Books : My Name Is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare
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by: Jess Winfield
List Price: $23.99Amazon.com's Price: $16.31 You Save: $7.68 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780446508858
ISBN: 0446508853
Label: Twelve
Manufacturer: Twelve
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: July 08, 2008
Publisher: Twelve
Sales Rank: 51451
Studio: Twelve
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
'Utterly delicious, original, witty, hilarious and brilliant. Shakespeare In Love on magic mushrooms. The Bard has never been this much fun.'
-Christopher Buckley, author of Boomsday and Thank You For Smoking
A Tale of two Shakespeares...
Struggling UC Santa Cruz grad student Willie Shakespeare Greenberg is trying to write his thesis about the Bard. Kind of...
Cut off by his father for laziness, and desperate for dough, Willie agrees to deliver a single giant, psychedelic mushroom to a mysterious collector, making himself an unwitting target in Ronald Reagan's War on Drugs.
Meanwhile, would-be playwright (and oppressed Catholic) William Shakespeare is eighteen years old and stuck teaching Latin in the boondocks of Stratford-upon-Avon. The future Bard's life is turned upside down when a stranger entrusts him with a sacred relic from Rome... This, at a time when adherents of the 'Old Faith' are being hanged, drawn, and quartered as traitors.
Seemingly separated in time and place, the lives of Willie and William begin to intersect in curious ways, from harrowing encounters with the law (and a few ex-girlfriends) to dubious experiments with mind-altering substances. Their misadventures could be dismissed as youthful folly. But wise or foolish, the bold choices they make will shape not only the 'Shakespeare' each is destined to come... but the very course of history itself.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Another encomium, but with one small caveat
"My Name is Will"--not to be confused with the TV show starring Jason Lee--is the best "novel" about Shakespeare since Anthony Burgess' "Nothing Like the Sun," and that about says it all. Speculation about the Bard's private life has been a cottage industry for at least a couple of centuries, and Winfield appears to have woven practically every known legend, from Shakespeare's poaching on Thomas Lucy's estate to his leaving his wife their "second-best bed," into his narrative. That he also manages ... Read More
Rating:  - An amusing romp through Shakespeare's youth
I bought this book because I saw a production of Reduced Shakespeare in London and loved it. Jess Winfield's humor is both intelligent and witty so I was looking forward to reading his novel. My Name is Will is two stories, one about young Shakespeare and one about a young graduate student working on his thesis about Shakespeare. The stories run parallel to each other. The Shakespeare story line is both factual and fanciful, and I suspect the graduate student story line is also rooted in fact. My ... Read More
Rating: - "Sex, drugs and Shakespeare, A sure path to Nirvana"
A bawdy and irreverent look at love and sex and drugs Shakespeare style this broadly humorous novel is a fascinating foray into the life of William Shakespeare and the world that he experienced in the 1580's where his happy family circle was constantly under threat from the dark religious forces of the time. It is the quest for identity and lots of good times that shape this narrative with two Will's - one real and one fictional -separated by time and place but not necessarily by life's experiences.
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Rating: - Get thee to a bookstore!
This delightful novel has two Shakespeares narrating: UC Santa Cruz grad student Willie Shakespeare Greenberg in 1982 who is attempting to do everything but write his Master's Thesis on the Bard and 18 year old William Shakespeare of Stratford- upon- Avon in 1582 who is stuck teaching Latin and trying to avoid those who would hurt him for being a Catholic. Greenberg gets the odd chapters and Shakespeare the even, until their lives come together.
"...You perform here, amongst this company, with seeming ... Read More
Rating: - Interesting Book
Reviewed by Carol Hoyer for Reader Views (8/08)
Mr. Winfield does know his Shakespeare, which is evident in his writing of this book. Although sometimes a little hard to read, Mr. Winfield brings together life before William Shakespeare became the writer he was and a drug-using Will who is in graduate school in California.
Will Greenberg wants to do his master's thesis on the religious controversy about William Shakespeare, whom he thought to be a closet Catholic during a time when ... Read More
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