2nd look at classics

One of the wonderful things about Great Basin Chautauqua (GBC) each summer is that it forces you to reread classics or to take another look at literary figures. This year’s Chautauqua made me take a second look at “The Decameron” by Boccaccio and Eugene O’Neill, America’s greatest playwright.
When “The Decameron” came under papal ban in 1559 it was not for its bawdy tales but for its mocking thrusts at the Catholic church. A perfect example is story No. 10 told on the sixth day. The target of the comedic satire: relics.
It’s a tale of Cipolla, “short, redheaded” friar, the “nicest scoundrel in the world.” He promises to show village parishioners “a most beautiful relic” he had brought home from the Holy Land, “one of the feathers of the Angel Gabriel.”
But two tricksters substitute charcoal for the feather. Unflustered when he discovered the trick during a sermon he was giving, Cipolla proclaims that he has “some of the charcoal on which the most holy martyr St. Lorenzo was roasted alive.”
Cipolla told of other “holy relics”: “the finger of the Holy Spirit,” “the forelock of the seraphim which appeared to St. Francis,” “one of the nails from the cherubim,” “some of the beams from the star which appeared to the three wise men in the East” and “a phial of the sweat of St. Michael when he fought the devil.”
Boccaccio (1313-1375) was taking a droll jibe at the silly business of relics. To this day far too many Catholics indulge in gullible relic reverence.
Fred Krebs, a history teacher in Kansas, portrayed Boccaccio under the Reno tent, bringing out Boccaccio’s humanism. Boccaccio believed in learning and reason while attacking fear and superstition.
“Dante wrote ‘The Divine Comedy’ about religious matters,” Krebs/Boccaccio said. “I wrote the human comedy.”
O’Neill’s dark vision
Brian Kral, playwright and theater director, was fine playing Eugene O’Neill. Kral/O’Neill had an acerbic temperament to go along with his passion, anger and realism.
He relates the pipe dreams of the derelicts in “The Iceman Cometh” but confesses fondness for them. Justifiably so. “Iceman” is an O’Neill masterpiece along with his “Long Day’s Journey into Night.”
The pipe dream theme tied back nicely to that of Lennie and George in Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” But the frequent piano accompaniment to the O’Neill portrayal was distracting. The director probably thought it was brilliant. It was not.
O’Neill idolized Nietzsche. His first wife recalled that O’Neill kept copies of Nietzsche’s books close at hand, the pages tattered and filled with marginalia. But O’Neill discovered that immediately after World War II the American public wanted entertainment, not pessimism.
Long after the war the public still craved entertainment rather than reality. When the great Arthur Miller play, “The Death of a Salesman,” appeared on network TV in 1985 with Dustin Hoffman in the Willy Loman role, viewership was low. Why? The public did want to hear about failure, about an empty life.
O’Neill assailed Americans for their pursuit of materialism. He told Time in 1946: “America is the greatest failure in history…we squandered our soul…the Bible said it much better: for what would it profit a man ‘if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ ”
[The sainted Dorothy Day caroused at Greenwich Village pubs with O’Neill circa 1918. She tells of a drunken O’Neill one night reciting all 182 lines of Francis Thompson’s poem, “The Hound of Heaven.” (“Naked I wait thy love’s uplifted stroke!” ) ]

Riveting Steinbeck--but
Clay Jenkinson, director of the GBC, was riveting in the role of John Steinbeck (1902-1968). Indeed, to pay the ultimate compliment, he was Steinbeck. Jenkinson/Steinbeck made it clear that a writer is married to his books, not to any woman.
But Jenkinson did not quit after mesmerizing the audience. He spoke on and on. This listener finally walked out after he began reading lengthy excerpts from the Steinbeck classic, “The Grapes of Wrath.” All writers need editors. Speakers must edit themselves. Knowing when to stop is an art.
Jenkinson is an extremely bright guy but an air of pretentiousness permeates the theme of his GBC reader article, “Exploring the Nature of Creativity.” It is noticeable too in proclaiming that the GBC kickoff dinner promised conversation “with Nevada’s greatest minds.” Some on the list of “great minds” are an embarrassment.
Jenkinson also writes a lot of nonsense in his GBC essay. He declares: “Virtually everyone is creative.” Or: “Everyone who writes a poem is in a sense standing on the shoulders of giants.” Newton rightly said: “If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Much poetry, past and present, is hardly written by giants.
Post-mortems: Disgusted by appearance of Krebs at my favorite independent book store the morning after he played Boccaccio. He gave 10-minute answers to simple questions then asked hopefully: “Does that make sense?” Windy, windy guy.