Liars and Saints

 Around one year ago, I had a chance to attend a wedding, a gay wedding. As is often the case, one half of the couple seemed to have the "louder" personality; he was working on voting rights, so he designed the "order of activities" to resemble a voting pamphlet. Small stick figures illustrated the text. The font came from the NYC subway signs; each activity involved numbered " how-to- style" instructions. The louder spouse was a world traveler--so the food stations were from far-flung corners of the Earth; each station represented an actual, bizarre trip that the spouse had taken (and laminated photos drove the point home). All well and good--but I trained my eye on the quieter spouse. Still waters can run deep.  Not shockingly, the quieter spouse stole the show. He did this in his vows. He spoke about struggling to come to terms with his sexual orientation--feeling, for a long time, that he had to be guarded and "perfect" to compensate for his ...

 My family has a tradition of benign polyps. Polyps in the colon! They're benign sometimes, but they could morph. They could become vindictive--at any moment. What this means for me is that I get to "jump the colonoscopy line." For a long while, I've been thinking about my 45th birthday--that special time when I will drink a potion, spend hours in the bathroom, and then get probed. I'll always recall how gracefully my spouse handled this event in his own timeline. He even seemed to enjoy himself. He was loopy after the procedure--and we headed home to Brooklyn to watch "Curb Your Enthusiasm." (It was the one where Larry David steals flowers from an impromptu roadside memorial.) From certain angles, an early colonoscopy is not a twist to be celebrated. But I'm sort of pleased--because this will generate new material. And so I know how Julia Wertz feels. Wertz is my favorite cartoonist. I'm including her new work here.

 The famous story about Barbara Pym is that--after a long run--she fell out of fashion. Her career seemed to be over. Then, British luminaries were asked to name the most underrated writer of the past 75 years. (Why not?) Only one name earned double recognition--from Philip Larkin and from a critic. The name was Barbara Pym. It's a cliche to say, "I didn't want this book to end." I almost always want a book to end. I get ready for the next option. But, with Barbara Pym's "The Sweet Dove Died," I did actually ration the pages--because I didn't want the book to end. "Dove," the final Pym book published in Pym's own lifetime, is deliberately darker than Pym's legendary "early-career" novels ("Excellent Women," "A Glass of Blessings," and so on). It's also full of sex. Gay sex! (Pym has an elliptical style, at times, but you can sense what she is alluding to.) Finally, Pym's characters are very real...

 The strange thing about any kind of good family counseling is that little asides can have more weight than the "big declamatory" moments. I was flustered at the start of a session because I had just finished an hour of tutoring, and my student's "absolute value" chapter did not match my own "absolute value" chapter. I had prepared certain material--and I then had to observe, in real time, that I'd made an error and I'd created a need for on-the-spot course correction. I happen to be weirdly insecure about absolute value, and I had to say, in a faux-calm voice, "We'll start here next week." The counselor I talk to rummaged around in her "cognitive-behavioral" toolbox. Apparently, if something small is bothering you, you have to "drill down" to a core belief, the real source of the distress. Then you have to try to "tell a different story" about yourself. So--for example--if you flub a question about a...

  A Gothic novel tends to be built on family secrets and a hint of the supernatural. "A Beautiful Family"--the recent debut novel by Jennifer Trevelyan--fits the bill. It's c. 1985. Vanessa, a teen girl, seems drawn to the ocean waves. When she almost drowns, she describes a feeling of having been summoned, as if by the gods of the ocean. Could this be possible? Or is Vanessa making up the story to conceal the fact that she just wanted to be rescued by a hunky lifeguard? The question is left unanswered. Vanessa's family is rotting away; the "parasites" in question are just a series of lies. Vanessa's mother is lying about her rapport with a vacationing neighbor. Vanessa is lying about her extracurricular activities. The narrator--ten-year-old Alix--is committing multiple sins of omission. For example, she has suspicions about a missing Walkman--but if she shares what she knows, she will be disciplined. The short-term misery seems to outweigh the long-ter...

 One thing Sia handles particularly well is storytelling. A pop song can easily fail to seem rooted in the "here and now"--we don't know which room the speaker is in. But Sia's speakers have a way of looking around and noticing the weather: Sun is up; I'm a mess. Gotta get out now, gotta run from this. Here comes the shame. Here comes the shame. To show that the speaker is troubled, Sia has her recall some recent events: Help, I have done it again. I have been here many times before. Hurt myself again today. And the worst part is there's no one else to blame. I always admire Sia's candor. When working with Disney, Sia chooses to be slightly sunnier--but the result is *not* cloying. I messed up tonight. I lost another fight. Lost to myself--but I'll just start again. I keep falling down. I keep on hitting the ground. I always get up now to see what's next. It's impossible not to find this protagonist charming--and Shakira's buoyant performan...