Frayn, Michael

The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe

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Everyone Should Know These Truths
Pure yawn
A touch of humor in the profound
A Big, Friendly Summary of Philosophy
I kept reaching for a pencil

The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe
Michael Frayn
Manufacturer: Metropolitan Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0805081488
Release Date: 2007-02-06

Book Description

What do we really know? What are we in relation to the world around us? Here, the acclaimed playwright and novelist takes on the great questions of his career—and of our lives

Humankind, scientists agree, is an insignificant speck in the impersonal vastness of the universe. But what would that universe be like if we were not here to say something about it? Would there be numbers if there were no one to count them? Would the universe even be vast, without the fact of our smallness to give it scale?
With wit, charm, and brilliance, this epic work of philosophy sets out to make sense of our place in the scheme of things. Our contact with the world around us, Michael Frayn shows, is always fleeting and indeterminate, yet we have nevertheless had to fashion a comprehensible universe in which action is possible. But how do we distinguish our subjective experience from what is objectively true and knowable? Surveying the spectrum of philosophical concerns from the existence of space and time to relativity and language, Frayn attempts to resolve what he calls “the oldest mystery”: the world is what we make of it. In which case, though, what are we?

All of Frayn’s novels and plays have grappled with these essential questions; in this book he confronts them head-on.

Customer Reviews:

Everyone Should Know These Truths.......2007-06-20

This is an astoundingly brilliant, yet accessible, exploration of man's true nature. As part of my joy and work, I have read many of the wisest thinkers who have set words to paper. I know of no one since the Axial Age who has presented these truths about how we humans really function as clearly and refreshingly as Mr. Frayn. Nevermind the absense of a competent editor - Frayn probably couldn't find one up to the job, please read it, understand it, and integrate the understanding. Do it for your own integration and fulfillment, your children's and, ultimately, mankind's.

Pure yawn.......2007-05-15

Frayn is an OK playwright and novelist. I enjoyed Copenhagen and Headlong (though I thought Spies was sentimental drivel in a manner akin to this tome). But this is sheer, pure and pathetic nonsense. The Washington Post reviewer (Colin McGinn) got it about right, but the previous reviewers on Amazon have it wrong. The average reader will learn nothing useful of cosmology, particle physics, neuroscience and even philosophy (except that it's a huge waste of time) from this long-winded, completely unedited (it seems) and vacuous volume. If you want to learn something about physics, read Brian Greene or Frank Close. If you want a general summary then read Bill Bryson (a vastly superior writer, as tacitly acknowledged by Frayn himself). I learned more philosophy from 1 page of AC Grayling's 90-page total destruction of Wittgenstein ("The world is everything that is the case" - yo, Ludwig) than 100 pages of this long-drawn-out excrescence. An earlier reviewer compared Frayn favorably with Richard Dawkins. GMAB - Dawkins is a superb, succinct and accurate scribe while Frayn simply cannot express any thought in less than 1000 words. Avoid like the plague.

A touch of humor in the profound.......2007-05-07

I know Michael Frayn through exposure to his playwriting masterpiece (at least that is how I consider it) "Noises Off", a thoroughly entertaining and very, very funny farce of all things theatrical and therefore, of culture as a whole. I was not prepared for the depth and breadth of his skill in weaving the substances of philosophical thought and almost gossamer-like threads of humor and grace and compassion for the struggle we as human beings have with living life. A long book yet filled with enough insights theatrical and, especially humor, and it became an easy read, enjoyable as well as thought-inducing. I highly recommend it.

A Big, Friendly Summary of Philosophy.......2007-04-23

Michael Frayn is well known as a playwright for the hilarious farce _Noises Off_ (film version good but less funny) and for _Copenhagen_, a drama about quantum physicists. He is also a novelist, translator, and journalist. When he was at Cambridge, though, he studied philosophy, and he might say that all his works have been offshoots of that particular endeavor. He returns to the big subject in _The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe_ (Metropolitan Books) with a suitably big book with lots of big and important topics and plenty of profound but lightly-expressed ideas. It has to be said that most of Frayn's ideas have to do with just how deep our wonderment ought to be and how few answers we have, but still, this is a genial guided tour of the issues that have consumed thinkers since before the days of Plato.

The paradox that Frayn looks at in many different ways is this: "The world has no form or substance without you and me to provide them, and you and I have no form or substance without the world to provide them in its turn." He also says that we have not even begun resolve the paradox. "The universe plainly exists independently of human consciousness," he writes, "but what can ever be said about it that has not been mediated through that consciousness?" We have come scientifically to understand a great deal of our universe, especially the planet we inhabit, but the amount compared to the mysteries that still remain is tiny. When we look closely at its complexity, it merely becomes more complex. Frayn, as you can imagine, thinks that numbers are invented. After all, we messed around with numbers for centuries without using a symbol for zero until that concept became part of the system. "Number, in short, is not something logically and mysteriously anterior to space and time, or to cause, or to the human presence in the world." Frayn examines the truth content of stories; how can we evaluate, for instance, the statement "Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street"? It is all less complicated than counterfactuals, which have been a puzzle for philosophers for centuries. All this is less puzzling than that of the old bogey of consciousness; Frayn writes, "About consciousness much has been said, and not a word of it that told us anything we didn't already know perfectly well from our own lifelong experience, which is nothing. We can't even say what _sort_ of a thing it is." Consciousness is plainly dependent on the mechanisms in the brain, but paradox again, no accounting of such mechanisms comes close to explaining what feeling and being aware are.

What meaning we get from the universe, too, is up to us. Frayn starts and ends his tour of paradox and how little we can really know with a Rashomon-like invitation: on a calm, clear night, just look up at the stars in wonder. It isn't enough for us humans, because we will start wondering about those lights, and their spectra, and their speed of emission, and on and on; it isn't enough, and then it is enough because it has to be. Frayn's deeply personal explanations of philosophical ideas expressed in an avuncular and amiable way is an engaging look at a broad range of important ideas. Despite his repeatedly showing how much of what we know for sure cannot really be known for sure, this is not a book of despair but an invitation to look with delight more deeply at the nature of things.

I kept reaching for a pencil.......2007-03-22

Professional philosophers will have the same problem with this book as professional historians have with Paul Johnson (thus a few 4-stars will appear in an otherwise unassailable 5+-stars). As a non-professional philosopher (but professional scientist), I found this to be a remarkable work: An amalgam of physics, neuroscience, linguistics, and philosophy, brought to bear upon the issue of how we create the universe. Its an astonishing synthesis.

Frayn has a genius for accessibly posing the important questions. What is free will? What is consciousness? Does the universe exist (metaphorically) without us? Most important, do we have the language to even ask the right questions? Could we ever understand ourselves? Frayn has serious doubts, and the answers pour through our fingers like water. But our hands are left wet, and we thirst for more.

Average customer rating:

Demise of Determinism
Intriguing.
Intriguing concept - but is it drama?
The play and a fascinating postscript
Deserves a reading

Copenhagen
Michael Frayn
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0385720793
Release Date: 2000-08-08

Amazon.com

For most people, the principles of nuclear physics are not only incomprehensible but inhuman. The popular image of the men who made the bomb is of dispassionate intellects who number-crunched their way towards a weapon whose devastating power they could not even imagine. But in his Tony Award-winning play Copenhagen, Michael Frayn shows us that these men were passionate, philosophical, and all too human, even though one of the three historical figures in his drama, Werner Heisenberg, was the head of the Nazis' effort to develop a nuclear weapon. The play's other two characters, the Danish physicist Niels Bohr and his wife, Margrethe, are involved with Heisenberg in an after-death analysis of an actual meeting that has long puzzled historians. In 1941, the German scientist visited Bohr, his old mentor and long-time friend, in Copenhagen. After a brief discussion in the Bohrs' home, the two men went for a short walk. What they discussed on that walk, and its implications for both scientists, have long been a mystery, even though both scientists gave (conflicting) accounts in later years.

Frayn's cunning conceit is to use the scientific underpinnings of atomic physics, from Schrödinger's famous cat to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, to explore how an individual's point of view renders attempts to discover the ultimate truth of any human interaction fundamentally impossible. To Margrethe, Heisenberg was always an untrustworthy student, eager to steal from her husband's knowledge. To Bohr, Heisenberg was a brilliant if irresponsible foster son, whose lack of moral compass was part of his genius. As for Heisenberg, the man who could have built the bomb but somehow failed to, his dilemma is at the heart of the play's conflict. Frayn's clever dramatic structure, which returns repeatedly to particular scenes from different points of view, allows several possible theories as to what his motives could have been. This isn't the first play to successfully merge the worlds of science and theater (one is inevitably reminded of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and Hapgood), but it's certainly one of the most dramatically successful. --John Longenbaugh

Book Description

The Tony Award—winning play that soars at the intersection of science and art, Copenhagen is an explosive re-imagining of the mysterious wartime meeting between two Nobel laureates to discuss the atomic bomb.

In 1941 the German physicist Werner Heisenberg made a clandestine trip to Copenhagen to see his Danish counterpart and friend Niels Bohr. Their work together on quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle had revolutionized atomic physics. But now the world had changed and the two men were on opposite sides in a world war. Why Heisenberg went to Copenhagen and what he wanted to say to Bohr are questions that have vexed historians ever since. In Michael Frayn’s ambitious, fiercely intelligent, and daring new play Heisenberg and Bohr meet once again to discuss the intricacies of physics and to ponder the metaphysical—the very essence of human motivation.

Customer Reviews:

Demise of Determinism .......2006-11-25

Why did Heisenberg come to Copenhagen? Was he there to prod his former mentor for information on America's nuclear program? Or, was he there to gloat? Perhaps to reach a bargain; we won't build it if you don't? Perhaps to warn Bohr: Leave now before it is too late. Or, merely to pick the brain of the old master? About that calculation, did you say two tons or two kilos? Then again, Bohr was a kind of deity. Could Heisenberg have come to him for absolution: Forgive me Father for I have sinned; the Nazis made me do it. Or, is it possible that a German could actually be a goodie. After all, Heisenberg never built "the" bomb. Indeed, after the war Heisenberg asserted that though he possessed the scientific ability to construct a bomb, he instead steered the Nazis towards the production of a reactor.
Uncertainty. It allows Frayne to explore science, morality, politics and memory, all of which are inexorably linked. Explore is the operative word, here. Nothing in the play is ever really resolved but Frayne does use Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle" to consider and explore the subjective nature of observation, which in this case relates not only to the workings of the atom but to the human mind as well.

Intriguing........2005-11-09

Michael Frayn, Copenhagen (Anchor, 1998)

Copenhagen 2000 Tony Award winner for best play, turns on a rather simple premise: Niels Bohr, his wife Margrethe, and Werner Heisenberg, who were all together at a brief meeting in 1941 which has confused historians ever since, are back together after death. They are trying to piece out what actually happened that night; it seems they don't remember what happened that night any more than do those who have written so many pages about it over the years. In the process, they also dissect quantum physics, argue the viability of the atomic bomb (and why Heisenberg didn't think it was possible, while Bohr ended up being a small, but instrumental, player on Oppenheimer's team), and in general behave like old friends who have grown old and crotchety.

Frayn is obviously coming from the Waiting for Godot school of drama here, as the play is absent any action whatsoever; all the events are described by the three players. This has been expressed by a large number of the play's critics as a weakness. Whether or not you see it as one is, well, pretty much up to you; in all honesty, it never really occurred to me to consider it a weakness while I was actually reading the play, which I take as a positive thing.

The real reason to pick this up, though, is in Frayn's rather long afterword. (One wonders if anyone considered having one of the actors come out and relate it after each performance.) While the play itself does a decent job at demystifying the physics and mechanics of the various details about which Bohr and Heisenberg spent most of their lives niggling, the play's afterword both puts these details, and the nigglers, into the larger picture of their culture and time and elucidates a few things that someone simply seeing the play is likely to still not understand (such as how much of Frayn's various ideas as to what happened in the mysterious conversation he pulled out from under his arm, and how much has actually been posited by scholars). While the play itself is interesting, the afterword is fascinating, and the two together make for a good read. *** ½

Intriguing concept - but is it drama?.......2004-07-29

Reading a play poses challenges, as one must imagine it as a production while reading it as a book, and Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" is no exception. Written without stage directions or set descriptions, and relying solely on dialogue, this three-person play describes the complicated relationship between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, two physicists responsible for groundbreaking work in quantum physics. With Bohr's wife Margrethe acting as a fulcrum, the two great physicists discuss their lives before, during, and after World War II, using Heisenberg's visits to Copenhagen as focal points. Probably the most radical device Frayn uses is skipping around in time (appropriate given the mention of Einstein) where the characters speak after they have died as well as in the past, often with one describing to the audience what is happening or what something means while the other two interact; the reader has to be astute enough to "hear" the change in tone to know whether the characters are speaking in the past or as deceased observers, especially since the change can occur from one sentence to the next. This play gathers its power mostly near the end as certain principles of quantum mechanics, particularly the ability of an atomic particle to act like both matter and wave, clarify these relationships. Issues of personal responsibility and negligence ignite the last pages.

But is this drama? Frayn does not create scenes except through expository writing and discussions. Action is described rather than shown, and thematic development is contained solely in the words spoken by the characters. What's worse, the characters seem too aware of the implications of their actions, making the dialogue somewhat heavy-handed. I would expect skilled actors to be able to magnify the glimpses of deep emotion as well as enliven what is already an intriguing concept, but in lesser hands, this play could end up as a mere exercise. The cover perfectly describes the starkness of "Copenhagen": three industrial chairs on an empty stage, two characters talking while another looks on.

Frayn's postscript lends context to the play, and I recommend not skipping it since this is an intellectual play about an intellectual topic. Particularly interesting is Frayn's description of fact, background, interpretation, and pure imagination on his part.

The average play reader should find "Copenhagen" fascinating. The basics of quantum mechanics are rendered in understandable and digestible bits. If you are planning to see a production of "Copenhagen" in the near future, the book is worth purchasing for the postscript; it should enhance your enjoyment of the production.

The play and a fascinating postscript.......2004-02-11

This book contains the text of Michael Frayn's Tony Award-winning play (94 pages), a fascinating 38-page Postscript, and a two-page word sketch of the scientific and historical background to the play.

The play itself is brilliant (see my review of the PBS production directed by Howard Davies, starring Stephen Rea, Daniel Craig, and Francesca Annis available on DVD) and is the kind of play that can be fully appreciated simply by reading it. There are no stage directions, no mention of props or stage business. There is simply Frayn's extraordinary dialogue. A photo from the cover suggests how the play might be staged on a round table with the three characters, Danish physicist Niels Bohr, his wife Margrethe, and German physicist Werner Heisenberg, going slowly round and round as in an atom. This symbolism is intrinsic to the ideas of the play with Bohr seen as the stolid proton at the center and the younger Heisenberg the flighty electron that "circles." Margrethe who brings both common sense and objectivity to the interactions between the ever circling physicists, might be thought of as a neutron, or perhaps she is the photon that illuminates (and deflects ever so slightly) what it touches.

At the center of the play (and at the center of our understanding of the world through quantum mechanics) is a fundamental uncertainty. While Heisenberg and Bohr demonstrated to the world through the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics that there will always be something we cannot in principle know regardless of how fine our measurements, Frayn's play suggests that there will always be some uncertainty about what went on between the two great architects of QM during Heisenberg's celebrated and fateful visit to the Bohr household in occupied Denmark in 1941. There is uncertainty at the heart of not only our historical tools but at the very heart of human memory (as Frayn explains in the Postscript).

"The great challenge facing the storyteller and the historian alike is to get inside people's heads... Even when all the external evidence has been mastered, the only way into the protagonists' heads is through the imagination. This indeed is the substance of the play." (p. 97)

The three characters appear as ghosts of their former selves, as it were, and begin immediately an attempt to unravel and understand what happened in 1941. The central question is Why did Heisenberg come to Copenhagen? Was it an attempt to enlist Bohr in a German atomic bomb project? Was it to get information from Bohr about an Allied project or to pick his brain for ideas on how to make fission work? Or was it, as Margrethe avers, to "show himself off"--the little boy grown up, the man who was once part of a defeated country, now triumphant?

The play leaves it for us to find an answer, because neither history nor the recorded words of the participants give us anything close to certainty. With the conflicting statements of the characters Frayn implies that the truth may be a matter of one's point of view, that is, it may be a question of relativity. Ultimately it may even be that Heisenberg himself did not know why he came to Copenhagen.

Also being asked by Frayn's play is a moral question. Is it right for scientists to build weapons of mass destruction to be used on civilian targets? Heisenberg contends that this is the question he wanted to ask of Bohr. It is ironic that although Heisenberg was condemned by physicists around the world for his (presumed) unsuccessful attempt to build a fission bomb for Hitler, his work killed no one, while the universally beloved and admired Bohr had a hand in the Manhattan project that resulted in the bombs that were dropped on the Japanese cities.

As the electron is seen and then not seen, its speed measured and then not measured, but never both at the same time, so it is with Heisenberg's character in life and in this play. We are never sure where he is. Is he working for the Nazis or is he only pretending to? Is he working on a reactor or is he working on a bomb? Did he delay the German project intentionally (as he claimed), or was the failure due to incompetence, or even--as Frayn suggests--to an unconscious quirk of Heisenberg's mind?

In the Postscript Frayn recalls the historical evidence he used in constructing the play and cites his sources and gives us insights into what Bohr and Heisenberg were like. He quotes Max Born, describing Heisenberg as having an "unbelievable quickness and precision of understanding," while "the most characteristic property" of Bohr, as described by George Gamow, "was the slowness of his thinking and comprehension." One can see where Frayn got his metaphor of the atom with its heavy nucleus and its speedy electron. But Bohr was also thoughtful and thorough while Heisenberg was "careless with numbers." And of course these are relative terms since both men were Nobel Prize-winning physicists, brilliant men who reached the very pinnacle of their profession.

Bottom line: one the great plays of our time on an epochal subject, fascinating and cathartic as all great plays should be.

Deserves a reading.......2004-01-21

COPENHAGEN is a play that welcomes a reading. The structure of pure dialogue between the physicists, Heisenberg, Bohr and Bohr's wife Margrethe( who represents the non-physicists in the audience) lends itself to the closer examination the written word gives us. Michael Frayn brilliantly imagines a moment frozen in time- Heisenberg arrives from Germany in 1941 to discuss something with his mentor, Bohr in occupied Copenhagen. Seizing upon this historical event and its mysterious circumstances, Frayn recreates the event from a variety of perspectives in pursuit of a greater truth. Was Heisenberg a hero, who kept the Nazi's from achieving the ultimate weapon, or a victim of his own carelessness?
Reading the play, gives you the time to reflect upon how creatively Frayn frames each of his scenarios. The dialogue is never less than challenging, even while playing to the audience surrogate, Margrethe. Frayn uses these two great minds to introduce the audience into the realm of advanced physics and the moral ambiguities involved in the mixing of pure science with the nature of war. The forced civility between the two men emphasizes the underlying current of terror created by the Nazis rise to power and the oncoming dawn of an atomic age. Frayn does not offer any easy answers, to do so would be an insult to the wonderful work that has gone on before.
The postscript alone is worth the price of the book for any fan of the play. It sets up the historical context for the play's creation and gives the reader a much greater understanding of where Frayn came up with many of the issues he examines in this work.

Average customer rating:

An effort to read, but well worth it
Enjoyable cover to cover
Just couldn't stick with it
Good writer, not a great book
Hilarious

Headlong: A Novel
Michael Frayn
Manufacturer: Metropolitan Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0805062858

Amazon.com

With its sumptuous surfaces and alluring sense of gravitas, classic Dutch painting has fascinated writers for centuries. It's easy to see why. Giant religious representations and gaudy classical scenes already have the weight of literature behind them. But an enigmatic portrait or dimly lit interior seems like a virtual incubator for narrative, and now Michael Frayn joins the Netherlandish fray in Headlong, which features a Bruegel canvas in the starring role.

The other star of the novel is youngish art historian Martin Clay (a Hugh Grant character gone to fat), who identifies the lost Bruegel in a tumbledown country home. The picture elicits an immediate shock of recognition: <blockquote> Already, somewhere in those first few instants, something has begun to stir inside me. In my head, in the pit of my stomach. It's as if the sun's emerging from the clouds, and the world's changing in front of my eyes, from grey to golden. I can feel the warmth of the sunlight spreading over my skin, passing like a wave of beneficence through my entire body. </blockquote> The sight of this masterwork glimmering through the "grimy pane of time" fires up Martin's customarily dilettantish intellect, and he decides to secure it for the nation--and make himself a fortune--without revealing its true value to the owner. Much double-dealing, bamboozling, and suppressed hysteria ensue as he and the owner try to outfox each other. Yet the heart of the novel is Martin's search for the meaning of the painting that has become his "triumph and torment and downfall." Bouncing from gallery to museum to library, he delivers an extended (and entertaining) lesson on iconography and landscape.

As Martin's obsession takes hold, the pace of the novel also accelerates into a breathless rush of action, comic anguish, and scholarly speculation. Not surprisingly, some of Martin's machinations go haywire, which leads to a certain amount of irritating slapstick--shady deals in underground parking lots, art treasures being tipped into the back of a filthy Land Rover, and so forth. But even if he makes his plot work overtime, Frayn is superb in the quest for the meaning of art, not to mention the lure of money and intellectual reputation. And for that alone, Headlong deserves to be called picture perfect. --Eithne Farry

Book Description

An unlikely con man wagers wife, wealth, and sanity in pursuit of an elusive Old Master.

Invited to dinner by the boorish local landowner, Martin Clay, an easily distracted philosopher, and his art-historian wife are asked to assess three dusty paintings blocking the draught from the chimney. But hiding beneath the soot is nothing less-Martin believes-than a lost work by Bruegel. So begins a hilarious trail of lies and concealments, desperate schemes and soaring hopes as Martin, betting all that he owns and much that he doesn't, embarks on a quest to prove his hunch, win his wife over, and separate the painting from its owner.

In Headlong, Michael Frayn, "the master of what is seriously funny" (Anthony Burgess), offers a procession of superbly realized characters, from the country squire gone to seed to his giddy, oversexed young wife. All are burdened by human muddle and human cravings; all are searching for a moral compass as they grapple with greed, folly, and desire. And at the heart of the clamor is Breugel's vision, its dark tones warning of the real risks of temptation and obsession.

With this new novel, Michael Frayn has given us entertainment of the highest order. Supremely wise and wickedly funny, Headlong elevates Frayn into the front rank of contemporary novelists.

Customer Reviews:

An effort to read, but well worth it.......2007-01-03

I think the negative reviews may have been given by those who were looking for a book to read on the beach. To enjoy the book, you have to remember (at least to some extent) the sketches of art history, the Spanish attempts to suppress the beginning of the Dutch rebellion against themselves and the Catholic church, the college-professor narrator's get-rich-quick scheme, etc.

I was willing to put in the effort, and felt richly rewarded for it. Within the author's intent, my only criticism would be that the narrator is generally portrayed as intelligent, but his actions sometimes seem imbecile, which stretched my credulity. Perhaps it should not have - I have known some fairly impractical college professors.

Enjoyable cover to cover .......2006-12-01

A fantastic book. Extremely funny and witty. I was not going to write a review until I read all of the unwarranted negative reviews. I would guess the criticism of this book stems from the increasingly short attention span of the average person. If you like to bury yourself in an interesting and funny story, this is the book.

Just couldn't stick with it.......2006-08-07

This had all the earmarks of something I'd love. I was an art-history major in college, am still a major museum-rat, and I especially love Dutch art. But the novel was sooooo boring that I gave up after about a hundred pages. The early dinner-party scene at the Churts' house was hilarious, but then the endless, dry art-historical and philosophical ruminations just put me to sleep. As other reviewers have said, it would have helped immensely if there had been illustrations of the works in question. But reading interminable descriptions of what various paintings look like, and how many different ways you can spell "Brueghel".... please.

Good writer, not a great book.......2006-06-03

I was looking forward to reading this book, yet turned out to be pretty dissapointed. He gets 2 stars for being a good writer, sadly this book just wasnt interesting. The story grew stagnant very quickly, and seemed like a bunch of filler that I wasnt interested in. The main character started getting to the point where it seemed like verything he though about was a repeat of something he had previously said. I think the story had potential, but just wasnt executed well.

Hilarious.......2006-05-17

Fantastic book! Fun, classic plot elements, with some great twists and turns. A very smart read, too. Bravo!

Average customer rating:

My favorite play
It's About Doors and Sardines, Bags and Boxes, and Sheets.
Hilarious
Funniest play of all time!
noises off

Noises Off
Michael Frayn
Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1400031605
Release Date: 2002-08-27

Book Description

Noises Off, the classic farce by the Tony Award—winning author of Copenhagen, is not one play but two: simultaneously a traditional sex farce, Nothing On, and the backstage “drama” that develops during Nothing On’s final rehearsal and tour. The two begin to interlock as the characters make their exits from Nothing On only to find themselves making entrances into the even worse nightmare going on backstage. In the end, at the disastrous final performance, the two plots can be kept separate no longer, and coalesce into a single collective nervous breakdown.

Customer Reviews:

My favorite play.......2007-02-27

I first saw this play in high school and I really liked it--after seeing it, I HAD to get a copy of the script. :-D Michael Frayn's NOISES OFF is hilarious all the way!

It's About Doors and Sardines, Bags and Boxes, and Sheets........2006-08-24

NOISES OFF is the hilarious play within a play about a group of actors performing a touring edition of a British farce entitled NOTHING ON. The reader (and performers and audience members for that matter) are only allowed to see NOTHING ON from the first act. The first time they see it, it is the night of the dress rehearsal. The next time they see the act it is from behind the stage several weeks into the company's tour. The final act of the show is once again a performance of the first act of NOTHING ON, but seen from the front of the stage several weeks later. The hilarity involved ensues from the interactions of the performers and their relationships with each other. NOISES OFF displays that as funny as a play might be from the audience, sometimes it pares in comparison to the hilarity ensuing behind the scenes.

Hilarious.......2004-12-09

I love the movie, but reading the actual play is even better! It's such a worthwhile read, you can just picture what's really happening. If you're into sex farce and comedy, this is definitely the play for you!

Funniest play of all time!.......2002-12-09

Noises Off is the funniest play of all time. It is play with in a play where everything that could go wrong does. Lloyd the director has decided to put on the show "Nothing On," a tradtional sex farce, when fiction begins to look like reality. This madcap play takes many twists and turns through cheating couples both on stage and off. A must read for any comedy lover.

noises off.......2002-10-15

am ordering the book today. i saw the play in nyc and thought it was the funniest thing i have ever seen. worth a trip from almost any place - it is so well acted and the energy of the actors cannot be overstated. a night of fun. ps. the 5 rating is in anticipation.

Average customer rating:

The confusion of childhood revealed
Bitter-sweet childhood memories
Spies- Michael Frayn
This one misses its mark
Would Make A Great Short Story

Spies: A Novel
Michael Frayn
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Headlong
The Trick of It: A Novel
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Copenhagen
Panther in the Basement

ASIN: 0312421176

Amazon.com

In Michael Frayn's novel Spies an old man returns to the scene of his seemingly ordinary suburban childhood. Stephen Wheatley is unsure of what he is seeking, but as he walks once-familiar streets he hasn't seen in 50 years, he unfolds a story of childish games colliding cruelly with adult realities. It is wartime and Stephen's friend Keith makes the momentous announcement that his mother is a German spy. The two boys begin to spy on the supposed spy, following her on her trips to the shops and to the post office, and reading her diary. Keith's mother does have secrets to conceal but they are not the ones the boys suspect. Frayn skillfully manipulates his plot so that the reader's growing awareness of the truth remains just a few steps beyond young Stephen's dawning realization that he is trespassing on painful and dangerous territory. The only false notes occur in the final chapter when the central revelation is too swiftly followed by further disclosures about Stephen and his family that seem somehow unnecessary and make the denouement less satisfyingly conclusive. This is a much sparer and less expansive book than Frayn's 1999 novel Headlong, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize. --Nick Rennison, Amazon.co.uk

Book Description

The National Bestseller

The sudden trace of a disturbing, forgotten aroma compels Stephen Wheatley to return to the site of a dimly remembered but troubling childhood summer in wartime London. As he pieces together his scattered memories, we are brought back to a quiet, suburban street where two boys--Keith and his sidekick, Stephen--are engaged in their own version of the war effort: spying on the neighbors, recording their movements, and ferreting out their secrets. But when Keith utters six shocking words, the boy’s game of espionage takes a sinister and unintended turn, transforming a wife’s simple errands and the ordinary rituals of family life into the elements of adult catastrophe.

Childhood and innocence, secrecy, lies and repressed violence are all gently laid bare as once again Michael Frayn powerfully demonstrates that what appears to be happening in front of our eyes often turns out to be something we cannot see at all.

Customer Reviews:

The confusion of childhood revealed.......2007-06-23

A page turner to make you think about pre-adolescence, wartime, and child rearing. The book's WWII setting is engrossing, and, while Frayne does exhibit some of the carefully orchestrated plot trickery we've grown accustomed to, the richness of his plot and his characters is a gift to all readers.

Bitter-sweet childhood memories.......2006-08-11

Set in Britain during the Second World War, the novel follows the goings-on of a residential neighborhood as seen through the eyes of a child who's barely started to grasp the meaning of adult life and is reluctantly about to leave his playfulness, naiveté and innocence behind.

Very tender, creative and evocative writing by Frayn. In my humble personal opinion though, the book fails to take off. It's too flat and the subject lacks that which will make the book pop. I tired of it long before I reached the end.

Spies- Michael Frayn.......2006-01-24

Spies is an assigned novel I have to study for English Literature at AS level.
To be honest I agree with all reviews, good and bad.
It is a beautiful book, but perhaps too poetic.
I was extremely bored for the first few chapters, but as mentioned, once you get into it, it is very intriguing and cleverly written, and, I have to admit that Frayn is wonderful at capturing feelings of people.
Although I agree with people dismissing it as boring and too poetic, which is what I thought to start off with, if you persevere with it you get to the "good bits".
There's no written rule as to how long it's got to take to get into it, with Spies it just means you're more interested as the plot takes flight.
A good book, but if your concentration span isn't great, it may take you a while.
I think it's worth the buy but if you're not into stories that unravel in stages, it's probably not for you.
In my opinion, good book :) well done Frayn!

This one misses its mark.......2005-06-08

I really enjoyed reading Headlong and Copenhagen, but Frayn missed with this one. Frayn is excellent at satirical farce or philosophy. but neither of those forms require the generation of much emotion. Farce is really an intellectual genre that depends on speed and humor for effect. Copenhagen worked because it was an intellectual mystery. This novel needs the reader to identify and engage with the main character to care about the outcome. Instead, Frayn is too interested in suggesting the fleeting quality of memory to help us understand Stephen. Also, there is a problem writing a mystery from an adult's point of view when he knows the outcome. Withholding information under those circumstances make it seem that the author is playing unfair games with the reader and also dilutes the suspense. I think the reader never really feels what the consequences of the boys' actions are likely to be--we don't sense real danger and therefore lose interest. Read A Little Friend by Donna Tartt to see how she handles a child's coming of age where the consequences of the girl's actions are life changing and terribly frightening.

Would Make A Great Short Story.......2005-03-28

The book takes place during WWII and follows the lives of two eleven year year old boys as they play a game of spy. The game tests their friendship and gets one of them involved in a very grown up situation with tragic consequences. If written as a short story this book would have received four starts. As it is written though, the last 20-30 pages are well written but the first 150 feel like filler.

Average customer rating:

Alarms and Excursions
Michael Frayn
Manufacturer: Samuel French
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0573018081

Book Description

Four old friends sit down for a quiet evening together. But they are harassed by various bells, warblers, beepers and cheepers, all trying to warn them of something.

Average customer rating:

Engaging
Metafictive delight
Envy as Self-destruction

The Trick of It: A Novel
Michael Frayn
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Domestic Life | Women's Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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Spies: A Novel
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A Very Private Life

ASIN: 0312421443

Book Description

He knows everything about her before they meet: the make of pen she writes with, her exact height, the various honorary degrees she holds. He knows more about her nine novels and 27 short stories than she does herself. Naturally—he has devoted his life to studying and teaching them, and he reveres them. Also, he is four times as clever as she is.

The Trick of It is a comic and painful voyage of exploration into the creative process and the feelings it arouses in others. The humble academic disciple finds himself admitted to his subject’s life, and off to this oldest friend go a series of dispatches—by turns awed and patronizing, reverential and jealous, disingenuous and appallingly frank.

Customer Reviews:

Engaging.......2007-01-30

Different from Frayn's other novels. I absolutely loved this book - read it in about 6 hours straight. It's psychologically engaging. Great to see the inside of a relationship from a male perspective.

Metafictive delight.......2003-01-31

This is a story of hero(ine) worship, a disastrous relationship, and the destructive power of envy, told in the form of letters from an English academic who becomes romantically involved with the famous author who is the subject of his studies. As in "Headlong", Frayn gives us a flawed protagonist we both like and despise. We can see the value of what he wants and wish him well in his quest, but then can only look on in agonized impotence as he goes about securing his object by entirely inappropriate means. The comedy of the scenario would be enough, but Frayn has more on his mind. This is a novel about novels, about writing. It's a kind of metafiction which explores "the trick" of fiction. What is it that writers do? How do they create their stories? Do they invent? Or do they plunder their own lives and the lives of those around them? In the manner of most good metafiction, this one raises more questions than it answers. In the end, the origin and status of what we have just read is never quite resolved. Is this simply a collection of the protagonist's letters? Or is it the 'factual novel' he has lately been writing in competition with his wife? Or is it in fact a novel written by his wife, based on their shared experiences? Or one written by his Australian academic friend to whom these 'letters' were addressed? Or even one by the biographer who was urgently trying to locate them for his own dire ends? We never really know - which is part of the trick of it.

Envy as Self-destruction.......2001-07-19

Written in a form of protagonist's letters to his Australian friend, the novel is an subtle and psychologically exact depiction of moral degradation of an ordinary man (not a bad or evil one in his essence but somewhat bilious and self-absorbed) afflicted with envy. He has received a windfall of love, goodness and generosity, but being unable to surmount personal jealosity he loses respect of his colleagues and even his job itself and turns a sting of his malice against his wife and only friend until this destruction becomes his self-destruction.

Book Description

The new collection from the author of the Booker short-listed novel Headlong and the internationally acclaimed Copenhagen.

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Highly accomplished
Probably not Frayn's best...
a quiet, unassuming little masterpiece
A perfect masterpiece
sweet, haunting, intense

A Landing on the Sun: A Novel
Michael Frayn
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Copenhagen

ASIN: 0312421907

Book Description

From the bestselling author of Headlong and Spies, "an unconditional triumph" (The Washington Post Book World)

For fifteen years, ever since the taciturn civil servant Summerchild fell to his death from a window in the Admiralty, there have been rumors.

So Brian Jessel, a young member of the Cabinet Office, is diverted from his routine work and asked to prepare an internal report. Slowly, from the archives in the Cabinet Office Registry, Jessel begins to reconstruct Summerchild’s last months. It begins to emerge that, at a time when America had just put men on the moon, the British were involved in an even bolder project, and that Summerchild was investigating a phenomenon as common as sunlight, but as powerful and dangerous as any of the forces that modern science has known.

The secret world into which Brian Jessel stumbles turns out to be even more extraordinary than his department had feared.

Customer Reviews:

Highly accomplished.......2003-01-31

With its enticing blend of sex, death, Establishment politics and academic philosophy (in this case the theory of happiness), the setup for this intriguing novel sounds like something by Ian McEwan. But Frayn brings to it his trademark sense of humor, so it never quite gets into the same territory. The comic aspects of an unlikely love affair between a devious public servant and the Oxford academic who is also his boss are fully exploited, providing a nice counterpoint to the more intellectually engaging philosophical material. In that sense, this novel makes a nice companion piece to Frayn's two most recent efforts - "Headlong" and "Spies" - both of which similarly deploy comic plots as devices for discussing more serious concerns. In the right hands, this kind of thing can really work. Frayn consistently manages to pull it off because he makes clever narrative choices. Here, he uses the first-person narration of an investigator, the transcripts of meetings, and audio tapes of the lovers to tell a story which unfolds in two timeframes. He also sets up an intriguing mystery - Who killed Stephen Summerchild? - to pull you through. Highly original and engaging, this should appeal to readers who prefer literary fiction but also enjoy the intrigue and pacing of crime/mystery novels. It's a challenging fusion of the two.

Probably not Frayn's best..........2000-06-20

The book is an irritating dichotomy. A tightly woven,well-structured plot compliments an economical stock of carefully crafted and intriguing if ultimately plebian characters. At the same time the book preaches it is tedious and not terribly interesting. Frayn's stream of consciousness works well, though it falls short of Faulkner. Unfortunately, interesting questions remained unanswered, such as the teasing fascination of Jessel's family relationships and his resolution of an old love affair. The book is not in the least bit funny and should not be considered a comedy. I have the most profound respect for Mr. Frayn and his integrity. That's what makes the book so frustrating to read. I KNOW he can do better. It was as if he hadn't proofread his own work. The bittersweet description of this sordid love affair is painful and well worth the experience of reading but, in all, the book, as a work, fails.

a quiet, unassuming little masterpiece.......2000-03-14

This book is a strange, finely crafted, sometimes very funny, deliberation about beaurocracy, philosophy, love and insanity.

A perfect masterpiece.......2000-02-29

I cannot find that any reviewer has properly taken the measure of the virtuosity of this work, apart from any of its other merits. Frayn anchors Jessel in the very same place as Serafin and Summerchild, the two people whose history he is investigating, and from that conceptual base he goes out on forays into differences of time and of identity. Jessel plays and experiments with abolishing those differences, but the sameness of place is flatly literal. It's delicious. --As well as the interplays between his time frame and theirs, and between his identity and theirs, there is the interplay between his happiness and theirs; and, for good measure, Frayn explores the interplays amongst these other interplays. All of this finely interwoven, never tangled; so funny and so sad; and bound together with a terrific detective story. --Frayn makes a brilliant job of making us believe (in a way) Jessel's own representation of himself as a dry, grey, prosaic civil servant, while also showing us how lively and responsive a mind he has. --The philosophy tutorials are wonderful: a lot of mockery, but also some real philosophy. Frayn makes the unlikely love between Serafin and Summerchild seem almost inevitable: all it took was an exchange of truly personal reminiscences, their sheer intimacy being the magnet that pulls the two people towards one another. --This is the most complex thing Frayn has ever done; he ran fearful risks with it; and the upshot is a triumphant, dazzling success. `

sweet, haunting, intense.......1998-10-13

I read this book almost a year ago, but even at this distance I can say it haunts me. When I think of books I've loved, this is certainly one. In structure, it reminded me a little of AS Byatt's Possession (if not quite that complicated). It's smart and funny about the lives of civil servants, and keeps your sympathies shifting and swelling. A brilliant book.

Average customer rating:

Somewhat interesting

Chekhov Plays (Methuen Paperback)
Michael Frayn
Manufacturer: Methuen Publishing, Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Continental European | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

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The Death of Ivan Ilych And Other Stories

ASIN: 041318160X

Book Description

The critical clamour for a Complete Chekhov in Michael Frayn's translation has borne fruit Sunday Times

Customer Reviews:

Somewhat interesting.......2005-03-05

I had to read this for a class that I had. I know it is representative of Russian literature, but it's very bleak and depressing. None of the plays have a really happy ending, but they do have good endings. My least favorite of the plays was Three Sisters, and my favorite was Cherry Orchard. Three Sisters, in my opinion is about the most bleak, unsatisfying, and depressing play about life and love I have ever read. Cherry Orchard is, in my opinion well thought out, bad things happen in this play, but there are reasons for these occurances, and it also has the most satisfying ending of all the plays in this book. Seagull, Uncle Vanya, and Ivanov aren't really bad, but aren't spectacular. If you want to read a light-hearted and easy going play, don't read this. They were interesting enough for me to give this four stars, they aren't bad for the most part, but aren't spectacular either.

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