Liars and Saints

Patricia Clarkson steals the show in "House of Cards." Her best moment is in the last episode. She has slipped Claire some Chinese poison; "just don't exceed the dosage, or you can kill someone." Claire has of course (implausibly) used a full bottle on the loathsome Tom Yates (and this shows, emphatically, that "House of Cards" is not a serious drama, and does not want to be; it's a delightful low-rent noir, in the style of "Dressed to Kill," and God bless it for that). Clarkson--"Ms. Davis"--seems to intuit that Claire has used the Chinese extract for nefarious purposes. But of course she can't say that; this is Washington, DC, and Claire is a power broker, THE power broker. So--coolly--Ms. Davis says, "Your husband's liver could fail at any time. I can't do that for you, obviously, but I know some people. I could make some calls." And then she picks up the Chinese extract. "Remember this stuff can be...

When I had very bad social anxiety, my loony therapist made a few suggestions. He said I could brainstorm and list a set of topics for possible discussion with my friend or date, before I saw this person, so, if silence threatened, I could revert to the list and push things along. When I had an especially garrulous friend, and I didn't know how to combat the wall of talk that she would inevitably throw up whenever I saw her, my therapist suggested that I say, "Hey! Could we just sit in silence and hold hands?" (This guy really is from Mars. Who in the world would say, "Friend! Let's hold hands!" My therapist would.) When I met the man I will soon marry, and I was worried at the thought of initiating a first kiss, I was advised to say, "I'm going to hold your hand now." And indeed I did. And the rest is history. Bernard Waber wrote books about courage. He had been a student at U. Penn, and he dropped out to fight in WWII--and, when he returned...

IT'S TIME TO TALK ABOUT THE MURDERED NUN. Here is what we know, after episode one: -There are two spunky old ladies who have a JUSTICE FOR THE MURDERED NUN Facebook campaign. The two old ladies read their Facebook feed and make inquiries, and worry together about how to make certain other hypothetical inquiries. One approaches an archivist with a broad smile and says, "I'm looking for this file! I asked before, and it didn't turn up, but I find if I ask a second time, things sometimes magically turn up! So I wonder if maybe this file has made its way back to its proper slot since the last time I asked?" Flash those pearly whites. The archivist--perhaps aware that a camera is trained on her--smiles right back and says, "Let's give this a shot!" Here's the moment I fell in love with "The Keepers." So many daffy bits of subtext, tucked away like sapphires in the vast minefield that is this murder inquiry. (One of the spunky old ladies ...

-There are two greasy older boys at your all-boy Catholic high school who will somehow discern that you are gay, and will call out your name in a mincing voice and push you into lockers. Be crafty! There is a chapel in your school building. Certain Catholics—and these are truly the weirdos, the daffiest of the daffy in your deeply daffy school—gather there to get a Communion wafer Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, before class. There’s the deeply troubled Christian Brother who stands at four feet, has no teaching duties, and seems to possess neither working shampoo nor the power of speech. There’s the addled biology teacher who speaks like a Muppet and displays an ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN bumper sticker on the front of his desk. If you attend services with these loonies, then the bullies cannot get to you for a few hours every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It may be, as you suffer through the tedious mass, that you actually think of Bette Midler, the hooker in Disney’s The Hunchback of No...

Every death is violent. The iris, the rainbow of the eye, closes down. The pupil spreads out like black water. It seems natural, if you are there, to push the lid down, to ease the pleated shade over the ball, down to the lower lashes. The light is out, close the door. Mrs Warburg called me at midnight. I heard the click of her lighter and the tiny crackle of burning tobacco. Her ring bumped against the receiver. "Are you comfortable, darling?" I was pretty comfortable. I was lying on her daughter's bed, with my feet on Anne's yellow quilt, wearing Anne's bathrobe. "Do you feel like talking tonight?" Mrs. Warburg was the only person I felt like talking to. My boyfriend was away. My mother was away. My father was dead. I worked in a felafel joint on Charles Street where only my boss spoke English.  I heard Mrs. Warburg swallow. "You have a drink, too. This'll be our little party." Mrs. Warburg and I had an interstate, telepho...

A brutal war of genders. Vanessa Bayer’s nameless protagonist labors over a hot stove while her husband enjoys “the big game.” Bayer’s efforts to engage her husband, Beck Bennett—“Are we winning?”—meet with a blunt dismissal. “Come on, Babe,” says Bennett, adjusting his crotch. “Don’t act like you know what you’re talking about.” The assembled men chuckle at this fresh witticism; meanwhile, Bayer, alienated even from herself, confides to us that her husband “is right.” (Bayer conveys the sense that she has just undergone a lobotomy; the loopy expression on her face clashes wonderfully with the hell that surrounds her. Repeatedly, she alludes to her “hungry guys,” as if foreshadowing the role of the docile servant “Donkey” in “War for the Planet of the Apes.”) Bayer’s sexless, bright-pink cardigan and multicolored plaid shirt hang off her like rags on a chimp; wherever her mind actually is, it’s far, far from the shell of a woman that we see in this suburban kitchen. Her mind is in ano...

One more entry before I leave, and then I promise I really am out of the country for several days. For this entry, we will pretend that we have all read "A Portion of Your Loveliness," by Amy Bloom. (It's available at narrativemagazine.com.) And now I'll list the things I love in that story: -"I carried a dead baby in my womb for four weeks and looked and felt perfectly fine." (This is a story--as most, or all, of Bloom's stories are--about duality. The surface is different from the stuff underneath. Sometimes, the surface (apparent health) is very literally different from the literal stuff underneath (dead fetus). -"Do you know what Grandma said? It's great to feel good, it's better to look good. She meant sometimes you don't want people to know how you really feel--so you can fool them by looking good." I love this heretical bit of advice. Who says this to a small child? But it's true, isn't it? Life is sometimes a g...

I will be away in Scotland for a while, and will resume posting sometime around July 25. P.S. Bonus! Below is THE TAYLOR SWIFT CHEAT SHEET! Enjoy! The  Taylor   Swift  Cheat Sheet Some of the literary devices TS uses very well: Intertextuality: When one piece of writing refers to another. These are the hands of fate; You're my Achilles heel. This is the Golden Age of something good, and right, and real. ( TS is alluding to the Iliad; she also seems to be alluding to the Classical Period of Actual Greece.) You said you'd never met one girl Who had as many James  Taylor  records as you But I do. (This isn't really a reference to a James  Taylor  song, but the words "James  Taylor " are so evocative and recognizable, I think TS is using them to stand in for: "everything that is moody and smart.") I'm dancing on my own. I'll make the moves up as I go. (Here, TS is tipping her hat to Robyn, to "Da...

Taylor Swift’s “Fifteen” follows the plot of “White Horse,” “All Too Well,” “Dear John,” “Forever and Always,” “You’re Not Sorry,” and portions of “Begin Again.” An innocent girl is duped by an erotically powerful swindler/trickster-man. (You can see some actual evolution in “1989.” In “Style,” when TS confronts Harry Styles with evidence of his roving eye, she does not become righteous and enraged. She in fact empathizes; she says, “I have a roving eye, as well.” In “Wildest Dreams,” TS knows where she’s headed before she starts—and doesn’t really blame Scott Eastwood for being a cad. These little bits of complexity represent a leap forward—and they may help to explain why the “1989” persona seemed slightly less popular, in some camps, than the wide-eyed “Speak Now”/”Fearless” persona.) What’s remarkable to me, in “Fifteen,” is the way that TS is able to shoot herself forward into the late “aughties,” and to look back at one year of high school with a wise, world-weary eye. (She...