Liars and Saints

 I find Thanksgiving stressful and exhausting, so it's important to me to have books that will immediately lift me from my surroundings and take me to another world. The books should also be short because, if there is ever a time for super-ambitious, long-march reading, then Thanksgiving is not that time. This year, I chose Laurie Colwin's last novel, "A Big Storm Knocked It Over." Colwin was beloved during her career, but she died young, in the early 1990s. She seems to specialize in perceptive stories about anxious New Yorkers, in which little or nothing actually happens. But she, Colwin, is smart and writes well: Sven was compact and well-made, like a good canoe. He had short-cropped silver hair and light, cold-blue eyes. His clothes were very beautiful and expensive. It was said that he had only two real interests in the world, besides running the art department of a publishing house: poker and fucking.....It was said that the art departments of major NYC publishi...

 Just so you know: Last night, PBS made available an edited version of a recent Lea Salonga performance, filmed at the Sydney Opera House. Lea Salonga understands two things that certain other Broadway stars fail to grasp. (1) People have a limited appetite for banter. (2) People really, really want to hear your hits. (So, unlike Leslie Odom, Ms. Salonga did not use her time to perform sleepy, deconstructed versions of obscure 1930s slow jams. For this, I'm grateful.) Basically every Salonga number is a barn-burner, but I'm ranking the top three here: (3) "The Human Heart," from Salonga's most recent Broadway appearance. Nice to hear the rather scathing story about the ONCE ON THIS ISLAND costume department, as well. (2) "Meadowlark." It's similar to Patti LuPone's version, except that you, in the audience, can understand all the words. (1) "On My Own." Like musical fireworks! I loved this concert. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/

 My favorite episode from the Middle Phase of THE CROWN was "Margaretology." In that one, Princess Margaret traveled to America; on her trip, she met with LBJ, and she persuaded LBJ to give funding to England for one event or another. (In THE CROWN, England is always in danger of suffering a major blow, and there is always just one unorthodox person who can change history with a few well-timed gestures. Maybe it's Margaret, joking with LBJ. Maybe it's Di, hugging children in Australia. Maybe it's Elizabeth herself, expressing public faux-sadness after Di's death. We'll need to wait for Season Six, for that.) In "Margaretology," everyone wants Margaret to be formal and polite with LBJ, but Margaret understands the person she is dealing with. So she insults the memory of Kennedy. Then she becomes involved in a dirty limerick contest, and she delights LBJ: There was a young lady from Dallas Who used dynamite instead of a phallus. They found her vagi...

 A stand-out villain should be at least as lovable and interesting as a hero, and I'm including three of my favorite baddies here (in ranked order): (3) The Crocodile, "Red Riding Hood." Hoping to eat our heroine, the crocodile removes his cap, a courtly gesture. Red Riding Hood is not impressed. (2) The Wolf, "Red Riding Hood." (It's hard not to feel charmed by both villains in this tale. There is a lightness in "Riding Hood" that you miss in "Hansel and Gretel," which is why I'm not quite as captivated by Marshall's Witch.) The Wolf can't help himself; it's suggested, in this strange story, that the Wolf's greatest sin may be disrupting Granny during her reading hour. (1) Viola Swamp, "Miss Nelson." Ms. Swamp looks a bit like a drag queen. However, we know she is villainous, because she arrives in front of the classroom and "cancels Silent Reading Time" (see "The Wolf," above). Ms. Swamp...

 This Thanksgiving, I plan to watch "Notorious," which has been called "Hitchcock's best film," and also "the best movie Cary Grant appeared in." (Debates begin: now.) A thick new Cary Grant biography emerged a few weeks ago ("A Brilliant Disguise," by Scott Eyman), and among its notes are these: *"Notorious" is subversive because the protagonist is rather psychologically "ugly." The villain is actually easier to like, in some ways. *Cary Grant complained that Hitch had "thrown the film to Ingrid" (though he wouldn't have a similar complaint for his final two Hitchcock films, "To Catch a Thief" and "North by Northwest"). *Ben Hecht did a great deal of the writing work, but Clifford Odets made some contributions. Grant had just made "Night and Day," one of his worst movies--so the context, here, is inspiring for all of us. I'm looking forward to a cup of tea, a filmed tale of ...

 Susan Meddaugh worked with James Marshall--she called him "Jimmers"--and, eventually, Meddaugh had writing ideas of her own. Meddaugh's masterpiece--"Martha Speaks"--borrows from the famous first sentence of "Where the Wild Things Are." That sentence: "The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief.....his mother called him WILD THING...." Meddaugh's opening: "The day Helen gave Martha dog a taste of alphabet soup, something unusual happened." The soup travels to Martha's brain--not to her gut--and Martha dog suddenly acquires verbal abilities. The talking is cute until it isn't; Martha talks too much. Her family scolds her harshly. She swears never to speak, or to eat alphabet soup, again, but a crafty robber arrives. Hunger-Strike Martha has forgotten her own rules of sentence construction; she cannot notify anyone about the robber's forced entry. Hoping to make Martha go away, the robber tosses her (Martha) s...

 Last week, a couple of Trump judges moved to make conversion therapy legal in some part of this country. The judges said there was "not enough research" to show that conversion therapy severely damages many lives. I thought of this while watching "Carol," Saturday, with my husband. It's a movie partly about a kind of conversion therapy. Carol, a gay woman in the fifties, has some trouble separating from her wounded husband. The husband--Coach Taylor, from "Friday Night Lights"--can't really let go. And it's embarrassing for him--the thought of his wife with another woman. This guy does all he can to break Carol down. (Also, he is not entirely unsympathetic, which is one of many miracles in this beautiful movie.) Threats pertaining to child custody get trotted out. A strange man on a cross-country road trip turns out to be a spy; he is collecting audio evidence of Carol's homosexual transgressions, to be used in court. Seemingly defeated, C...

We're heavy into "Charlie Brown" season. In case you missed the news, PBS will air the "Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" special tomorrow (Sunday) night. This is your one chance to see the special in a way that does not support the tyranny that is Apple-Plus. "Thanksgiving"--my husband's favorite CHARLIE BROWN episode--involves a despotic Peppermint Patty, an odd "popcorn dinner," and a final-act surprise, in which Snoopy unveils a turkey feast. It's therapeutic to follow Charlie, at Halloween and at Thanksgiving:  contending with Lucy and the football, repeatedly finding rocks in his "treat" bag, losing control of himself with a white bedsheet and a pair of scissors. He doesn't often learn, but he does persist. I love that guy. I look forward to tomorrow night.

 I am four episodes into the new season of "The Crown," and I'm finding it as wildly uneven, bewitching, sloppy, and beautiful as always (at the least).  Season Four moved from the delightful, upsetting "Fairytale" to the hackneyed, endless "Favourites," and that's just what life is like, if you're a fan of "The Crown." So far, my favorite moments involve Di, the princess-to-be, roller-skating in a palace, fighting her way through a Camilla date, and beginning to discover her own "fan appeal." That said, I'm also just as enchanted as everyone else by the bisexual, bi-continental wonder that is Gillian Anderson. Who could have seen this role coming? Maybe we *all* ought to have seen this one coming. Anderson was just twenty-four when she landed the lead in "The X-Files" (Pamela Anderson and Jennifer Beals were under consideration). GA won an Emmy; she was mistreated on-set after having announced her pregnancy. S...

 What a year! We are deep in the "child-proofing" trenches. For months, Josh would happily accept a change: If you removed a dangerous object from his hands, he would shrug and then sally forth. Now, there is a major meltdown. Sometimes, a phrase pops up behind my eyes, and it's: squealing like a stuck pig. Anyway, next week, the New York Times will announce its annual "Best Books of the Year" list, and Charles Yu and Sigrid Nunez will almost certainly receive attention. I predict some buzz for Sue Miller, and for "Hidden Valley Road," as well. A part of me always resists these lists, and especially the critics' insistence on separating kids' lit from "adult lit," so I'm going to gush, here, about a few titles that will almost certainly fail to make the cut: * A Song for the Dark Times (Ian Rankin). Dependably gripping mystery, partly about the strange relationships that formed in and around Scottish internment camps during WWII. ...

 Billy Wilder told Sondheim: "Don't make SUNSET BOULEVARD into a musical. That movie needs to be an opera." Sondheim listened. But Andrew Lloyd Webber thought: "I can write a pseudo-opera." Buzz around ALW's SUNSET BOULEVARD was strong: People were saying, This is the female PHANTOM . Patti LuPone signed on for London, but the contract said someone else could do the role in Los Angeles. When LuPone learned of Glenn Close's casting, she (allegedly) said: "Glenn Close? She brays like a donkey. They call her George Washington because--in profile--her nose actually meets her chin." (LuPone denies this story, but the source says, How could *I* come up with insults like that ?) Glenn Close did everything right; Meryl Streep would hang out in the shadows of the theater. (Maybe Meryl eventually recognized that this part would always belong to Glenn, even in the hypothetical film version of the musical.) Elaine Paige heard an early draft and said: ...

 Michael Riedel's "Singular Sensation" is here, and it's great, and I'm ready to answer your questions: *What role does Stephen Sondheim have? Sondheim attends a Broadway performance of the revival of "Show Boat," in which Elaine Stritch sings to a baby. If you've heard the recording, you know that Stritch is weirdly ferocious. (She is Elaine Stritch.) At the end of the lullaby, Sondheim murmured: "I didn't know if Stritch would sing to that baby or eat it." Also, a diva-ish Jonathan Larson, deep in the weeds before "Rent"''s opening, goes to Sondheim to complain about various collaborators. Sondheim rolls his eyes. "You chose those collaborators," he says. "Now collaborate with them. Or you can be like Wagner and go off on your own, and find some King of Bavaria to fund your work." *Where is Bernadette Peters? She is rather quiet in this book, though she is mentioned as a possible star of the Guys...

 Chris Van Allsburg was an artist before he was a writer. He had work displayed at the Whitney. Then he turned to storytelling.  "Jumanji" was his second book, in the early eighties, and it won the Caldecott. (It later "inspired" a movie, and words can't express how little I'm interested in the movie.) In "Jumanji," two kids find a board game, and they imagine it will be tedious. But they soon understand that the text of the game is to be taken literally; if a card refers to invading rhinos, you will meet actual rhinos. If monkeys raid your "camp," you can expect to see monkeys climbing up your kitchen table. The exotic crises of the game grow and grow and compound themselves, and it's only because little Judy reads instructions that the two children are able to survive. Judy rolls a twelve, races to the center of the board, and shouts JUMANJI!--with triumph--just before a hungry lion gets a chance to do his business in the living roo...

 A transgression is a kind of sin--against society, or against oneself. It leads to strange behavior. In the movie "You Can Count on Me," a woman named Sammy transgresses. She begins sleeping with her married boss. This is maybe a result of wanting to stay employed (Terry and the boss have had issues). Also, the affair might be a useful distraction from Terry's messy love life, involving a great deal of Antia Brookner-ish dishonest conversation with a guy called Bob. Sammy doesn't really respect herself, and her disastrous affair becomes painful. Alone in her car, Sammy giggles, shrieks, and cries--within a span of two or three seconds. In a silly conversation with her boss/lover, Sammy must defend her computer habits. Someone has been altering the workplace screens to show bright, garish colors. Sammy loathes her boss/lover and her work situation; with only half-concealed contempt, she says, "Listen....my own desktop palate is.....fairly conservative...." M...

 The NYT sort of panned Taylor Swift's most recent album--which was striking, because (a) people generally loved (or claimed to love) this album and (b) the NYT is generally in Taylor's corner. One song the "Times" *did* like, and one that delights me, is called "Illicit Affairs." It's a standard country-song setup. The speaker is "the other woman" within a triangle. As in "Style," or "All Too Well," the speaker is painfully ambivalent. God is in the details, and Taylor really lets loose here. Her speaker conceals herself with a hood, for her walk of shame. She takes shadowy back roads. She tells her friends she has gone out for a run--to account for the post-coital flushed face! Also, the speaker buys fancy perfume, but then abandons it, because she can't leave olfactory evidence in the guy's car! The speaker feels irritated by the guy, who is presumably older: "Don't call me kid, don't call me baby; lo...

Michael Connelly's "Trunk Music" refers to a mafia term. When you put a human in your trunk, then shoot the human in the head.....you're making "trunk music." A body is discovered in a trunk. Los Angeles Detective Harry Bosch interviews the widow--and learns that the deceased had some shadowy business in Las Vegas. Later, having traveled to that town, Bosch explores a culture of casinos and strip clubs ("Dolly's on Madison").  Some lessons..... P***sy dust" is glitter that you apply before a "lap dance" -- but if it gets on the "patron"'s khakis, then a marital fight might follow. If your valet is "Gussie," it may not be because he was born "August"; the name might refer to the valet's habit of getting "gussied up." A main goal, if you're working in a strip club, is to sell many, many glasses of overpriced champagne; that's where (some of) the major profits are. Michael Conn...

 "All my life," said my husband, "I've wanted to be a suburban mom. Today is the day." He was talking about Halloween. He had gone into the drugstore to pick up a prescription, but he had emerged with two large scarecrows, and the scarecrows had painted-on smiles. We did a drive-by tour of local houses, and Marc was especially drawn to various blow-up dolls--Victor Frankenstein's Monster, a praying mantis, Howard Ashman's Audrey II. (Marc has since murmured about a desire to have one blow-up lawn doll "in each and every room of our home.") The actual highlight of the evening was a small chocolate Labrador Retriever, who wore two white pillows on his back--and this lab had somehow become sandwiched between two cardboard slabs. The slabs were "graham crackers"; the lab was a "Hershey's square." The gestalt effect: a walking s'mores bar. Now, in mid-November, we continue to discuss this dog at the dinner table. Our curr...

 Mariah Carey moved to New York City in her mid-teens; she had a job at Sports on Broadway, on the Upper West Side. For a while, Mariah tended bar, then someone discovered she actually wasn't of age. She became a coat-check staffer. At a party, Tommy Mottola "pierced" Mariah "with his gaze"; Mottola later heard Mariah's demo. TM to MC: "You are the most talented person I've ever met. You could be as big as Michael Jackson." The hits, the hits! "Vision of Love," "Someday," "Emotions," "I'll Be There," "Make It Happen." Mariah wrote "Hero" for Gloria Estefan, who was meant to contribute the song for a Geena Davis movie. But Tommy had a second thought. Hence: Mariah's "Hero." Mariah had a fondness for R&B -- particularly certain works that she calls "grimy" -- and Tommy couldn't understand. Ol' Dirty Bastard added some sections to the "Fantasy...

 I tend to dislike politicians, and I think the country is still a big dumpster fire, but we shouldn't blame this on Seamus Heaney: History says,  Don't hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme. If people want to quote these lines, then hurray! They're terrific lines. They're from "The Cure at Troy," about the Trojan War. The speaker is saying: History teaches us not to be optimists. Even so, there are occasions in a life when justice wins, and the win is like a tidal wave; the sense of triumph is overpowering. The lines of verse have several nice features. Life is merely "this side of the grave." Justice is like a tsunami, rare and memorable. My favorite part: "Hope" and "history" can rhyme. These two "h" words--so different, so far from rhyming--can, occasionally, become a "hat"/"cat" pair. The weirdness...

 Lena Dunham alerted the world--via Twitter--to this brilliant impression of Adam Driver. In the clip, Driver is ordering coffee. This is a challenge! You have to get the barista's attention. Then you need to request cream, put a cap on the ice usage, and make some decisions regarding hazelnut syrup. It's also tough to remember to toss in a "please." We like Adam Driver because he is so tortured all the time: He might slip in a FUCK! almost randomly. He spits out certain words as if the act of speaking is physically painful. He stretches and caresses and mushes his own face. You can't make a great parody unless the thing you're mocking is extraordinarily distinctive, polarizing, well-defined. (This is why Patti LuPone is a great source of comedy, and Bernadette Peters.) "Adam Driver Orders Coffee" is a thing that needed to happen; it has been an idea, gathering force, for a long, long while. And now it's here. https://digg.com/2020/adam-driver-st...

 John Grisham wrote "A Time to Kill," then "The Firm"--and it was "The Firm"'s world-historical success that led readers *back* to "A Time to Kill." Though "Time to Kill" didn't initially have the sales that "The Firm" had, readers did discover and did fall in love with "Time to Kill," and Grisham now reports that most readers who come to him to describe a favorite Grisham book.....are describing "A Time to Kill." Partly for this reason, Grisham has now revisited the "Kill" setting. "A Time for Mercy" brings back Jake Brigance, a lawyer in Mississippi in 1990. Near Jake's home, a well-liked police officer regularly abuses alcohol and secretly assaults his family (once or twice per night). On an especially bad night, the officer beats his girlfriend so severely that she seems to lose her life. Her young son picks up a gun and murders the police officer, who has been passed out...

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.....   This is a story where people don't speak very clearly to one another. Andy wants to escape his life, and he might succeed with a bit more money. He convinces his rather dim-witted brother Hank (also financially troubled) to rob the family business. "It's like we're robbing a Mom and Pop store, but we're literally robbing Mom....and Pop...." Andy doesn't tell Hank to keep other people out of this, and I believe he doesn't remember to say NO GUNS. Hank--scared--hires a colleague, who does use a gun. Meanwhile, there's a certain workers' schedule at the family shop--a dull anonymous lady is meant to be on duty--but the schedule has evaporated. Mom is taking the reins. One shot is fired; a second shot is fired. Two corpses--within seconds. What follows is chaos. We know that Hank and Andy don't like their father very much; this resentment might be the real reason for the robbery. The father--Albert ...

 "Kafkaesque" means "oppressive and nightmarish," and last night did earn the title. How surreal to stare at the droning CNN man, and to imagine that a report on one percent of a state’s vote total counts as news. Someone on the NYT website vowed to "take my dog for a walk and just check the news in the morning," and this helped me. My own version of "dog-walking" was to visit Book Lovers Cafe, a group on Facebook I very much like. These are introverted folks who enjoy fast-paced blockbuster books, and they write about their book-love, and sometimes their coffee-love, alongside photos of book nooks, individual book stacks, and snazzy bookmarks. These are my people. A nice feature of Book Lovers Cafe is that someone will occasionally ask a quick "ranking/preference" question, and you can fire away, and then move on. Here are my recent replies (using just the top of my head)..... Saddest Book I've Ever Read: Ariel Levy, "The Rule...

 The world is such a mess, and today may be a particularly ugly day. But it's also November, and it's an opportunity for thanksgiving. Here is the gay dad edition: *Gratitude for the following writers/artists: Jerry Pinkney, Nicole Rubel, James Marshall, Susan Meddaugh, Marc Brown, and Chris Van Allsburg (especially "Two Bad Ants") *Gratitude for Daylight Savings Time, because it means your baby starts going to sleep an hour "earlier," which would have seemed impossible otherwise *Gratitude for the passage of weeks, because certain things actually get easier, e.g. feeding *....For fall walks and Linus and the Great Pumpkin * ....For the person in your child's life who bakes you pumpkin bread, puts your child in mouse ears on Halloween, takes your child to the pool, introduces "drumming" and "French lessons" into the daily routine, and donates a sweater from the "Tommy Hilfiger" Baby Autumn lineup, for fun. These are all wond...

 I've become semi-hooked on the artist Summer Pierre, who reminds me of aspects of myself. Pierre sits and thinks about Frida Kahlo, or she gets very upset if a comics panel appears in "The Atlantic" without proper credit to the artist. I'm in a fight with the local library--I believe the staff lost one of the books I had borrowed--and I can imagine Summer Pierre having strong feelings about this, as well. In any case, here are three images from Pierre's work. One celebrates soap--it's from a Times piece directed at kids, "Soap Is Awesome"--and you'll want to note the tough soap molecules taking on the frowning virus. A second panel--again, for kids--lists various means of self-care; you have an exciting horizon before you, and it may involve "showering," "learning a new skill," or "breathing out." A third panel shows the valiant Frida Kahlo, and Kahlo is threading ribbons in her hair, in an effort to direct the view...