Liars and Saints

  In one of my favorite stories, by Amy Bloom, a little girl struggles with trauma. The source of the trauma is her parents' separation. The little girl has no sense of perspective--given that she is a child--so she expresses her sadness by staging events from a genocide. She uses her dolls. My daughter's favorite game is Holocaust. She's been playing it for two years, since fourth grade, and she is unbelievably inventive. She found her old American Girl doll, Samantha from Park Avenue, cut her hair off with kid scissors for that ragged, doomed look, took the poor doll out of her plaid dress, wrapped her bottom in a dirty dish towel, and laid her in a pile of leaves. She crumpled soil into a cup and brewed it with boiling water. She came into the house... "It must have been like this--for THEM," Abby said. "Where'd they get the hot water?" I said. That's what I had been reduced to.... My son is not dealing with trauma, but he is dealing with sens...

 Sondheim and Arthur Laurents were often at odds; Laurents was, by most accounts, one of the most hateful human beings in the history of American theater. Sondheim eventually wrote to Laurents, "You have just enough talent to realize how mediocre you are." It's hard to imagine one person saying that to another person. There are moments of mediocrity in "West Side Story"--I'm recalling the adult characters--but Laurents also wrote "Gypsy." Can we think of "Gypsy"'s writer as mediocre? I admire the pendulum swings of "West Side Story," mainly in the Second Act. We start with Maria in ignorance; as far as she knows, no killings have occurred. We then get the brutal truth. We then retreat to a dream world, in which everyone has a restart, a blank slate. Think again: Anita shakes Maria out of her stupor. Think again: Maria melts Anita's heart. But the Jets then assault Anita, causing her to tell a vicious lie. But Tony is giv...

  Like JFK, like LBJ, Gary Hart had multiple affairs. The one that really plagued him was with a bookish actor/writer named Donna Rice. Hart and Rice spent some time on a boat--the "Monkey Business"--and Rice was photographed on top of Hart's groin. Hart then said he hadn't had any kind of dalliance with Rice; the two were just talking about possible job opportunities. During damage control, Rice asked Hart's people not to leak her name. She also disclosed an embarrassing moment from her past--a semi-nude photo--imagining that this was just a topic for her brief phone call. Hart's people immediately threw Rice under the bus, volunteering her name and the details about her past, hoping that this would put out the fire. For years thereafter, Hart made no effort to contact Rice. (He did eventually call her to apologize.) Given Rice's formidable brain power, a second act was inevitable. Rice became an important crusader against child pornography. Hart had a ro...

  Flag Day has come and gone. In Maplewood, it passed without comment. When I was growing up, there was an annual moment of silence around the school flag; there were also daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm not a great fan of patriotism; I do plan to watch "Reservation Dogs" this summer. It's striking to me that one of the final episodes of "Hacks" involves a high-visibility "land acknowledgment"; this practice has actually just *disappeared* from my local theater, the Paper Mill Playhouse. (My husband half-jokingly suggests that the removal of the land acknowledgment surely has something to do with a threat from Trump.) New York City seems ambivalent toward the anniversary of the American Revolution. At the Met, there is one small room with a tiny exhibit called "Revolution!" (The room generally seems to be empty.) The Frick has resurrected one of the Gilbert Stuart images of George Washington--but, with Goya and Rembrand...

 I like stories about transgression, because a transgression almost always involves a coverup. Once you break a rule, you generally have to lie about *not* having broken the rule. And things begin to spiral. In "Carolina Caroline," the title character discovers that she can rob people of twenty and fifty dollar bills. She just confuses them with excessive language. She has a person give her several dollars. Then, she will say, "Actually, I need a fifty dollar bill. Tell you what. I'll give you one dollar--and you give me a fifty--and we're even." The brain thinks this is a fair exchange. But the brain forgets that the ones in Caroline's hand are *store* bills. The clerk gives a fifty to Caroline--ON TOP of the ones that the clerk has handed over. Of course this leads to bank robbing. Caroline's lover, Oliver, sits outside with a police scanner--and honks the horn as soon as Caroline needs to come out. One moment of carelessness means that a cop makes...

 I'm approaching the end of "Hacks." One thing I really value is a well-considered title. "Hacks" stands out as a punchy, memorable label. (I can't read the non-fiction book "Checkmate," by Ben Mezrich, because the title seems so lazy. It seems to have originated in the "brain" of an AI machine.) Any writer will tell you that the work does not get easier. A blank page is always a source of terror. It doesn't matter how much experience you have. So--in the last stages of her life--Deborah is still a hack. This is both dispiriting *and* inspiring. (Also, it's plausible that Deborah, in her victimhood, would crazily imagine that the right path forward is a long set about Joan of Arc. This makes me think of Billy Eichner, foolishly believing that people will buy tickets because of a comedy's "important" and "historic" premise.) In another corner of the world, Ava is considering a reboot of "Who's Makin...