Page 4 - Boca ViewPointe - June '21

Page 4, Viewpointe June 2021

Book Review

The Shaygetz (rude fellow) & managers, and rehearsing actors while
driven to create his masterpieces. One
The Mensch (model fellow) cannot help but be amazed at Hermione
Lee’s rendering of this ambitious writer. I
Blake Bailey. Philip Roth, The Biography. New York: W.W. knew Stoppard as a successful experimental
Norton & Company. 2021. playwright but hadn’t been aware of just
Hermione Lee. Tom Stoppard, A Life. New York: Alfred A. how widespread his drive and range of
Knopf, 2021. work, notably his journalism, television
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and major involvement in movies, script
And our little life is rounded with a sleep.” Shakespeare doctor to Steven Spielberg and contributor
“Fame is No plant that grows on mortal soil.” John Milton of a limerick to the musical Cats. Like
“not with a bang but a whimper.” T.S. Eliot Shakespeare who escaped the dead-end
life of an apprentice in Stratford to become
By Dr. Ronald J. Meyers a phenomenon, Stoppard too overcame the
traumas of his youth to become a creative,
Two images stand out civil human being.
to me from Tom Stoppard’s In contrast, there was Philip Roth’s
drama. The game of chance charge to his biographer Blake Bailey,
at the opening of Rosencrantz after Ms. Lee turned down his request to designate her, Bailey quotes Roth’s obsessive commitment: “I write
and Guildenstern are Dead, not to rehabilitate him—but only to make him interesting. for a simple and ridiculous pathological reason—because
Hamlet’s East European Roth was born to an observant Jewish family, enjoyed a I cannot stop myself.” Ambition? Atonement? His wives
university chums play loving home environment in Newark, New Jersey, attended and companions were compelled to wait in the wings as
intensively, and the game the best schools and universities, and turned his anger and he entered his studio for nine or ten hours a day. All of the
reflects the tenuousness and resentment into literature. Bailey’s biography is outrageous time and in all of his relations, he was trolling for material
uncertainty of Stoppard’s in its representation of the priapic Roth roughly between to bolster his writing. Roth enjoyed his life as a celebrity,
own life; it could have gone so many bad ways but for the Portnoy’s Complaint and Sabbath’s Theater, where the hero’s with flings, in Bailey’s account, with the likes of Barbara
luck of the roll. At the outset of the Holocaust in the late stated aspiration was “to affront and affront and affront till
nineteen thirties, the Sträusslers, a Jewish family escaped there was no one on earth unaffronted.” Book Review on page 5
from Czechoslovakia to Singapore where Eugen, the father,
perished, thence the widow Marta continued to India where
she met an English officer Major Kenneth Stoppard who
married and brought her and her two sons to Great Britain; Board Of Directors
there the younger son Tom was raised as an English lad,
following the Anglican faith, playing cricket, and pursued
his inclination to become a writer, and indeed the dominant May 2021 – May 2022 Officers/Executive Committee
voice of English language drama of his time. Unlikely as
landing a continuous string of sevens. Chairman and President Barry J. Haberman District 5 Howard Weinstein (El Dorado)
The other image from the film authored by Stoppard, Vice Chair Steve Retzer Esplanada, Caravelle, Palomar, La Corniche,
Shakespeare in Love, depicts the playwright Shakespeare Secretary Steve King and El Dorado
consumed and driven by his life’s work, balancing Treasurer Harvey Kaplan District 6 Connie Murray (Villa Flora)

Villa Flora, Montego Bay, Villa del Sol, and Palladium
writing scenes, interacting and arguing with producers,
District Directors District 7 Alan Markoff (The Plum)
District 1 Mary Ann Frazier (Palms) The Plum/Cortina, Villa Sonrisa and Pointe 100
Encantada, Valencia and The Palms District 8 Robert Cornell (Costa Brava)
District 2 Steve King (Imperial Royale) Costa del Sol and Costa Brava
Promenade, Imperial Royale, Imperial, Regency District 9 Robin Gliboff (Edgewater)
and Panaché Edgewater Pointe Estates and Stratford Court
District 3 Harvey Kaplan (Meridiana)
La Mirada and Meridiana At Large Directors
District 4 Michael Ehrentreu (El Viento)
El Viento, La Paz, and Southwinds Through 2022 Through 2023
Chandra Stewart-Keith (Panaché) Barry J. Haberman (Encantada)
Bob Greenstein (Lakes of La Paz) Marvin Lazarowitz (Via Stel)
Steve Retzer (La Mirada) Carsten Bethge (Valencia)

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