I first read this philosophical novel when I was nineteen, and find it is one of the rare books I return to again and again. Dag Hammarskjold, a former Secretary General of the United Nations., carried two books with him always: The Bible and The Serpent and the Rope. Raja Rao was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature and received many other awards. This novel is for anyone with a search for Truth.
The Serpent and the Rope is about a young Brahmin from India who lives in France, marries a French woman yet loves his friend’s wife who is also from India. This is a story about a young man’s search for Truth which leads him from India to France, England, and back to India. Here is the opening:
I was born a Brahmin – that is, devoted to Truth and all that. Yet how many of my ancestors have really known the Truth...seen God face to face? … I can feel them in me. And know they knew they did not die. Who is it that tells me they did not die? Who but me?
*Perhaps I should add that I was married to Raja Rao for twenty years.
First published in 1915, this timeless poetic book and play is set in a fictitious town in Illinois, a series of interrelated monologues where the dead speak of their past lives and lessons learned.
In my first career as an actor in New York, I was cast in three productions of the play adaptation of Spoon River, nightly performing fifteen diverse characters. This remains one of my favorite experiences due to the poetic language and the amazing range of characters as well as how to review the lives we have lived.
A haunting collection of poetic voices revealing the hidden lives regrets and truths of a small American town.
In Spoon River Anthology Edgar Lee Masters presents a series of interconnected poems spoken by the deceased inhabitants of Spoon River each offering a glimpse into lives marked by ambition disappointment love and quiet struggle. Through these voices the town emerges not as it appeared in life but as it is remembered in reflection and confession.
The work departs from traditional narrative structure instead building a cumulative portrait through individual perspectives. Each poem contributes to a broader understanding of the community revealing…
My favorite novel by British playwright & novelist Charles Morgan.
The character of Therese is inspired by the famous French singer, Edith Piaf. Set in the French countryside, this unique love story between street singer Therese and philosopher Barbet, a great passion that cannot be sustained in daily life.
Why, when we love each other, can’t we be together? Why is it impossible? I know the answer, Barbet. Because we are on separate voyages.
Morgan dives deeply into his characters and the complexity of their life journeys. Sometimes love is not enough. Something readers may find a mirror to their own individual voyages.
Set in the Charente country and the Paris music halls of the 1930s, The Voyage tells of the travails of one man’s quest for lovelove for a woman, and love for France. Available once more to a modern readership, the story that is widely regarded as Charles Morgan’s finest work is that rare thing: a novel with appeal across ages and tastes. It is at once romance and adventure, a hymn to France.
“Excellent! Big Bravos! A masterpiece so well written: clever, funny, poignant, sad; it has it all! - Noel Paul Stookey (Paul in Peter, Paul, & Mary)
The plays of Catherine Ann Jones not only pay tribute to the past, but are a true gift to the present. A memorable work of art! - Dianne Skafte, Ph.D, Listening to the Oracle
From the Introduction to Remarkable Women: by Catherine Ann Jones:
Sometimes story ideas arise from what happens to us in our own lives. Even if they don’t, they usually connect with something felt within. I was then still acting in New York and had been cast as the British author, Virginia Woolf, in a comedy. Naturally, I began reading everything I could about Virginia Woolf. Long after the play closed, I was still reading about Woolf. Then one day, I sat down and wrote a drama about her struggle with madness in a world gone mad, i.e., Hitler and WWII. – a drama far removed from this baby boomer raised in New Orleans and Texas. I had long been fascinated by the razor’s edge between creative genius and madness. So I chose this as my theme in On the Edge: the Final Years of Virginia Woolf. The play was first directed by Harold Clurman, who is known for directing Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams. Later it won a National Endowment for the Arts award, yet the real reward was the response from the audiences. One evening after a performance, an older European woman came up with tears in her eyes. A Holocaust survivor during WWII, she thanked me for putting in the play about the 1938 anti-Semite Krystal Nacht incident. Trembling, as she held my hands, she said, “I was there. I was there.” - Catherine Ann Jones
Remarkable Women offers a transformative journey for anyone interested in the power of stories or the deeper mysteries of the human experience - Betty Sue Flowers, Ph. D., editor, Joseph Campbell: The Power of Myth
