Friday, October 21, 2011
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm, William Andrews Clark Library – Facility
Join us for an exciting afternoon including a reading from The Tragedy of Arthur by bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist Arthur Phillips, followed by a discussion with Professor Helen Deutsch(UCLA).
The Novel The Tragedy of Arthur is an emotional and elaborately constructed tour de force featuring its doomed hero Arthur Phillips, a young man struggling with a larger-than-life father, a con artist who works wonders of deception but is a most unreliable parent. Arthur is raised in an enchanted world of smoke and mirrors where the only unshifting truth is his father’s and his beloved twin sister’s deep and abiding love for the works of William Shakespeare—a love so pervasive that Arthur becomes a writer in a misguided bid for their approval and affection. Years later, Arthur’s father, imprisoned for decades and nearing the end of his life, shares with Arthur a treasure he’s kept secret for half a century: a previously unknown play by Shakespeare, titled The Tragedy of Arthur. But Arthur and his sister also inherit their father’s mission: to see the play published and acknowledged as the Bard’s last great gift to humanity. . . . Unless it’s their father’s last great con. By turns hilarious and haunting, this virtuosic novel—which includes Shakespeare’s (?) lost King Arthur play in its five-act entirety—captures the very essence of romantic and familial love and betrayal. The Tragedy of Arthur explores the tension between storytelling and truth-telling, the thirst for originality in all our lives, and the act of literary mythmaking, both now and four centuries ago, as the two Arthurs—Arthur the novelist and Arthur the ancient king—play out their individual but strangely intertwined fates.
Registration is required. Please be aware that space at the Clark is limited and that registration closes when capacity is reached. Confirmation will be sent via email. Please call a week ahead to arrange for wheelchair access. Register online here.
