Dec 12, 2007

Trumpery, Big and Small


Just saw Farnsworth Invention, about which I may post more thoughts in the future. The short version: Aaron Sorkin has so many obvious weaknesses (the showoff pedantry, the square-jawed, men-were-men preachiness, the tidy morality) that it's all too easy to underrate him. If we're going to have recent history told as hustle-bustle, pseudo-mythic infotainment--if we know that's the bargain going in--we could do a lot worse.

And it reminded me, unfavorably, of another play about an uneven race between two men for scientific credit: Peter Parnell's Trumpery, about Darwin and Wallace, at the Atlantic. I found it pretty dreary, though I confess I was not in the majority.

(Photo by Doug Hamilton.)

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