Shedding Clothes, Shedding a Life: Trading Mozart for Oprah?,Shedding Clothes, Shedding a Life: Trading Mozart for Oprah?
What do King George and thieves have in common? Why an author, of course. The British playwright Alan Bennett wrote the screenplay for The Madness of King George, and he has written the pithy and hilarious The Clothes They Stood up In (1996). At its abbreviated length, 161 four by six inch pages, it’s not fair to call this short piece of fiction a novel. A novella? The inside jacket description perhaps says it best: a comic fable for adults. However it's categorized, I wish it were a play, for it's fast paced and funny and were I to see it live, I would at least be laughing out loud in a crowd and not chortling to myself.
The story concerns Mr. and Mrs. Ransome, their marriage, and the burglary of their home. On the first page, we learn that Mozart plays a large part in their marriage. (It is not until the end of the story that we understand the full extent of how Mozart figures in their marriage, but to tell would be to detract from the witty conclusion.) Mr. Ransome is a Mozart fan, almost to obsession, and he is most possessive of his stereo equipment and Mozart music collection. When Mr. and Mrs. Ransome return from an evening at the opera (Mozart, of course--Così fan tutti, or, as Mrs. Ransome affectionately and simply refers to it, Così), they are surprised to discover that all of their possessions have been stolen. Toilet paper, refrigerator, oven and casserole within. All gone. Even the rugs. The Ransomes are stripped, temporarily, of their cozy (“Così”?) surroundings, and as the story unfolds, we watch how the Ransomes’ lives are transformed by their attempts to acclimate themselves to their new sparse surroundings.
Mr. Ransome concerns himself with scheming to upgrade his stereo equipment once the insurance company processes the claim. His life is not seriously disrupted. The morning after the burglary, for example, he keeps to his routine, going off to work as usual, except he wears his only clothes, his opera attire. Mrs. Ransome, however, slowly becomes as liberated as her home is of its furniture. She ventures into stores she formerly disdained. She finds that she enjoys the bare necessities (card table, camp beds) she purchases in the interim, as if the inexpensive furniture has released her from the weight of the formerly solid, respectable furniture and complete sets of china and flatware. She buys a television, and for the first time in her marriage discovers she enjoys watching it. She perplexes her husband, a lawyer and a self-professed word snob, with her new language gleaned from the popular culture of talk shows.
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