RICK CASTRO
presents
VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB
this month's selection
THE
ORTON
DIARIES
EDITED BY
JOHN LAHR
MAY 30th
1pm: PST
donation required to attend
paypal.me/rickcastrotea OR venmo.com/rick-castro
We have decided to come out of our plague closets and meet at an actual location in real time!
I will send location & directions a few days prior to our real time meeting!
John Kingsley Orton
(1 January 1933 – 9 August 1967),
known under the pen name of Joe Orton, was an English playwright, author and diarist.
His public career—from 1964 until his death in 1967—was short but highly influential.
During this brief period he shocked, outraged, and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies.
The adjective Ortonesque refers to work characterised by a similarly dark yet farcical cynicism.
"To be young, good-looking, healthy, famous, comparatively rich and happy is surely going against nature."
The Orton Diaries, written during his last eight months, chronicle in a remarkably candid style his outrageously unfettered life: his literary success, capped by an Evening Standard Award and overtures from the Beatles; his sexual escapades-at his mother's funeral, with a dwarf in Brighton, and, extensively, in Tangiers; and the breakdown of his sixteen-year "marriage" to Halliwell.
Edited with a superb introduction by John Lahr, The Orton Diaries is his crowning achievement.
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