Written Script

By Annalita Marsigli

Accept a premise. A man dies. Ten years later he returns to earth in his beloved country home in France only to discover that his wife has married his cousin and that his scholarly writings, which... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879518200
• ISBN13: 9780879518202
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: Overlook Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

spirited novel

There is a forbidding coldness in the idea of a determined universe, but it is there, by contrast, that the human spirit shines brightest. Marsigli's tragic hero, Ivain La Baille, awakes to a sadistic plot that is to be his life after death. Its authors, two puppeteer gods, recall the arbitrary tempers of the gods of ancient Greece and with a theatricality allowable only to gods call themselves a production company and cast Ivain as protagonist in their playful tinkering with destiny. Ivain must defy the gods to free himself; this ancient theme underscores the movement of the story; it is played with a light touch and wry references to the tradition of epic defiance. Despite the mean spirited and portentous Kirkus review (above) this is a fascinating novel with various original touches. The French countryside is written of lovingly as an idyll; a scene where birds are trapped and starved in a cage echoes Virgil's eclogues and symbolises the deepest fears expressed in this story: arbitrary suffering and lack of control. But it is the brilliant theatre at the novels end that impresses most; the historical and theatrical interests of the novel and the protagonist reach a denoument both funny and philosophical. It is a startling idea the like of which only Stoppard has hit on before and deserves to be kept for the reader to discover. Since reading Marsigili's book I have seen The Truman Show (a film) attempt the same questions as the Writen Script but it did so with such crude devices that I was happy to return to this spirited and well structured novel.

Review by Publishers Weekly April 13, 1998 page 51

Shakespeare and the afterlife figure in a novel by playwright Marsigli that asks the question: Are our lives scripted ahead of time or is there truly a possibility of free will? Marsigli's answer is a formal but surprisingly engaging novel of ideas in the grand European tradition of Goethe and Mann. A kind of aristocratic everyman, Columbia University classics professor Ivain La Baille finds his life cut short, at age 30, when he is caught in a crossfire of terrorists at the airport. Yet 10 years later he reappears, as a Shakespearean actor no less, offered an other chance to run through the script of his life - which is actually a floppy disk he is to carry around with him at all times. Has it already been programmed and is he merely providing "new material" for the Great Playwright himself, the so-called Father Godlet? Or is there a chance to alter events, (such as when La Baille plays Caesar on Broadway and refuses to allow the hero of his former life to die?) In exploring La Bailles's life between his ancestral country estate in France and his apartment in New York City, between his beloved well-bred wife, France, who hastily remarried after his death, and Allegra, the beautiful temptress and fellow "dead soul" who has been sent to be his guide, Marsigli handles her weighty matters with a surprisingly light touch, patiently letting her tale unfold at its own speed. Despite unmemorable prose and rather cardboard characterization (the too-virtuous wife, the rejected "bad" woman, the sly, toothless fortuneteller), there is much here to delight the thinking reader, and the scenes of country-house life in a French village alone will ensure a work-of -month readership among savvy Francophiles.

Great read - especially the James Joyce ending

The imagery and unusual juxtaposition of time is what made this novel an exiting read. Of course there were times that things went over the edge but when dealing with these types of concepts that's to be expected. If you don't want to read the whole book read the last 30 pages - incredible imagery regarding the most interesting historical figures of ancient history.