A Bright Ray of Darkness

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Since "Reality Bites," as a young teen, I've been a fan of Ethan Hawke. His angsty 90's vibe was swoon-worthy. Hawke's first book, "The Hottest State" solidified his talent. Not only was he a brilliant actor, but a talented writer. A bracing meditation on fame and celebrity, and the redemptive, healing power of art; a portrait of the ravages of disappointment and divorce; a poignant consideration of the rites of fatherhood and manhood; a novel soaked in rage and sex, longing and despair; and a passionate love letter to the world of theater, A Bright Ray of Darkness showcases Ethan Hawke's gifts as a novelist as never before. But Hawke is also known as the man who cheated on Uma Thurman and offered loutish excuses about the sexual needs of great men like Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and him.

The actor and director, who made his screen debut at 15, has published several books during his acclaimed Hollywood career, and he recently produced and starred in a spectacular TV adaptation of James McBride’s “The Good Lord Bird.” But still, I liked all the Shakespeare. And what life was like for auditioning, memorizing, practicing, performing, etc. Clearly Hawke knows of what he writes in that case and, for this book, there's the rub (read: value). If you read it, take it for what it is. Lights, action, READ! Ethan Hawke is an author. Yes, yes, yes, I know he's actually an actor. A very fine actor. A twice Oscar-nominated actor (he has two Oscar nominations for writing, too). But he is also, without doubt, an author. That's about as good a compliment as you can pay to anyone switching crafts like this. He's an artist, if you will. This is no vanity project; it's a proper, high-quality novel.Oh. And the amount of advice on life and love and acting. Really. This guy has more Yoda-figures in his life than most of us have Chewbacca-figures on our hardwood floors (rug burn joke). Hawke spends a lot of time delving into the scenes of the protagonist on stage and the rest of the time ruminating over his broken marriage and how to handle his two children. So much of this story sounds autobiographical. What I read online, he takes parts of his life and implants it into the book. I couldn't shake the feeing of what was real and what wasn't..

I figured I'd hit some plateau that was adulthood---where I believed things would just stay level for about forty years while I would do great work and have interesting experiences---then rather uneventfully I would begin to decay and die. But this was just not the case. I was not on a plateau. I was descending, tripping, stumbling, and burning. My whole being, or personality or self or whatever is supposed to be the seat of me, or the soul behind my eyes, was being boiled away in a giant iron cauldron like the flavor leaving a carrotIt's about an actor (well, duh) performing Shakespeare ( Henry IV) on Broadway as he is coming off a divorce to a big-time pop singer. He drinks, does drugs, feels sorry for himself, has two kids he loves, feels insecure about his stagework (he's a movie guy), and cheats on his soon-to-be ex-wife. I spent many years in the theater as an actor and playwright, so the world of A Bright Ray of Darkness is one I know well. This is one of the best pieces of writing I’ve ever read to convey the art of pretending to be somebody else in a made-up story in front of hundreds of people who, in the best case, suspend their belief that you are really a regular schlub. Add to that the raucous insanity of a bunch of people whose real emotions don’t know the difference between what they’re pretending and being a regular schlub, and even if they do, sometimes they get overwhelmed by the professionally evoked stuff, but, unlike regular schlubs everywhere, these schlubs get distorted by all the applause, so they think what they do is a matter of life and death.