Liars and Saints

  She quickly sets the scene:   Sitting in a park in Paris, France— Reading the news, and it sure looks bad. They won’t give peace a chance; that was just a dream some of us had. Still a lot to see—but I wouldn’t want to stay here. It’s too old and cold and set in its ways here.   She is already poking fun at herself; she is both hungry to see more of France and irritated by a European “coldness and oldness.”   Met a redneck on a Grecian Isle; He did the goat dance very well. He gave me back my smile… But he kept my camera to sell. Oh, the rogue, the red, red rogue…. He cooked good omelets and stews—and I might have stayed on with him— But my heart cried out for you, California….   Again, there is some difficulty with decision-making: “The rogue….I might have stayed on with him….” Also, we jump from one country to another with just a single word.   I caught a train to Spain… Went to a party down a red dirt road… There were lots of pretty people there, readi...

  Around ten years ago, in Steubenville, Ohio, two high-school football players sexually assaulted a girl. One of the players, Trent Mays, already had a predatory history, and it seems he chose the new girl because she came from another town, and she was vulnerable. The two football players took the unconscious girl and violated her with their fingers. Trent Mays also attempted to force her to perform oral sex. It seems other acts occurred, because of semen evidence, but the rest of the story is shadowy. Mays liked to have trophies from his assaults, so he circulated photos; boys saw footage of the assault and commented via video, and the videos then spread themselves throughout Steubenville. Only one witness -- a kid who had some history with law enforcement -- attempted to raise objections. "This isn't cool; this is rape." No one listened to this one witness. Later, adults -- parents and educators -- tried to erase evidence of what had occurred. Rape myths popped up: ...

 Tom Perrotta wrote "Election" because he was interested in George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot. Perrotta didn't want to comment directly on Perot, but he did have thoughts about power, and about human emotion; Perrotta also knew that the meanest political stories are the "smallest" political stories. So Perrotta wrote about a high-school election; he turned Perot into a stoner girl, a D student, a student determined to spread chaos through various overly bright high-school hallways. A similar idea forms the center of "Tracy Flick Can't Win." Again, the stakes are amazingly low. One character is a school vice-principal; she really wants to be the principal. Another character had an affair with her boss many years ago; now, she'd like very much to get a kind word from this guy, or maybe a "farewell" coffee mug. Tom Perrotta makes me think of Richard Yates -- who was relentlessly bleak, and who poked holes in inflated egos, always. It's...

  "Breaking Bad" is about love, sex, and death; it's funny and subversive; it has a snappy, alliterative title and a memorable opening-credit sequence.  A man abandons his lofty intellectual dreams to become a teacher. Later, a cancer diagnosis shakes him. If there isn't a God, if life can be so random and awful, then why not make some cash in the world of methamphetamines? Walter White shows smarts in certain ways; he manages the nefarious kingpin Gus Fring, and he extracts himself from Fring's watch (while also keeping his stooge, Jesse, alive). Walter wards off a DEA visit even when his vehicle has obvious "bullet wounds," and he stops a murderous plot by connecting many, many dots, in his head, at just the right moment. At the same time, Walter can be almost incredibly obtuse, especially with his spouse, who is just as sharp as he is. And when Walter advises teenagers not to have sad thoughts about a recent plane explosion, you really can't belie...

 Every community has a glamorous lady -- and, for Maplewood, the lady is L. L lives three doors down from me. When I spot her and ask about her state of mind, she sighs deeply and says, "I'm mourning the position of women in this country." She goes on: "I'm not depressed? I'm not anxious? I'm  languishing.  Read the Times. It's a thing, it's called  languishing ." I offer that my life has recently become a bit more colorful, because I have some proofreading jobs. "That's nice," says L. "I'm working with Brooke Shields. I'm producing her documentary about her teen years. Brooke says,  You think the Britney stuff was bad?  It's time to hear MY story ...." I nod, as if we've all "been there." "Of course," adds L, "the big bulk of my time is going to my true crime film. Have I mentioned that? TELL THEM WHAT YOU DID. The entire town knows the identity of the murderer. They're say...

 A novel of manners is just about how people talk to one another in cafes, on dates, in offices. For a certain reader, this is catnip; I am that certain reader. Elinor Lipman, queen of comic novelists, writes about manners. She considers how you might send a gentle reminder if your e-mail correspondent seems to have become a ghost. She memorizes the people who show up for a particular funeral -- then she notes how the act of "showing up" moves mountains. She sees the comedy in a cover letter, or a resume -- and she helps us see the comedy, too. A few years ago, Lipman's husband died, and Lipman didn't want to leave the house. So she mocked herself, in fiction; she invented a widow who is terrified of the world, and who wants to market a sex-free Match.com service called "Chaste Dates." When Lipman did find herself stepping out, she kept a journal close at hand; she later found a spot in her novel for "a blind date, a former baseball player who effective...

I celebrated my birthday early, with my husband, by listening to court transcripts from the Charles Adelson case. Charles is a chauvinist dentist in Florida. His sister, Wendi, is a difficult person; she was briefly married to another difficult person, Dan Markel. A bitter divorce ensued. Wendi complained about Dan's tyrannical post-divorce behavior, and Charles then arranged to have Dan murdered. Charles handled the logistics in a sloppy way--believe it or not!--and now the season of justice is upon us. If you're wondering how to respond to your fortieth, I have to recommend the podcast "Tally"--which introduces you to unforgettable characters. I'm not talking just about Charles and Wendi and Dan, but also about Wendi's mother, Dan's law school classmate David Lat, and a group of rabbis accused of extortion by the FBI. It's said that truth is stranger than fiction--and "Tally" makes the case. For example, after the murder, Wendi (who may hav...

  The first time I saw my son dance, the music video was "Vogue," by Madonna. To me, "Vogue" seems like a response to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." In his 1984 song, Prince acknowledges the grimness of existence: "In this life, things are much harder than in the afterworld...." You may not like "the world you're living in...." Madonna is similarly blunt: "Look around. Everywhere you turn is heartache. It's everywhere that you go. You try everything you can to escape the pain of life that you know...." Prince has an answer to sadness: just go crazy, just get nuts. "Better live now before the Grim Reaper comes knocking at your door..." And, similarly, here's Madonna: "Let your body move to the music. Let your body go with the flow...." "Vogue" was an afterthought; Madonna needed something to pad out her album "I'm Breathless," which had an Oscar-winning Sondheim song (...

 One last thing Kate McKinnon did on SNL, a thing I loved, was to bring Amy Coney Barrett to life. A villain doesn't know she is a villain, and so McKinnon makes Coney Barrett into a deranged, chipper chatterbox. McKinnon's hands swat at the air, as if brushing away pesky opponents. McKinnon also trots out her judgmental Justin Bieber face, to indicate how Ms. Coney Barrett feels about young pregnant people. But an additional star here is the writer, whoever that may be. The lines are brilliant. When ACB recalls the Supreme Court case, she shrugs and says, "I asked all of my question." Referring to "safe haven" laws, ACB says, "Just do your nine and plop. It's not even ten months. It's nine. Plop the baby, JUNGLE BOOK it, and move on." Finally, "it's not murder if you give birth, wrap the baby in a bag, and drop it in a mailbox. Or just turn it over to a stork, have the stork dump it on some lesbians!" I don't get tired of...

 "Only Murders in the Building" is ostensibly a murder mystery, and it's clearly a love letter to Hitchcock's "Rear Window" (especially in the opening credits). But, at its core, the series is a portrait of Manhattan, and it shows (gracefully) how a big residential building can behave like a small town. A main figure in the current season is Bunny, who has been murdered. In life, Bunny was a grouchy co-op president, difficult to talk to, but committed to the common good. ("Do you have a permit to sell that merchandise in my courtyard?") Bunny is the sort of boss you affectionately mock; when you're scolded, you shiver with pleasure and say, "I've just been bunny'd!" Nearby Bunny's former space is Amy Schumer, playing Amy Schumer. In the series, Ms. Schumer is a vampiric, status-crazed narcissist. ("We all have to learn by doing....That's how I mastered stand-up comedy...in one day. It took me one day....I was also...

 "I just think," I say, "the producers really should have monitored the understudy's Insta. Is that what young people use? Insta? Everything went wrong with the Insta." Sometimes, Marc and I wonder if Lea Michele is really mean, or if she just had a big rocky patch in her professional "first act." "Do you believe," says Marc, "that someone chose to name her own daughter after a bean? Where does 'Beanie' come from?" My own thoughts drift to the word "funny," in "Funny Girl." Tiffany Haddish is pretty funny; Carey Mulligan was quite funny, in "Promising Young Woman." Annaleigh Ashford is funny. But then the word "girl" suggests youth ..... I shut down my phone; it's time for bed. But Marc has another question: Who are  people who need people ?  And the gears start turning again. It's going to be a long night.

On Paul Holes, "Unmasked":   One standard rule in the world of memoirs is that the writer must expose a Divided Self; we're all waging inner wars, and when we see someone candidly describing internal conflicts, we (often) make a connection.  The detective Paul Holes knows this well -- or at least his ghost-writer knows the drill. Holes is the cold-case expert who tracked down the Golden State Killer. This alone is a great story. It involves linking the East Area Rapist to the Original Night Stalker, forming an alliance with Patton Oswalt et al, fighting over the ethics of genealogy research, and trailing sketchy people who turn out to be innocent. Holes describes apprehending the GSK; this guy murmured about "a force that made me do it," and he sat immobile, fully immobile, under watch, for at least an hour. (During assaults, the GSK would often become silent for long, long stretches; the victims would then think they were alone, and suddenly the GSK would clear...

 Each morning, I imagine my shirt will remain clean until bedtime. Today will be the day. Today, I will: get a bib on my infant before every feeding. Get the baby in the special dining seat, so when she throws prunes, I'm at least several inches beyond the "flight path." Observe the blue Dr. Brown "warning line," so excess milk doesn't nose its way past the tan stopper-disc and into my lap. My plan lasts until ten am, when I decide I'll cheat just a bit. If I squirt pureed peas into my crying baby, my baby can continue to play while I keep my spot in John Grisham's "The Rainmaker." Susie won't tolerate this, so then she is in my lap, spewing both tears *and* liquefied peas. A water wipe is an option, but it's easier just to use the shirt I'm wearing as a big rag. Then, it's a long slide down, until at seven pm, Susie's urine makes it past her diaper, past her Minnie Mouse shorts, and onto my jeans, which are already spec...

 People think of Tomi Ungerer as the Michelangelo of picture books; the images are strange, and they make your eyes pop, and no one else could invent them. Also, Ungerer's narrative ideas are sublime and weird; they are not earthbound. In a matter-of-fact way, Ungerer announces that a bat has stumbled in on a late-night drive-in movie. ("I have to see color! I have to see the daytime world!") Other writers could work for decades, and they'd never have anything like that idea. A final thing I love about Ungerer is that he doesn't moralize, and he doesn't underline in an unnecessary way. He doesn't talk down to kids. Determined to make his own path, a bat begins to experiment with paint, and he sketches green and purple designs on his little body. We don't need an aside about the wonder of being different. We don't need the narrator to observe that a slightly goofy moment is slightly goofy. The story just unfolds; less is more. This might seem easy, ...

My liberal strategist friend has a Republican friend. If my liberal friend wants to combat a particular Republican evil, e.g. homophobia, the Republican's favored response is: "I understand and agree with you, but I really think you want to save my fire power for something else." In other words, protecting a certain minority is a worthy cause, but there are many *worthier* causes: Why not save political capital for the *really worthy* causes? This way of punting makes me think of "It Was All a Lie," a book by Stuart Stevens about the recent history of the Republican party. Around 2016, various Republicans were alarmed that Trump might prevail. Stevens led an effort to recruit high-profile centrist Republicans to run for the presidency--just to carve some votes off of Trump's plate, and thus ensure a victory for Hillary Clinton. Each of the centrists said: "No, no. Trump is a fascist, and America will understand this and let HRC win. Let's watch Trum...

  A great script is a ticket to another world, and you carry the characters with you for a few weeks.  "American Woman" seems to borrow from Richard Linklater's "Boyhood," although it's less slow, less self-indulgent than "Boyhood." A woman, Deb, sits with her adolescent daughter. The two are talking about dresses for an upcoming date. Deb had her daughter when she was sixteen--and, at sixteen, the daughter went ahead and had a son. Everyone is together under one roof. (Did this then lead to "Mare of Easttown"?) We think we're going to be watching a parent/child film--but, within a few minutes, a random murder occurs. Deb is now without her kid, and she must raise the grandchild on her own. Over two hours, we track Deb through bad relationships, despair, drunken tantrums, betrayals, celebrations. Deb ends things with one terrible man after a confrontation with the man's wife. ("You think you're special? You're the fir...

 My frenemy's mother looks and dresses like Sophia Loren.  In her Florida life, she teaches Kindergarten. (Often, her son says, "My kids are so lucky! Granny is a Kindergarten teacher!") Surely, Mother Frenemy is the most glamorous Kindergarten teacher who has ever lived, and her contract seems to allow her to fly to New Jersey for long stretches, to raise the child whom my frenemy should be raising. After a certain party he has hosted, my frenemy declines to write thank you notes. He has his mom do the job. The notes have a little narcissistic twist; each has a staged shot, not of the party guests, but of the party host, and this makes me giggle (just a bit). My husband clears his throat. "Oh God," he says. "You're going to write about this. You actually don't know who drafted the thank you note. You haven't studied the penmanship of every single gay man on this planet....." And I just shake my head. "This is war," I murmur. ...

  Vince Gilmer was a well-loved doctor in rural North Carolina. One day, he borrowed his father from an assisted-living facility and committed patricide; he removed the fingers of the corpse, then he slept and went to his office. His nurses said that nothing about his behavior indicated distress. During questioning, however, Gilmer was a bad liar, and his plot was sloppy. It wasn't hard to build the case against the doctor. But had he made a deliberate choice to commit his murder on the border between North Carolina and Virginia (creating a "turf battle," redirecting beams of attention that would otherwise fall on his own apparent villainy)? Years later, Gilmer's rural-clinic successor (the writer of a new memoir, "The Other Dr. Gilmer") felt puzzled. Why would a smart man insist on being his own defense attorney? Why had Gilmer sabotaged himself in the courtroom? How could Gilmer commit murder and then show no signs of angst? Was he a sociopath? He talked a...

 A strange thing about parenthood is that the quietest exchange can send you into a tailspin of burning rage. (Or is that just me? It's just me? OK.) The other day, I sat with my infant and awaited the end of my toddler's school day. I had a new book of stories by John Grisham. They weren't demanding stories. They were the kind of stories with this brand of language: Swinging her briefcase at the accountant, Jessica began to hiss. "You get me that money," she said, "or you'll never see Tootie again....." My infant was sleeping in her carseat; I was zipping along in the story, keeping my mind's eye on Tootie. A friendly fellow mom approached to make eyes at my baby. This was fine; it's nice to have human contact. But at the end of the chat, she said, "Reading a book! With two small children! I don't know how you do it!" And God damn it. I said nothing. But here's what I would say, if I could revisit this moment:  Having a kid...

 One of my favorite stars, Cameron Diaz, is un-retiring. She is making her first film since 2014. Diaz has been a bright ray of sunlight in my life over many years, via "Being John Malkovich," "Bad Teacher," "Charlie's Angels," "In Her Shoes," and "The Holiday."  But my "number one" among her films is "My Best Friend's Wedding," a movie that has an important spot in my family's heart. "Wedding," ranked among the greatest romantic comedies of all time, is actually not a romantic comedy. Girl meets guy; girl loses guy; but, then, girl does *not* overcome various obstacles to re-claim guy. Girl struggles, flirts with villainousness, then learns to accept pain and put on a brave face (with assistance from Golden Globe nominee Rupert Everett, who has an iconic speech at the end of the movie). One of many treats in this movie is the fact that you're actually watching a musical; the story begins wi...

  "The Ice Storm" is the strangest of journey stories; the journey in question is just one trip home, for a Thanksgiving weekend. Tobey Maguire heads back to Connecticut to be with Mom and Dad; it's the early seventies. Dad is having an affair with Sigourney Weaver; Mom is aware, but also tired, and she thinks maybe the awful status quo is sustainable (or *close* to sustainable). The children in this story watch the adults, and "mature" weirdness and cruelty get exaggerated. Cristina Ricci toys with a little kid who might grow up to become Timothy McVeigh. Tobey Maguire drugs a friend so that he can win a contest for Katie Holmes's attention; the drugging is badly planned, and there is collateral damage. You're always noting a gap between speech and thought; these Connecticut people are just actors, and they are very, very bad actors. It's embarrassing and painful to watch them. But, also, they seem to draw out our sense of compassion. "The Ice ...

  Unfortunately, there is one thing my son will watch beyond cartoons, and it's "Smooth Criminal." I try to imagine how I might contextualize this dance routine. "Michael Jackson was a monster and a pedophile, but also a brilliant dancer.....and many producers on Broadway decided that America was ready to forget the bad stuff and be entertained....And the producers were right.....because....here we are, watching clips from the Michael Jackson musical...." I spoke too soon. My son will also watch "Together Again," featuring Janet Jackson. And a speech begins in my head: "Janet is an apologist for her brother....She does what she can to scrub his image.....But maybe it's not fair that she is forced into any kind of public position vis-a-vis Michael....who was a grown man, after all...." Occasionally, I sigh deeply, as a way to keep my head on straight. And my son--a shrewd mimic--does the same. When he is irritated with his sister, I hear h...