[.ca] Nol Coward: A Life in Quotes (ISBN 0413774414)

A JUMPING-OFF PLACE:
I am all in favor of more Americans who don't happen to have lives in the Theatre, familiarizing themselves with the works of Noel Coward. And if this charming, funny, little sampler (chock full of rhymes and quotes and line drawings) will help, then I'm all for it. But, most of Coward's quotes in Day's book are taken out of context from plays and films. And what usually makes most of them laugh-out-loud funny or just smilingly clever is that very context: what and how and why Coward's characters say what they say. Also alot of his references are very, very British and relatively antique like this short speech from "Private Lives," one of his best and most frequently revived plays: (Amanda): "And India, the burning Ghars, or Ghats, or whatever they are, and the Taj Mahal. How was the Taj Mahal?...And it didn't look like a biscuit box, did it? I've always felt that it might." That passage (quoted in its entirety from this volume) is simply not really funny, unless the reader knows the play and the character of 'Amanda' or is watching the play and hears the actress playing 'Amanda' speak the lines. But then there are always his wonderful, romantic lyrics, usually tinged with sadness when they are not downright playful: "I'll see you again,/Whenever spring breaks through again;/Time may lie heavy between,/But what has been/Is past forgetting." And wonderful, pithy lines that have to do as much with today (think: American politics) as they do with the period in which they were written: "It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit." If this book is a jumping-off place for people to really dig in and investigate Coward more thoroughly, then I recommend it. Better yet, read his plays like the above mentioned "Private Lives" and "Hay Fever" and "Blithe Spirit" to begin with, and then some of his short stories and his vastly under-rated Diaries.