Liars and Saints

 The recent Times interview put a spotlight on a Taylor Swift song I admire; this is a widely beloved song. I want you to know I'm a mirrorball-- I'll show you every version of yourself tonight. I'll get you out on the floor-- Shimmering, beautiful-- And when I break, it's in a million pieces. To me, this is notable because Taylor is speaking directly to the listener. This isn't unparalleled--but, in other settings, I tend to think of Taylor in storyteller mode, writing to "Betty," to Jake Gyllenhaal, to her mother. The idea is that a pop performer--or any public figure--is just a vessel to be used. You listen to a pop singer so that you can learn or understand something about your own life. "When I break, it's in a million pieces." The personal failures of the songwriter are a gift to the world--because the shattering yields a million pieces (a million songs). This composition is celebrated for its bridge: And they called off the circus-- Bu...

 Everyone has a colonoscopy now and then--so this is not like a report from the epicenter of 9/11. The doctor appeared to be a small child, and I liked him. He had an inelegant way of speaking. "Who knows if insurance will cover this?" he wondered aloud. "If you had a more dramatic family history--if your father were, like, dying of colon cancer, then you would be a slam dunk...." He briefly considered my small daily intake of Adderall. "I mean, you *could* ingest that before a colonoscopy....but that's like pissing into the wind...." (OK, he did not use that simile--but I *saw* the simile. I saw it in his eyes.) The unpleasant part is the waiting. I worked my way through every Christmas carol I know--then moved on to Sondheim. "Johanna," "Anyone Can Whistle," "Losing My Mind." Oscar Hammerstein. Frank Loesser. "I spend sleepless nights to think about you...." Did Sondheim think that this was an odd way of using ...

  This season of "SVU" has not been flawless, but it has mostly been delightful. Then April 23 happened. Oscar nominee Melissa McCarthy plays Jesmyn Jewell, a star on the ultimate fighter circuit. I'm pretty sure that most--if not all--of McCarthy's lines are improvised. (She is channeling her "Bridesmaids" character.) Famously, on "The Simpsons," the yard work sequence from "Cape Feare" made the cut only because the writers needed one full minute of padding. I believe we're seeing something like that in the McCarthy scene from "SVU." Jewell immediately falls in love with Olivia Benson (who just wants some simple information). Jewell keeps derailing the conversation to talk about Benson's "yams," her "baby browns," her talent for "being spicey." Jewell wants cash--but if cash is unavailable, "some other arrangement" could be designed. The scene would not work if Mariska Hargitay st...

 Anne Fadiman's extraordinary personal essay, "Under Water," is an adventure story. In her youth, Fadiman goes on a rafting trip. A young man gets his foot wedged between two rocks. Here, you might expect a successful rescue. But that's not the tale. Fadiman and her friends attempt to reach the victim--but the attempt is a failure. Next, the *adults* arrive and make an attempt--and they also fail. In other words, the kid dies. What makes a personal narrative special is the depth of the writer's thinking. A banal lesson might be this: "Don't ever go rafting." Or this: "Carpe diem." But Fadiman takes an odd, shocking path: The victim's shirtless torso was pale and undulating. I thought, he looks like the flayed skin on St. Bartholomew in the Sistine Chapel. As soon as I had the thought, I knew that it was dishonorable. To think about anything outside the moment, outside Gary, was a crime of inattention. I swallowed a small, sour piece of ...

  We aren't moving. Not for many years. But there is a distraction available if you cannot purchase new real estate. You can *re-make* your current house. In the Raymond Carver story "Boxes," Carver's mother repeatedly violates her lease agreements. There is nothing wrong with any of the towns she has chosen, but she herself is unsettled. "Wherever you go, there you are." This is the subtle message of the story. Raymond has to pretend to agree whenever his mom blames the town for her ills. My husband and I are considering new paint colors for the exterior of our home; you would think that this color question is the key to our future happiness. If we choose correctly, we will never, never have any other issues to contend with. Never. We send each other photos from Google searches. We "feed" our current house to ChatGPT, which spits out "reimagined" versions with varying color schemes. At a Buddhist shrine in Newark, I could not think, ...

  In "Wants," Grace Paley makes several odd choices. She decides to return some overdue books but then parks herself on the steps leading to the library's entrance--she seems to be a daydreamer. When she spots her ex, she refers to him as "my life." (Could this be deliberately antagonistic?) The ex says that the marriage died because "you never invited the Bertrams to dinner"--and instead of calling the accusation absurd, Grace shrugs and says, "That's possible." We can imagine that Grace may be simmering with rage; her way of managing life is to detach. The story never *tells* us to reach that conclusion. One of the smartest touches is to show Grace observing the librarian. This minor character reveals that Grace has been a "person of interest" for eighteen years. The librarian has "more to tell"--but the ex ploughs ahead with a disruption. In this moment, Grace seems to identify with the librarian--she knows how it f...