Liars and Saints

 One reservation that people have with regard to contemporary literary fiction is that characters will not "make a scene." There is a mildness, a quietness, that does not lead to explosive conflict. For this reason, many readers turn to "young adult" novels. "Sunrise on the Reaping" has a terrific central figure: Plutarch Heavensbee, a kind of journalist who stages tearful moments for the entertainment of the masses. He makes an error and loses footage of a family breakup; he then offers the family extra minutes of togetherness if they will cry on camera for him. (The writer Suzanne Collins was inspired in part by reality TV. When we watch someone get her hopes crushed on "The Bachelor," what are we really doing?) Elsewhere, a "tribute" in the Hunger Games confesses that he has previously organized betting pools around the games. He has profited when certain children have died. Now, he suspects that his own family is placing bets agains...

  Rachel Aviv wrote a wonderful piece in "The New Yorker" about Alice Munro. Among the revelations: *Munro was raped. She didn't report the rape. She threatened her assailant with an idea for a short story about the incident--and I think the two never spoke again. *After Munro sabotaged her own relationship with her daughter, she still collected stories about the daughter (via another family member). She would then insert herself into the stories and present them to her editor, Dan Menaker; in Munro's retelling, Munro herself would be (magically) at the kitchen table as her estranged grandchild performed his various tricks. *When Munro's husband was outed in court, Munro made plans to live with a family friend. When she realized that the scandal would not become international news, she stayed with her husband. The planned matrimonial rupture had been just a face-saving effort--bread and a circus for the masses. Thinking about Munro, I've returned to the story ...

  It's said that "The Simpsons" has the success it has because of its twin subjects: family and folly. There will always be family; there will always be folly. We will always feel an interesting ambivalence toward our blood relations. We will always behave in silly ways. And so there will always be "The Simpsons." My son has a behavioral coach who visits on Tuesdays. I find this person well-intentioned and somewhat exasperating. She has built a career on challenging the gospel of potty training--the gospel that says, "Your child must display curiosity and readiness before you begin the process." The behavioral coach says, "Nope. Not true." The coach's prodding so deeply irritates my son, he has started to shut her out. He isn't subtle. "Go away," he says, when she arrives. "Bye! Bye now!" Sometimes, he holds up a hand and says, "Stop talking. If you talk, I'm going to hit you." Once, the coach suggest...

  My daughter and I survived only one hour of the new "Snow White"; Susie complained that the Evil Queen was too loud and that Grumpy was "bad to look at." I didn't think Gal Gadot was too loud, but I agree with many critics that the performance is regrettable; how did this push past the editing process? I became distracted by considering various performers with actual musical-theater ability who would be better in the role. Heather Headley, Sherie Rene Scott, Anika Noni Rose, Annaleigh Ashford, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Laura Benanti--these are the names that came to mind. Also, I thought about Stephen Sondheim and his stinging words for Diane Paulus. Sondheim became irritated when Paulus imagined that she was wiser than Ira Gershwin; Paulus would rescue "Porgy and Bess" by making it "more enlightened." Sondheim suggested that there is a difference between operatic grandeur and kitchen-sink realism; the fact that something is not "gritty ...

  "Here After" is a memoir about a woman whose husband heads out for a run. This guy is thirty--thirty-one, thirty-two--years old. He stumbles and dies. It's never clear why he dies. The autopsy suggests that--at the moment of death--he was in perfect health. The writer, Amy Lin, then becomes deranged with grief. She begins looking for a "suicide bridge." (Her friend suggests that "no bridge in town is high enough" for the desired outcome.) Amy Lin considers reading the Joyce Carol Oates "grief memoir" but feels (justifiably) irritated by JCO's famously coy omission. (Nowhere does Oates write, "Within a year of my husband's death, I marched down the aisle again.") Lin is scathing when she describes the narcissism of friends and family. There is an expectation that you will start to cope and "find closure"; if you don't display signs of resilience, you will quickly become boring. Observers believe that a "s...

 My career coach says that the worst phenomenon is a client who doesn't take the work seriously; she charges a substantial fee in part to discourage this kind of client from signing up. I do try to take the work seriously. I've dragged myself out of the house to resume tutoring. The challenge of relating to teenagers has been stimulating; thank God for Hollywood. I can score points by agreeing with one student that the new Captain America is "actually not that bad." A favorite student made my day by congratulating me after the Oscars: "Anora did so good!!!!" (Never mind that this student was hoping to learn basic grammar rules from me. We can discuss that some other time.) Mainly, though, I find myself wandering through art museums, then feeling guilty about my choice.  "Why go all the way to the Met? Why not be practical, and check out the Morristown Museum?" This is dispiriting to me. It's like saying, "Why travel an extra hour to hear t...

  Some people wring their hands about the large number of fictional sex workers who have lent their stories to Oscar-winning performances. Characters played by Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway, Mikey Madison, Jane Fonda, Charlize Theron, and so on. I have no doubt that there is something prurient at work here.  But also....It's just interesting to follow a character who exists on the margins, whose life is unsettled. It's easier to spin a story from this than from the life of a character who is established, who has made many major choices, who has secured some form of comfort and stability. To me, this seems like stating the obvious. Stephen Sondheim's Dot is not a sex worker, but she is a marginal figure: Well, if you want bread And respect and attention-- Not to say connection-- Modeling's no profession... Dot is smart, and yet she doesn't know how to read. She is almost literally muzzled by her employer, who is also her lover. Her sole source of revenge is her own witti...

  Beverly Cleary's gift was for paying very close attention to children. She had respect for a kid's emotional life; she recognized that this life was not substantially different from an *adult's* emotional life. When Ramona Quimby is old enough to think about her Halloween costume, she has a brief panic attack. She considers the possibility that no one around her will recognize her. If she isn't recognized, is she still Ramona? I remember this sometimes when I'm dealing with social anxiety; the fact that a fear isn't rational doesn't help to erase the fear. Ramona listens to a fight between her parents and wrestles with the possible implications; she launches a campaign to end her depressed father's smoking habit. She also struggles with boundaries; when another child wears her hair in "boing boing curls," Ramona discovers that she cannot control her own roving fingers. If you have ever engaged in Facebook stalking, then you have walked in Ram...

 To me, St. Patrick's Day is mainly about storytelling. I don't know if Ireland is disproportionately "good" at writing, but consider the names: Edna O'Brien, Synge, Mark O'Connell, James Joyce, Colm Toibin, Yeats, Sean O'Casey, Brian Friel, Claire Keegan, William Trevor, Colin Barrett, Sharon Horgan, John Banville, Roddy Doyle, Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson, Frank McCourt, Seamus Heaney, Sally Rooney, Brian Moore. This seems abnormal. My kids and I read "Patrick, Patron Saint of Ireland," by Tomie dePaola. We have read it many times. DePaola understands that a good story is about a character, not a message. And Patrick has a good story. He is captured from Britain and sold into slavery in Ireland. Alone, he talks to God incessantly for six years. Given a chance to return to Britain, he "seduces" a group of hounds, so that they will force their master to create a Patrick-sized vacancy on his ship. But, then, Patrick is restless in Br...

  "Parenthood" is like a retelling of "Sex and the City"; we have four protagonists, and they oppose one another in reliable ways. Two are feckless; these two are the Samantha and Carrie forces, Dax Shepard and Lauren Graham. The other two are fairly conservative; these two would be Miranda and Charlotte, Peter Krause and Erika Christensen. The feckless siblings are not always in committed partnerships; the conservative siblings are very much married, and married, and married. Generally, in an hour, two siblings get "heavy lifting" storylines, and the other two get "comic relief" plots. Sometimes, the comic relief is an indirect comment on the heavy lifting storyline. For example, as Erika Christensen struggles with the weighty news that her child will need to "move backwards" in elementary school, Dax Shepard has a lighter script about learning to endorse his son's love of ballet. Emily Nussbaum called the series one of two "f...

 In some ways, this memoir features an unreliable narrator. Whenever a speaker is unerringly virtuous, and surrounded by fools, you have to feel suspicious. A skeptic may read this book and ask a question: "If Sarah Wynn-Williams finds Zuckerberg so repellent, why does she remain with the company for years, and years, and years?" (It's a question that SWW doesn't really answer.) A pivotal scene features SWW in a game of Settlers of Catan. Gradually, SWW realizes that her colleagues are deliberately modifying their strategies so that Mark Zuckerberg will win. SWW (heroically!) launches a protest. Everyone denies that she sees what she is seeing, and Zuckerberg, apparently one of the smarter people on the planet, seems startled and dismissive toward SWW. This is a "set piece moment"; it's like Sigrid Nunez attending an awkward dinner with Susan Sontag in "Sempre Susan." But does it pass the "smell" test? Does SWW's inability to doub...

  At the end of "Strega Nona," the titular witch punishes her naughty servant by making him eat bottomless bowls of pasta: Too much of a good thing becomes a kind of hell. This is the position I'm in. My daughter has discovered the early nineties version of "Beauty and the Beast"--which is great--but I've now seen it five times in one week. I'm locked in a strange psychological battle with my daughter. If, in any way, I suggest that I've seen the film too many times, this will only make the film seem much, much more attractive. My best option is to cheerfully submit, hoping that the tale will lose its luster. I occupy myself with editorial questions. This sorceress in the prologue--who the fuck does she think she is? She tricks the prince, then sends him to purgatory for one stupid remark? Also, I think about the Beast's patch of land. Presumably--to procure eggs, milk, textiles--someone needs to leave the palace, fend off the hungry wolves, and ...

  A "rearview mirror" song is a note to a friend; it's the thoughts you forgot to articulate. You have these thoughts as you're driving away, and you're glancing in the rearview mirror. Often--in the song's asides and parenthetical allusions--we get the entire history of a relationship. A sterling example is Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Getting Back Together." Taylor is delivering a message--of course--but she is also narrating several months of "bad romance"; she is giving us the (entertaining) context for her decision. Another fine example is "Make You Feel My Love," by Bob Dylan. This is a friend addressing another friend. Letter Recipient is in trouble. Letter Writer is offering help. When the wind is blowing in your face-- And the whole world is on your case-- I could offer you a warm embrace-- To make you feel my love. The reason that the song is brilliant is the little wrinkle that Dylan adds. The Letter Recipient is po...

  Curtis Sittenfeld's new collection of stories is uneven. "White Women LOL" tries to be a riff on the Central Park Birder incident, but the piece has very little to say. Also, a "sequel" to "Prep" just meanders and sputters without a payoff. But--elsewhere--certain characters pop off the page. I keep thinking about a woman who has memories of her adolescence. In college, she studied the viola. She was self-conscious about her coed bathroom, so she trained herself to poop before anyone else was awake. But a particularly cruel male neighbor discovered her secret--and made inferences about her self-loathing--and began stalking her during bathroom trips. This is such a strange situation. Everyone poops; the poop itself should not be a source of shame. But the bully has extraordinary power over the violist. I couldn't anticipate where all of this was headed. I also felt caught up in the world of a liberal film producer who has a strange assignment. A c...

  Part of marriage is being indulgent. For example, there is a certain kind of humor my husband likes, and I'm not always sure how to respond, but I've learned to say, "That's nice, dear!" Marc found videos on Facebook. A man goes into grocery stores with a concealed fart machine, then he films the faces of bystanders as he loudly "farts" in the cereal aisle. Sometimes, he has drizzled chocolate sauce on the back of his pants, so it looks like he has pooped before the fart. Another recent item that Marc found hilarious...He attended "Broadway Backwards," and in one skit, a woman approached a doctor and complained that she had just turned (permanently) invisible. And the doctor said, "Sorry, I can't see you right now."   My own idea of humor is a Sherie Rene Scott clip. She performs "(Christmas) Baby, Please Come Home," and she looks like she has just escaped from a psych ward. She has mascara running down her face. I...

  It has become increasingly clear that Mike White is using the new "White Lotus" season to explore the Alex Murdaugh case. (Look around online.) To recap: Alex Murdaugh came from a powerful Southern family. He developed an Oxy addiction, and he stole from his clients to pay for the drugs. At the same time, his troubled son became implicated, or semi-implicated, in the death of a young gay man. Then the son drank too much, crashed a boat, killed a friend, and abandoned the friend's corpse without any (visible) regret. Finally, Alex Murdaugh murdered his son and his wife--this was an apparent effort to distract the country's attention from Alex's own fiscal misconduct. There is speculation that the son was secretly gay. This seems to be on Mike White's mind. The Schwarzenegger character clearly has a disturbed relationship with his own sexuality--which shines through his unnerving reference to his brother's "young cum" and his boastful declaration...

 As Matt Zoller Seitz observes, "Mad Men" is a prestige series *without* a grand narrative plan; it's *not* about the formation of a cartel or the war between NY and NJ crime families.  In that sense, "Mad Men" resembles "The Good Wife"; both shows just follow life as life unfolds. "The Good Wife" has a procedural backbone--almost every hour I recall is a spotlight on a particular legal case. Although more loosely, "Mad Men" also makes use of a procedural format. There is generally an effort to seduce a client, whether the client is a cigarette maker, or a male deodorant brand, or an airline. The procedural element is delightful to me. Think about the deodorant. Don enlists his young workers for help. But they dwell on the scientific properties of aerosol; they don't know what they're doing. They work up images of aerosol cans in a spaceship--it's unclear if they have identified an audience or if anyone will make a power...

  Sometimes, I feel like the Anna Kendrick character in "A Simple Favor," living in seclusion, uploading pitiful cookie recipes to my underperforming "mommy vlog." Then my neighbor appears, and she is the Blake Lively character; stories spill out of her, and yet she has no interest in writing. Often, the stories involve forced evacuations. Tasers on planes, malfunctioning train cars, aborted Hertz rentals. And her five-year-old son adds color, by wandering into hotel hallways at 4AM, waging war against the potty, skipping off of soccer fields in the middle of a game. (I love and relate to this kid.) My neighbor speaks freely and with precision: moving to a suburb was a bad idea, and having three kids was regrettable. She is taking steps toward her fight/flight anti-Trump plan: the family will relocate to Costa Rica, and all work will occur via Zoom. My neighbor's decisiveness is such that I don't really (fully) know whether or not she is kidding. My neighbor...

 "Mad Men" rewrites "The Sopranos." Matthew Weiner asks this: "What if Tony and Carmela separate, but they never find their way to a reconciliation?" The seeds of the Draper divorce are there in Season One. Betty needs to stage a birthday for her daughter, Sally; Betty is profoundly uncomfortable in her suburban world and in fact suffers from neurasthenia, to the extent that she has almost killed her children (near-victims of death-via-car-accident). Her husband's startling response is this: "I see all the wealth around you, and I think, come on, can she  really  be unhappy?" Don--a man--is basically useless with the birthday party. Betty asks him to build a playhouse in secret, but he can't be bothered to do the work of concealment, so Sally learns very quickly about what she will be getting. ("Don't tell your mother. Now get me a beer.") Don later inflates his daughter's expectations by suggesting she might receive a p...

  "My Dead Friend Zoe" begins with a Rihanna clip: When the sun shines, we'll shine together. Told you I'll be here forever.  Said I'll always be your friend. Took an oath, I'ma stick it out to the end.... Two friends, Zoe and Merit, are killing time. There is a little drop of sexual harassment from a colleague; there is a threat of death on the horizon. Also, the radio stops working. Zoe sort of likes her stint in Afghanistan; she has a sense of structure and purpose. Back home, she felt that school wasn't her thing. She thinks she might return to war right after completing her commitment. But Merit has academic ambitions, and she wants more for Zoe. She persuades Zoe to take a shot at civilian life. This doesn't work out well; adrift, drinking heavily, caught in a dead-end job, Civilian Zoe begins to contemplate suicide. Merit isn't answering her phone in a dependable way. A gun appears on a coffee table; you can fill in the blanks. Later, in mou...

  My daughter is enchanted by disguise; she has embraced "hide-and-seek," though she doesn't grasp the rules. She thinks the point is to shout, loudly, "I'm over here! I'm hiding over here! Pretend to ask the crossing guard, and see if you can find me!" It's not a shock, then, that she loves the Disney fairy tales, which are all about curses, reversed curses, elaborate costuming. "Sleeping Beauty"--the greatest of the greats--has Aurora assume the role of a peasant girl in an effort to save her own life. It also has the fabulous Maleficent in human form; it's only in Act Three that we discover Maleficent is truly a dragon. (You can draw a straight line from the dragon to Ursula the Sea Witch, who assumes the dimensions of a tsunami at the end of "The Little Mermaid.") Susie is most comfortable speaking "through" the mask of a stuffed cow, a princess doll, a plastic mermaid. I see myself in this; it's easiest for ...

 Liana Finck is a brilliant writer and illustrator with a journey story. She "follows the fairytale." She goes off to live in a castle ("Apartment 5B") and has a child who teaches her to embrace "fish sticks, playgrounds, other customs of the kingdom." But she soon finds herself doing battle with her spouse. The spouse never leaves work early when the school nurse calls. The spouse seems helpless in the kitchen, and he allows an open carton of eggs to rot on the dining room floor. Liana has a standard approach to a problem, which is to name it, point it out, let the air out if its tires. When she found herself playing hostage to her own social anxiety, she began announcing, "I have social anxiety." She started to laugh about it. And the social anxiety went away. But this approach doesn't work in marriage. Liana repeatedly notes herself shouting, "You are what is wrong with the world! You are a symbol of the patriarchy!" And--instead...

  My fascination with villains dates back to the reign of Howard Ashman.  Orin, Gaston, Jafar, Ursula: These characters are larger than life, and they raise the stakes. If I'm going to rent a movie with my daughter, I have to ensure that there is a dynamic villain, or I will risk two hours with a film-not-worthwhile. (Thank you to Olivia Colman for her recent contributions to "Paddington in Peru.") It makes sense to me that Maurice Sendak would be drawn to "Hansel and Gretel." Sendak liked villains. "Where the Wild Things Are" begins with a monstrous decision; the mother cannot be bothered to empathize with her energetic son, so she sends him to bed without food. Later, the boy is forced to endure the company of his many unhappy aunts and uncles; their faces have morphed, and they are now wild beasts. (Their "greeting" to little Max is ambiguous at the least: "I will eat you up.") Sendak left sketches for "Hansel and Gretel....

  It's a dubious honor to be called "Best Picture." "Crash," "Green Book," "Everything Everywhere"--these are films that will not stand the test of time. But sometimes a smart, fun film wins the award. That happened in 2025. "Anora" is like a Katharine Hepburn comedy grafted onto a Gena Rowlands drama; amazingly, both halves are successful. The first scene is startling and powerful. The last scene is startling and powerful. What happens in the middle is startling and powerful. The title character--both strong and weak, both smart and dumb with a youthful-stupidity flavor--is dazzling. When I was in my twenties, I went to work with a teacher who crossed several lines. He narrated stories from his notably active sex life, which, on one occasion, involved two strangers in the span of an hour. He wondered aloud about dumping one recurring buddy, because the buddy would just consent to oral (and not other forms of) sex. Also, he "jo...

 How strange to allow a President "the authority to pardon." Most Hamilton-ish ideas involve a "checks and balances" approach: if the President uses a veto, the legislative branch can override the veto, and if the President challenges an existing law, the Supreme Court can decide that the challenge is without merit. But no one looks over the President's shoulder as he issues a pardon. Like a King, he can just wave his wand and delete the past. The theory was that the President could use the pardon to display selflessness and magnanimity; in shielding decent people from some of the harshness of "the law," the President would inspire normal Americans to consider acts of mercy. But that's not really how the pardon has worked. Often, the pardon has had a political and self-serving function. For example, when Harding pardoned Eugene Debs, the gesture was not about deep feelings for Debs's plight. Harding didn't want Debs to become a martyr by dy...