Liars and Saints

Nell and Henry always said that they would wait until marriage was legal for everyone in America, and now this is the case--it's August 2015--but earlier in the week Henry eloped with his graduate student Bridget. Bridget is twenty-three, moderately but not dramatically attractive (one of the few nonstereotypical aspects of the situation, Nell thinks, is Bridget's lack of dramatic attractiveness), and Henry and Bridget had been dating for six months. They began having an affair last winter, when Henry and Nell were still together; then in April, Henry moved out of the house he and Nell own and into Bridget's apartment. Nell and Henry had been a couple for eleven years. In the shuttle between the Kansas City airport and the hotel where Nell's weekend meetings will occur--the shuttle is a van--and she is its only passenger--a radio host and a guest are discussing the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump. The driver catches Nell's eye in the rearview mirror and say...

The works of "Gabriel Garcia Marquez" are to be shelved under "G," not "M." Why is this difficult to understand? The author is always referred to as "Garcia Marquez." Not "Marquez." And yet booksellers everywhere are in error, all the time. So someone in search of "100 Years of Solitude" might never find it--because of laziness and idiocy. -People have harsh judgments about who is and is not qualified to speak about books. Recently, Reese Witherspoon gave an interview to the Times, about how she liked to read. Ms. Witherspoon studied English literature at Stanford. She has gone on to "author" many characters--as a performer. Beyond that, she has brought women's stories to the big screen, in a major way--as a producer. (I'm thinking of "Wild" and "Big Little Lies.") Would anyone doubt that Witherspoon is a storyteller--actually, a storyteller to be reckoned with? Apparently. Some insuffer...

It's back. A gender-reversal production--led, of course, by Patti LuPone. The director did the buzzy Denise Gough Broadway revival of "Angels in America." Obsessed. A recent version of the Harold Prince Songbook, on Broadway, exposed, for one critic, some home truths. Harold Prince had worked both with ALW ("Evita," etc.) and with Sondheim ("Company," "Follies," etc.). First: ALW's work looked very, very pale alongside Sondheim's. Second--and more interesting: "I'd sometimes thought of Sondheim's work as too cerebral, too dry. But this production made something clear to me. Ambivalence isn't the absence of emotion. It's *too much* emotion. It's emotion overflowing." "Company" is about paralyzing internal conflict. Its people are at war with one another, and with themselves. The inmates are running the asylum. Words rarely mean what they "should" mean. "Poor baby" in fact ...

(5) Is "The Nun" a terribly-written, very-lightly-plotted excuse for a movie--without real characters? Yes. Do you need to see it? No. And yet. And yet. A part of me loves the Catholic campiness. The graves in ancient Romania, with little bells attached, so if you were buried alive, you could pull on the string and the bell would ring, and passersby would take notice. The concept of "perpetual adoration": At least one nun is always chanting in Latin, hymns to the greatness of God, so that the Devil's wrath might be kept at bay. The scene where Taissa Farmiga has a special evil-defeating relic, with the blood of Jesus inside, but you think that the glass is broken and the blood has leaked out, but it turns out Taissa has been storing the blood in her mouth, and she spits it in the demon's face. What gay former Catholic wouldn't love this stuff? My seventeen dollars were wasted, yes--but I'll always have that memory of Taissa, with the blood of Jesus...

(3) "Vacant Possession."  Hilary Mantel's work is informed by rage. It's rage about gender inequality. Her first novel--"A Place of Greater Safety"--was dismissed by male critics. One complained that there was "too much discussion of wallpaper." (Mantel mentioned wallpaper exactly once in 750 pages.) Mantel suffered for years from endometriosis, which was dismissed and/or misdiagnosed by several male doctors. Asked what era she would most like to write in, she says, "Now is as good a time as any for female writers." (Which is *not* to say that it's a g reat time for female writers.) One of her early novels, "Eight Months on Ghazzah Street," concerned the brutal treatment of women Mantel witnessed when she actually lived on Ghazzah Street. There's a sense of rage, also, in Mantel's thoughts on the treatment of (female) writer Anita Brookner: "Brookner is the sort of artist described as minor by people who ...

John Waters says, "If you are not obsessed, you are nothing." On that note, please recall that Lin-Manuel Miranda will be back in the public eye soon. He will be in "Mary Poppins Returns." (Who is excited for this film? Yours truly.) In honor of this major event, let's note some things about LMM: -Writers tend to have certain tics--and they return to these again and again. Take a look at "Everything I Know," from IN THE HEIGHTS. Put it up next to "Wait for It," from HAMILTON. Hmm... -In both cases, there's an inciting exchange. In IN THE HEIGHTS, someone hands Nina a photo album from her dead Abuela's possessions. In HAMILTON, the title character quizzes Burr about his girlfriend, Theodosia. -So: We start with something small. Nina pages through the photo album and sees images from the eighties; you can tell the era "by the volume of the women's hair." Abuela seems to be in every image; "if it happened on th...

People have been tweeting the highlights of "Fear," by Woodward. Fair enough. But I feel that Ottessa Moshfegh's new novel deserves similar attention. -Yes, the protagonist describes a twisted love. Her lazy sometimes-boyfriend accuses her of being a prude because she won't administer oral services to him while he is on the toilet. To prove she is in fact not a prude, she offers to have him penetrate an oft-overlooked orifice. He tries, and stops, claiming that there is fecal matter all over his member, and the protagonist knows this is false, because "he didn't even get inside there." -Are you hooked? The entirety of the first one hundred pages--at least--is like this. -The narrator, having lost both of her (checked-out) parents, decides to sleep for a year. She will have a "year of rest and relaxation," and maybe when she wakes up she will stop feeling disgusted by everything. Her mother was clinically depressed and would have her sleep...

(5) "The Witch Elm," by Tana French. I complain about French often, because I think her style is too windy. But I always read her books. She has a way of blending a tricky plot with an unreliable narrator. So you don't know if the world she is describing is crazy, or the narrator has sort of lost his mind, or both. I'm thinking of "In the Woods." It's interesting to me that "The Witch Elm" is the first of French's novels not to follow the "my-new-narrator-is-linked-to-the-preceding-book" trend. A fresh start! I'm all for that. (4) "Nate Expectations," the final installment of the Nate trilogy, by Tim Federle. Each title has been outstanding: "Better Nate than Ever," "Five Six Seven Nate." I actually wonder if Federle chose the name "Nate" in part because it would yield such valuable puns. (3) Additional seasons of "Hannibal"? I took a while to get adjusted to this show. For...

"Insecure" gave us a "Beach House" episode this season. "Beach House" is the famous moment in "Girls"--Season Three, ranked among the top "Girls" episodes--when the four protagonists gather and attack one another, Edward Albee-style. "Insecure" has recently done something similar. The four main women go to hear Beyonce at Coachella. "Here we are," says one woman, "standing with the whites in The Field." This later becomes: "We're out fighting the whites in The Field." References to slavery seem to be a recurring thing this season (and, certainly, last season, as well). There's the "field" discussion, the line, "Look at you, working away like a little slave," and also, in a kitchen scene: "We are slaving here." There's also a startling moment when a cop uses a taser on one of the four characters--a moment played for (uncomfortable) laughs. "Remember ...

Can I tell you how much I love "Thriller," by Michael Jackson? This was actually the last single off the album "Thriller." It had a few titles before it became what it was. Like many good things, the proper title arrived as a sudden bolt of inspiration for the writer (who was not Michael Jackson). I am obsessed with stories and with holidays. When I was a child, my father would look at me with concern and say, "Do you think you live in a storybook?" The answer was yes. My stated ambition was to become a Wuzzle, which was something like a Care Bear. That's what I imagined my career could be. As a teacher, long past the burn-out date, I kept myself going by having my reading groups design holiday cards. December 1st (or even late November): Time to think about Santa Claus! September 15? Time for ghouls and goblins... "Thriller" isn't "Anna Karenina," but someone did take time to craft sentences here. Look closely. Using anth...

Here are some things I think about work. They are also things I think about while I am *at* work. (1) Salvy. A psychology magazine says: "When you are dealing with an irritated person, have compassion for yourself. Irritation is contagious--so you have to take care of yourself." This is more complicated than it seems. If you mirror back irritation, then the problem just grows and grows. If you try, in a self-flagellating way, to conquer the other person's irritation, without having first checked your own "oxygen mask," then you're headed for disaster. So, when someone speaks to me rudely at work, I immediately picture my dog, Salvy. He is like my glowing heart. My spirit animal. My daemon, as in "The Amber Spyglass." I sit and see Salvy's face, in my mind. This seems to help. (2) Raise your rates. My shrink emigrated from Italy, and he has a special fondness for immigrants. There was a particular Afghani coffee vendor on the UWS whom he...

Pelecanos: "The Man who Came Uptown." Oh My God. I'm obsessed. Nora Ephron once described a great reading experience as "the rapture of the deep." That applies here--to the new novel by George Pelecanos. Mr. Pelecanos has been called "America's coolest writer," and he is a particular favorite of Dennis Lehane. People know him more for TV than for novels. He has worked on "The Deuce," "Bosch," "The Wire," and (likely) others. TV is great, but there are some things only printed literature can do. Pelecanos knows this. A smart work of prose engages you in ways TV can't; you become a co-creator of the story; you fill in blanks, make inferences, complete the canvas. Your mind melds with the characters--in a way unique to fiction. Good fiction. Pelecanos knows this. The new GP book--"The Man who Came Uptown"--is about, among many other things, the pleasures of reading. It's a thriller about reading. S...

(5) In the pretty good novel "The Wife," the narrator has a notable ending. She has just disclosed to us that her husband's life has been a lie, and that she is filled with rage (husband-directed rage). Then, paradoxically, she turns to her husband's awful biographer and says: "My husband earned all the greatness that came toward him. If you suggest otherwise, I'll sue." Or something like that. It's a strong ending, because the statement is ambiguous and tortured and ironic: The husband really earned little or nothing, and the wife knows this. But she can't vindicate herself, because too much is at stake. She was complicit in her husband's farce. She has to continue to save face, as much as it pains her. This is a very fine "button"; it makes us think of HRC and Bill Clinton, which is surely intentional. It also nicely encapsulates the anguish, the inner war, that *is* this character. Well done. In the movie, though, a scriptwrite...

Nothing's gonna harm you Not while I'm around Nothing's gonna harm you No, sir, not while I'm around Demons are prowling everywhere Nowadays I'll send them howling I don't care I got ways Toby dimly understands that something is wrong in Mrs. Lovett’s shop. He seems to suspect that Sweeney is a bad guy. Maybe, on some level, he understands that Mrs. Lovett is complicit. But to admit that to himself would be shattering; instead, he will turn her into an ally, and someone worthy of comforting. So this is not a simple song. It’s a perverse and ironic moment in the show. The oppressed is comforting his oppressor—without realizing what he is doing. Dramatic irony: When we in the audience know something that the character does not know. Meanwhile, Sondheim uses language—beautifully—to inhabit a child’s mind. The syntax is “bare-bones.” The image of defeated, “howling” demons seems appropriate for a boy—or a boy-man. And the touching boasts at ...

Once Peter had brought her suitcase on board the train he seemed eager to get himself out of the way. But not to leave. He explained to her that he was just uneasy that the train should start to move. Out on the platform looking up at their window, he stood waving. Smiling, waving. The smile for Katy was wide open, sunny, without a doubt in the world, as if he believed that she would continue to be a marvel to him, and he to her, forever. The smile for his wife seemed hopeful and trusting, with some sort of determination about it. Something that could not easily be put into words and indeed might never be. If Greta had mentioned such a thing he would have said, Don't be ridiculous. And she would have agreed with him, thinking that it was unnatural for people who saw each other daily, constantly, to have to go through explanations of any kind. When Peter was a baby, his mother had carried him across some mountains whose name Greta kept forgetting, in order to get out of Soviet Cze...

Some initial thoughts about Holofcener's new movie: -You know you're in good hands very early. That's because Anders "beds" a stranger he has met at Target (or something slightly more upscale). "What is this?" he has asked the stranger. And the stranger: "It's a toothbrush holder, but you could just use a cup." Anders: "How about this?"" (And he holds up an enormous bucket.) Stranger: "That's sort of BIG for a toothbrush!" Hilarity ensues, and we cut to the two of them having awkward, fruitless sex. What I love about the fruitless sex: The discussion of toothbrushes inserted into holders seems, weirdly, erotic. (And I'm sure Holofcener was thinking about this). When we see the bad sex, there's a book in the background, on the nightstand: "Living with Shame." This is bleakly funny--and it's classic Holofcener. It also sets us up for Anders's climactic bad sex scene--much later--with ...

What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?  "Tub People," a strange and sinister picture book, allegedly for small children. In my teaching days, it was recommended to me, inexplicably, by a guide for elementary-school science teachers, though it has very little (if anything) to do with science, and it's quite disturbing. I love this book. What’s the last book that made you laugh?  Donald Hall, in "Notes Nearing Ninety," thinks about what it means to be old. He says, "You know you are nearing ninety when someone refers to an event two years in the future, then gives you a silent, apologetic look." Also, Lorrie Moore, reflecting on her failed marriage: For bizarre reasons, various newsmen wanted to film the wedding ceremony. And Moore said no. The pastor repeated the comment: "The bride says NO." And this was how the ceremony began. The last book to make you cry? "Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You," "...