Liars and Saints

North Tonawanda was a mean place. It was mean and ugly. The local newspaper had a column, “Sound Off,” where you could call and anonymously berate your neighbor. If you had a grievance, you’d just unload, for an answering machine, and then your comments would get transcribed in the paper, without a signature. (Years later, at a school were I worked, it was suggested that teachers could critique one another via unsigned Post-It slips, in a kind of hat. I had traumatic flashbacks.) One day, the paper ran a critical piece about funding for the local community theater, and the semi-closeted married man who ran the theater was affronted. And so he wrote an editorial--this was signed, I think; it wasn’t “Sound Off”--and he attacked his critic. At one point, he accused her of hypocrisy, and he said her behavior was like “the tub calling the kettle black.” He used “tub,” not “kettle," because he wanted to get in a subtextual dig regarding this person’s excessive weight. North Tonawand

There's more to say about women's figure skating. -Let's start with Tara Lipinski. People criticized her when she retired from competitive figure skating so early. (That's the trajectory. You win your gold, then you retire; you skate for "Stars on Ice" and make a trillion dollars in places like Buffalo, but you don't have to worry about all the pressure anymore. There's a mold where you accomplish your retirement basically before you're even teething; Tara is in that mold, and Sara Hughes. Yuna Kim is an outlier. She won gold and then came back and tried to win gold again, and people thought she had succeeded, but Russian corruption meant that an inferior imposter stole Yuna Kim's second first-place prize. Those Russians!) -Anyway, Tara Lipinski sort of went underground for a while, and then she reemerged as an all-star sports commentator. She bought a huge, gaudy mansion on Kiawah Island, and you can find the footage online. Google: "

Here's the start of a story I love, "Gift," by Elizabeth Strout: Abel Blaine was late. A meeting with directors from all over the state had gone too long, and all afternoon Abel had sat in the conference room with its rich cherry table stretching like a dark ice rink down the center, the people around it trying to sit up straighter the more tired they became. A young girl from the Rockford region, who Abel felt was carefully dressed for her first company presentation--he was moved by this--had talked on and on, people looking at Abel with increasing panic--MAKE HER STOP--because he was the man in charge. Perspiring lightly, he had finally stood and put his papers into his briefcase, and thanked the girl--woman, woman! you could not call them girls these days, for the love of God--and she blushed and sat down and didn't seem to know where to look for a few minutes until people on their way out spoke to her nicely, as did Abel himself. Then Abel was finally in his c

I had a trying and absurd week, and one way I coped was to scrutinize--really scrutinize--facts about women’s figure skating. And here’s some info. -Tara Lipinski really, really likes the current women’s Gold Medal winner. In praising this winner, Tara is pretty clearly praising herself. “I can’t believe she’s just a high-school junior!” (Of course, Tara herself was around that age when she won her gold. This--Lipinski’s own win--was a controversial moment in American history. It was controversial because many people felt that Michelle Kwan deserved the prize. Michelle had been around for a trillion--or maybe eight--years and she had exquisite “artistry.” She was elegant and thoughtful, or something like that. I guess I have a poverty mentality. I like my entertainment loud, fast, and less-than-subtle. Sure, Tara Lipinski fell short of, like, Nureyev, I guess. Sure--when she wasn’t jumping--she just sort of flailed her arms around and smiled a lot. But, to me, she seemed more joyous

Grade Seven. Easter play auditions. I thought I had the role of Jesus locked up. I actually didn’t show up for the cold readings; that’s how confident I was. I was like Mariah Carey thirteen months ago; I was that kind of foggy-headed diva. And so “Jesus” went to someone else. A greater indignity: My role almost didn’t have lines. It was almost a non-speaking cameo. I was to appear right before Jesus was nailed to the cross; I was to importune the crazed masses. As a small child, I was to say, “Please! Please! He made larks for us out of clay!” (All these years later, I remember the words. I remember them because I think that that sentence is exceptionally strong writing. Can’t you imagine Jesus at Golgotha--or wherever the hell he was--and the children are surrounding him and begging him not to die? And one of the kids says, “Please, mob! He made larks for us out of clay! ” And a clay-lark! What the fuck is a lark? Can’t you see the children two thousand years ago, animating their l

I remember very clearly fourth grade--sitting with Dan Sass and Cory Rinow, who would not, would  not , listen in science class. (Dan Sass would grow to become my frenemy. Years later, in seventh grade, I cultivated a crush on my fellow clarinetist, Ashley Churder, maybe as a way of hiding my budding homosexuality. I think I didn't really want to kiss Ashley Churder, with her floral tops and her generous smile; I think I just wanted to *be* Ashley Churder. Anyway, I went around whispering the news of my crush, and Dan Sass actually relayed the news directly to Ashley, in the middle of Mrs. Carnduff's intro to algebra. Dan Sass. "Sass"--you couldn't make this stuff up. Stranger than fiction. He was weirdly tall--around nine feet, in my memory--and maybe his height made him feel entitled to act as a bully. The fact that he shared my first name makes me think of him as a bizarro version of myself--my malicious doppelganger, my Mr. Hyde. Ashley didn't mind that I

Notes on the start of Tillie Olsen’s great story, “I Stand Here Ironing”-- I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron. (This is a famous first sentence. Famous for a few reasons. It’s the definition of in medias res …In other words, who are “you”? What have you asked? The speaker’s uneasy relationship with her interlocutor will be a feature of the story—alongside the speaker’s uneasy relationship with her daughter. Then the metaphor. The question is a thing—trapped under the iron. Pushed right and left. Is there a better way to suggest ambivalence? The ambivalence in tortured love? The mother must release her aggression somehow; she will release it through the iron.) “I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter. I’m sure you can help me understand her. She’s a youngster who needs help and whom I’m deeply interested in helping.” (So much tension here! You feel as if you’re reading a murder mystery

My first run-in with the law: pre-Kindergarten. Not the "law," but the teacher. I was talking when I was not meant to. I was sent to the "balance beam," which was like the "time-out corner." The other culprit joined me. What's especially galling: I'm certain I wasn't the one doing the yapping. I'm certain it was slow-witted Jonathan, and I felt I had to engage him; I had to be nice. I should have stepped on his toes and hissed, "Listen, motherfucker: You'll get us in trouble." But: no.  Otherwise, pre-K was not a challenging year. Mainly, I remember attaching popsicle sticks to a photo of myself. The sticks formed a kind of Depression-era picture frame, and then you'd smear shit around the perimeter. Glitter glue. Cotton balls. Finger paint. My teacher was a nervous, bird-like woman; her sorrow was written on her face. It was a small town, so, if you were the weirdo child I was, you'd quickly apprehend that you

There's a critic, Nancy Schoenberger, who writes about "functional masculinity." She says this idea was the classic territory of John Wayne. She says masculinity has taken a hit because of excessively macho figures; she says it's wrong to throw out the baby with the bathwater. In other words, there's a great deal that is good in John Wayne. I actually see John Wayne-ish attributes in several female figures: the Taylor Swift persona, Mirren in "The Queen," the women of "Sex and the City." (1) Humility, courtesy, keeping your word . Is there anyone more courteous than Carrie Bradshaw? The effervescent smile, the heartfelt apologies, the way she warmly offers her bed to the chaste model in "The Modelizer." (SJP may be a mean girl, as Kim Cattrall suggests, but I really like the heroic--false?--image SJP has cultivated.) (2) Enduring quietly while protecting the weak--coupled with an awe toward women . Think of Carrie helping Miranda

Some annotations on the start of the great story, "Yurt," from "Ms. Hempel Chronicles"-- A year ago, Ms. Duffy, the fifth-grade English and history teacher, had come very close to losing it, what with her homeroom being right next to the construction site for the new computer lab, and her attempts to excise the Aztecs from the curriculum being thwarted, and her ill-advised affair with Mr. Polidori coming to an end. (This is a classic Jane Austenish opening. Why? Because it’s slightly ironic. “Very close to losing it”--? Come on. This is the over-heated language of the faculty lounge. I love the dual-consciousness of the writing—the idea that Shun-Lien Bynum is quietly mocking her characters while also embodying their point of view. I also love the way that things are ordered: the affair of the heart, the thing that really matters, one imagines, is the thing that comes last! It’s placed on the same plane—or even slightly below!—the problem of the construction s