Liars and Saints

  Richard Osman writes unusual "journey" stories: Something bizarre happens, and we follow the consequences, and yet, simultaneously, very "relatable" tales unfold (on the sidelines). In "The Last Devil to Die," an antiques dealer becomes involved in a heroin operation. This seems to lead to his murder. An investigation points to a colleague named Samantha, who once pissed away her life by mourning the loss of her husband, but who discovered a second wind when she realized she loved committing crimes. (She sold a fake antique to a man who later threatened to kill her, then the two bonded over a spur-of-the-moment plan to pursue a career in art forgery.) While the insane heroin story unfolds, Osman also tells us about dementia. A loving marriage is disrupted when the husband, Stephen, begins to lose his mind. He writes a letter to himself--detailing the facts of his case--and he receives the letter in the mail. "You are in great pain, even if you don...

  Any memorable story will make use of tension and irony. The first concept is a gap between speech and thought. The second can be "situational": when we're led to expect one event, and the exact opposite is the thing that occurs. To me, Sondheim's "Putting It Together" is a dramatic masterpiece. It's a scene in which an artist needs to compete for funding. He is constantly saying something at odds with the contents of his heart. What he wants to say is: "Fuck you all, I'd like to work...." Instead, he must say: "I list the contributors on the side of my invention...." Also, to a minion: "You just gotta take it easy!" Then, the situational irony: An artist's job is to listen and to empathize, but the artist here can do neither. George continuously steps on toes, by saying the wrong thing: "You have no shortage of opinions," "I love your work, lighten up," "Go mingle RIGHT NOW...." You ca...

 Oscar Night is my Super Bowl; it's charitable for Marc to watch, because this isn't the language he speaks. Certainly, I would not devote three hours to the (actual) Super Bowl. I think the Oscars must--at times--remind Marc of the experience of watching paint dry. But he watches. "Who is Zendaya?" he asks. "She is the biggest movie star on the planet." (This calls to mind my own inquiry: "Remind me if Travis Kelce has a brother? And he plays for....a  different  team?") I do not think the Oscars represent the best in moviemaking, but I do think of them as a kind of political contest. If you win, your bargaining power can increase. (Though this isn't always the case.) It makes me sort of breathless when Cillian Murphy scores a victory--not because this is unexpected, but because we now live in a world where  Cillian Murphy is an Oscar-winning actor . He now might have options that weren't available one year ago. Who knows what this might m...

  In Woody Allen's great film "Husbands and Wives," Judy Davis announces that she is leaving Sydney Pollack. Two members of Davis's audience--Allen and Mia Farrow--can't wrap their heads around this news. The rupture in Davis's life has strange consequences. Allen and Farrow begin to argue, and ultimately they decide that *they* will split (while, oddly enough, Davis goes back to Pollack). The main idea is that, no matter how cool and calculated you are, you can't really control your life. To make God laugh, tell Him your plans. It's the genius of "The Simpsons" to rework this story as a cartoon. In "A Milhouse Divided," it's Luann and Kirk who are splitting up. This is revealed at a dinner party, where Marge tries to make chit chat about the new "Woods-y Allen" movie. ("I always enjoy his work, except for that one whiny guy who seems to get all the starring roles....") Will Luann's dissatisfaction trigge...

  The Tony Awards this year could be a showdown between "Cabaret" and "Merrily We Roll Along." Sondheim admired Kander and Ebb, so I like this possibility. "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" is diegetic music: It's a folk song that exists within the world of "Cabaret," so characters are *aware* when a waiter begins to sing it. Other characters can comment on the song (and, by contrast, you would not have a character commenting on "Defying Gravity" or "Send in the Clowns," as these are not diegetic songs). Again and again, "Tomorrow" starts with beauty and ends in corruption: The sun on the meadow is summery warm; The stag in the forest runs free. But gather together to greet the storm.... Tomorrow belongs to me. The "storm" is almost buried in the stanza; it rears its head toward the end. This is like Katie Britt cooing at us in her kitchen, then slipping in some racist rhetoric before the big finish. The branch ...

  Babar the elephant enjoys the beach, in youth; he digs in sand, with a little shell. The shell rests in a fold that he has created with his trunk. After the brutal murder of his mother, Babar retreats to Paris, where he briefly becomes distracted by an elevator in a department store. The kind intervention of an elderly Parisienne ensures that Babar will find his way: He learns about deportment, analytical thought, etc. The king of the jungle dies; Babar must return to his ancestral lands. Here, he rules with grace; he loses his temper only once. That's not to say that life is placid. Awaiting the birth of one of his offspring, Babar can't focus; he must take a brisk walk, in an effort to cope with his nervousness. Also, foreign invaders rear their heads, at times. And Babar's hot-air balloon blows off course; there are moments of hunger, there is the temptation of despair. A great fan of these stories, Maurice Sendak, has written eloquently about the subtext: The precious...

  Facebook is like a car crash; I can't look away. Most recently, the people of my town have started fighting about "flag disposal." A veteran spotted a flag in a dumpster, and he then posted a rather condescending lecture about the proper care of flags. A liberal firebrand saw the post and wrote, "I can't believe we're wringing our hands about cloth when this country dumps people, actual people, in the trash....Where is the sense of perspective?" .....I thought both halves of this fight were obnoxious. It was like witnessing an argument between my two children; empathy was not a possibility. Richard Russo is the king of small-town storytelling. His 2007 work, "Bridge of Sighs," concerns a town, Thomaston, that is pretty clearly a version of Russo's own ancestral Gloversville, in upstate NY. One road divides the middle class from the lower middle class; the road is actually called "Division." If you're "Western," liv...

  One thing I like about David Graziano is that he is really trying--not always gracefully--to make Olivia Benson into a human being.  Is she a superhero? She has extracted a child from a box in the ground. She has used the jaws of life to pull her dear (pregnant) friend from a crushed, burning car. Just recently, on a slow day, she stopped her boss from murdering his neighbor; the murder was actually seconds away from happening, when Olivia intervened. "Probability of Doom" asks--subtly--how much Olivia can withstand. She has been struggling this season, seeing antagonism in neutral strangers' faces, snapping at her colleagues. A new therapist suggests that she might want to revisit an old case, to answer some questions that she is asking herself--but the apparently straightforward act ("Google the phone number!") becomes overwhelming. All this plays out against a backdrop of indescribable horror. A pregnant woman reveals that her pedophile husband has been sta...

  It feels like Susie and I have watched every animated film in history, in the past few weeks: "Anastasia," "The Great Mouse Detective," "Snow White," "Lego Batman," "Encanto," "Up," "The Rescuers," "The Rescuers Down Under," "A Cat in Paris," "Puss in Boots II," "Tangled," "Ratatouille," "The Incredibles," "The Jungle Book," "The Princess and the Frog," and more. It's refreshing to watch with an attentive small child, because she can teach you about moviegoing: Suspend disbelief, and actually enter the world of the characters. Somehow, this is easy in childhood--and it becomes difficult in your forties. Susie just needs to see one animated skull; this causes her to shriek, "Spooky!" and to cover her eyes. Another thing I've learned from this project: The makers of "Snow White" knew what they were doing. Adjus...

  One way to define the 11:00 number is this: "the final star turn." Think of "Rose's Turn" or "So Long, Dearie." A major star has a life-changing realization--in "real time." ( Starting now, it's gonna be my turn....  or....  Dearie shoulda said  so long ....so long ago... ) Howard Ashman did something fun with the 11:00 concept. In "Beauty and the Beast," his star--Angela Lansbury--did not actually have the leading role. But Ashman wisely entrusted the fireworks to her. Lansbury could articulate the climactic discovery--"you can change, you can learn"--while the real stars could *enact* the discovery, through a dance. Ashman won the Oscar for this song. (Walt Disney himself had tried for years to dramatize "Beauty and the Beast," but he couldn't wrap his arms around the story. I credit Ashman with locating something universal in the fairy tale: Anyone can be errant and prideful, and this doesn't hav...

  "One Life" is a clever film that benefits immeasurably from Anthony Hopkins's presence. Hopkins is an elderly man who worries about becoming a grandfather. His life has dried up, in a way; he spends his time hoarding objects, to his wife's frustration. She urges him to start "purging"--and this act sends him on a journey. Long ago, the Hopkins character helped approximately six hundred children to flee Czechoslovakia during the Second World War. He did this, at least in part, because he and one child had discovered a shared love of swimming. The human connection moved him--and he found himself making calls on various desperate kids' behalf. In the present, Hopkins wants his "Czech" papers and mementoes on view--as an example of the kinds of things that can be undertaken in your "one life." Because Hopkins, the actor, is so bright, he helps to make this character something different from a tiresome saint. Hopkins wisely underplays th...

  The Five-Star British Swim School is the brainchild of one bright man, the Wizard of Oz, who never shows his face to parents. I'm not sure why it's a "British" school, but I think the adjective just preys on a lazy American assumption that anything English is vaguely superior (e.g. Jane Austen novels, Benjamin Britten operas, Judi Dench). The Wizard of Oz has hired a fleet of annoyed, bored children to teach the classes; the children are unsupervised and underpaid, and they sometimes speak openly about their job-related irritation. I try to manage this as if I were a Christoph Waltz character--worldly, unillusioned, in command of the situation--but I am not Christoph Waltz. "Look," says the guard at the door. "Umm...you're not allowed to use the locker rooms? But the teacher should give you a little tent. Your kids will have a changing tent. If it's not there? Definitely contact me...." There's no tent--and, in a rage, I strip nude. ...

  Recently, an online poll asked: "What is the beloved musical that you secretly dislike?" My answer is "Les Miserables," the show that dares to rhyme "virgin" with "urgin'" .... "Les Miserables" is the insane, bloated story of a good man who tries to escape from a psychopath. The psychopath, Javert, wants his enemy to return to jail, and I assume this is because of intense, repressed homosexual lust (although the lust remains subtextual, in a show where almost nothing counts as subtext). One day, the good guy has an opportunity to kill the psychopath, but the good guy loves Christ, so he chooses forgiveness. But this act of mercy is overwhelming for Javert, who then opts (delightfully) to murder himself in the Seine. That's basically the entire story. Here are a few things I hate in this show: *"I'll see him safe behind bars! This I swear by....the stars!" *Jean Valjean withholds basic details of Cosette's lif...

 Yesterday, I interviewed for a tutoring position; one-third of the Zoom call failed to materialize, and she never sent a heads-up (or explained her absence, in the ensuing hours). I tried to play it cool--as if this were not the sole interview I'd had, in a long while--but, after the call, I became excited by the thought of "Linkedin," and I immediately sent a "request to connect." Then I spent the rest of the day fretting that my request would come off as "needy." "Girls5eva" is my story. I watch it because I *am* Dawn. Drifting through her forties, Dawn dreams of a renewed connection to "the world outside parenthood." But that world is youth-obsessed. Ariana Grande sings of her many dazzling romantic entanglements; by contrast, Dawn is mainly worried that her spouse will watch "The Crown" before all members of the family are present in the living room--present and accounted for. Dawn gives voice to my concerns. For exam...

  For a long while, I was intimidated by the thought of "room decoration." How do I know what my children want in their rooms? Then, oddly, a light went on. Marc took Josh to a particular gym in NJ, where the "chill-out room" featured an aquatic theme. You could stare at plastic fish and dig your fingers into synthetic "mermaid scales." This was mesmerizing for Josh. So my son's room became the bottom of the ocean floor. Now, wooden fish swim across the walls. A 2-D turtle hangs out above the dresser. Everything, or nearly everything, is blue, and I'd like to add "decal coral" to the perimeter (but I haven't reached for my shopping cart, yet). My daughter's room is sub-Saharan Africa; we have the giraffe, the hippo, and the lion, and I have a vision of papier mache birds (flying overhead). Basically, the house is becoming a Disney film. A part of me doesn't understand why my own bedroom can't be the New Orleans of "Th...

  The cliche about writing is that you should write for yourself; write the story that you would want to read. But so many writers struggle with this. So much material seems committee-tested, pandering. Then there is Larry David. Here is an extraordinary recent scene from "Curb Your Enthusiasm." A group of friends has opted to dine at a Chinese restaurant. One friend discloses that he is dating a powerful executive at Disney. Now things become surprising--and somehow inevitable. The bawdiest friend discloses that he would like to fuck Tinkerbell. "She's so sexy, she'd bop over...wink at me....I'd put her in my pocket....." (Art gets at the truth--and the Tinkerbell in Disney's "Peter Pan" is bizarrely, inappropriately sexy. How often is this discussed?) As if things can't get stranger, Larry David interrupts this discussion to observe a fish, in a decorative fish tank. The fish is clearly stuck to a filter. But the host doesn't want...

 Adelle Waldman has rewritten "Pride and Prejudice"; her Lady Catherine is a woman named Meredith, who is gunning for a promotion at a big box store in upstate NY. Meredith attended FIT, but she dropped out to become a pop singer. When the music plan dried up, Meredith found herself back home, climbing the ladder at "Town Square," a kind of fancy Wal-Mart. Now, Meredith berates her employees, who struggle to live on part-time wages, and who walk to work on deadly highways at 3:30 am. Untroubled by a conscience, Meredith finds the employees irritating. When someone approaches with a hard-luck story--a need for a prison visit, or a complaint about asthma--Meredith becomes impatient. Her taxes contribute to welfare programs, so why should she wring her hands about other people? Meredith is a fabulous monster--unique in contemporary American fiction. We have all worked for a Meredith--and we have all behaved like Meredith. In one scene, a white woman calls Town Square t...

  Before my senior year of college, I interned at Vintage Books; my boss was Russell Perreault, a bright, irascible man who had climbed up from very little (and who kept climbing, climbing, climbing). Russell loved books; he gave me three, when I met him. One was "Revolutionary Road," by Richard Yates, who has become "the artist of my life." I admire Yates's energy and his sense of humor, even in his "minor" novels ("A Good School," "Cold Spring Harbor"). Russell also gave me "What Makes Sammy Run" and "The Monk," a Gothic novel. I'm not sure I'll ever read "The Monk," but "Sammy" seems appealing to me, now that I'm in my forties and interested in Old Hollywood. Russell was known for having very little patience, and I think he realized (quickly) that I wasn't meant for a publicity department. I recall asking for Random House to cover my subway expenses; I could sense Russell...

 "Two Dogs" is the story of a marriage--between dachshunds, Augie and Perry. These two are adored, in youth, but then their owner goes away to school, and life becomes somewhat repetitive. Augie (the immature one) fills his days by stealing Perry's rubber ball. Perry (the civilized one) calmly asks for his property, but the only trick that works is to play high notes on the piano until Augie relents and apologizes. Desiring a change, the two dogs attempt an illicit trip outdoors. They roll in raccoon poop; they pee on the rose bush. But they go too far; they realize they can dig (and dig, and dig) an enormous hole. And the evidence of their transgression threatens to overturn their lives; they risk eviction from their comfortable (and warm, and food-filled) home. I love these dogs because I think I know them; I think I'm reading about two halves of myself. Falconer died soon after "Two Dogs," but he ended on a high note; it's a funny and suspenseful work...

  Judy Blume made waves with “Margaret,” but her “minor” work is just as fun: “Freckle Juice,” “Blubber,” “The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo.”   In recent years, Blume has become a champion of gay characters, in picture books: Julian the Mermaid, Amy Bloom’s “Flower Girl.”   Blume spends at least a portion of the year in Key West; her husband rescued the local cinema, and Blume seems to have contributed to the literary scene. I don’t think she runs Books and Books, but she has donated her time. Her photo is in the windows, with a note to the viewer: “I READ BANNED LITERATURE!” (Blume is beaming.)   It’s charming to see Blume’s evangelism for certain writers. Under the new Sigrid Nunez novel, Blume has written a letter to shoppers: “I’ll read anything by Sigrid. I’d just like to be her friend. I wish I could have lunch with her every week….” For Mary Karr, and for “The Liars’ Club”: “THE MEMOIR THAT STARTED IT ALL!!”   My favorite part of Blume’s store ...

  The astonishing series, "The Curse"--which is like a horror-film version of "Curb Your Enthusiasm"--has to do with bodies. It's partly about how embarrassing our bodies are. In one scene, a producer of reality TV needs a certain subject to weep on camera. She won't comply--she isn't feeling joyful, and in fact she is dying of cancer. But the producer assaults her with a pipet of fake tears, then tries to rub a potion on her cheeks, "for redness." Later, shockingly, a father-in-law speaks to his "mentee" about the phenomenon of the small penis. "There are beefsteak tomatoes, and there are cherry tomatoes--but once you stick them in a sandwich, they all taste the same...." Some of the grossest jokes concern skin. A popular show--in the fictional world of "The Curse"--has a masked lover dating various interested women. No one knows what the masked man looks like. It's only on a climactic wedding night that the m...

 Ten years after Philip Seymour Hoffman's death, there are several performances that stay with me: "Talented Mr. Ripley," "Moneyball," "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," "Capote," "Magnolia," "Doubt." But my own favorite is "The Savages." I think of this as a spiritual sequel to "You Can Count on Me."  In "YCC on Me," Laura Linney is the responsible sibling; in "The Savages," she is the one who can't grow up. She has to fly to Buffalo to deal with her senile dad; this guy was abusive, in his golden era, and now he is beyond reach. Linney believes that if she makes the right moves, she might somehow achieve "closure" with her father. Old wounds will be healed. Of course, she is wrong, and her anger keeps rearing its head in surprising ways. She requires the "elder care" residents to watch "Daddy's favorite film," which has substantial inter...

 The extraordinary career of Jason Katims, which began in the "So-Called Life" era, has to do with small towns. In "My So-Called Life," the town takes the form of a high school; everyone is in everyone's business. One's decision to dye one's hair has substantial sociological implications. A love triangle becomes the talk of the town. Boundaries are crossed; seismic shifts may occur when a "good kid" needs to tutor a "bad kid" in math. Katims went on to "Friday Night Lights," the feather in his cap. Here, the "town," another high school, is the setting for anything and everything: extramarital flirtation, economic warfare, racial awkwardness, abortion fighting, theft, mental illness, drugs, power struggles. Essentially decent people make mistakes, and attempt cover-ups, and the farcical lying is always worse than the actual "crime." So "Parenthood" is a reasonable variation on a theme. It's h...