Liars and Saints

This is just a statement of appreciation for Victor Lodato's really stunning "Personal History" piece in the New Yorker--available right now. Lodato was fifteen and--it seems--depressed, when his life changed. He had been ashamed of who he was, and his voice was barely audible (because of shyness and self-loathing, among other things). He was wandering around a pool when he made some kind of wordless connection with a lifeguard--a man in his twenties--and then an affair began. Lodato says he and the man met two dozen times over approximately four years. He isn't extremely explicit, in his writing, but you can infer what happened (at least on a superficial, physical level). One of many impressive things in this piece is the way that Lodato interprets his own behavior, his own character. He sees his desire as a way of forcing himself "into being." He recalls the sound he made the second time he reached "a climax": It wasn't like any sound h...

The writer Victor LaValle had an observation. "If the toughest character in your story is not an old lady who no longer gives a shit? Then I don't believe your story. Old ladies are the definition of badass." He was referring to that aura you get when you're no longer interested in impressing people. When excessive tact is no longer your calling card. I fondly remember an older teacher I was shadowing at the start of my career. I asked if I could observe a lesson and she wrote, bluntly, "No. Not today. I don't feel well." I'm certain that many, many other people would have just ushered me in, for fear of seeming rude--or at least would have written a lengthy, winding apology. I really admired that blunt dismissal. In "Tea with Dames," the lady past the point of Needy Caring is, of course, Maggie Smith. There's an Amy Bloom story where a character says, in an admiring way, "My friend has a lot of chien." I think that refe...

"Now that we're having a baby," says my husband, "I'm really going to get in shape. I'm going to strengthen my core. Need to be fit for that baby!" "Well, me too," I reply. "At least I'll start running again." My husband throws up his hands in a defensive way. "I wasn't implying anything about you! I wasn't saying that you need to run!" This is the sort of semi-evasive conversation that happens with some regularity in my marriage. I have been told, in expensive therapy sessions, that it's important to state, to your spouse, in a sensitive way, precisely the stuff that is on your mind. So, in a rock-solid, gold-star, we-did-all-our-homework arrangement, you could say: "Honey, I think you could lose a few pounds." And no madness would ensue. There's a guide to marriage--written by a divorce lawyer--that suggests, as maybe a number-one principle, "Send That Difficult E-mail." In o...

"Can You Ever Forgive Me?" shines so brightly in part because it's a Nicole Holofcener movie. It has Holofcener in its DNA. (She co-wrote the script). Holofcener has made her name by noticing things no one else notices. (She's like Jerry Seinfeld, who recently struck comic gold by musing aloud about a raisin.) Tiny, indelible moments are sprinkled through Holofcener's scripts. A man stands before a wall of multicolored towels at Bed, Bath, and Beyond; he is overwhelmed, engulfed, by the options, and we suddenly feel as if we're on an alien planet. (Later, the same man expresses wonder at the concept of a "toothbrush holder": What a bizarre world we live in!) Famously, in "Please Give," Catherine Keener feels overpowering guilt when she sees a slovenly man near a fancy restaurant. "Please, please take my leftovers," she says, and her neediness is palpable. It's as if she wants to go through the Stations of the Cross on a ...

(5) Janet Malcolm is back. I wrote about her mid-week and then, as if summoned, she reappeared in the New Yorker ! I had been describing "Thoughts on Autobiography from an Abandoned Autobiography." If you go and read that piece, you will sense Malcolm surely isn't done wrestling with this genre (the world of autobiography). And, lo and behold, the *new* piece (in the current NYer) again concerns autobiography. Because we're talking about Malcolm, we're talking about an odd essay. Malcolm is open about her skepticism and the lapses in her memories; the gaps between the stories she tells herself and the actual truth. She has a digression about peonies vs. roses (!), which leads to a discussion about "the idea of the absolute" in art. There's a comical and sad allusion to her early school experience in America, when she could not understand English and imagined that "Children" referred to a specific student (a student more favored than Jane...

As a creator, Michael Bennett was drawn to the sadism in the entertainment industry. You see this theme in both "A Chorus Line" and "Dreamgirls." "A Chorus Line": A chilly, male director torments his ex-girlfriend. Uncomfortable with whatever emotions he is feeling, Zach chooses to hound Cassie: A kick is too high, a shoulder "pops" too soon. There's subtext: Zach is hiding behind the guise of a demanding casting director, but really he is playing mind games with Cassie. There's a "MeToo" aura in the scene, especially notable because the real harassment is just under the surface. The sadism in "Dreamgirls" is equally unnerving. I'm thinking of Effie's big breakdown. You don't get a chance to scrape Effie off the pavement; she's still convulsing downstage when the other girls re-appropriate her collapse; they take her words and turn them into a slick pop tune. The heartlessness of the music industry:...

It seems to me that "The Nightmare Before Christmas" is about an artist. It's about a guy well-versed in his trade, longing for something new. It's like the story of Sondheim, around the time of "Merrily We Roll Along." Like any good musical, "Nightmare" gives us a colorful setting. "In Our Town of Halloween": A literally two-faced mayor, The Thing Hiding Under Your Bed, an oppressive old woman endangered by Deadly Nightshade, a doll-human in need of stitching, an Oogie-Woogie (really just some worms), a superhero (part-pumpkin, part-skeleton). Jack, our protagonist, has his big "I Want" moment: longing for new inspiration. And then, as in any great story, our protagonist goes on a journey. From Halloween Town to Christmas Town. A fish out of water. Inspired. Except that Jack doesn't fill out his red suit properly; his "gifts" are terrifying specters; he forcibly exerts his will on Santa Claus, who does not app...

Ian Rankin wanted to be Muriel Spark. Or someone like Muriel Spark. An august literary novelist. He studied Spark in grad school. But, in his own writing career, he found himself pulled, again and again, toward the crime novel. He stuck with his interest. Maybe eight or nine so-so books came into the world. Then Rankin found his stride--with "Black and Blue." Like Simenon, like Balzac, he has been tireless, producing and producing and producing through a now-legendary career. My impression is that Rankin's "sweet spot" was right after "Black and Blue"--with "Dead Souls," "Set in Darkness," and "The Falls." But there's really no strong reason to think this. I need to investigate the newer novels, and maybe I'll get to that this year. In any case, here's what you need to know about Rankin. He actually hasn't given up on the idea of "literary credibility." He feels that the crime novel is just as...

Tolerance and forbearance aren't great skills of mine. I can feel murderous rage on the train from NYC. I felt it yesterday, just because the woman across from me was typing too loudly on her laptop. Her meaty paws clacking, clacking, clacking away. Assaulting the keys. Typing whatever inane thoughts she had into her "Google Slides," because those thoughts simply could not wait. Once, I sat with my shrink in a movie theater. My shrink has exquisite Old World manners. We sat, and the guy in front of us flashed his iPhone. Time for texting! My blood pressure soared. Surely, there was no solution--no option but to simmer in rage for the duration of the two-hour Italian film we had signed on for. But my shrink approached this stranger and gave a beautiful speech. He made it seem as if *he himself* were the problem. As if, in a just world, everyone would be allowed to text all the time, in all contexts--funerals, weddings, UN summits. As if people requiring full-dark in a ...

(5) There's some general interest, in my inbox, regarding Adele (see essay: "On Being Gay"). What surprised me is that Adele did *not* win universal adoration. However, Annie Lennox did. There's a swelling of voices who demand that Annie Lennox have her own half-time show. And why not? If Bruce Springsteen had one? Think of the catalogue we're dealing with. "Broken Glass," "Why," "No More I LOVE YOUs," "Little Bird," "Waiting in Vain," "Whiter Shade of Pale, "Can't Get Next to You," "Money Can't Buy It," "I Put a Spell on You," and then all the Eurythmics hits. The people have spoken. Still, I'm fond of the Adele idea. We haven't even talked about "Make You Feel My Love" and "One and Only." I know that football is an evil institution, and that the players get permanently, physically damaged, and that their brains are forever altered, and then ...

Form matches content. Salty, earthy Anita knows more than head-in-the-clouds Maria. Maria's melodies are soaring--her words evoke thoughts of suns and moons--whereas Anita has her feet on the ground. Anita's melodic lines are short and choppy. "A boy like that will kill your brother. Forget that boy. Go find another." And: "Anita's gonna get her kicks, tonight...." -Many stories unfold at once. Something beautiful and ethereal can become coarse or blunt in a new set of hands. "Tonight, tonight" becomes a sex song when Anita gets her paws on it. In my favorite moment, "Maria" takes on multiple meanings. It is lush and gorgeous when Tony sings it. But, at the gym dance, the lushness isn't there; the melody is pizzicato. Those plucked strings make you think of little hairs standing on end--and, maybe, you're actually having chills as this idea gets unveiled. The plucked strings seem to speak of anticipation and excitement and t...

(5) Did you notice the debt "A Star Is Born" owes to "Silver Linings Playbook"? "Playbook" was--and is--Bradley Cooper's most artistically-successful movie. One of its main charming features was the chaotic working-class family that surrounded Cooper's character. Whenever Cooper stepped into his childhood home, the camera seemed to develop a case of ADHD; everything was kinetic; there was constant movement, movement, movement. The house seemed extremely cluttered, lived-in; it seemed to be its own world. Do you not get exactly the same impression when Lady Gaga's character enters her father's home, in "A Star Is Born"? And is Andrew Dice Clay not doing his best Robert De Niro impression? De Niro was nutty and delightful in "Silver Linings"; he revealed his eccentricity through his non-stop chatter w/r/t Philadelphia sports obsessions. Andrew Dice Clay is nutty and delightful in "A Star Is Born"; he reveals his ...

In my household this weekend, we mainly talked about the Super Bowl half-time show. Why hasn't Tay Tay ever done it? What would be more enjoyable--suffering through Maroon Five's upcoming insipid performance or sitting alone in a dingy room and eating your gun? And where is Justin Bieber in all of this? These questions were good, and provocative, and they led me to recall my favorite Half-Time story. It involves Adele. Asked, once, if she would perform, she chuckled. "No, no," she said. "That show? That's not about music." I love this regal, bitchy story. I love that Adele could blithely dismiss the Super Bowl option. I love that she not only made her cutting remark, but then felt impelled to share that cutting remark with all of the world, on some chat show. The Half-Time event may not be about music (certainly not this year, for Maroon Five has never made anything resembling music in its long, long, endless career). And all that said, I still d...

Spoiler alert.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1orjA9Z8g4 One of the better movies I've seen this year is "Private Life," by Tamara Jenkins. It's not perfect. These days, at least in many cases, if you're having a baby through surrogacy, you're explicitly advised *not* to use the donor egg of someone you know well. Given that this warning now seems to be the norm, it's weird that Jenkins doesn't include a lengthy discussion w/r/t Giamatti/Hahn's violation of the norm. It's plausible enough that a couple would choose to violate the norm. Maybe it's a financial question. Maybe the couple is so smitten with their donor, they're convinced nothing emotional/spiritual/moral could ever go awry. I'm willing to believe these things. But Jenkins needs to have dialogue in which these things are spelled out. And she needs to have a scene were Giamatti/Hahn confront Molly Shannon and really wrestle with the idea of carrying out a perilous...

One of the smarter things Joseph Epstein ever said was this: "Small talk is underrated." He was pointing out that it is, in fact, a cliche to say: "I hate small talk." This line is meant to be sort of earth-shattering; it's meant to convey that the speaker actually has access to deep and penetrating truths that set him apart from all of the rest of humankind. So burdened is the speaker by his own philosophical importance, he cannot be bothered to chat about the weather, or the new Lady Gaga movie. But how often does the speaker--having made this "anti-small-talk" revelation--then support his claim by making some profound statement? Has that ever happened, in your own experience? -My own flailing awkwardness is sometimes successfully masked by a question I love, a question I ask more than just about any other question: "Have you seen any good movies lately?" This allows me to listen to a half-hour speech about recent movies, a subject that...

...You speak of your Army comrades as "brutally stupid." I too am surrounded by the type, and can find little compassion for them. Have you read Farrell's Studs Lonigan ? Do so, and you will find the majority of my classmates in its pages. They are without minds; they are without purpose. They think it "Hot sh*t" to roll in the bed of some downtrodden whore and to talk of it lasciviously afterwards. I am not shocked by their antics -- they amuse me-- but I find it depressing to realize that these are specimens of the finest America has to offer in her young manhood. And if this is what one encounters in the V-12, I can imagine that the caliber is still lower in a unit such as yours, which must include the very dregs of society. Well, C'est la guerre. With regard to religion, I suppose this will startle you (remembering our talks at school about Schopenhauer, etc.) but I am no longer an atheist. In the past several months I have taken honest st...

The Kushner/Spielberg adaptation of "West Side Story" is on the way, which inspires some thoughts-- -This musical was the work of four affluent gay white men. The men were: Jerome Robbins, Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim, and Leonard Bernstein. The men (with the possible exception of Sondheim) were/are insufferable, and they fought a great deal. Sondheim was a Young Turk, and he had to be deferential to his elders. (Though this bothered him. Also, he wanted to be both lyricist and composer in his career. He wouldn't even get to do this on his *next* big project, "Gypsy.") -As gay men in an earlier era, Robbins, Laurents, Sondheim, and Bernstein were all contending with the Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name. And this is the best way to understand "West Side Story." It's about forbidden love. Easier to graft that story onto an undercooked racial-tension plot--than to tell the blunt truth. For this reason, I wonder if it's really a good idea...

Because I have to: -Taylor Swift's "Red" could just as easily be called "Jake Gyllenhaal's Neediness." For that is what it is. It is a portrait of one (recognizable) man's neediness. -This neediness takes the form of phone-calling. Apparently, shattered by the breakup, Gyllenhaal would call and call TS so he could waffle, in real time, on the phone. He infected her with his mealy-mouthed-ness. Clearly, the sadistic and mind-blowing phone calls had a strong impact on songwriter TS. She alludes to them in not one, not two, but three songs. -Song One. "You call me up again, just to break me like a promise. So casually cruel in the name of being honest." -Song Two. "So he calls me up again and he's, like, I STILL LOVE YOU. And I'm like, THIS IS EXHAUSTING...." -Song Three. "You think I moved on or hate you. Cuz each time you call? There's no reply." -TS is the younger half of this relationship, but clearl...

The novelist Kingsley Amis devoted much of his long, long career to a catalogue of irritants. He was an extremely irritable person, and this particular (apparently minor-league) emotion fueled several small masterpieces. In preparation for "Ending Up," he actually listed 45 tiny things that annoyed him, and then built them into his novel. We sometimes forget that "negative" emotions can be fruitful. My old teacher, Amy Bloom, had, I think, the best Susan Collins Tweet I've seen thus far: "Politics upsets me. My loathing for Susan Collins inspires me." And it's true that a detestable person can light a fire under you. You may not even notice, so be-stirred are you by your rage and exasperation. In the spirit of Montaigne, and with a tip of the hat to Mr. Amis, I'd like to list, here, some things that really piss me off: - E-mail etiquette. Do you know what really bugs me? When I convey a change in plan by email, and a client writes, "...

If you are a substitute teacher, all you can offer is self-control. Less is more. Here's how it works. Here's how it works when you are in the middle school. (1) The project is, invariably, YOU ARE AN IMMIGRANT! WRITE IN YOUR JOURNAL! It doesn't matter which school you're at, it doesn't matter whether the philosophy is progressive or conservative...The project is always: BE AN IMMIGRANT! That little creative-writing twist seems to give everyone a warm feeling. You see: The kids aren't ACTUALLY immigrants! But they are PRETENDING! They are PRETENDING to be immigrants! (2) The girls are smarter than the boys. If it's a little gay boy, then he may have his sh*t together. Otherwise, there is a wide and stunning gulf between the girls and the boys--every time. (3) There will be three levels of writing quality. The weakest projects will belong to the boys. The boys can't quite wrap their heads around the creative writing component. So their projects wi...

Recently, I sat with an acquaintance and discussed books of the year. My acquaintance is rather proper and politically-minded, so he went on and on about Tayari Jones and Roxane Gay, and I imagine it felt good and virtuous to describe these well-respected writers and their widely-lauded works. My choice, though, for book of the year was something far more lurid. It was "I'll Be Gone in the Dark," by Michelle McNamara. I continued to think about it over the weekend. Indeed, how could anyone stop thinking about it? Certain details are etched permanently in my mind. The way the killer would stick a teacup on top of a victim's heaving chest; he would say, "If you make a sound, if that cup moves an inch, everything will fall and crack. If I hear a crack, you are dead." So then, basically, the person couldn't breathe. The way the killer actually went to a town hall meeting and heard someone complain about him--then sought out and targeted this understand...

It's not clear to me that Dr. Ford has changed the world long-term. History is fickle, and many people are fools. But Dr. Ford did a heroic thing, and many viewers appreciated that. She inspired big portions of America. So--it seems to me--she deserves to be the subject of a picture book. If I wrote for children, that's the story I'd turn to now. I'm actually not sure there's a more important subject, in the world of writing-for-kids, at the present moment. In that context, I have to say some positive things about Tim Federle's "Nate Expectations." I was perhaps a bit too hard on it. That's because I have such high hopes for Mr. Federle. Despite the flaws, there are many things the book does well, and it's important to notice those things, too. - "Mom, I'm trying not to drink my calories." It's delightful--and absurd--for a little gay high-school freshman to make this announcement, and it's clear Federle enjoys highlig...

You have to write the things you were "called" to write. There's a wish to be topical and earth-shattering, but sometimes the thing that really obsesses you is a recent trip to Rite Aid. You have to give proper respect to that memory of your Rite Aid trip. Cheryl Strayed uses the slightly obnoxious phrase "called to write." Meg Wolitzer says, "Go back and look at your Internet search history from yesterday. That thing you researched? That's the thing to write about." Surprise them. It seems to me that a writing career is one prolonged war between the things you fixate on and the wish to be new. In other words, if given your druthers, you might write about Taylor Swift EVERY SINGLE DAY. But: You have to bear in mind that a reader might want to be surprised. Honor your obsessions: This is why Sondheim is continuously thinking about subtext and power plays. Keep it new: This is why, despite the fact of Sondheim's abiding passions, SS als...

(5) If you're the object of trauma, you remember many of the circumstances, and you remember who did the deed. This is said repeatedly, now, but it merits (even more) repeating. And there's generally an element of irrational shame, particularly if the action involves sexual assault--so, over and over again, the victim not only opts against doing any reporting, but also makes a concerted effort to give the appearance of "everything is perfectly normal." This ground was covered in Krakauer's "Missoula," several years ago, and in several other places. Given this information, it's really stunning to me that people like Susan Collins can continue to seem as (willfully?) ignorant as we've been observing. All that said, I have to mention a Tweet Adam Goldman recently issued: "You either believe women or you don't." I disagree. Life isn't that simple. Women are not a monolith. Different cases require different interpretations. Which m...