This Day in History — September 22 jamaicaobserver.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jamaicaobserver.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Donât Open the Door: class act
Richard Roquesâ latest play is a short but powerful tale of two strangers thrown together. Jane Clinton talked to him
29 July, 2021 â By Jane Clinton
A scene from Richard Roquesâ Donât Open the Door
WHEN I last interviewed Richard Roques, it was just days before his play,
Short Memory, was about to open.
Then the first lockdown was announced, the play was cancelled, and life as we knew it stopped. During the pandemic, it is estimated the theatre industry lost more than £200million.
Now, 16 months on, Roques is readying himself for the opening, not of
Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in the 2000 film version of American Psycho
Credit: Alamy
The 30th birthday of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho is not a universal cause for celebration. Many people have found something almost offensive about the anniversary falling at a time when men are being asked to think urgently about how to make the world safer for women. Even Ellis himself, when I ask him about his most famous work, admits, “It wouldn’t be published today.”
The fact that it remains in print – and has spawned a hit film and even a stage musical – will be seen by some as an indictment of the fundamental misogyny of Western society. Back in 1991, one feminist campaigner denounced American Psycho as a “how-to novel on the torture and dismemberment of women”.
UConn Magazine: Elevating English Majors
English professor Gina Barreca, dubbed the “feminist humor maven” by Ms. Magazine has kept us laughing through 10 books from “I Used to Be Snow White But I Drifted” to “If You Lean In, Will Men just Look Down Your Blouse?” Her latest, though, invites others to the party.
(Peter Morenus / UConn Photo) Copy Link
English professor Gina Barreca, dubbed the “feminist humor maven” by Ms. Magazine has kept us laughing through 10 books from “I Used to Be Snow White But I Drifted” to “If You Lean In, Will Men just Look Down Your Blouse?” Her latest, though, invites others to the party. “It’s like that children’s book ‘Stone Soup,’” she says of the “little of this, little of that” approach she took to editing “Fast Funny Women: 75 Essays of Flash Fiction.”