NEW BOY - PREDICTIONS AND HEADCANONS

This little article I have made for the 23rd of April this year is about predictions and headcanons to be confirmed surrounding New Boy, Tracy Chevalier's preteen US retelling of Shakespeare's Othello!

Ian will be gay or bi.
'Cuz Iago is in my own headcanon, and Mimi is revealed by Chevalier to have had as hard a time as Emilia in the original tale. There may be possibilities for either O, Casper, or Rod, or all three, to have some ho-yay with Ian...
Dee's mother will be a widow/divorcée and an important person. And Dee will be her only child.
Well, the Takarazuka Othello version The Lost Glory already gender-flipped Desdemona's privileged single parent and Rule 63 works perfectly, with a mama bear anxious about losing her only daughter! I'm glad Chevalier gender-flipped this character as well, and I wonder if Dee's mum and dad issues will play a relevant role in her character arc...
Mimi's esper powers will come in handy.
And play a pivotal role in the story. We know she is an introvert because she fears others may reject her due to these powers, and that Ian is abusive towards her.
Ian will discredit Casper with a sugar rush.
So I thought... how will the drunken quarrel scene be handled with 12-year-olds instead of adults? This is one possibility that is more whimsical and unrealistic than the one below...
Ian will discredit Casper by exposing a nerdy or girly side of his.
Like the fact that the popular boy puts on make-up, or sleeps with plushies, or knows a lot about LotR/Star Wars! Now all we've got to do is wait and see how this plays out in the novel!
The lieutenancy will be replaced by a post in the student council.
Yet another theory I've got since the details on New Boy were released. More influenced by anime than by US school fiction, but it might nevertheless come true.
Blanca will have a tiff with Casper, in parallel to O's suspicions about Dee, following the pencil case affair.
I just love the scenes where Bianca has this row with Cassio and confronts him about the hanky... Whether there will be a breakup and make-up as in the original tale, it's still in the lap of Mrs. Chevalier.

TRACY CHEVALIER NEW BOY... BREAKING NEWS!!!

The official title for Chevalier's Recess meets Othello is now officially revealed to be NEW BOY!! (honestly, I thought she would change it because BLACK BOY sounds too racist for me as well as for many others)...
Now we've got a release date (for next month) as well as character names and a few relevant plot details!!
Add my own expectations for the book, translated or in original US English, or both, to arrive in Spain --El Corte Inglés offers shipping of the original already, but it won't be released until late May...
The perfect self-gift as a carrot to cram for the last university exams, the ones that will break or make my career!!
Since I had a pretty unconventional primary at a mental institution and all my classmates were mutes or echolalics, and it was a friendless secondary to high school teenage that introduced me to feeling LEFT OUT and clashing with classmates, my experience of primary school was not first-hand. Hitherto, all my experience of the social dynamics of recess had come from TV, from shows like Recess and various anime. I wanted to be an Ashley at heart, but I got gradually used to being one of the Pale Kids. Anyway, Napoleon had been one of them as well as a cadet and lieutenant!
So I'm really looking forwards to this... and I'll have to blog the review (and also the Waterfire reviews and those of KKPCàlM, while also doing all my Terminology homework; all that will make me type MORE THAN Alexander Hamilton)...

Osei Kokote is an diplomat’s son, newly posted to 1970s Washington, DC with his father. With only a few weeks of school left before the summer holidays, and graduation to junior high (secondary), he’s been enrolled in the local elementary (primary) school as a way to break him in softly, and give him the chance to meet new friends. This, as Osei knows only too well, is ridiculous. His parents don’t understand what it feels like to be the only black boy in a white sea of faces, among snide children and bigoted teachers. He does. He’s an expert at starting new schools: at always being the new boy, the oddity, standing out in Rome, London... And he’s used to the fact that, on your first day, no one cares for the new boy.

No one except Dee Benedetti, that is. Something of a teacher’s pet, she’s asked to take Osei under her wing. But, as they line up for class, there’s a spark of something unexpected between this blonde WASP girl and the quiet, courteous son of the Ghanaian diplomat. Fascinated by his charm, his composure, and his exoticism, Dee wants to help Osei – or ‘O’, as he suggests she calls him, as no one can pronounce his full name. She even swaps pencil cases with him, so that he doesn’t have to use his sister’s mortifying strawberry-patterned case (the only one his mum could find). By morning recess, the entire year is aware of their chemistry. By lunchtime, they’re going out. And, by afternoon recess, their blossoming tendresse is already heading towards the rocks of suspicion, jealousy and, perhaps, worse… And this comes courtesy of Ian, precociously cunning in the art of causing pain, who sees his hard-won place as the master of the playground slipping from his grip.

Othello should be a hard play to transpose to other circumstances. In an ideal world, it would be a historical piece, bound to the worldview of 17th-century Cyprus. Its nasty racial slurs should shock far more than they do. The fact that it can actually be retold so easily in the modern world is gloomy proof that we haven’t come anywhere near as far in terms of diversity and tolerance as we’d like to think. Yet, as I said above, I just can’t quite buy into the elementary-school setting. Chevalier does a good job of transposing characters: Osei’s and Dee’s class tutor is Mr Brabant; the headmistress is Mrs Duke; Ian’s sidekick is the irritating Rod; and his unwilling girlfriend is the delicate Mimi (whose migraines seem to indicate some kind of clairvoyant power). And yes, of course one takes things seriously at school – but might it not have worked better with slightly older children? Yes, primary-age children play at going out with one another – I remember getting married several times in the playground – 

CHEVALIER: For the Othello fans among you, just to say: Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly" is the "Willow Song" in New Boy. I'll say no more - you'll have to read it to see!

As her contribution to the Hogarth Shakespeare series of contemporary retellings of the Bard’s works, Tracy Chevalier turns Othello into the story of a disastrous chain of events that follows a black student’s (Ghanan foreign service brat Osei Kokote's) arrival at a white elementary (primary) school in suburban Washington, D.C., the capital of the US.

Knowing Othello is a tragedy, readers begin the novel with dread, aware that at least one of the sixth-grade protagonists gathering before classes begin will likely meet a tragic end. Among the girls, Dee is smart and popular, Mimi intuitive and thoughtful, Blanca what used to be called “fast.” Blanca’s boyfriend, Casper, is the most popular boy, but “calculating” Ian runs the playground. The children are shocked by the arrival of Osei, a Ghanaian diplomat’s son and the first black child the all-white school has seen. Despite references to Soul Train and bell bottoms, the school’s straight-laced, narrow-minded atmosphere feels more 1950s than post–Civil Rights–era 1970s. Dee and Casper are the two exceptions. Casper offers friendship while the romantic attraction between Dee and Osei is immediately palpable—and goes over the top into ick-factor territory when Dee looks at Osei and “the fire leapt and spread through him.” Meanwhile, Ian senses Osei will challenge his sway over his classmates, especially after Osei shows prowess during a kickball game. Lacking Osei’s confusing charm, Ian comes across as a bully who controls through fear. He manipulates the other kids to create emotional mayhem that closely follows the original play’s outline. The book’s five divisions equate to the play’s five acts, and the novel’s primary pleasure lies in how Chevalier parallels Shakespeare’s plot details—for instance, transforming Othello’s handkerchief embroidered with strawberries into Osei’s strawberry-embossed pencil box and having the kids play on a playground pirate ship. And the Willow Song sung by Dee is Killing Me Softly!

This follow-the-plot-dots modernization unfortunately falls flat due to Chevalier’s heavy-handedness in turning Othello into a polemic on the evils of racism and her awkward shoehorning of tween angst into Shakespearian tragedy.

Chevalier sets this tragedy in a Washington, DC primary school in May 1974, and the main characters are sixth-graders.  According to an interview on YouTube (and her website),

I was 11 in 1974... I grew up in Washington, DC, and lived in an integrated neighbourhood and went to a school that was about 80% black, and so I had the unusual experience of being a white minority. And I wanted to write about that, although I have flipped it ... the book opens with a black boy walking onto an all-white playground, and it's about what happens to him over the course of the day.

Chevalier of course simplified the story, removing most of the subplots, but the characters are still recognizable:

• Othello - "O" or Osei , the son of a Ghanan diplomat, whose name means "noble" in his language.  He is the "new boy" of the title - this is his fourth school in at least three different cities in six years.
• Desdemona - Dee, short for Daniela, the most popular girl in the sixth grade, although her mother is very strict and she goes home for lunch every day.  She is assigned by their teacher to take care of O on his first day.
• Iago - Ian, the clever sixth grade bully (and the villain of the play).
• Emilia - Mimi, Dee's best friend, now "going with" Ian although she wants out of it.
• Cassio - Casper, the most popular boy in the sixth grade.
• Roderigo - Rod, Ian's sidekick, who has a crush on Dee.
• Bianca - Blanca, Dee's and Mimi's friend who is "going with" Casper.
• Brabantio - Mr. Brabant, the teacher for O, Dee, Casper, and Blanca, a Vietnam veteran.
• Lodovico - Miss Lode, the teacher for Ian, Mimi, and Rod.
• Montano - Miss Montano, the school nurse.
• The Duke of Venice - Mrs. Duke, the school principal (headmistress).

The handkerchief, the symbol of perceived betrayal in the original play, becomes a pencil case.

The book is divided into five sections - before school, morning recess, lunchtime, afternoon recess, and after school - corresponding with the five acts of Shakespeare's play.  Each section begins with a jump rope chant.  Chevalier said she especially enjoyed being able

...to reference ... the games we played, the slang we used, the candy we ate, how school worked, how I felt in school, and all that stuff came rushing back.  It was it was a great experience and very different from what I normally ... write, historical novels that are set ... centuries ago and have nothing to do with me.

Nevertheless, Chevalier's experience with writing historical fiction has her including all sorts of period details from 1974 (songs, TV shows, etc.) that made me appreciate the setting even more. (But from the US; some of these references may be foreign to Europeans like me!)

I also loved the way she worked in the class preparing to perform A Midsummer Night's Dream (page 112).  When Dee tells O she is playing Hermia, Ian overhears.

"Doesn't she fall in love with one boy after another?" Ian interjected.  "She's fickle like that.  Lucky boys."
"Only because of what you do.  It's just magic," Dee explained, as O's face darkened.  "It's a comedy, so it turns out alright in the end."
"Who do you play?" O demanded of Ian.
"He plays Puck," Dee said.  "The head fairy who makes all the mischief happen."

So true!  This is a tragedy of jealousy.  Updating the story to the 1970s also highlights the prejudices that are still relevant today.  I was in sixth grade just a few years before 1974 - and all the ever-changing friendships, crushes, and jealousies of that age ring true.

The book's ending is vague, but I think that is deliberate.  Something bad happens (the play IS a tragedy, with three of the four main characters dead by the end, and the fourth is arrested), but it's not quite clear what.

Highly recommended.

MORE INFO ON CHEVALIER'S OTHELLO

Word of Tracy reveals more details on her playground pre-teen version of Shakespeare's outpost thriller for the Hogarth project, including the now official title (which, IMOHO, sounds a tad racist :o ), her ideas on otherness, and the names of some child characters (if you haven't recognized who Osei, Dee, Ian, and Mimi should be... may the Lord of Light smite you unbelievers!):

TEASER BLURB:

In Tracy Chevalier's retelling of the play, we are transported to 1970s Washington, D.C., where an 11-year-old black boy arrives at an all-white school. But it's when his attention is drawn to one of the girls in class that the trouble really begins.

TRACY HERSELF EXPLAINS:

It felt SO good. The new book is a retelling of Shakespeare's OTHELLO and is called BLACK BOY. Set on a US school playground around 1974, it features an 11-year-old Afro boy named Osei, a girl named Dee, her friend Mimi, and the school bully Ian (all the characters except Osei are Caucasian, for more info). It is also a nostalgia trip for me, including Big Buddy Bubble Gum, Now and Laters, the Jackson Five, Roberta Flack, Hot Wheels, and bell bottoms with flowered embroidery on the hem. Ah, the 1970s...

(NOTE BY SANDRA: As a European, I only recognize the Jackson 5, Hot Wheels, and bell bottoms. The rest is that US stuff you have to google, as I always do with referents of US or Japanese culture I encounter for the first time in fiction).

Now of course I have editing to do, because a book always needs editing. You can work all you like on your own, but it's only when someone has read it that you know if it works or not. And there is always something that needs fixing.

The play isn’t even really about race. This story would work if Othello were Jewish in a Muslim community, or a Korean in China. Racial difference is just one example of the outsider status Desdemona is seduced by, and that is what I find so compelling about the play. It is a state we can all relate to, as we have all been outsiders at some point, whether as the new student in class, the new employee at a job, the newest member of a church or an exercise class or a football team. It’s hard being new.

Sometimes you can shake off that label relatively quickly: you learn your job, you find your place on the team. You fit in. Othello, however, will always have black skin in a white world. It will take much longer to get his friends, his family, his comrades to become colour-blind – if ever. Remember, Desdemona is attracted to him because he’s black. Some outsider status sticks.

That is what draws me to Othello: despite his military prowess and his smitten wife, he is so vulnerable. It only takes a bully like Iago, with his own murky agenda, to stick his finger into the wound and press. Shakespeare complicates matters with fights and lost handkerchiefs – he has three hours to fill on stage – but really the story boils down to one man saying to another, “Are you sure she likes you?” Planting that one seed of doubt brings down the whole edifice of a person’s character.

The simplicity of that template  – you are different, which makes you vulnerable, and I’m going to take advantage of that – means Othello’s story can take place anywhere – because it already does. I am writing a novel inspired by Othello, and decided to transplant the story to that most elemental place – the school playground. A Ghanaian boy named Osei joins an all-white US school and attracts the attention both of Dee, who is fascinated by his otherness, and Ian, the school bully whose territory is threatened. And so another fundamental human story gets played out…

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Looking back at what I wrote this springtime, half a year ago:

So... how will Othello's ethnic descent be played? Will he be Sub-Saharan, Middle Eastern, Asian, Abie/Maori... or a Caucasian among non-Caucasians (I've got a boarding-school animesque retelling with a blond and blue-eyed Frenchman, Elliot, among Asians!)? The outsider who has risen to the top of the pops (my guess) and is dating one of the local Ashleys (man, I luved the Ashleys and the Tylers!)... Another, even more awesome decision would be making Othello another minority: a disabled person (an aspie would be awesome), seropositive (due to a blood transfusion: this was before the HIV scare)... or even female (a female Iago, or "Iako," like I read of in a novel, would be awesome, and an "Othella" would be even more... heck, even the "Othella and Desmond" approach of getting the whole cast through Rule 63, like Tarantino did in Switchblade Sisters [Othello completely gender-flipped with high-school "bad girls," courtesy of Quentin Fricking Tarantino: as awesome as it sounds]). Or even a twofer minority.
So, will he choose the nerdy new kid (an aspie Cassio would make the story even more impressive) over his savvier hitherto right hand... who will make the upstart misbehave under a caffeine or sugar rush? And will the McGuffin still be a hanky, or something else?
Will there be any character deaths (this is the story of some schoolkids, after all, an impressive premise for a coming of age theme), like in the original?
Will any characters be cross-cast (a female Iago, or "Iako," like I read of in a novel, would be awesome, and an "Othella" would be even more... heck, even the "Othella and Desmond" approach of getting the whole cast through Rule 63, like Tarantino did in Switchblade Sisters [Othello completely gender-flipped, starring high-school "bad girls," courtesy of Quentin Fricking Tarantino: as awesome as it sounds]).
How will the queer and feminist themes be played out (after all, this is the 70s)? Which motives would Chevalier's Iago have?"

And comparing it with Chevalier's own revelations about the characters: (threatened bully Iago/Ian, queen bee Desdemona/Dee, her best friend Emilia/Mimi, and dark-skinned new kid Othello/Osei... what will the Cassio character look like? Will he be more the aloof brilliant kind [like Ryóma Echizen, the Prince of Tennis] or more of an extroverted lovable eccentric [like Odd della Robbia or a male Luna Lovegood]? And more emphasis on the racial aspect of otherness... so far, nothing confirmed on queer or feminist POV, so it's still to be read).

SO: Adiós to some of my own conjectures, including the ones with an Othella and Iako... though they were funny. In fact, I have put the whole cast through Rule 63 (though retaining their ages) and someday you'll get my mind's eye views of the cast gender-flipped: Othella, Iako, Cassie, Roderica, Desmond, Emilio, and Beau <3 Gender-flipping all seven is a formidable way into getting into the heart of the gender dynamics and relationships in the story :)
However, the thought of queer and/or feminist interpretation has not been revealed yet by Chevalier. Neither the catnip that will disgrace the Cassio character nor the McGuffin gift that, placed in the wrong hands for a frame-up, will convince Osei of Dee's betrayal. So there is still hope, and all we can do is cross our fingers and wait.

OTHELLO MEETS RECESS: SUMMER 2017

All good things come to those who wait.
This proverb was told to me time after time, due to impatience (still nowadays!) being my besetting sin, and also:
Better late than never.

Well, Tracy Chevalier's modern take on Othello is scheduled for release in summer 2017. Within more than a year.
Still, nothing more is confirmed except the fact that she will focus on the theme of being an outsider. And a little about the premise (über-exciting!!!).
But we'll keep you informed, in the most Varys-like style, of how the project unfurls...
For one does not simply walk into the Mordor of novelism. Writing a novel takes a lot of time, over a year, so you will be informed little by little... Currently, Tracy may still be brainstorming and thinking of ideas for the story, already knowing the plot and the characters of Othello. So far, the blurb is that the story will take place in a PLAYGROUND IN THE 70S, and all the characters will be PRE-TEEN CHILDREN:

My Othello is set on a 1970s elementary (primary) school playground; all the characters are 11 years old, and the action takes place over one day.

Think of it as Othello meets Recess. Ah, Recess. One of the series of my 90s childhood, a look into playground society, a faithful view of pre-teen society for an institute-bred aspie like me (fine training for the social world I would enter in high school)... and at the same time a satirical look at the adult society that the playground mirrors...

So... how will Othello's ethnic descent be played? Will he be Sub-Saharan, Middle Eastern, Asian, Abie/Maori... or a Caucasian among non-Caucasians (I've got a boarding-school animesque retelling with a blond and blue-eyed Frenchman, Elliot, among Asians!)? The outsider who has risen to the top of the pops (my guess) and is dating one of the local Ashleys (man, I luved the Ashleys and the Tylers!)... Another, even more awesome decision would be making Othello another minority: a disabled person (an aspie would be awesome), seropositive (due to a blood transfusion: this was before the HIV scare)... or even female (a female Iago, or "Iako," like I read of in a novel, would be awesome, and an "Othella" would be even more... heck, even the "Othella and Desmond" approach of getting the whole cast through Rule 63, like Tarantino did in Switchblade Sisters [Othello completely gender-flipped with high-school "bad girls," courtesy of Quentin Fricking Tarantino: as awesome as it sounds]). Or even a twofer minority.
So, will he choose the nerdy new kid (an aspie Cassio would make the story even more impressive) over his savvier hitherto right hand... who will make the upstart misbehave under a caffeine or sugar rush? And will the McGuffin still be a hanky, or something else?
Will there be any character deaths (this is the story of some schoolkids, after all, an impressive premise for a coming of age theme), like in the original?
Will any characters be cross-cast (a female Iago, or "Iako," like I read of in a novel, would be awesome, and an "Othella" would be even more... heck, even the "Othella and Desmond" approach of getting the whole cast through Rule 63, like Tarantino did in Switchblade Sisters [Othello completely gender-flipped, starring high-school "bad girls," courtesy of Quentin Fricking Tarantino: as awesome as it sounds]).
How will the queer and feminist themes be played out (after all, this is the 70s)? Which motives would Chevalier's Iago have?

Still, we've got more than a year full of excitement ahead. More than a year of Olympics, Shakespeare, Waterfire, Pretty Cure, gaslamp fantasy, and many other surprises to keep us excited until next summer comes...

REELING AND WRITHING XXIII: OTHELLO À LA CHEVALIER

REELING AND WRITHING
or,
Miss Dermark's 2015 Advent Calendar

DAY TWENTY-THREE

OTHELLO À LA CHEVALIER
or
I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE WHAT TRACY DOES...

Fifteen years after the publication of Girl with a Pearl Earring, which was inspired by one of the best-loved paintings in the world, Hogarth today announces that Tracy Chevalier is joining the Hogarth Shakespeare series to write a novel inspired by one of the world’s best-loved plays –Othello.

Tracy Chevalier says: ‘Othello is essentially about being an outsider and the price you pay for that difference. Most of the protagonists in my novels are outsiders, geographically or mentally, so writing Othello’s story was an irresistible opportunity.’ 

Clara Farmer, publishing director at Chatto & Windus/Hogarth, acquired world rights in all languages from Jonny Geller at Curtis Brown.

She said: “Tracy Chevalier’s ability to conjure whole worlds in her work has always been exciting, and I look forward to discovering the world she creates for her Othello.” (Hey, I look forward to the same myself!)

The series will launch to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016.

Chevalier's take on "The Lieutenant, the Moor, his Wife, and his Aide" (let's see how she retells the hooking proto-thriller) will be released in the Anglosphere in autumn 2016 (it will also reach Spain, where Lumen will publish the novel!!)

So brace yourselves, Othello lovers: AUTUMN IS COMING.