Liars and Saints

*Oscar winner Octavia Spencer--tonight!--in an apparently crazy thriller, "MA." I think one reviewer called this the most bizarre movie he'd ever seen. I'm sold. *Paper Mill Playhouse is now launching a new "Beauty and the Beast," if you can't wait for the Broadway revival. As much as I regret Howard Ashman's early death, I still think the Beast's non-Ashman "filler" number, "If I Can't Love Her," is sort of fun. *If I didn't sell you on "Rocketman" yesterday, know that Gemma Jones and Jamie Bell are brilliant, Taron Egerton is apparently doing awards-caliber work (who knew this was possible?), and the story begins in a surprising spot. (Despite what you may imagine, Elton was not "to the manor born.") I'm so excited for this movie!!

*The exercise shorts I use were purchased approximately fifteen years ago, at a Foot Locker. They were crappy then; they are crappier now. Any elastic in the waist is now gone, so that, when I run, I must keep one hand clutched around the waist....so I don't moon anyone. *The other hand grasps my iPhone, which brings me to Problem Number Two. I have not updated my music in over a year. And, at that point, the selection wasn't so great anyway. How often can I listen to Taylor Swift's "King of My Heart"? This was never a strong song. It is certainly not a song that merits seventy thousand airings. *I can't take an interest in running footwear, so I just purchase the first cheap thing I see on the New Balance site. But the shoes turn out to be hideous--they seem to borrow a design idea from medieval mesh armor--and then I realize I *do* sort of care what my running sneakers look like. *If you run, you're encouraged to stretch "properly" before...

Cathy Guisewite, responsible for the comic strip "Cathy," has now released a memoir. One of its more charming features is occasional lists of reasons not to exercise. So, joining the fun, I'm recalling, here, the things I tell *myself* to get out of a run: *I'm tired! *The seven-minute walk to the train station is really *like* exercise; it's exercise in disguise. *Yes, my mood is down, but I'll leave this particular desk job in approximately fourteen months, and I can tolerate low endorphins till then. *My thighs chafe. *The temperature outside is anything other than 74 degrees Fahrenheit. *At thirty-six, I'm concerned about knee ailments. Yep! These are the contents of my head. Your own excuses are most welcome here!

A good song is the thought you have while looking in the rearview mirror. It's the thing you forgot to tell your lover, or your friend, while you were in that person's company. A good song is a work of reflection. Elton John's "Your Song"--which I'd thought was Elton's work but was apparently Bernie Taupin's work--counts as a "rearview mirror" moment. The speaker has just been in his lover's company. Now he's thinking back on that time. The awkwardness of the song--which seems sincere and spur-of-the-moment--is likely the product of some real thought. It's a bizarre song. The stammering young man is infatuated, and he doesn't have any money, so he can't buy something to demonstrate the level of his infatuation. All he can do is write a song. "This is your song." There's a hint of gay pride or gay defiance when the speaker emphasizes: "You can tell *everybody* that this is your song." What I pa...

*Today--by my decree--is Annette Bening Day! Please note: *Bening's four Oscar nominations are as follows: Lead Actress ("American Beauty," "Kids Are All Right," "Being Julia"), Supporting Actress ("The Grifters"). *Bening is currently up for a Tony Award ("All My Sons"). *Like her one-time co-star, Julianne Moore, Bening does not look for "strong female" roles. She looks for roles where she can recognize an interesting slice of humanity. *Bening auditioned for "Dick Tracy," and though Warren Beatty didn't cast her, he said, "That's the person I will marry!" *Bening's "Valmont" is like "Dangerous Liaisons," but with Colin Firth! And Michelle Pfeiffer! *You can see Bening opposite Meryl Streep--briefly--in "Postcards from the Edge." *I think "Mother and Child" is under-rated....if you're looking for a semi-obscure moment when you can still s...

*Salvy had a vet who fat-shamed him. She pinched his (scant) blubber and made derogatory references to his overly-abundant dinners. Note: Salvy did not become defensive or aggrieved, and thus he reclaimed the power in this interaction. If you are feeling compelled to react to something, consider the question: What would happen if I didn't react *at all* --? As Salvy has shown, total impassivity can be a Nancy Pelosi-esque badass gesture. *After the fat-shaming, I sadistically altered Salvy's diet. The dinners were cut down dramatically. and Salvy didn't fucking care. He ate the smaller meals--and there wasn't groaning, there wasn't a sudden uptick in mood swings, there wasn't bargaining, there weren't "lapses." None of that. *I was home alone last night in a thunderstorm, and Salvy offered a proper response to thunder after dark: total coolness. Salvy had not listened to any murder podcasts. He had not spent his weekend considering "the ...

Don Henley's "The Heart of the Matter" is a story song. It moves from A to Z. (A) is implied. A happy relationship. Then problems intervene. The nature of the problems is kept vague: "the bad luck," "the struggles we went through," "I lost me; you lost you." "The work I put between us." Living in "a graceless age." People "filled with rage." In this hothouse of ego and insensitivity, the relationship dies. Boy loses Girl. As a final twist, Boy is at least granted the gift of self-awareness. He is shattered and newly capable of self-reflection: Like Joni Mitchell in "Both Sides Now," he now at least partly understands "there's a lot that I don't know." A humbling. Not strictly a bad thing. "The more I know, the less I understand." "My will gets weak." "I think (life) is about forgiveness--even if you don't love me anymore." I particularly love how...

Trivia for Howard Ashman zealots: *"Beauty and the Beast" will be the first Disney version of a Broadway musical to get a revival. Yes, folks, we are now all that old. The first Broadway version of "BatB" was not critically beloved. Ashman was dead; the creative team padded the work with dull, shapeless songs in which characters simply stated the obvious. Nevertheless, Terrence Mann--Broadway's original Javert--earned a Tony nomination for his portrayal of the Beast. *If you ask me: Howard Ashman's great discovery, when drafting BatB, was this: "Dishes," pronounced with a cartoonish French accent, rhymes with "delicious." *Jack Viertel writes, in "The Secret Life of the American Musical," that a show ought to have a big, tone-setting number, followed by an "I Want" song. The tone-setting number is crucial: For a long while, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" did *not* start with "Come...

Some people say Philip Roth's final novel was his best novel. Specifically, Tom Perrotta says that. Leah Cohen, in the NYT, confessed that she generally didn't like Roth's work, but that the final novel had a simplicity she appreciated. The meta-narrative tricks of "Operation Shylock" and "The Counterlife" had disappeared. Roth seemed to have stopped showing off. He was now simply telling a story. The final novel--"Nemesis"--is about polio. Like Roth's "Patrimony," "Nemesis" introduces us to an inexplicable, ravenous force of destruction--in this case, a virus--and then shows how people try to cope. The protagonist, Bucky Cantor, is a young man in his twenties, held back from WWII because of poor eyesight. Cantor's job is to run a playground in Newark, a summer program for small children. But, as kids begin to die from polio, angry, confused parents hold Cantor responsible: "How could you let those kids run ar...

*The high point Friday night was Hilty's rendition of "The Heart of the Matter"--such a thoughtful and honest song. It was a nice change from the Broadway material that filled most of the concert. *Hilty actually played Galinda/Glinda for over four years. Her interpretation is ranked quite high, among fans. (Annaleigh Ashford also tends to rank high.) It would be nice if the Broadway community imposed a moratorium on cabaret renditions of "For Good"--maybe for the next five to seven years. Too much of a good thing.... *You have to wonder why, given all of the options in the catalogue, a Broadway performer would choose zero Sondheim numbers. I'm just saying. *So, the best work of the series, if you ask me, came from Annaleigh Ashford. Not that everything has to be a competition. Check out Hilty's new spin on the work of Don Henley. See you back on PBS!

A few Sondheim thoughts, for Sondheim fans only: *"Into the Woods" will be at Town Hall in several weeks. So we're looking at three major NYC events in the next year (at least): the Doyle revival of "Assassins," the staged reading of "Woods," and the "Company" import. (I'm not sure if "Company" is confirmed yet, but it seems like it's a given.) *If Patti LuPone wins a Tony for "Company"--seems like a given--she will be the first actor of either gender to win a Tony Award for a role in "Company." LuPone will also join the august company of Angela Lansbury, the only actor (at present) to have two Sondheim acting Tonys. (Incidentally, Lansbury recently trashed Ethel Merman in an interview. Basically, Lansbury said, "My Rose was better than Merman's, because I'm a real actress." I guess you can say this sort of thing when you reach a certain age.) *"Into the Woods" is about h...

These are the Tony winners, among the men, at least the ones I can think of: *Boyd Gaines, "Gypsy" (Gaines has a ridiculous number of Tony Awards) *Len Cariou, "Sweeney Todd" *Zero Mostel, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" *Nathan Lane, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" *Michael Cerveris, "Assassins" *David Burns, "Forum" *Phil Silvers and Larry Blyden, "Forum" So....two takeaways: (1) It seems Sondheim is more invested in juicy, larger-than-life women than in men. (2) The one and only actor, of either gender, to score a Sondheim Tony twice: Angela Lansbury. Obsessed! Mark your Tony calendar!!!

*In fourth grade, we like to talk about social justice. Unfairness. Perhaps it's unfair that a woman has never been President of the United States? But one wide-eyed girl has an explanation. "Maybe they aren't President because they don't *want* to be President." Silence floods the room. How can you begin to respond? *"I'm going to be a novelist *and* a scientist," says one student. She is serenely coloring a Mother's Day card. "I'll also be an inventor!" *Terry Gross says a great conversation-starter, among strangers, is: "Tell me about yourself." Fair enough, but I don't think this works with kids. A better choice, with kids: "Who is your favorite superhero?" There is inevitably an answer, and it's often Thor or Spider-Man . Then there's some excited murmuring--and you can't understand the murmuring because small children are unintelligible maybe half the the time they speak....but at least...

Like Woody Allen, Sondheim writes award-winning roles for women. The following divas have scored Tony gold via Sondheim: *Donna Murphy ("Passion") *Joanna Gleason ("Into the Woods") *Alexis Smith ("Follies") *Catherine Zeta-Jones ("A Little Night Music") *LuPone, Lansbury, Daly ("Gypsy") *Karen Olivo ("West Side Story") *Lansbury again ("Sweeney Todd") *Laura Benanti ("Gypsy") *Glynis Johns ("Night Music") *Patricia Elliott ("Night Music") ....And I'm almost certainly leaving some off. Add your selections below! Nothing is more important than this particular list!!

*We're approaching the fiftieth anniversary of the first appearance of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" (June 3, 1969). *This book became a bit notorious when George W. Bush cited it as his favorite book of all time, at some point during or near his Presidency. People clutched their pearls. A President who reads children's literature! Shouldn't we be led by someone continuously buried in Proust? Or--I don't know--the works of Thomas Merton? *I thought people were being ridiculous. Though I'm not wild about Dubyah, I really liked his answer. "Hungry Caterpillar" is a work of art. (And it's interesting that Dubyah has gone on to a life of painting, apparently.) *Like Dr. Seuss or Chris Van Allsberg, Eric Carle has a gift for "de-familiarizing." He has ideas others do not have. For example: the saga of one tiny caterpillar. Or: big, lush, vibrant, stylish images of leaves, apples, pears, chocolate cake. Any story is a journey story,...

Two things: (1) If you're a Donna Leon fan, know that the new novel, "Unto Us a Son Is Given," is just as twisty and rich with subtext as many of the earlier entries. (And if you haven't read Leon, then check out these smart mysteries! Maybe start with Leon's masterpiece, "Acqua Alta.") (2) HILARY MANTEL'S BOOK THREE IS COMING! "The Mirror and the Light," the final work about Cromwell, will be out in March 2020. At long last!

I am wired very much like my mom, so I can almost predict how she will respond to the thought of a baby registry. She tells me that there is a certain manufacturer. They make those mechanized swings--sometimes called "Neglecto-matics." Anyway, this manufacturer has, or had, a defective product. The swing would tip over and spill the baby onto the floor. Then the swing would crush the baby. Imagine! Dead infants! This story has planted its own seed of worry in me, such that I don't hear the name of the manufacturer. And then there's a coda. The deaths happen only when you use the swing past the "maximum age" threshold. In other words, if you're putting your toddler in an *infant* swing, then, yes, maybe you ought to anticipate death. It's soothing for me to hear this kind of horror story, because it's precisely the way my own mind works. It's nice to know there's someone out there who understands how your own gears fit together. Th...

Jason Robert Brown will be appearing with Sondheim at Town Hall in a few weeks--a rare thing, obviously. A couple remarks on JRB: *This guy is most gifted when he is writing about ambition or "hunger." You see that again and again in "The Last Five Years." *For example: The comedy of seeing your friend get knocked up, and pretending to be excited when you're actually, quietly plotting your own escape. "She got a little cute house in a little cute town with a crucifix on the door....Mitchell got work at a record store in the mall....I made Carol Ann a cute baby sweater, thinking, I can do better than that. " *There's comedy, too, in the thought of defying your parents and pursuing the fetish of your choice: "I've had Shabbas dinners on Friday nights...with every Shapiro in Washington Heights....but the minute I first met you, I could barely catch my breath....my Shiksa goddess..." *On the farce of being a struggling actor, in summ...

I'm ridiculously excited about Thomas Harris's new novel, "Cari Mora," and so: a few thoughts herein: *Harris invented Hannibal Lecter--named by Stephen King "the greatest of modern monsters." And who could disagree? *Harris hasn't released a non-Lecter novel since--approx.--the 1730s, and actually the only non-Lecter Harris work, beyond "Cari Mora," is "Black Sunday," about terrorists hoping to blow up a blimp over the Super Bowl, or something like this. (Weirdly prescient!) In childhood, I dreamed of writing a novel in which good and bad faced off at a baseball game, and the bad guy was outed by tumbling down the "safety net" that protects fans from fly balls. As he fell, the bad guy would lose possession of a scrap of paper, and on that paper you would find all his nefarious secrets. I see now this is a "Black Sunday" rip-off. *Jodie Foster almost wasn't Clarice. Michelle Pfeiffer could have taken the ...

I'm floored by Heather Headley's recent release--"Broadway My Way"--and I especially like her cover of "Waitress"'s "She Used to Be Mine." If you've been living under a rock: "She Used to Be Mine" is the power ballad from the climax of "Waitress." It has become canonical very quickly: You can find it attached to Shoshana Bean, Ben Platt, Jeremy Jordan, and Lea Salonga, among so many other singers. The great innovation in this song has to do with its title: You think the speaker is referring to some former lover, but in fact she is referring to herself. She is describing an impetuous youthful version of herself, a version now lost: "She is messy, but she's kind. She is good, but she lies. She is hard on herself. She is reckless and won't ask for help. She is gone--but she used to be mine." In her current depressed state, the speaker is fighting to get back to some other life--a "messy" bu...

Many people say it's good to choose a likable protagonist--when you're writing--and whether or not you agree, you have to concede that Strega Nona is supremely likable. She is a bit like Wonder Woman, in a peasant's dress. No problem, for her, is insurmountable. An inept assistant, a diva-esque cousin, a lovelorn visitor in search of a bachelor-man: These things are "as nothing" to Strega Nona. Not only does the witch set things right, but, also, she does her work with supreme calmness and tact. No one receiving her help has to feel embarrassed about being needy or incompetent. Though Strega Nona may be aware of the incompetence, she has great skill in pretending to look the other way. Not to read too much into a series of picture books.....but it's Strega Nona's warmth, love, and compassion--more than her skill--that help to make her a favorite among readers. When she reveals the secret of her trade--in one of the earlier books--it's not intelligenc...

*Cynthia Erivo did one of the weakest professional shows I've ever seen--two Fridays ago, on PBS. It was a reminder that talent in one area does not guarantee talent in another. The songs were humorless and preachy. There was a sense of monotonousness. Erivo herself seemed uninterested in building a relationship with the audience; she shared very little from her own life; though the concert was under an hour, it seemed to go on for a year. *What a nice surprise, then, when Annaleigh Ashford kicked ass a few days later. Ashford was everything Erivo was not: unpredictable, self-mocking, buoyant. When you thought you were entering a Slow Sondheim Phase, Ashford would startle you with "cabaret karaoke." When you thought you were going to get forty minutes of disco dancing, Ashford would shock you with a Mr. Rogers ballad. *Our final cabaret of the year is just one week away. Megan Hilty has done Broadway--she was a Galinda replacement, for example--but she obviously is ...

"You're jealous of the dog," says my shrink. "He has siphoned off some of your husband's attention." Absurd! I think. But then, sometimes, I spot my husband singing to his pooch: Salvy, we love YOU! We LOVE you! WE love you! Sa-a-al-vy, we love YOU! And: Salvy! Swimming across the deep blue sea! Salvy! You'll always be a part of me! Around Christmas, my husband began murmuring about a new device. It was a camera you could install in your pet's den, so that you could view your pet, on your phone, at all times. The camera also had a small orifice, and the machine would spit out bits of kibble at your prompting. Plus: It offered "Dog TV" and "aromatherapy." My husband spoke more and more about this, and I understood that he was leaving hints. He was identifying the gift he wanted me to pick up. The gift I could give him for Christmas. And I silently refused. I saw this as the potential death of romance. In January, ...

"My Fair Lady" has announced its closing date--this July--so: a tip of the hat to its star, Laura Benanti: *Benanti was omitted from a TimeOut list of Broadway's twenty-five greatest divas, but I would most certainly include her. This is a career that has given us "Sound of Music," "Gypsy," "She Loves Me," "Into the Woods," "My Fair Lady," and other major works. *Benanti was an odd kid who dressed as Sondheim's "Fosca" for Halloween. She has classic musicals running through her blood. *It seems to me Benanti is *furiously* creative: Unsatisfied with her Broadway stardom, her stint as Melania Trump, and her work in "Younger" and "Nashville," Benanti has scripted her own material, including a few memorable strip routines for "the Skivvies," a YouTube series about "what's next on Broadway," and a special skit in which she pretends to teach (uninterested) kids how t...

If you're raising kids, or if you're just interested in how people behave, I can't recommend highly enough Kevin Henkes's new novel "Sweeping Up the Heart." This is geared toward third or fourth graders, but, as with any good book, Henkes's work is universal. I don't imagine I'll ever outgrow it. "Sweeping Up the Heart" concerns a little girl who has grown up without a mom. She spends most of her free time at a local ceramics studio, working on tiny molded rabbits. There, she meets a boy her age with similar interests, and the two get swept up in a drama. The boy becomes convinced that a local woman is the protagonist's dead mother in disguise--a visitor from beyond the grave! Of course, the boy is wrong, but, being sensitive, he *has* picked up on something extraordinary about the local woman. The woman is linked with the protagonist's life in a surprising, inevitable way. The unfolding of various secrets gives you great pl...

OMG her concert is on TV tomorrow (Friday) night! Things to know: *Ashford won the Tony for "You Can't Take It with You," but she also came close with "Kinky Boots." *Ashford's "Sunday in the Park" co-star, Jake Gyllenhaal, will make a guest appearance tomorrow evening. *Ashford will be pairing Sondheim WITH ELTON JOHN in a medley! *You'll also hear a Mr. Rogers tune (*not* "Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"), and you'll hear some Alanis Morissette. *Ashford has been plotting this particular sequence of songs, in her head, for the past ten years. Very excited! Tune in! (PBS, probably 9 pm in your neck of the woods....)

*Just so you know, there *will* be another Stephen King release, but it won't be this summer. You'll have to wait until September. *One of my favorite pulpy novelists, Laura Lippman, *does* have a beach read coming out this summer. Laura Lippman's work: highly recommended. Smart, contrarian, interested both in weird tiny details of daily life and in gothic, strange plots. Lippman sometimes takes inspiration from real-life crime stories--and, oddly, a case that inspired Lippman's "What the Dead Know" has just been solved, or semi-solved. Famously, long ago, little sisters were abducted from a mall and never seen again. If you pick up the recent non-fiction book "The Last Stone," you'll at last learn, or sort-of-learn, what happened to those sisters. *"Younger" returns. I wonder if "Younger" may be straying close to wearing-out-its-welcome territory. I say that only because, in Season Five, the clever permutations started ...

Anjelica Huston is back on screen in two days....so....some thoughts! *Ms. Huston was sort of loafing around in her twenties when a powerful acolyte of her father's said, "You could be something. You just need to get your act together." Huston clearly listened. Her second memoir--"Watch Me"--has a title that works on a few levels. We're watching her on-screen, obviously, but we're also watching her design a life for herself, a life she can be proud of. *Ms. Huston turned down Kathy Bates's role in "Misery," and she is now publicly sharing news of the impressive dimensions of Jack Nicholson's physical endowment. Clearly, she has decided to be as open as she wishes--which is maybe a benefit of becoming a Hollywood veteran. *The Oscar came for "Prizzi's Honor," of course, but Oscars almost arrived for "The Grifters" and "Enemies," as well. Obsessed! And happy to see AH in "John Wick 3." AH ...

Some Dr. Seuss trivia: *There's a new biography out. Adam Gopnik, reviewing the book in the NYT, says that Seuss started strong and ended weak. In other words, the old books are better than the newer ones. *Gopnik suggests that, in his early work, Seuss conveyed a sense of devil-may-care breeziness. The stakes didn't seem terribly high. But, as Seuss advanced, and his reputation grew, he felt a need to be profound. To Make Statements. Paradoxically, the early works--where there was no obvious effort to Make a Statement--do in fact make the most successful statements. *Gopnik cites as a Major Achievement Seuss's introduction of Thing One and Thing Two in "Cat and the Hat." He says these characters have a "meta" quality. A work becomes meta when it comments on itself. And, with Thing One and Thing Two, Seuss *does* seem to be drawing attention to the artifice in the story. I also love that Seuss--working with easily decoded one-syllable words--recogn...

Some other thoughts on this fun book: *A thesis is that "marriage" and "work" -- as institutions -- were in crisis, in the America of 1999, and that this crisis was reflected in "Being John Malkovich," "American Beauty," "Office Space," "Election," and "Eyes Wide Shut," among other films. Fair enough. But when are marriage and work -- as institutions -- *not* in crisis? *Though "Being JM" was widely seen as the Movie of the Year, it did not earn an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. (Keener did, for Best Supporting Actress.) You can now find "Being JM" on some of the Greatest Films of All Time lists. *P. T. Anderson said, when making "Magnolia," that "family is the vein you want. Open that vein, and everything spills out." Tom Cruise was favored as a Best Supporting Actor winner--but the ultimate (boring) choice was Michael Caine, for "The Cider House Rules." ...

I have a nominee for our next song of the summer. It is Shoshana Bean's cover of "I Wanna Dance with Somebody." Before reading on, please listen: https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=A0geKYzIxdpc1eIAXUhXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEyc2wxbzd0BGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjcwMTJfMQRzZWMDc2M-?p=shoshana+bean+i+wanna+dance+with&fr=spigot-chr-ffmac#id=1&vid=e646ef65c98ba09d92409f4f5e24b002&action=view I could listen over and over, and there are just a few things I have to point out: *If you're my age (or Ms. Bean's age), you grew up with this song, and your childhood sort of comes back when you hear it. Part of Ms. Bean's enthusiasm is clearly just the enthusiasm you may feel for certain things forever pinned to your own early years. *Obviously, "I Wanna Dance" is a song of yearning, and that's maybe slightly unclear in Whitney's upbeat version. Slow it down a bit, as Ms. Bean does, and it's suddenly a powerhouse opportunit...

This book--which covered the famous movies of 1999--was a real treat, and included some startling trivia: -The actor who played Jar Jar Binks was so devastated by responses to "Phantom Menace" that he considered suicide. -Brad Pitt said, in 1999, he believed "Fight Club" was the finest film in his resume. -Reese Witherspoon says she was *not* drawing on her own inner life to play Tracy Flick, but was instead borrowing from memories of high-school girls she had disliked. Tracy Flick--once loathed, in America--is now a source of warm feelings for many people. -"American Beauty" was not always a clear Oscar contender; many people felt that "Being John Malkovich" was the finest film of the year. -Catherine Keener had mixed feelings about "Malkovich," because she disliked the character she was playing; Keener herself recommended Cameron Diaz for the role that Diaz eventually won. -Bill Murray considered actively pursuing blockbusters ...

*The Starbucks at Sheridan Square. Yes, everyone hates Starbucks, and everyone continues to visit. Just a reminder, here, that I despise, despise, despise Starbucks, which eats around five of my dollars every day. I despise the meaningless corporate lingo. I especially despise the Starbucks near my work, which has a mural with the inane words: "One Person, One Cup, One Community." What can that mean? I hate that it has a cheap aura of faux-profundity: how the repetition of the word "one" might lead you to believe that the words are actually conveying something. I also hate the "e pluribus unum" vibe. We are a community because we all shop at Starbucks? Really? *The Ariana Grande trick. This is the trick: "You think that I loathe adversity, but in fact, I welcome it, because it gives me new strength." This was interesting with "No Tears Left to Cry," but it was less interesting with "Thank U, Next." Ariana--who says she never...

One of the treats of "Furious Hours" is that its author is curious about everything. Not just one murder trial, not just Harper Lee. So you get digressions about (and these are just a few examples): -The Scottsboro Boys. African-American boys wrongly accused of a horrific crime. These kids were forced through trial after trial, and repeatedly called guilty by all-white juries. The story dragged on for years. -The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. Another case that went on for many years, whereby black people were injected with syphilis and allowed to suffer--and were watched by heartless doctors. -Marie Laveau. In a creepy digression about voodoo and "the Seven Sisters," Casey Cep mentions Marie Laveau, the woman who worked as a "conjurer" in Louisiana. Commenting on the weirdness of American myth-making, Cep wryly notes that "Laveau seems to have been born before the American Revolution, and to have lived into the twentieth century." -Philip...

Some people believe that an artistic career should become easier with time: Why would it be hard to walk out on stage if you had witnessed yourself do this, with success, over and over again? But the opposite is often true. If you move people, then you (maybe) feel compelled to pull off the same magic trick repeatedly, and you get stuck in your head. Witness the story of Amy Winehouse. I think stage fright is (also) what happened to Harper Lee. I think, if she hadn't had such a tremendous impact with "To Kill a Mockingbird," she might have produced more. There was a sense that the next work had to be a magnum opus, and it's hard to produce anything under those conditions. Some thoughts on "Furious Hours," a new book about Lee: *The murder trial Lee ultimately failed to cover might have been one good, compelling article. It maybe didn't need to be a book. If only Lee had freed herself to try something small. The trial concerns a voodoo preacher who ...

Cynthia Erivo is on PBS, in concert, tonight! 9 PM--at least in my neck of the woods. Some thoughts: -Erivo started singing in earnest because, in childhood, she just noticed that people liked when she made music. -Erivo took Broadway by storm--winning a Tony in her debut, in "The Color Purple." This wasn't just a good performance: There was something about Erivo's stillness and quiet charisma that made people murmur about "legends" and "making history." -Erivo will be serving some Whitney and some Annie Lennox tonight. I'm excited! Tune in!

It would never occur to me to feed animal legs to my dog. And yet Marc cannot stop giving, giving, giving. New items for Salvy. And more. And yet more. Marc started with "bully sticks," which are tiny, foul-smelling rods--made of some weird animal part--and yet he felt that they disappeared too quickly. This is what he said, at least. I actually think the thrill of being more and more beneficent--the thrill of giving bigger and better treats--is what really inspired Marc to move on from bully sticks. At times, it seems my husband is offering whole animal carcasses to our dog. Our house has started to resemble a boneyard; it makes me think of the wasteland that the three hyenas visit in "The Lion King." Unidentified bones are littered through the living room, through the bathroom, on high ledges, in my marital bed. When I found a femur next to my pillow, I recalled the decapitated horse in the first installment of "The Godfather." Salvy does really li...

David McCullough--twice a Pulitzer winner, for "Truman" and "John Adams"--has a new book, "The Pioneers." It's the story of the people who settled the Northwest Territory, in America, long, long ago. Of note because: McCullough obviously writes really well, and if you want a short (300 page-ish) non-doorstop-ish intro to his work, this is the book for you. ("John Adams" and "Truman" are both intimidating in their length.) Also: What a great setting for some vivid characters to do weird things! This book promises at least one bizarre real-world villain, apparently, and I look forward to meeting him....

I'm no Bruce Springsteen expert, but I can't help but see how (quietly) radical the start of "Thunder Road" is: The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely Hey, that's me and I want you only Don't turn me home again, I just can't face myself alone again Don't run back inside, darling, you know just what I'm here for So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore Show a little faith, there's magic in the night You ain't a beauty but, hey, you're all right Oh, and that's all right with me... Radical? Yep. It's a popular song, but the speaker isn't a wide-eyed teen, and almost nothing is simple. Nothing is black-and-white. Do you notice all the shades of gray? Mary "ain't a beauty," but counts as "all right." The two stars "ain't that young anymore."...

May 15 is "Celebrate Dorothy Parker Day"--the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of a now-canonical book, "The Portable Dorothy Parker." What to know in advance? *Ms. Parker would answer the phone by asking, "What Fresh Hell Is This?" *Ms. Parker wanted, on her tombstone, the words: "Excuse My Dust." *When working at the "New Yorker," which was very poor, Ms. Parker often failed to carry out her tasks. Confronted by her boss, she said, "I did try to stop by last week, in fact, but someone was using the pencil...." *Parker, making use of zeugma, to describe her apartment: "It's quite small. I have just enough room to lay my things--and a few friends." *Parker, on the laws of the universe: "Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses." *And Parker, on adversity: "Guns aren't lawful; nooses give. Gas is awful....You might as well live." Three cheers for Dorothy! E...

One of my heroes is Elizabeth Strout, for a few reasons. *When Strout was struggling to launch her writing career, she became a stand-up comic. She did this although it was terrifying. And the reason: She felt there was something facile or glib in her fiction. She wanted to feel that she was telling the absolute truth--capturing life as it really is. And stand-up comics need to do this, if they're going to be successful. A Comedy Cellar audience won't tolerate bull-shit. This is how Strout trained. *It doesn't seem all that common to write "sequels" in the world of literary fiction, although Philip Roth did it. I admire Stout's weird career--how she returned to Lucy Barton after everyone thought she was finished with Lucy Barton. And it looks like we'll be getting a sequel to "Olive Kitteridge" next year. *Another contrarian streak: It's not all that common to write a "novel in stories." But why not? I love the way that Olive ...

"Furious Hours," the new account of Harper Lee's brief dalliance with true-crime reporting, earned a major rave in the NYT tonight. The author is a Rhodes Scholar; this is her first book. Apparently, it's not just gripping crime writing, but also a plausible and groundbreaking (new) theory of why Lee stopped publishing. And you can find it in stores now. Can't wait!

A triple threat is a special phenomenon. To be a triple threat, you have to be really, really good at singing, and dancing, and acting. You can't be passable in one area and good in the others. It's more like: There has to be the sense that you could do *any one* of the three full-time, and the world would still be dazzled by your gift. My husband asked (jokingly) if Madonna and Taylor Swift count as triple threats--and I said, whoa, no, not by a long shot--and I knew that a post was necessary. The ultimate triple threat is Sutton Foster. There's no question, if she were simply a mute featured dancer in various Broadway shows, she would still be a *celebrated* mute featured dancer. And the singing and acting are admirable. As much as I resent "Younger" for taking Foster away from the Broadway stage, I'm grateful that the show allows me to contemplate Foster's grace and actorly intelligence on a regular basis. Chita Rivera, obviously, is a triple thre...

The novelist Ben Dolnick had a great piece in the NYT this weekend. It's about binge-reading. It's in favor of long gulps of reading. Don't read in short spurts, says Dolnick. Read for an hour at a time. Why? You get absorbed in the book. You notice details within subplots that you wouldn't otherwise notice. The author's voice seems to meld with your voice. There's a sense of momentum--and the reading becomes more and more entertaining--and then you can't stop. What I very much like is that Dolnick isn't wagging a finger. He isn't saying, "Read because it will make you smarter, or because you'll grow a better vocabulary." He's saying: "Reading should be fun, and the way to make it fun is to really commit to it--with zeal--for hours on end." I had this same epiphany a few months ago when reading an interview with the thriller writer Michael Connelly. He said, "Reading is about momentum [that word again]. When I c...

The most important night of the year is fast approaching. Here are some things to know about the Tony Awards: *There seems to be an annual tradition brewing at PBS. Last year, in the Fridays running up to Tony night, PBS aired concerts by significant Broadway names: Sutton Foster (pretty good), Andrew Rannells (fabulous), Stephanie Block, and Leslie Odom. *This year, PBS will give us Cynthia Erivo (Friday this week, iconic, and close to an EGOT, for her interpretation of "Celie"), A. Ashford (fine in "Sunday in the Park," but she wasn't Bernadette), and M. Hilty (why does anyone ever try to replace Ellen Greene in "Little Shop of Horrors"--?) *When people say that Bernadette Peters has three Tony Awards, they sometimes fail to observe that one of the three is like a "humanitarian hero" award. This fact seems important to me. *One of Bernadette Peters's Tony wins was for "Annie Get Your Gun," and people didn't really ...

As I contemplate this rainy Sunday, a part of me would like very much to get lost in an old P.D. James mystery, "The Black Tower," one of her finest, and a winner of the "Silver Dagger" Award: It was to be the consultant physician's last visit and Dalgliesh suspected that neither of them regretted it, arrogance and patronage on one side and weakness, gratitude and dependence on the other being no foundation for a satisfactory adult relationship however transitory. He came into Dalgliesh's small hospital room preceded by Sister, attended by his acolytes, already dressed for the fashionable wedding which he was to grace as a guest later that morning.... Crisp language anatomizing a slightly-dishonest relationship--one with which most of us are already familiar (harried expert paired with uncomfortable client). Wonderfully-balanced sentences: the parallel structure of "attended by," "preceded by," "dressed for." "Arrogance...

Cher is 73--as she'll freely tell you--and she has a few grudges. Here's what I learned from her intermittently puzzling concert, at Barclays, Thursday night: *In a long, rambling, actually disconcerting monologue, Cher recalled being forty. Jack Nicholson and a director had met with her. Then the director called Cher and said: "Jack and I think you are too old and unsexy to be in THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK." Cher was devastated. *The part of the story that seemed to have a "parable" aura: After crying for a long while, Cher noticed how attractive and compelling her own tears were. She knew she could make creative use of these tears. And I think--though Cher spelled out very little on Thursday night--she was offering this WITCHES OF EASTWICK story as an example of how she rises above adversity. How she makes flowers from manure. But we didn't find out what changed with EASTWICK--how Cher ended up in the movie after all that pain. Instead, Cher made an...

One of my favorite writers--Kevin Henkes--has a new children's book available. This is not a picture book, but a brief "chapter book," and, like several of Henkes's other chapter books, it appears to be about a quietly weird kid who meets another quietly weird kid. Misunderstandings ensue. I admire Henkes because he is so dedicated to his work. And I like that he stretches himself to write not just for tiny PK kids, but also for more-advanced kid-readers. I also like that Henkes bravely addresses death--the deceased kid in "Olive's Ocean," the motherless Blaze in "Words of Stone." And here's how "Sun and Spoon" begins: Spoon Gilmore's grandmother had been dead for two months when he realized that he wanted something special of hers to keep. This thought came to him in the middle of a hot, sticky July night and nagged at him off and on until morning. It was all he could think about at breakfast. He was sitting alone at ...

A writer has to "pitch" ideas--to editors--over and over again. It's an awful, hateful part of life. One thing Howard Ashman pitched was the thought of converting Sebastian the crab from an English butler-type to a Caribbean fellow. Ashman wanted to explore Caribbean music. The pitch worked. "Darling, it's hott-a....down in the wat-a....." Another Ashman pitch: "Aladdin should be the tale of a ne'er-do-well trying to reform and to please his perpetually-aggrieved mother, or grandmother." This pitch did not work. Many of Ashman's "Aladdin" ideas were eventually trashed, because the characters didn't "pop"; I think this massacre was known, at Disney, as "Black Friday." I think Ashman was an enthusiastic maker of "pitches," and I think, when he had to draft a song, a natural angle he would take is "the salesman approach." How can I work myself into a possible mindset for Sebastian? We...

"The Impeachers," non-fiction, about Andrew Johnson, but obviously making some kind of gesture toward Trump. I like the jaunty title, which makes me think of "The Rescuers," and "The Rescuers Down Under." "Furious Hours." Harper Lee apparently became obsessed with a murder trial late in her life, and seemed interested in having a true crime success, a success similar to the big splash Truman Capote had enjoyed. (Ms. Lee helped with "In Cold Blood," but people sometimes forget.) "Furious Hours" tells of Ms. Lee's (aborted) true crime phase. I can't remember anything about this interlude from "Mockingbird," the famous Harper Lee biography. I can remember that Lee became increasingly irritated by Capote, in part because Capote would not really discourage rumors that he had secretly written "To Kill a Mockingbird." Also, late in life, Capote became more insufferable than ever, and he published a...

"The baby will be a boy," I say on the phone, and my ever-circumspect father responds: "Good." That is the extent of the response. I could say, here, that many gay male couples opt to go the "boy" route--if an option is available--perhaps because the struggles of boyhood are struggles well-known to gay men. I could mention my father-in-law, who is less mysterious than my father, and who says, whenever I bring up the baby, "That's so strange." He's referring to the idea of two men procreating. He always smiles and says, "Very, very strange." My father and I don't talk about these things. Instead, we lean on current events, which are a favorite kind of crutch in my family. I tend to see metaphors in these current-event discussions--because I see metaphors in everything--and I imagine, if you knew all the crazy depth I attribute to casual remarks, you would roll your eyes and say, "A cigar can be just a cigar." ...

*"Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures." Yale's "Jewish Lives" series is a treat: short, incisive books about major figures in history. I loved Molly Haskell's volume--a brief consideration of the life and work of Steven Spielberg. (In my view, "a brief life" is always a good idea. Who really wants to read four hundred or five hundred pages on a historical figure?) Ben Hecht wrote "The Front Page" and "Notorious," among other classics, and apparently his actual life was as colorful as his writing career. There's another book on Hecht out, but I'll take the short, beginner's-guide volume. *"Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault." Cathy Guisewite wrote and drew the comic "Cathy" for something like thirty years. When she stopped (by giving the title character, "Cathy," a baby), she took a respite from creative expression. But she said the urge to write started to build up inside h...

The nominations are in! Some initial thoughts.... *Gideon Glick made a big splash in "Speech and Debate" several years ago. This was one of Stephen Karam's early plays--Karam would go on to fame with "The Humans" (soon to be an Amy Schumer movie)--and Glick was great in it. Though I've not yet seen "To Kill a Mockingbird," having Glick play a child version of Truman Capote just seems right, and having him win a Tony for that particular role seems right (to me), as well. *Could an adult credibly inhabit the body of a small girl, Scout, in TKAM? Yes, if that adult is Celia Keenan-Bolger. Again, there seems to me to be a cosmic sense of "rightness" to this bit of casting, and if Celia wins, as well, that would be nice. (That said, CKB did *not* make a big splash as Eponine, the show-piece role in "Les Miserables," a few years ago. People have mixed opinions on the Greatest Eponine of All Time. Some throw their weight behind Fra...