Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare

I've had some time to get over being disturbed by the whole Drench-a-Wench thing. Certain commenters didn't help, but I am being zen about it all. And so I finished reading Jess Winfield's My Name is Will.

I enjoyed the novel - Winfield is witty and evocative. And his two young Wills are human and flawed and clever and likable. (I have also had fun listening to Winfield on the NYT's Book Review podcast, which has utterly out of date archives, and on KQED Forum.)

Since watching him and the rest of the Reduced Shakespeare Company perform Hamlet was such a part of my childhood - and really the only part of the Faire other than the cinnamon sticky buns and lemon shaved ices that I liked - I feel this odd possessiveness. Like, I knew this guy (or my mom did? Whatever.) back before other people did.

So, reading the novel ended up being only about 20% reading the novel - and I'm sorry about that! I wish I could have experienced just as it is, like most readers probably will. Instead it was revisiting my childhood. (I would have been 6 at the time of the book, and hanging out in the Glade reading a totally unperiod book and sulking about how my costume wasn't pretty enough. And 2 or 3 years later the Agoura Faire would be bulldozed and I would be dancing and the Faire would be irrevocably past.) I was amazed by how clearly I remembered the small details - the potholes and the "5 miles per hour" signs at the entrance to the site, the huge tankers that sprayed water on the paths to keep the dust down, the rough locations of various stages and areas - that Winfield mentions during Willie's drug-induced stay at the Novato Faire. And it reminded me again of how different my early childhood was from that of my friends, whose parents hadn't spent the weekends playing high-caliber dress-up. And reminded me of all the things I did and didn't like about the experience. And more than anything, how it shaped me, and how long ago it was. How I am 3 years older than the swaggering Russian diplomat who came to Elizabeth's court and met my mother. And how strange it is to see my childhood in print.

So I guess Jess that I have to thank you for that.