Liars and Saints

 I don't live in Montclair, but I'm there often. A feature I dislike is the canonization of one resident, Stephen Colbert. Anytime there is widespread adulation for anyone, I become skeptical. Colbert's slightly patronizing ads for the "Montclair Film Festival" drive me batty. A better facet is the Montclair Book Center. This eccentric bookstore may or may not carry all of the current major titles you'd expect, but it does have tattered four-dollar mass market editions of forgotten Golden Age mysteries. Also, hardcover editions of old titles are kept *separate* from the paperbacks--so you get the thrill of discovery TWICE. It's like two bookstores within one building. The last thing I'll say about Montclair is that there are several "Bosch" houses up in the hills. These are upside-down houses--they are perched almost on top of Manhattan. Sometimes, the "consumption" of volume and surface area is astonishing; it's exciting just t...

 The NYT says that "West Side Story" is Bernstein's classic mix of "discord and schmaltz." Bernstein likely believes, deep down, that he is constructing an opera--and that is suggested by his self-conscious song title, "Quintet." We are meant to think of Mozart. I love "Quintet" above all the other numbers because the discord and the schmaltz are right there together. Singing on his own, Tony can be just a bit insufferable: Oh moon, grow bright-- And make this endless day, endless night-- Tonight! But Anita cuts through the nonsense, thinking about her *own* lover: He'll come in hot and tired. So what? Don't matter if he's tired-- As long as he's hot. Sondheim could simply have the rival gang members puffing themselves up, but instead he chooses to look at self-deception. He has the gang members half-acknowledge their plans to use illegal weapons. "Well, IF things start to go too far...." With this kind of writing, S...

  I know a wealthy WASP. She attended Saint Ann’s and Yale; she then became a stay-at-home mom. The family owns multiple properties on various continents. The WASP’s parents—two elderly alcoholics—host elaborate parties with baffling rules and codicils. If you violate a rule, the WASP family speaks laughingly about you as if you aren’t in the room. If someone wrongly suggests that you know a great deal about Jane Austen, then the WASP produces trivia questions to stump you. Once you are stumped, the WASP seems satisfied. She then hands you supplemental Austen material—“as a gift.”   The WASP’s mother likes to pretend to complain about when the WASP was a child star in the City Opera revival of “A Little Night Music.” Of course, “Claire Bloom had the Gingold role—and Claire was  not  friendly.”   These are all terrible behaviors—and I was happy to see them parodied in “Pineapple Street.” A wealthy couple leaves their townhouse to one child and his “gold-digger” w...

An annoying thing happened at my child's school. His teacher inexplicably disappeared for three months--and the district, frantic for coverage, hired a sixteen-year-old replacement. No, she was not sixteen. But she was pretty close. My shrewd son quickly sussed out the truth--the new teacher was not adequately familiar with her "steering wheel." No one was captain of the ship. This caused distress for my son--who could not express his distress in complex sentences. So he began to pull down his pants. Pulling down one's pants is a not uncommon choice in the context of a speech delay. But the choice was terrifying for the sixteen-year-old--who chose not to share her concerns with my spouse or with me. To me, this choice has just a whiff of (unexamined) homophobia. It's hard to believe--if my child had a mom--the situation would have been handled in the same way. Long story short. My son essentially lost three months of instructional time because the classroom was sp...

  Alice Munro married Gerald Fremlin and began writing about him. He inspired the central man in “Labor Day Dinner”—he was the man making fun of Roberta’s body. Speaking with a reporter, Munro said, “My husband doesn’t read my stories.” And Gerald made a correction: “I read them. We just don’t talk about them.”   Gerald popped up as Orpheus in “The Children Stay,” as Ladner in “Vandals,” as the murderer in “Dimension.” Although Rachel Aviv does not mention “Floating Bridge,” I think Gerald was there, too—he was the emotionally abusive partner. He was the suicide case in “Comfort.”   After Gerald died, Alice asked not to be buried near him. While senile, Alice mentioned that she never “wanted that pedafil”—she seemed to invent a word somewhere between “pedophile” and “pitiful.” Rachel Aviv writes about cycles of trauma—Alice once moved far away from her own mother, and later, Andrea Skinner detached herself from Alice. Skinner once observed a vacancy in Alice’s eyes; “it w...

  Critics are celebrating Matthew Rhys for his WTF fuck. It’s a great face—but all Rhys faces are great faces. Rhys in horror, yes, but also Rhys in discomfort, Rhys in frenzy, Rhys in anger. The Rhys of “Widow’s Bay” is sweaty, desperate, and needy—he is relatable. There must be a cost to exposing so much inner weakness. What a gift Rhys has.   In “Widow’s Bay,” Rhys has lied to his adolescent son: “Your mother died in childbirth.” In fact, the mother lived for years, and her schizophrenic letters are waiting to be discovered. Rhys learns that he can lift a curse on “his” island—to promote tourism, he just needs to murder a certain tainted citizen. (There is an elaborate story about a poisoned bloodline.) The problem is that the citizen in question is Rhys’s octogenarian receptionist—can he really bring himself to smother her with a pillow?   People have written about “Widow’s Bay” and its relationship to history. In America, we try to build industries on nostalgia—but, ...