Liars and Saints

  This is my other favorite painting; it's by Peter Paul Rubens. It has a title--but I prefer to give it my own title. I've selected the title "Leaving the House." Little Frans, the boy, has run ahead and ascertained that the car door is locked. He wonders why Peter Paul can't hurry up, find the remote key fob, and click the "beeper" button. Mom, Helena, worries that it might rain. Peter Paul understands that the trip ahead will involve walking--the family is heading to the zoo. Wouldn't it be smart to double back and locate the stroller? Right now, I'm watching "The Americans"; the main story that interests me is about the married Jennings couple and their teen daughter Paige. Whenever the Jennings share a secret, they exchange looks, and their daughter notices the look, and the camera notices the couple *not* noticing Paige's moment of observation. When Paige visits her parents' fake travel agency, she jokes that Mom wants to ...

  Lily King called her first story collection "Five Tuesdays in Winter"; the title is a dare. King is daring herself to find extraordinary moments within superficially banal settings. Extraordinary moments within a "winter Tuesday." Mitchell's daughter, who was twelve, accused him of loving his books but hating his customers. He didn't hate them. He just didn't like having to chat with them or lead them to clearly marked sections--if they couldn't read, why were they buying books? .... His daughter loved the customers. She sat behind the counter at the cash drawer every Saturday, writing up receipts in an illegible imitation of his own hand and chatting like an innkeeper. She was too tall and too sophisticated for a Maine preteen. She made him uneasy. She had recently learned the word "reticent" and used it on him constantly.  "Isn't he the most reticent person you've ever met?" she asked Kate, his only other employee. ...

  I first saw "Spring Awakening" while I was in my early twenties; I had endured a Catholic education in which my teacher, a deacon, made a point of observing that homosexual intercourse was a problem. "Two men can have a close friendship, but all articles of clothing must remain in place...." With "Awakening," it was immediately clear that something seismic had occurred.  There is the band on the stage, and blackboards, and several members of the audience. Lea Michele appears in a white gown and recites a kind of prayer: Mama, who bore me-- Mama, who gave me-- No way to handle things-- Who made me so sad. Mama, the weeping-- Mama, the angels-- No sleep in Heaven... Or Bethlehem... What is she talking about? Having lived through her own Christian education, Lea Michele's Wendla feels chaotic, unnerved. She seems to identify with Mary, exhausted, wandering through Bethlehem, visiting unfriendly innkeepers at overpacked inns. (Later, the unwed Wendla wil...

 Harlan Coben was not a voracious reader at Amherst College. (His classmates included David Foster Wallace and the future superstar Dan Brown.) Coben was not "groomed" to be a writer; his parents liked books, but they didn't push an agenda. When Coben tries to explain the source of his ambition, he recalls a high-school classmate who was murdered. The apparent killer--another teenager--simply disappeared. Coben also recalls that he lived near a site for the storage of nuclear missiles. (This was close to the Livingston Mall.) And one of Coben's neighbors was a wealthy mafia kingpin--a man responsible for several murders. These bits of data floated around in Coben's head. And he became a writer. Coben offers life advice--as well as writing advice--and he sometimes offers advice that seems to fall into *both* buckets. Don't whine. Be curious about the world. Don't hesitate to make things up. Bad writing often seems like throat-clearing. There is a tendency t...

 A couple seems to have some pedestrian problems. The man and woman have recently relocated from Chicago to London; the new house has issues with its wiring. The man complains to a friend about British customer service reps: "They're not rude, but they're not NOT rude, you know? No one is going the extra mile." One source of tension at home is that the young woman believes in ghosts while the young man does not. Then--in one of the most startling scenes I've ever witnessed in a theater--the young man begins a new conversation with the young woman. And the young woman suddenly evaporates. She does not leave the room; she does not drop through a trapdoor. She evaporates. "She" had been an otherworldly imposter. It's time to call in the Barbara Hershey neighbor. (I refer to this person as the Barbara Hershey neighbor, because she is in every scary movie, and she is sometimes played by Barbara Hershey. She is the PhD who has to recite a nonsense speech a...

  With "Hacks," Jean Smart was consistently better than her material. She made the show seem smarter than it was. I have no objections to her Emmy win.  I do have objections to the "Hacks" finale. Let's revisit this. DV, having heard she has a more-or-less terminal illness, tells Ava that she will be linking up with Dignitas. It's time to die. As others have noted, DV makes no mention of her daughter or grandchild. This is implausible, but it's *also* a slap in the face to Kaitlin Olson, who has done beautiful work as "Junior" throughout the series. Ava first rejects DV's invitation to Europe. She won't participate. Then, she recants. Oh, fine. A pivotal scene occurs at the Louvre. Ava suggests that the "Mona Lisa" is middlebrow. "I mean, it's prettier than anything *I* could do, but....meh." DV says the painting is the most beguiling image in Europe. Ava immediately responds: "Lady, what BEGUILES me would m...