The Historians: Rise and Fall of Gestures Drama, Book 39: By Peter Greenaway

by Peter Greenaway (Artist), Daniele Riviere (Editor)

Conceived and written by Peter Greenaway, the series The Historians --to be published in a literary form, in its entirety, in 100 volumes, over the next ten years--creates and examines in exhausting detail the 100 year history of a great continent as an encyclopedic compendium of everything in the world gathered together in one place. The novel The Rise and Fall of Gestures Drama, Book 39 announces itself as the first in this 100-book series of "Book 39 of The Historians traces a history of Gestures Theater on the Continent from its very simple beginnings to the sophistications of 39 years later when the genre across the 50 continental countries has expanded to a phenomenal degree and virtually engaged the imaginations of the entire continent's population of 300 million. The theory and practice of Silent Gestures Theater excites intense debate and controversy when it expands its characteristics to embrace text and sound and murder, to bring down censorship pressures that ultimately destroy it. "

96 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2007

About the author

Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. He is currently professor of cinema studies at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

Reviews

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Greenaway's stand-alone novels are in general a bit weird, but this one quite takes the prize, even though it might not be his best (that, I think, would be "Gold".) Billed as book 39 from a series of 100, of which only book 6 seems to be in the works (it has been forthcoming for a while - the date keep being pushed back) it hints at an attempt of world building, I haven't seen him really do since The Falls, with events taking places in an imaginary continent with unknown customs, languages and traditions. Not that this is the point, though, it's just there in the background, making stuff more obscure while we are being told 100 occurrences in the history of an imagined form of performance art.

It's entertaining in a very dry way, slightly less violent than his other works, a bit more sloppy in it's systematics (though this might be part of the concept of the series, with the books being written by a large number of historians), and with some sharp references to modern commercialization and censorship of art, but on the whole a little underwhelming.

If Greenaway actually fulfills the concept in some form this might end up as part of something very good - I wouldn't expect 100 books, but then, the very ambitious Tulse Luper-project ended up as only 3 movies and a book (the aforementioned "Gold") as the primary works. As a stand-alone piece, though, it is not his strongest, and new readers I would definitely recommend starting with "Gold" before this one.