Liars and Saints

“The Flying Machine” is sillier than “The Tooth,” but it’s still weirdly moving. George’s problem is that he wants to feel special. His attempt at a solution: He has purchased a “flying machine,” and he plans to be “the first of the species” to go airborne. Gently, like Frog addressing Toad, Martha observes that George actually is *not* flying. A quick fix: Lighten the basket. Remove the hippo from the structure. But of course this is an over-correction, and the machine sails away. And here--oddly enough--is where George gets his resolution. Martha says, “It’s OK. I like it better when you’re down here, on Earth, with me.” And George feels special. The End. Why do I feel--more and more, as I get older--that all of life is contained within the covers of “George and Martha: The Anthology”? Some day, I might try to write about adult characters again. We’ll have to see!

The director Rian Johnson is having a big weekend, because his murder mystery--“Knives Out”--has made a major splash with critics. I can’t wait to see it. I’d see any Agatha Christie-inspired work. But there’s a special reason to be excited about “Knives Out,” and that reason is contained within one word: “Ozymandias.” Mr. Johnson didn’t write “Ozymandias,” from “Breaking Bad,” but he directed it, and I imagine he had a say in the construction of certain images. So many moments in this hour are memorable: It’s maybe my favorite hour in TV history. The supreme weirdness of the hour is established right away. We know we’re tiptoeing toward a major gunfight, but the storytellers tease us. They don’t start with the gunfight. They flashback one year to give us a little domestic tidbit: The baby Holly, we learn, earned her name one day when Walt was late home from a “cook.” To appease his wife, he threw her, Skyler, a bone: “Hey, let’s name the baby HOLLY.” We wonder: Why are we seeing t...

Just so you know, the NYTimes Book Review did a podcast this week, giving some insider info on the “Ten Best Books.” I listened just for a bit; some juicy notes and some thoughts.... *It wasn’t always the ten best. It was sometimes eight, or nine. But people assumed ten, so eventually the editors just said: ten. *There is always a split, now, between five works of fiction and five works of non-fiction. Even in a year when fiction seems especially strong (for example). No attention is given to thematic variety: The books with the most beautiful sentences and the most gripping stories and the smartest research are the winners. Always. Period. *One that calls out to me is “No Visible Bruises,” because the title is brilliant. “NVB” is what cops say to address their own worries when they’re leaving the scene of a possible domestic assault. But “visible” is a word that raises questions. What if there are psychological bruises? What if there are actual, physical bruises, and one spouse ha...

“The Dance Recital” is a title with a double meaning. It seems to refer to Martha’s dance recital; the initial conflict has George resisting an invitation, because “dancing is dumb.” George then remembers his manners, and goes, and enjoys the performance. Not much of a story, but then the real reason for the narration kicks in. Seeing Martha onstage awakens a new George. An artistic George. And, of course, George begins dance classes of his own--and the title’s second meaning, GEORGE’S “Dance Recital,” becomes evident. If Martha can do “The Beautiful Butterfly,” then George can do “The Mexican Hat Dance.” Maybe not “Ulysses,” but, still, an opportunity to consider surprise twists, hidden meanings, reversals, character growth. Thank God for “George and Martha."

“Frozen” is not a great movie, and it’s not a great musical. It borrows heavily from “Wicked”--the plot, the emancipation anthem, the star--and “Wicked” itself is sort of a lumpy mess. I see two moments of genius. One, obviously, is “Let It Go,” which is a rewrite of “Defying Gravity.” (And who wouldn’t ask for a bit more of “Defying Gravity” on the big screen?) The other is the decision to unmask one of the male stars as a trickster, a villain--a genuinely bold stroke for a Disney movie. In the earlier days of Howard Ashman, villains were more clearly flagged as villains, right away. Let’s give credit where credit is due. Though “Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast” are both better than “Frozen,” by leaps and bounds, neither seems to lend itself to a big-screen sequel. I think that’s because Howard Ashman didn’t really care about his princes. Eric, the post-Beast reincarnated Prince: Who needs to know what happens to these men? As in a Jane Austen novel, the adventure ends...

One thing that gets me through a long weekend is Ruth Rendell. It's true that Rendell died, and that her output is finite; we won't be getting any new Rendell books, ever again. It's also true that there are some dips in quality; people seem not to get too excited about, say, "Grasshopper" or "Talking to Strange Men." But give the lady a break. She wrote approximately ten trillion novels. And there are mic-drop classics mixed in there: "A Judgment in Stone," "A Demon in My View," "Make Death Love Me," "An Unkindness of Ravens,""The Tree of Hands." Rendell's great gift was for characters who "jump off the page," as one reviewer noted. Even when they aren't admirable, you feel you know them, and you want to follow them on their weird, high-stakes journeys. I especially like Dora Wexford, who is resolutely sensible and courageous. And her daughters, with their young-people dramas. And...

The NYT "100 Notable Books" list can be overwhelming. A few thoughts: *There is an interest in "genre fiction" here. This is slightly rebellious for the NY Times. It's like if Elizabeth II appeared in public and performed a Taylor Swift song. I'm thinking--especially--of "Mrs. Everything," "The Institute," and the Joe Hill title. (Plus the Tremblay stories.) *A surprising omission: Susan Choi's novel, which just won the National Book Award. No comment. *"Say Nothing" calls out to me--not only because people are so breathless about this book, but also because it seems to be (in part) about restitution. Restitution is on everyone's mind, in the MeToo era. When people behave badly, is there a way to "come back"? Apparently, people in Ireland are walking around with monstrous deeds in their past--and people aren't talking. It's a compelling situation. *I'd give a spot to Alison Lurie, for her bo...

I think Sondheim has a special love for the small, quiet numbers. This may be why, of all the Hammerstein options, “What’s the Use of Won’drin’” is the one that apparently really *speaks* to Sondheim. I like the muted, daydreamy quality of the title song from “Anyone Can Whistle”: “Maybe if you show me how to let go....lower my guard....learn to be free....” And I especially like the strange, brief, whispery solo that Gypsy gets in the first act of her battles with Rose. Gypsy is alone on-stage, on her birthday, singing (eerily) to her stuffed animals. If you were an imaginative child with few connections, would you not develop an intense relationship with your toys? I’m already hooked. “Little cat, little cat....Why do you look so blue?” sings Gypsy. (She is addressing the cat, sure, but she is also addressing herself.) “Little lamb, little lamb....I wonder how old I am....” No trumpets, no timpani, but this is an electrifying moment. A bizarre, chilling sentence, delivered to...

The re-vamped MoMA has a room dedicated to the gay poet Frank O’Hara, who once worked at the admissions desk, selling postcards. O’Hara would write on his lunch break. He particularly liked lunch, as a daily event, and in fact wrote a book called “Lunch Poems.” A younger gay poet--Mark Doty--has commented on O’Hara’s urbane “and sometimes genuinely celebratory” tone, and that tone is on display in lines that MoMA has quoted on a prominent wall: oh god it’s wonderful to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you so much It’s not clear to me if O’Hara was addressing his longtime partner, the dancer Vincent Warren, but that’s at least a nice thing to imagine. O’Hara was dead at forty--having been hit by a jeep on Fire Island. What I like in his artful lines is the parallel structure: simple verb plus direct object. “Drink too much coffee.” “Smoke too many cigarettes.” “Love you so much.” There’s also so much feeling in the “oh god”-...

What do you get when two men marry? You get arguments about the Netflix melodrama “The Crown.” My husband is a stalwart defender of “The Crown.” At all times. This show inspired him to schedule a trip to Scotland, to see the Queen Mum’s castle. Once a self-described critic of All Things Royal, my husband now wants to see “The King’s Speech,” plan a tour of Buckingham Palace, and send photos of our infant son to Elizabeth II, who “might be interested.” I have more of a tough-love approach to “The Crown.” I’ve spent many years thinking about Peter Morgan--I saw both versions of “Frost/Nixon,” trekked through the two major Helen Mirren outings, rented and studied “The Special Relationship”--and I find certain things grating. The can-I-or-can’t-I-trust-that-new-Prime Minister plot gets old. (We saw it with Tony Blair; we’re reliving it now, in Season Three of “The Crown.”) The will-Elizabeth-learn-to-display-emotion story is, similarly, recycled; we saw it in “The Queen,” and we’re see...

A story that haunts me is “The Tooth.” George is roller-skating to meet Martha (with flowers), and he falls and chips his tooth. His favorite tooth. He goes to Martha in distress; he knows he’ll never look the same. There is a moment of empathy. Martha’s sad face mirrors George’s; the two friends struggle to cope together. (Martha has only one line in this scene: “There, there.” The drawing indicates that Martha has supplied her mourning friend with a comfy chair, a warm blanket, a cup of tea, a Kleenex, and a pillow, for back support. All that detail!) A surprise twist: The dentist is able to furnish a gold replacement tooth, and it’s even better than the missing tooth. It’s stylish. “You look so distinguished!” says Martha, delighted. And the two friends skip off happily into the sunset. What’s striking to me here is that, in the midst of the turmoil, Martha doesn’t try to minimize George’s problem. She doesn’t dismiss what he says; she doesn’t lie about a sunny outcome she...

Recently, in the NY Times, Jason Zinoman, one of the great writers at work today, was brave enough to admit that certain bits of Louis CK’s old comedy still really move him. (This is brave because it’s now popular to dismiss work if the person who produced it is a monster; see the recent Times piece on Gauguin, for example.) I know what Zinoman is talking about. I still often think about Louis CK’s past observations about fatherhood. Specifically: *If you are a parent, the greatest joy is the thirty-second interlude between the time you lock the child in his car seat and the time you buckle yourself into the car. That brief pause is like a siesta, a little resort visit. (Who would think to make this observation?) *I love the Odd Couple dynamic between the cranky misanthropic comic and his wonderstruck child. The comic wakes on a Tuesday morning--enraged at the world--and sees the broad smile on his baby’s beatific face. The baby is delighted; the baby is stunned to discover...

I’m not wild about the novel that just won the NBA. The less said, the better. Instead, may I recommend “The Friend,” which won in the recent past, and which really deserved its win. “Your whole house smells of dog, says someone who comes to visit. I say I'll take care of it. Which I do by never inviting that person to visit again.” Almost the entirety of the novel is just that smart, and surprising, and funny. Also, it’s a great treat, over Thanksgiving, to rent certain curiosities that Film Forum is spotlighting. (If you can’t be AT Film Forum, you might as well re-create Film Forum in your own home.) The titles that interest me right now are: “Kind Hearts and Coronets” (Guinness) “Detective Story” (dir. Wyler) “Midnight” (script by Wilder) “Cape Fear” (the Robert Mitchum version) “Baby Face” (featuring Barbara Stanwyck) Enjoy!

A piece I love in the NYT acknowledges that the holidays can be sort of awful. Maybe not relentlessly awful, but also maybe not a relentless source of good cheer. (And the demand to feel, or to feign, good cheer can often make things more challenging.) The Times suggests a few things: *Dig out your controlled breathing exercises. *Carry a photo that you enjoy looking at. (I think reaching for the photo could be a substitute for emotional eating.) *Have a plan for therapeutic music time. (Again, the song you enlist can be a substitute for emotional eating. I seem drawn to Kristin Chenoweth's cover of "When I Fall in Love.") *Feeling lonely? Be in public, even if you're alone in public. Go walk around the town square, or eat in a restaurant, or see a movie. *Quietly distance yourself from an irritating or negative person. You don't have an obligation to make nice with the relative who wants to talk about your weight, or to download several hours of u...

Are you watching “The Preppy Murder: Death in Central Park”? Let’s chat. If not, skip this and go make a rental! * The thing that gets me is the fictional sex diary.  The defense wanted to make the victim look shady, so they claimed she’d kept a “sex diary,” a salacious account of her many conquests. This diary didn’t exist, though it would be so fascinating if it did (and also its existence would have nothing to do with the murder case, regardless of defense claims). It’s like the defense attorneys--grown men, professional men!--were dreaming up their own Upper East Side fan fiction, their own version of “Gossip Girl." In the days of Marie Antoinette, didn’t people sometimes invent false journals and attribute these writings to prominent national figures? Some things never change. * There’s more to say about the Catholic Church.  Linda Fairstein claims she has no reason to believe ex-Cardinal McCarrick raped Robert Chambers--but I see more than one reason to belie...

Sondheim lists three favorite female performances from his lifetime. One is Angela Lansbury, “Sweeney Todd.” One is Ethel Merman, “Gypsy” (on the nights she was self-disciplined). The third is Bernadette Peters in “Sunday in the Park with George.” Sondheim would surely argue that the following paragraph is too facile. Anyway, it seems that “Sunday in the Park” is a kind of memoir. By the era of “Merrily We Roll Along,” something had become glib in Sondheim’s work. Something was slick. Sondheim was like George, churning out chromolumes: “They’re becoming more and more about less and less.” (One of my favorite moments in “Sunday in the Park” has a stranger struggling to say something polite about the chromolumes... “They’re getting......SO LARGE!!!”) It seems to me, before “Sunday,” before the move to off-Broadway, Sondheim made a decision to write to please himself, once again. To worry less about what others might want. Maybe James Lapine played a role in this shift. Like Sondhei...

Looking for new reading material? Here are some books calling out to me right now.... *"Steering the Craft" (Ursula LeGuin) *"One Writer's Beginnings" (Eudora Welty) *"Anna Karenina" (but not translated by Pevear et al. I'm talking about the translation completed by Constance Garnett. Apparently, Garnett has been unjustly maligned, and her work is better than Pevear's work. For the current buzzy-ness of Pevear, we have Oprah to blame. This is all via Janet Malcolm.) *"Nobody's Looking at You" (Janet Malcolm) *"Howards End" (E.M. Forster....people say the current big-ticket play "The Inheritance" is like a lesser version of "Howards End," so why not read "Howards End"?) *"The Family Fang" (Kevin Wilson...A favorite of Ann Patchett's....Wilson truly seems to be an odd duck with a need to tell stories, and his new one, about siblings repeatedly, literally, bursting into...

Three Things Right Now: * Frank Rich interviewed Sondheim on Sondheim’s seventieth birthday. Rich notes that SS interrupted him just once. “When you were growing up, did you find....” And SS cut Rich off. “I never grew up.” You see that childlike sense of wonder in SS’s (spiritual) autobiography, “Sunday in the Park with George.” An artist rediscovers a (boyish) sense of innocence and excitement, while surveying the world: “Something in the light, in the sky, in the grass, up behind the trees....Things I hadn’t looked at till now....Flower in your hat....And your smile....And the color of your hair.....” * Of Hammerstein’s works, “What’s the Use of Wond'rin’” ...is the standout. Rich notes that SS does *not* highlight one of the super-famous numbers, e.g. “June Is Bustin’ Out” or “I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy.” “What’s the Use” is relaxed; there’s no self-consciousness; you don’t sense the writer sweating. The words nicely match the speaker, a sad, defeated, plainspoken...

A certain type of bitchy gay man will say Mariah Carey produced only one great album, her debut, “Mariah Carey,” and, after that, the fabled five-octave range disappeared, and Carey became boring. Not true. “Emotions,” the second album, is a work of greatness. And there’s the Christmas album. Sometimes, my husband wants to play Taylor Swift’s Christmas songs, and I cringe. As much as I enjoy Ms. Swift, how can you compare that stuff with the works of Mariah Carey? A few things to note about Mariah’s Christmas album: *The first four songs are MURDERERS' ROW. We are talking about one titanic achievement after the next. “Silent Night,” “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” “O Holy Night,” “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home).” We are putty in Mariah’s hands. If ever there were time for a mic drop, it’s at the close of these first four songs. *”All I Want for Christmas Is You” is the last time in American history that someone authored a bona fide juggernaut holiday song. A ...

Resisting trite choices. Who does this better than James Marshall? In "The Tub," we have a certain set-up. George is snooping on Martha. We might expect the story to unfold slowly: George has strange, troubling thoughts and feelings, Martha discovers George, Martha has an emotional reaction, Martha decides to act on her emotions, the resolution follows. But Marshall surprises us: He collapses the discovery, the emotions, and the thinking into white space. All of this happens via subtext. We are left to make inferences. Marshall trusts our intelligence, and we get to piece together a puzzle; we aren't force-fed. A similar thing happens in "The Big Scare." George frightens Martha, for fun, and Martha promises to retaliate. We might expect to see the retaliation, and the fall-out, and a reconciliation to end the story. But, once again, Marshall surprises us. Martha makes her threat: "I'll scare you next." George worries. He worries at the breakf...

If you're reading Jami Attenberg's "All This Could Be Yours," let's chat! If you haven't started yet, skip this piece (and buy the book). *This seems to be a story about living with Donald Trump. Attenberg doesn't spell that out, but she gives us a patriarch who is a bad man. A patriarch who abuses powerless people. And she asks: How do you live with such a man? *This novel is interested in gender. Sometimes, a man is neither bad nor good. In one of my favorite scenes, a woman fields a call. It's her young daughter. The daughter is complaining about Daddy. (Daddy and Mommy are divorced.) "Mommy, when Daddy took me to the mall, he ran into a lady and lied about his girlfriend. Which says that he has actually more than one girlfriend. So am I--also--meant to lie on his behalf?" Why should women and girls have to field these questions? Mommy sighs. "Your dad isn't a bad man," she says. She pauses. "But he isn't...

Just a “fan girl” moment for “The Tub.” George has an interest in snooping. Part of his snooping involves a glimpse of nude Martha, who is in the tub. (There might be erotic interest here, or not, and it’s just one of life’s mysteries that James Marshall has given us.) Martha catches George “in the act." Outraged, the lady sends the dude a clear message. A violation of a boundary will result in action: George is clobbered “via tub.” Like Mother with Son, Martha makes the message explicit: “We’re friends, sure, but there is such a thing as privacy.” *The story has the perfect pace. I think it’s four sentences long. Not a word is wasted: Marshall doesn’t spell out what his illustrations have already made clear. *Chekhov said: “If you put a gun in Act One, it needs to get fired in Act Five.” Marshall puts the tub in the title--and he delivers ... he gives us that tub, in a big way, in the final scene. *Chekhov said: “A story needs only a He and a She.” Both of Marshall’s ch...

Prince has a posthumous memoir out, and one of its apparent delights is a passage that slams the work of Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran. Using possibly sexual imagery, Prince complains about having Perry/Sheeran songs “shoved down my throat.” To honor Prince--today and always--I have some thoughts on “Nothing Compares 2 U.” *Sinead O’Connor did the super-famous version, but in my view, Prince (the writer) did it best. There’s a playfulness in Prince’s writing that seems to be missing from Sinead’s cover. For example: Prince  goes to the doctor to complain about a broken heart!  How can you deliver this line without at least a sense of mild silliness? Sinead seems to overlook the silliness. *I very much admire the honesty in a Prince song. In “When Doves Cry,” Prince speculates: “Maybe I’m just like my mother....She’s never satisfied....Maybe I’m just like my father....too bold...” Similarly, toward the end of “Nothing Compares,” a sheepish Prince admits, “I know that li...

Around the time of the engagement, I had an unusual request. I wanted to sacrifice one beach day at the movies. If you were in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in the summer--lucky you!--wouldn't you want to park yourself on the sand (and leave only for brief meals)? But my fiancee understand that I had an addiction to movies. Good movies, bad movies. I would spend substantial parts of any vacation--a vacation in a foreign country!--sitting in a multiplex. I'd tell myself this was an inventive way of studying "local color," but the truth is, if you're seeing Jordan Peele's "Us" at a mall in Montreal, you're just seeing a big Hollywood movie in a mall. My husband ceded his beach day. We drove to a small Cape Cod town to see "Wind River," a B-level film in which Elizabeth Olsen unearthed dire truths about the oppression of Native Americans in the West. People were slaughtered. No one smiled--for two hours. Graciously, quietly, my husban...

Cameron Diaz has retired from acting--at least for now--and it's time to mourn, properly. A new version of "Charlie's Angels" will happen on Friday. It does NOT have Cameron Diaz. It does NOT have Lucy Liu, or Drew Barrymore. (Why bother?) There was a phase--not long ago--when Ms. Diaz was basically the most powerful woman in Hollywood. She did movie after movie, and even when they weren't great, they still profited from her effervescent presence. In "Bad Teacher," for example, we had the rare chance to see her hurling a basketball at a small child's head, while berating that child for forgetting basic "To Kill a Mockingbird" trivia. In "Charlie's Angels," famously, Diaz wanted to impress a young man, so she interrupted him. The man had said, "Hey, I picked up some tickets to--" And Diaz cut him off. "Tickets!" she squealed. "I LOVE tickets!" In "The Other Woman" (which, yes,...

*One of the greatest pieces I've read--ever--in the NYT is an essay with work advice. A correspondent has written in. That person says: "I can't tolerate coworker X, I'm thinking of quitting, etc. etc. etc." The advice columnist could attempt pragmatic tweaks: "Have a heart-to-heart; draft a letter; focus on, and praise, positive attributes in your annoying colleague....." Instead, the columnist says, "Many people suck, and will always suck. And guess what? You might suck, too. So consider that before you go off and try to work for yourself." The columnist goes on to say: "Your job will never love you back. No matter how hard you try to love it. So work on the life you have outside your work. Cultivate hobbies. Pursue volunteer activities. Practice the fine art of being (patiently) bored." The columnist cites an intriguing recent book of advice: "How to Do Nothing." The essay made my day, and I encourage you to take ...

If you’ve watched “Unbelievable,” let’s chat. If you haven’t, skip this piece (and go watch the show!) .... *This work can inspire reverence because it’s so well-done, and because the subject is so serious. But a project I also enjoy is seeing the piece as an actual object, something man-made; it’s fun to consider the gears spinning beneath the surface. One thing that makes the story satisfying is the substantial change we see over time. Obviously, Dever’s character has several watershed moments. She suffers like Job; she is powerless, inarticulate; and yet, ultimately, she wins justice and becomes a badass. (Maybe *too* much of a badass to keep things plausible; there’s a “fan service” quality to her final scenes in the show.) I also like the changes the other protagonists go through. Toni Collette is brassy and ambitious, and she makes a show of rejecting Merrit Weaver’s tenderness--but maybe Weaver actually has rubbed off on Collette, because we see Collette (quietly) allowin...

It’s mid-autumn. May I recommend Reiner’s “Misery”? I watched this Friday with my infant, because we didn’t want to go out and battle the cold to see “Doctor Sleep.” We wanted to honor Stephen King, in one way or another, so we had a 1990 throwback. Here are some things you may not remember about “Misery”: *It has Lauren Bacall. She is James Caan’s brittle, sophisticated New York agent. We’re not talking about Bergman-esque levels of characterization here. But how fun to see Bacall being dry and fabulous! *This movie is pretty clearly  Hansel and Gretel,  by another name. There’s a fairy-tale structure. The protagonist goes off into the woods--literally--having left the comforts of home (Manhattan, in this case). Alone, in peril, in the snow, he meets an alluring lady who happens to be a witch in disguise. He must pretend to be something he is not, in order to outsmart the witch. (We see Caan--in an undervalued performance--craftily asking Bates to join him for cha...

Should you see her on Broadway in the next few days? Yes, yes, you should. Sexy and strange and vulnerable, in ways that may make you think of Bernadette Peters. A few thoughts: *Chenoweth does--randomly, shockingly--compare her work to "Capturing the Friedmans." She says she had planned an album with a different theme, then veered in the "celebrate women" direction. And she says this is like "Friedmans," which began as a story about a kooky clown, then became a brutal documentary about pedophilia. This is easily the most bizarre and most startling analogy I've ever encountered. I will continue to think about it. *Chenoweth did *not* win the Tony Award for "Wicked," but do you know who likely thinks this is an error? Ben Brantley. See the original "New York Times" review. *The great highlight was Chenoweth's cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" (a surprise). Chenoweth was reverent and visibly moved. "I ...

Some notes: *It's airing the day BEFORE Thanksgiving. And, weirdly, the famous Christmas special will be very early in December. (Check ABC listings.) *"Thanksgiving" was the third holiday-themed special; "Christmas" came first, then, pretty quickly afterward, the "Great Pumpkin" saga happened. A gap of a few years separates "Pumpkin" from "Thanksgiving." The voice actors have changed. Oddly, vocal music is prominent in "Christmas," disappears from "Pumpkin," and resurfaces in "Thanksgiving." ("Little Birdie," "Over the River....") *Critical responses to "Thanksgiving" did not match the effusiveness that followed "Pumpkin" and "Christmas"--though I think "Thanksgiving" is my husband's favorite. A main theme--Charlie's askew nature, as established by his screwy Halloween costume and his tiny fir tree--is carried forward: Charlie se...

I put off reading "Mrs. Everything," by Jennifer Weiner, because the thought made me feel guilty. Weiner seems to have a "lightweight" reputation, and even though I'd really liked "Good in Bed," I was feeling snobby...I'm so glad I silenced the inner snob and borrowed "Mrs. Everything" from the library. Weiner has a great gift for inventing likable, troubled protagonists and throwing them into dramatic situations. You don't spend chapter upon chapter in plotless "inner" scenarios; you're thrown into high-stakes scenes, and bad, shocking things happen. "Mrs. Everything" follows two sisters through the sixties and onward: One represses her lesbianism in a foolish (and understandable) heterosexual union, and the other struggles with food after having been assaulted at a big party. Both sisters make unwise choices; both seem like people you could befriend, or even people you could become. Sometimes, Weiner is...

"The Surprise"--the height of James Marshall's art--involves "Coventry." When you send someone to "Coventry," you cease speaking to that person. You decide you are "no longer on speaking terms." George--a child, emphatically--gets excited by the hose in the garden. He shouts, "It's raining!" and squirts Martha. Deeply irritating and unnecessary. Flummoxed, George says, "I was just fooling around." And Martha drops the hammer: "We're no longer on speaking terms." But life is difficult without a friend. There's the funny story you can't share. And the joke you heard on the radio. And the sight of the first autumn leaf, falling to the ground. Overwhelmed by these sensations, Martha reverses her judgment. She needs to share what she is experiencing. She goes to George, who is delighted. "We are now again on speaking terms." End of story. One of the things this story pulls off is ...

Our range of stories has expanded. When I narrate "Little Red Ridinghood," for Joshua, I'm slightly baffled. Who is the huntsman? Why does he happen to visit Grannie just after the wolf has done his terrible deed? After Little Red emerges--intact--from the wolf's gizzard, what are we to conclude? I simply say: "The End!" I'm puzzled--as well--by "Hansel and Gretel." These two escape the witch, yes, but even if they're successful with their trail of bread crumbs, skipping all the way back home, they have to face the horrifying fact that their stepmother (presumably still alive) chose to abandon them in the dark, dark woods. This knowledge seems to hover between my son and me, and we sit in silence, and we move on. We are lost in the thickets of Taylor Swift's "All Too Well": I left my scarf there, in your sister's house.... And you've still got it...in your drawer...even now.... Does the fateful drive in Huds...

Three quick thoughts on last night's travesty, the live-action "Little Mermaid": *Sebastian is--possibly--the secret star of "The Little Mermaid." There are only four major songs; Sebastian gets two of them. (Both of Sebastian's songs were Oscar-nominated; one actually won the Oscar.) The person playing Sebastian basically needs to have the charisma of Steve Martin in "Little Shop of Horrors." This is the scene-stealing role. The role you remember. (Yes, there's also Ursula.) Ashman invented the idea of a Caribbean-accented Sebastian (surely an issue, today, that would generate complaints about cultural appropriation, and see also "Arabian Nights," and the Chinese grocery-store moment in "Little Shop"). Ashman *loved* Sebastian. It's important that the actor loves Sebastian, too. *For these reasons, it's weird that Disney chose someone disengaged and actually visibly uncomfortable in this role, last night. And ...

It makes me very happy that Stephen King will be back with a new movie--"Dr. Sleep"--this Friday. In celebration, a few facts: * King almost gave up on writing before he really started. His wife found a draft of the novel he was writing; she found it in the trash can. She said, "This is good. Keep going." And the rest is history. * There's a sense of wonder and confusion among the critics. Writing about "The Institute," critics were sometimes puzzled to say they really enjoyed the novel. Some critics said, "This feels like a Greatest Hits re-run." Others said: "This is one of King's best novels." The detractors seemed to feel--almost against their will--that they'd had a good time. * Stephen King likes character development . He noted this in a review of Leigh Bardugo's new novel, "Ninth House." Horrors mean very little if you aren't convinced (or playfully semi-convinced) they're happening to r...

Sondheim's Contemporaries. (1) Lin-Manuel Miranda . My favorite Miranda moments are tiny, quiet scenes where character is revealed through word-choice. (Miranda has praised Howard Ashman, who is the king of matching words to characters). In Miranda's world, a cocky Hamilton interrupts an overly-tactful George Washington: "Do you want me to run the Treasury, or should I be the Secretary of State?" A verbose Hamilton can't really manage a courtroom, and he learns from a far-more-circumspect Burr: "Ladies and Gentlemen, my client is innocent. That's all you need to say ." An extremely nervous young man--startled when his love brings him champagne--can't really pay attention to the romance of the moment. He interrupts his friend: "How do you get this gold shit off?" (2) Tony Kushner. People don't really think of Tony Kushner as a lyricist, but indeed he is. I appreciate the supreme weirdness of "Caroline, or Change." W...

Everyone has been buzzing about the Netflix series "Unbelievable," so I'm not offering anything contrarian here. But in case you haven't started, do start to watch. The first episode combines the talents of Lisa Cholodenko ("The Kids Are All Right") and Michael Chabon, so--no shock--it's an unusual hour of TV. I didn't want to pay attention to Ayelet Waldman after all the "I love my spouse more than my children" nonsense (as if the love issue needed to involve a contest), but I guess, now, I need to pay attention to Ayelet Waldman. A few observations about the first hour, which is generating a great deal of the critical breathlessness: *The title "Unbelievable" refers to the label that cops attach to Kaitlyn Dever's story--but of course the title is double-edged. "Unbelievable" also refers to the way that Dever's character is treated, not just by her assailant, but additionally by her interrogators. *Chabo...

A story needs conflict. Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” has three acts: A rebellious working girl does battle with (a) her mom, (b) her dad, and (c) her oppressive boyfriend. This girl works hard! She has to left off steam. And so she returns home “in the morning light.” She fields phone calls “in the middle of the night.” She insists on being the one “to walk in the sun.” There’s nothing petulant in her response to her antagonists. Let those antagonists worry. Breezily, Ms. Lauper offers her message: “Girls just wanna have fun.” The words are simple and unpretentious--and that takes a great deal of work. The song reminds me of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.” In both songs, there is some subtle attention to economics. “Oh, mother dear, we’re not the fortunate ones...” “Man, I ain’t getting nowhere; I’m just living in a dump like this...” Both songs are about the need to make some noise--regardless of your circumstances. Lauper took a man’s rough draft--h...

I’m no expert here. I wish I had more real-world stories; I wish more things happened to me. But I do have a few thoughts, if you’re interested in telling a story from your life. One thing that helps me is ridiculousness. My character--the version of me I tend to write about--is a little bit effete and pretentious. So it helps to pair that character with an opposite--i.e. a baby or a dog. (Yes, I do think about this stuff.) Having the effete guy watch a Barbara Stanwyck movie while a dog gnaws on a bone, in the background....this seems inherently fun, at least to me. A story has a setting, rising action, and a climax. Writing about Salvy, I placed events on a “cold, dark night,” because (a) that’s the truth and (b) I liked having a “fairy-tale” atmosphere. The rising action: a stubbed toe, a tearful phone call. And I think the climax in almost any personal story comes from reflection. You’re not writing a spy story; you’re writing about your life, and so the exciting things will ...

Leigh Bardugo attended Yale in the nineties; she felt out of place. She hadn’t come from money. Her resume did not include references to Dalton or to Collegiate. Having wandered around, a bit, professionally, Bardugo discovered that she was meant to write fantasy novels. She wrote for teens. She wrote for adults, too, and so we have her “adult” debut, “Ninth House.” Like Tom Perrotta, another slightly uncomfortable Yale alum, Bardugo writes about power and privilege with an “outsider” spin. She notices things you might not notice if you took the Brearley-to-Yale route. She comments on the ubiquitous pea coats and pony tails; why do the undergrads lack a sense of style; why is it possible to stroll around campus, seeing classmates, thinking constantly, Who ARE you? Bardugo comments on the lustrous locks and shiny skin of many of the undergrads; wealth is “better than a vitamin injection.” And Bardugo notes the sleepy grin of an undergrad rapist, and the rapist’s tendency to point a ...