shroudofthesea 's review for:

A Bright Ray of Darkness by Ethan Hawke

3.0

---

i realized about halfway through what this reminded me so much of—a richard linklater film that yes, of course, ethan hawke appeared in—“waking life.” it’s been years since i watched it, but what i remember of the film is a shifting, dreamlike series of vignettes of a random assortment of characters sharing poetic insight on life itself. what made this movie charming to me rather than irritating or cloying was the unique rotoscoped animation. the closest thing that “a bright ray of darkness” has is hawke’s admittedly creative and smooth prose. his descriptions are consistently visceral and novel, and each of the many, many “here’s how to fix your life, pov character!” speeches have some genuinely poignant thought tucked away into them. but that’s all i could glean from this book—a series of vignettes tied together only through the fact that they’re all centered around the same miserable semi-famous white dude. maybe there’s something else to uncover here if you’re more familiar with the henry iv plays than i am (the only histories i still haven’t read, despite literally owning a discord server for fans of shakespeare’s histories and being on the board for my college’s shakespeare club—but i digress), but while hawke’s writing kept this from being a DNF, i can’t imagine ever revisiting it.