Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Adults don't often have a chance to be read to. Children — with luck — may curl up in an arm chair on a rainy day and listen to a soft voice talking like the rain. Isak Dinesen recorded that phrase for talking in rhythm and in rhyme, from a muddy evening game at the end of a hayfield. The rain, she said, was welcomed and soothing, where she lived in Africa, and so was swinging, striding language. Reading aloud is a pleasure; so is listening.
Before the cold weather breaks, warm reading evenings are springing up. Robert Campanile and Milne Library will present Caligula by Albert Camus at the Williams Inn, this Friday at 7 p.m. Caligula, the lunatic Roman emperor who made his horse a magistrate, makes a grim central character — Camus wrote the play in 1938 and saw it performed at the end of World War II, in a time full of political fanatics. But he concludes that a man cannot cut himself off from humanity without going mad.
For a funnier evening, Matt Tannenbaum at the Bookstore will read humorous stories from Dorothy Parker and others, March 19 at Colorful Stitches in Lenox, at 7:30 p.m. Listeners and knitters are welcome. An evening with the wit and critic who wrote
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania
will surely be a lively one.