In the case of the unnamed Gaul village which Asterix calls home, the collaborationists are often more trouble than the Romans, never mind history. Back in the day, independent-minded Gauls didn’t have recourse to a magic potion that made them indomitable.
For a long stretch of Asterix And The Big Fight, neither does Asterix. That departure from formula is one big reason this seventh entry in the classic comic series is so much fun.
Of all Shakespeare’s plays, King Lear hits the hardest. It offers the grimmest scenes, the coldest ending, and the bleakest worldview, turning the classic elements of tragedy on its head. Instead of offering catharsis, it presents despair.
But is it bottomless despair? That depends on the audience. In its early stagings, what the audience saw was quite different than what appears today. Theatrical managers as late as the 1800s famously pulled back on the carnage and even gave their audiences a revised happy ending.
Reading the play today is to understand the impulse. MacBeth wipes out an entire family, but no one in that play is as reduced by the human toll as we see Lear and Gloucester become. Hamlet may touch on existential themes, but the lack of any overarching morality is bracing here:
Can a hit record prove the key to solving a mysterious beheading? Will a horoscope’s dire prediction prove for once to be correct? Will a refrigerator’s possibly sinister secret force Dirk Gently to make an overdue renovation in his ultra-messy apartment?
After some 240 pages, I’m not sure I can answer any of those question, nor care very much either way. The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul manages to be rather long, very dark, and wholly frustrating finale to the Dirk Gently mysteries.
I don’t know where to begin. Let’s start with the gods.
In September 1939 a 21-year British holiday from history came to a sharp end. War was declared and Poland carved up by Germany and Russia as the rest of the world looked on. It was time to strike back.
Only it wasn’t, not right away. First came something called the “Phoney War,” eight months of waiting and hoping. Just two years later, Evelyn Waugh set about mocking that time of simmering conflict and self-rationalization was as experienced by London’s smart set.
Put Out More Flags is a satire written in the anything-goes spirit of Waugh’s earlier, peacetime works. Government ministries set about planning ridiculous strategies, seeing the enemy everywhere but where they actually are, getting men killed by sheer lack of imagination.
