Liars and Saints

I love this painting at the Met. I know nothing about Georges de La Tour. I do know that this painting was completed sometime around 1630. The reason I love it is that it is a narrative about transgression. Like the writer Patrick Radden Keefe, I think a story is useless unless it involves a crime. (Maybe that's overly dramatic, but it's pretty close to what I think.) A crime involves role-playing--you have to feign being someone you're not, if you want to stage a coverup--and role-playing leads to odd behaviors. I will always have fond memories of "Better Call Saul" because of Kim Wexler. Wexler's criminal ambition takes her farther and farther from "the truth"--then, after a massacre, she has to try to atone for what she has done. Georges de La Tour's "Fortune Teller" has a straightforward story. An elderly woman offers to read a palm. While the "mark" is distracted, a band of thieves gets to work on a pocket-picking mission...

  Arthur Miller wrote "Death of a Salesman" in a kind of dream-state; the play seemed to spill out of him. This was *not* a product of years and years of toil. Charley's famous speech is an analysis of Willy's career. A salesman doesn't have a practical skill--a salesman is really selling himself. In a superficial world, appearance and youth have great weight. There can be a moment when the world decides it does not want you; you become invisible. (This seemed to happen to a neighbor of mine--who could no longer afford the house she grew up in. She was falling behind with her taxes; the town chose to drum her out of her home, and she attempted suicide. It's still strange to me that there was no other "solution" to the problem.) Oddly, Charley's speech seems to be about Arthur Miller himself. After the Marilyn Monroe fiasco, Miller lost his standing in American culture. "The Crucible" and "A View From the Bridge" found some Ame...

 Beyonce is not my favorite performer; I quickly grow bored with songs of empowerment. I prefer singers who are more openly messy. Bonnie Raitt, Amy Winehouse, Adele. That said, I acknowledge that Beyonce does what she does very well. I particularly like "Irreplaceable," which casts Bey as a kind of all-powerful God: So go ahead and get gone-- Call up that chick and see if she's home. Oops! I bet you thought that I didn't know. What did you think I was puttin' you out for? Because you was untrue-- Rollin' her round in that car I bought you. Baby, drop them keys. Hurry up before your taxi leaves. It's this song that "Six" seems to borrow from (via "No Way")--especially in the bridge section. Because the writers are witty, "Six" inverts the Beyonce theme: Catherine of Aragon is wielding power *not* to evict a man but to preserve her own queendom. Then the stutter of the chorus--"n-n-n-n-no way"--seems to recall "C...

  I think this will be my last post about "Hadestown." My admiration is really centered on Eurydice's "I Want" solo: I was alone so long-- I didn't even know that I was lonely. Out in the cold so long-- I didn't even know that I was cold. Turned my collar to the wind-- This is how it's always been. All I've ever known is how to hold my own-- But now I want to hold you, too. Is it possible to invent new twists in a love song? Here, the writers push us "on to" an exciting bridge by dropping the last syllable in the refrain: "Now I want to hold you, too." Now I want to hold you--NOW. I want to hold you--hold you CLOSE. I don't wanna ever let you go. Now I wanna hold you--hold you TIGHT. I don't wanna go back to the lonely life. The other part I admire is the odd discordant passage at the end. Eurydice demands that Orpheus make several promises. Orpheus immediately complies; he is naive, and he believes that the promises a...

  We took our child out of the YMCA camp. I'm not very interested in the specifics of the camp. Other people seem to have a good time there.   What I did notice was that the camp was frequently calling, mentioning moments of aggression, poop accidents, penis waving. The head of the camp was exceedingly nice and a bit passive, and instead of giving me instructions, she would murmur about her need to "locate Joshua's triggers." Finally, I asked her what she would do if she were in my shoes, and she said, "I can't answer that, but I can tell you that I worry about Josh at my camp. I worry every single day." There was no need to hear anything more.     The *new* camp is both more expensive *and* more demanding. They tell me to send a trained babysitter -- someone to monitor Josh *in addition* to the counselors who are paid to monitor him. A part of me resents this. Isn't the camp getting enough money to solve its own problems? On the other hand, I apprec...

  One gift of Alice McDermott's is to invent characters who are both weird and recognizable; you feel you've met these people. Theresa, a tenth grader on Long Island, is semi-aware that her little cousin might be dying. But Theresa is in a kind of hormonal haze--and the death of a child is too much to think about--so Theresa lies to herself. At the same time, she is drawn to an elderly local artist whose work may or may not be "immortal." It's interesting--and scary--to feel that you have power over a Great Man. Theresa starts showing off around the artist; she shares her thoughts about Shakespeare (and about his villain Macbeth). Theresa's parents have moved to Long Island, to a groundskeeper's cottage, because they think that Theresa's proximity to wealthy people is a good thing. They encourage her to mingle with rich neighbors; at the same time, they feel wary around her, because they know she will not remain close to home. (In this way, McDermott i...