The enemy here is both the rationality of science and the irrationality of religion, not to mention Bruno's own, very human, vanity. Lydia Littlemore, even take refuge in their own El Dorado, an animal sanctuary owned by a wealthy Coloradan, but must eventually leave their false Eden.

It is not a naming of the world, but rather the world's creation.'īruno identifies with Caliban, Milton's Satan ('a master orator') and Pinocchio, but he is most like Voltaire's Candide. 'Mere vocabulary is not language … it is simply an act. Language, Bruno says, even helps him capture and keep his dreams. Language and its metaphysics are the soul of the novel and its most interesting thematic aspect. (An extended in-joke about one Gnome Chompy coming to get Bruno in his newly lingual nightmares is one example of overworked humour.)īorn in captivity in the Chicago zoo, Bruno emerges from his Plato's cave through the salvation of spoken language. But John Kennedy Toole's and Trevor Cole's novels are hilarious, while Hale's is, despite being a tragicomic picaresque, not all that funny. Norman Bray in Norman Bray in the Performance of His Life. Reilly inĪ Confederacy of Dunces and, more recently,

It's worth noting that the author is 26 and eagerly flaunting all his philosophical and literary book smarts like so many noisy bonnets at an Easter Parade.)īruno himself is reminiscent of other pumped-up intellectual blowhards like Ignatius J. Pages of exhaustive detail, such as an apartment floor plan, might be interesting in the hands of master stylists like David Foster Wallace or Rick Moody, but Benjamin Hale is not a stylist. What: 'The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore,' The Englert Theatre's first commissioned play.Despite an affinity for both talking animal narratives - whether for children or those of the NC-17 variety - and wordy, maximalist fiction, I found the first 200 pages of this grotesque romp both boring and annoying. Reach Zach Berg at 31, or follow him on Twitter at If you go 'This is the theater I want to make and share.' It’s almost 'Forrest Gump,' it has this massive structure,' Lewis said. 'Bruno goes from working in a lab, to become the smartest person in the world, to joining a Shakespearean theater group in NYC, to fighting religious protesters in the street. Lewis said it's possible that they could take the production on the road, having just finished a national tour of Working Group Theatre's production 'Out of Bounds.' Taking the sprawling play wouldn't necessarily be easy, but Lewis said it's something he loved audiences outside of Iowa City to see. 'The recreation of truthful life through made-up context from someone else's words is all I do. Vaxter said he has been 'comfortable taking that challenge' of memorizing over an hour or dialogue.

The evolution of bruno littlemore