Jess Winfield

The Publisher Says: A tale of two Shakespeares . . .

Struggling UC Santa Cruz grad student Willie Shakespeare Greenberg is trying to write his thesis about the Bard. Kind of . . .

Cut off by his father for laziness, and desperate for dough, Willie agrees to deliver a single giant, psychedelic mushroom to a mysterious collector, making himself an unwitting target in Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs.

Meanwhile, would-be playwright (and oppressed Catholic) William Shakespeare is eighteen years old show more and stuck teaching Latin in the boondocks of Stratford-upon-Avon. The future Bard’s life is turned upside down when a stranger entrusts him with a sacred relic from Rome . . . This, at a time when adherents of the “Old Faith” are being hanged, drawn, and quartered as traitors.

Seemingly separated in time and place, the lives of Willie and William begin to intersect in curious ways, from harrowing encounters with the law (and a few ex-girlfriends) to dubious experiments with mind-altering substances. Their misadventures could be dismissed as youthful folly. But wise or foolish, the bold choices they make will shape not only the “Shakespeare” each is destined to become . . . but the very course of history itself.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: Tediously moralistic look at how Society tames us by taking hostages.

Heteronormative...shocking, I know...look at Will Shakespeare as horndog, transformed by Time (and parenthood) into...ya know what, if you like this kind of stuff you already know you like it. I don't much. Catholicism is a major vector for evil in this world, there's no denying that to anyone not an apologist; but Catholics ran the risk of horrible deaths in order to enact their fantasy of Religion. On the modern side, academia comes in for a lot of unkind "ribbing" that's meant to make one see that everyone is, at heart, a spoiled brat. These things are crumped together like they're somehow morally equivalent. They are not.

But worst of all, from my personal point of view, is the fact that I had to agree with the author about something:

Shakespeare, in some sense, helped create the modern man, didn't he, his influence is that pervasive. He held the mirror up to nature, but he also created that mirror: so the image he created is the very one we hold ourselves up to.

Stop with the deification already, recognize that there was a man called Shakespeare who wrote a bunch of cool stuff and take the rose-colored glasses off, he did whatever he did in his personal life and we can not speak about it because we don't know. Guessing is misleading, because you're going to think he did what you'd've done. Maybe...maybe not.

I didn't like it; I don't particularly recommend it; but it was not a waste of eyeblinks for that one excellent insight. show less

William Shakespeare Greenberg--Willie--is a graduate student in English at UC Santa Cruz. It's 1986 and Willie's been drifting along, supported by his father (a professor at Berkley known for his his scholarly studies of the works of Woody Allen); although the term hasn't been invented yet, today we'd call him a slacker. Mostly, Willie wants to continue to do what he's been doing: smoke lots of dope, read lots of Shakespeare, get laid whenever he can (come to think of it, who wouldn't show more ideally like to do that?). Unfortunately, his father's going to cut him off at the end of the semester, so the need to choose a thesis topic--and write the damned thing--is looming.

Enter a night of "cow tripping" (a particularly Santa Cruz take on the time-honored aggie tradition of cow tipping, which adds the steps of first searching for [among the cow flops] and then ingesting psilocybin mushrooms, before actually tipping the unsuspecting bovines), during which Willie finds an oversized specimen of hallucinogenic 'shroom and has a vision of his namesake as an 18 year old schoolmaster. As the novel unfolds Willie's story--drug running, DEA agent evading, Renaissance Faire attending--is alternated with William's (Shakespeare, that is), with some zany, hallucinogenic overlapping.

The book is deftly written, loaded with lots of zesty, lusty, joyful wordplay. The story is clever, fun, and always interesting. I look forward to Jess Winfield's next book. show less

WHAT a great book. This novel parallels the lives of William Shakespeare and William Shakespeare Greenberg. The former is a closet Catholic schoolteacher, sleeping around and relying on the wit of his tongue in the British protestant era. The latter, Willie, is a grad student finally getting around to writing his thesis on Shakespeare as a closet Catholic while getting high more often than not in the 1980s.

The narrative switches off every other chapter to follow either William, who is being show more persecuted by Sir Thomas Lucy in his hunt for Catholic blood, and Willie, who has become an accidental drug-runner at the height of Reagan's War on Drugs. The parallels happen more often than you think, and it's absolutely brilliant. If you don't mind quite dirty bits and lots of drug promotion, definitely pick this up. It's funny, provocative, and incredibly interesting to see that Shakespeare's themes that have transcended time apply to his own life as well. show less

A thumping good read. Like Shakespeare’s histories, this is an entertainment, not a factual tract. It also doesn’t flinch from explicit scenes of drug use and sex. The subtitle for the book isn’t a come on, it’s truth in advertising. This book is not for the easily offended. It _is_ for fans of Shakespeare and comedy, though, and very accessible to those with only a passing knowledge of the Bard. Indeed, it might even encourage those students who see Shakespeare as a chore to do a show more little experimenting on their own. show less