Tag Archives: Revenge

Hag-Seed: A Tempest in a Teacup

In 2015 Hogarth launched the Hogarth Shakespeare project to have Shakespeare’s plays retold by acclaimed or (more frequently) popular novelists. Gratuitous? Yup. Lazy? Sure. Good idea? Nope. Money grab? Yahtzee! But, hey, Hollywood does it all the time, so why not?

Plus, Hogarth tapped Margaret Atwood to modernize The Tempest. So how bad could it be? Fair enough. Hag-Seed (Ms. Atwood’s adaptation of The Tempest) is not bad. At times, it’s quite enjoyable, but that’s usually when Ms. Atwood doesn’t hew to the play.

Felix is Ms. Atwood’s Prospero. Early on, we learn that his wife died shortly after giving birth to their daughter, Miranda. We also learn Miranda died when she was about 4 years old. In a former life, Felix was the artistic director of the Makeshiweg Festival, which he planned to make the “standard against which all lesser festivals would be measured.” To do this, he needed money, and that was Tony’s job. However, Felix’s failure to focus on the business side of the festival costs him. Tony convinces the board to fire Felix, and Tony replaces him. Felix has a temper tantrum and goes off the grid – changing his name and essentially exiling himself.

About 12 years later, Felix is working part-time at the Fletcher County Correctional Institute where he puts on Shakespeare’s plays with the inmates. “Power struggles, treacheries, crimes: these subjects were immediately grasped by his students, since in their own ways they were expert in them.” His program is modestly successful.

Tony and some of the more culpable board members are now important government officials. They will be at the institute to see the inmates perform My Fair Lady. Really? You ask. No, that would be stupid. They are staging The Tempest, of course. Felix plots his revenge.

The novel works best when it focuses on Felix’s interactions with the inmates and how they produce the play inside a prison – how they relate to Shakespeare’s works. They are effective and humorous fairies, goblins, and demons, and there is much to like about these passages. Ms. Atwood is adept at handling the “play within a play” aspect of The Tempest, and the prison is a perfect substitute for an island.

But the novel is less successful in addressing Felix’s need for vengeance. In The Tempest, vengeance is central to the plot. At times Prospero is monstrous in his pursuit of it. However, Prospero did not voluntarily exile himself. His brother usurped him and put him in a small boat with his young daughter – leaving them to drift on the sea. His brother clearly wanted them to die horrible deaths, so Prospero’s desire for vengeance is understandable.

Vengeance is central to Hag-Seed as well, and Felix at times is also monstrous in his pursuit of it. But his all-consuming need for vengeance doesn’t hold up. Felix exiled himself. Miranda was already dead, so her life was never at risk. If Felix’s life was in danger, he did it to himself. His desire for vengeance, which drives the plot, is gratuitous. Ultimately, and sadly, so is Hag-Seed.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor

Harlem Hustle

So Colson Whitehead knows how to tell a story, and Harlem Shuffle is a great one. The novel opens in 1959, jumps to 1961, and wraps up in 1964. It is a time of intense transition in New York City, as is obvious by all the people jettisoning their radios and buying TVs. And the changes are chaotic and violent, as is evident by the 1964 race riots in Harlem. But this is nothing new. It is always a time of intense transition in New York City, and the changes are always chaotic and frequently violent.

Carney owns a furniture store in Harlem. That’s his legitimate business. His side hustle is less legitimate. He fences the odd piece of jewelry or electronics for his cousin, Freddie, and a few other small-time thieves. Just to be clear, however, in a city where cops, successful businessmen, politicians, and everyone else is corrupt, Carney is “only slightly bent when it [comes] to being crooked.”

Freddie gets him involved in a heist of the Hotel Theresa, which is a sacred place in Harlem. Robbing it is tantamount to “taking a piss on the Statue of Liberty.” The insult is magnified because they rob it on Juneteenth. That kind of bad karma is a snapping turtle. It bites hard and doesn’t let go.

This starts a chain of events over the next several years that has Carney trying to survive his judgment-impaired cousin, corrupt White cops, disingenuous light-skinned Black businessmen, and the descendants of Dutch families who originally “bought” the island and think they still own it. Carney is the ultimate underdog relying on his wits and guts to survive, and the reader can’t help but root for him.

Survival is a major theme. “Black people always found a way in the most miserable circumstances. If we didn’t, we’d have been exterminated by the white man long ago.” So is revenge. When Carney’s application to the Dumas Club is rejected (because he is too dark-skinned and can’t pass the paper bag test), he goes after its leader, Wilfred Dukes. Not because he was excluded from Harlem’s most exclusive business club, but because Dukes encouraged him to give a “sweetener”, which Carney believes should have guaranteed his admission. The club is named for Alexandre Dumas, whose father was a French army officer and whose mother was a Haitian slave. Dumas wrote the most famous revenge story of all time – The Count of Monte Cristo. So that’s wonderful, and so is Carney’s revenge.

But the real story is how Carney deals with the consequences of the Hotel Theresa heist. Can his wits save him and Freddie? The novel ends at the construction site for the future World Trade Center (the Twin Towers). So more transitions are on the way. And they will be intense, chaotic, and violent.

Gladiola Overdrive, Chief Editor