Rave Reviews for
My Name Is Will - A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and
Shakespeare
“Hilarious, fascinating . . . a cunningly witty,
frolicsome, time-warping bildungsroman . . .
Winfield slings bucketfuls of double-entendres and wily
puns... But serious business underlies the literary
larkiness... Winfield's high-spirited tribute is a
celebration of the power of language and story through
which we learn who we are and who we might be as we strut
and fret our hour upon the stage, bit players reaching for
the heavens in a drama beyond our grasp.”
Donna Seaman, LOS ANGELES TIMES
“A lusty, pun-drunk first novel by the professional
wiseacre and award-winning cartoon producer Jess Winfield .
. . to say that Jess Winfield knows his Shakespeare is
laughable understatement. Upside down – boy he knows him,
inside out, and round and round . . . Winfield must have
known how much harder it would be to pull off a strange
eventful history like this one sans tights, sans stage,
sans everything – but where there’s a will there’s a way. .
. In MY NAME IS WILL, Winfield may be accused of treating
his favorite literary lion unceremoniously. But, after all,
no gentleman is a hero to his
varlet.”
Liesl Schillinger, NEW YORK
TIMES
“Pulls off a potentially clumsy conceit with nuance and
panache, as the lives of our two Williams intersect across
time and space with mind-bending results."
Adriana Leshko,
WASHINGTON POST
“Happily outrageous . . . The sex throughout is well done
and not for the prim . . .Winfield delights in puns from
low to high (“iamb what iamb”'), and cleverly sprinkles
conversations in the earlier age with lines that would
later turn up in the plays... Well done, Winfield.
Jeffrey Burke, BLOOMBERG.COM
"The two narratives in
Winfield’s whimsical debut are unified by their shared
irreverence, humor and literary gusto. Winfield uses his
deep understanding of Shakespeare’s work and times (he is a
founding member of the Reduced Shakespeare Company) to
great effect, and his affection for the material shines
throughout."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Bawdy puns, a clever construction, and a deliciously
irreverent sense of humor make this debut novel
irresistible."
BOOKLIST
"The words of Stratford-upon-Avon's most famous resident
have never rung with such screwball truthiness...
Winfield's twin heroes vault off the page with 3-D,
Technicolor, surround-sound exuberance."
Thane Tierny, BOOKPAGE
Winfield's own love of Shakespeare, love of words and love
of theater shine through. He plays with words and captures
the feeling of the times and places he is setting the
action in, yet the themes remain timeless . . . this is a
book that even Shakespeare may have enjoyed.
BOOKREPORTER.COM
"Jess Winfield's My Name is Will cleverly twists two
parallel plot lines — one set in California in the 1980s,
the other in Stratford-upon-Avon in the 1580s — into a
single bizarre adventure that'll have you questioning the
Bard's religious history and rooting for a guy trying to
deliver an enormous hunk of fungus to a mysterious buyer."
AUSTIN STATESMAN
"MY NAME IS WILL is more than mere
entertainment. Its greater value lies in Winfield's studied
response to one of literature's enduring mysteries: what
caused William Shakespeare to be so great? Winfield's
answer -- soothing balm to anyone at a crossroads in life
-- is at once simple and imponderable."
Christine Watson, SANTA CRUZ SENTINEL
“Lively, smart, and mature . . .William is utterly
convincing as a character: callow and a bit lost, but witty
and kind, and fully possessed of the ability to charm or
flay with words . . . [In] the chapters on Shakespeare . .
. the book comes to life with intelligence, humor, and high
stakes.”
NEW YORK
SUN
"Utterly delicious, original, witty, hilarious and
brilliant. Shakespeare in Love on magic mushrooms. The Bard
has never been this much fun."
CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY, author of
Boomsday and Thank You For
Smoking
"MY NAME IS WILL fuses a witty campus novel, based on the
narrator's hectic experience of the mythological University
of California of the nineteen seventies and eighties, with
a subversive historical one about the equally legendary
Elizabethan era of the young Shakespeare, to create a
provocative twin narrative, in which youths fight their way
through a world of rampant sex and drugs to the beginnings
of maturity. The narrative’s ingenious achievement is to
suggest how, by saturation in the past, a youthful rebel in
Elizabethan Stratford and one in modern Berserkeley can
share comic misadventures, both paradoxically illuminating
the historical Shakespeare family's inveterate
Catholicism.”
HUGH RICHMOND, PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF
ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,
BERKELEY
_________________________
Rave
Reviews for
The
Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) (revised)
Arts Theater, West End, London
Click any
quote for full review.
"Niftily updated... Wig-flinging,
wisecracking, twinkle-toed mayhem... Tirelessly funny
and accessible."
TIME OUT
“Wildly imaginative, thoroughly
affectionate to its source material, and above all,
infectiously fun."
METRO U.K.
“This is still a hoot. A neat blend of
nerdiness and slacker charm. Treat yourself! (Four
Stars)”
EVENING STANDARD
"As much a celebration as a send-up... A
preposterous riot of inventive physical
comedy.”
DAILY TELEGRAPH
“Get thee to a performance!”
WHAT'S ON STAGE
Rave Reviews for
What Would Shakespeare Do? Personal Advice From the Bard
"There is real spiritual insight here.... This is both an
amusing and thoughtful book... The fact that Winfield never
loses his humble sense of humor about it all is one of the
book's most winning qualities."
DETROIT FREE PRESS
“A funny, insightful, and thoughtful wee book.”
DOOYOO.CO.UK