letters and sodas: booknotes

Reading Proof, I thought of Rebecca Goldstein’s Properties of Light, though I don’t remember enough about the latter to properly compare the two works. Both share a similar central triangle: brilliant/mad father (a physicist in Goldstein’s book, a mathematician in Auburn’s play), brilliant/possibly unhinged daughter, plus a (male) student of the father’s who is the daughter’s lover as well. It’s the love/desire part of Proof that I found most satisfying, rather than the mathematics (which there isn’t really that much of ) or the family drama (which, on the page anyhow, seemed shrill and obvious).

I like the lucidity of Carson’s prose, the framing essays around these plays, and the prefaces to each one: the sense of knowledge and ease and also a sly smile when she writes things like “The first eight hundred lines of the play will bore you, they’re supposed to.” The four plays: Herakles, Hekabe, Hippolytos, Alkestis: Herakles and his madness, Hekabe and her rage, Hippolytos and his prudishness, the riddle of Alkestis. Carson’s language is minimalist, never forced: “God found a way/to be surprising./That’s how this went.”