first page, Vivian addresses death and the very real possibility of her premature death in such a nonchalant manner with a little hint of sadness that we get to see part of how she's dealing with her diagnosing. “I'm waiting for the moment when someone asks me this question and I am dead. I'm a little sorry I'll miss that.”. That one line was very telling and can and does have a huge impact on the audience (especially since she is addressing them directly). I found it had a delayed effect on me because at first, I snickered, but then it became clear to me that though it was funny, it was the sad truth that she was living with.
ReplyDelete2. I normally don't like when plays tear down the barrier between the world of the play and reality because they're often unnecessary and end up taking away from the play instead of adding onto it. It always seemed a bit of a childish thing because it would always seem like an interactive activity which isn't what I want in a play. Wit on the hand, makes that connection between Vivian and the audience almost essential because it gives the audience a presence in the action without making it feel like a scavenger hunt. I felt invested in Vivian and her diagnoses like I was her friend who was accompanying her everywhere she went.
3. Though I do feel like I am invested in Vivian, I wouldn't describe her as likeable. I find her off putting, and too condescending. She wouldn't stop talking about who she is and what she does during the whole scene with the technicians even though they really couldn't have cared less. She mentioned that she had a Ph.D. again and again and didn't really seem to get the hint that to the medical professionals, it didn't make a difference in regards to her situation. She's so unaware with what's going on around her that it's maddening. However, I actually prefer that she is this way; it's refreshing to not have to love the main character to care about what they're going through. It raised the question of whether or not our feelings about a character, deems how we relate to their pain.
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ReplyDelete1. The dialogue between E.M. and Vivian struck me because of the insight it gave us into Vivian's character. Vivian had worked on Donne nonstop and understood him, but as E.M. said, "the point is not the paper." Knowing about Donne has no utility if you don't apply it to your own life. On a larger scale, Vivian knows so much but at the same time she knows so little about relationships and family. She has no husband, no mentionable friends, and no parents or children. This paradox might contribute to the fact that the play is seemingly devoid of emotion. Yes, there is some dry humor but we don't feel sadness, resentment, or any other typical emotion that might come with a possible death sentence.
ReplyDelete2. Edson's approach pushes you into a character that otherwise would be very inaccessible. If we don't have access to memories of Vivian's past and her thoughts as the events of the play unfold, she seems very one dimensional. Adding her thoughts and memories helps give the audience a better picture. Also, the way the narrative transcends time gives a harsher context to the introduction. Seeing a cancer-ridden patient on stage instead of a professor in her prime forces the audience to grapple with her death early on instead of postponing it towards the end of the play, balancing out the dry humor to give the play an extra dimension.
3. Do I like Vivian Bearing? I'm torn. While I felt completely turned off by her cold rationalization and arrogance, I felt drawn to her small bits of dark humor. At times, I felt like I was almost talking to two people at once. Possibly this is because the narrative transcends time, so both her present and past selves find their way into the play.
1) I have really enjoyed the book so far, so much that I continued reading past the first 20 pages even though I was pressed for time last night. Some of the characters, namely Jason and Susie, really jump out at me with very little story attached to them. I think this is the power of dialogue. Dialogue is always the most important aspect to me in a story. When reading, I like to get out of a character's head and see how they interact with the world outside of them. A couple lines or set of lines stood out to me. The passage where Vivian breaks down the meaning of antineoplastic showed a lot of her characters inquisitiveness. Also, "Not insuperable barriers, not semicolons, just a comma." I'd be amazed by this line even out of the context of the poem, and it gave me a bigger perspective on poetry in one passage than I've gotten from any class or studying of it.
ReplyDelete2) The most interesting part of approaching the play this way is the way the rest of the characters and scene interact with her as she addresses the crowd. This shown best in the scene where she is being dragged around by the technicians. At first I thought she was talking to the technicians. I started asking "Why is she bragging about her accomplishments, she's distracting them." Then I realized she was talking to us, the audience, and I appreciated the way they were informing us of her past, even though it still had arrogant tones to it. I also like the way the setting changes around her even as she talks, making the fourth wall even more non-existent. It gives a more personal feel to the play, and will probably make me sympathize with Vivian more as the play goes on. It really makes me want to see the play performed live.
3) I agree with Emma that she is very arrogant, and while I would hate to have her around as a friend in real life, I love her as a character in the play. I think her arrogance is used to fill us in on her past in an amazing way. She's accomplished a lot, and having her brag to the audience and to the other characters about what she's done is a way for us to be informed on everything she's done. This way we really sense the magnitude of her cancer considering how successful she was becoming. Also, I'm a firm believer that any one who works to get their accomplishments has the right to own them in any way they want. Still, Vivian's way of owning her accomplishments is obnoxious to say the least.