Wicked

In the last few days, Wicked the musical has gotten some shout outs. I caught up on the last few episodes of Brothers and Sisters wherein Justin is making a point to sepnd quality time with all of his family members before heading back to his unit. Kevin and Justin go to see Wicked, an outing that thoroughly delights Kevin as he's apparently been trying for months to convince his family to see the play with him.

I, of course, couldn't silence the gender theorist in me who was rather disappointed in the writers' choice to fall back on homosexual sterotypes (this time, the gay man as a musical lover). However, coincidentally, the next day I talked with old high school friend. We manage to catch up three or four times a year, and we share the pop-culture addiction and spend lots of time rehashing what we are and aren't reading and watching. Said friend happens to be a gay man and when I told him Wicked was in my book queue, he gushed to me about what a fabulous musical he thought it was. So, I guess I ought to cut Berlanti and crew some slack.

Here's the catch, though, I've been reading the book (or trying to read it) for two weeks and am only 176 pages in. I continually fall asleep while reading it. No one finishes grad school without mastering the art of quickly getting through the unreadable. But even more perplexingly is the fact that, generically, I like texts that put a new spin on old stories--the Jasper Fforde novels, for example. I thrive off the intertextual connections found between a "new" classic like Smiley's A Thousand Acres and a classic classic KIng Lear, so by rights Wicked should be a book I'm lovin', but I'm not.