Birthplace
When Mr. and Mrs. Gedge leave their grim northern library for a job as caretakers of Shakespeare's birthplace, they imagine they've found their ticket to comfort. Instead, Gedge discovers a living nightmare: he must tend to a myth, reverently guiding crowds through a house whose connection to the Bard is tenuous at best. James constructs a delicious irony, the man tasked with preserving the Shakespeare legend begins to suspect the whole enterprise is built on almost nothing. There are no real facts about His life, only the slimmest historical evidence, and yet the tourists stream through in endless reverent waves, worshipping at the shrine of a man who may never have existed as we imagine him. Gedge's conscience gnaws at him while his wife sees only job security. This is James at his most wickedly funny, a sharp little satire about how we construct cultural gods and what happens when someone refuses to participate in the lie.
X-Ray
