Liars and Saints

  Dislikes  *AMC Theaters. Before any movie, you have an obnoxiously booming voice talking about laser light. Then you have a short film about different kinds of movie genres (car chase movies, dance movies, romance movies). Then you have Nicole Kidman giving her weird cult-vibe speech about how much she loves "Jurassic Park." It's too much, AMC. I thought, for a long while, that the CEOs would come to their senses. But, in fact, they're now  leaning in . It's too much. *The absence of menus. I hate everything about this. I hate digging out my phone, finding the scan option, changing the font to make things readable. I hate having to pretend that this is a delightful state of affairs--when the server explains that there are no paper menus. Most of all, I hate that this change was just smuggled in via COVID. I was not consulted. I expect that soon restaurants will say, "We actually don't make food anymore. You can purchase one of two kinds of soft drink....

  When I was in my twenties and teaching at St. David's, I would visit the Met during free periods. I especially liked the Art of Africa and Oceania--because this wing was consistently empty, and because the art was so different from what I had studied in college. Recently, for four years, the wing was closed--and now it's back. It's completely overwhelming. A special feature of the Met is its attention to "sight lines"--the rooms themselves should be works of art. So, for example, when you enter the Africa area, you see Oceania rearing its head in the distant background; you see monumental statues far, far away. It's like you are standing at the entrance of a cathedral. Holland Cotter wrote about the two "figures of greeting"--which are important  to me. Although many of the African pieces are from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the two greeting figures are not; they go way, way back. They both seem to be people who are praying--but one has...

  My favorite TV script is for "Bart Gets an F," an early episode of "The Simpsons." This is a beautiful portrait of Bart--in the days before Homer became the series protagonist. It's also a meditation on the word "underachiever." Bart has been labeled a failure by various school authorities. But he shrugs. Many brilliant minds have struggled with conventional schooling: Edward St. Aubyn, Chris Rock, Jay-Z, and so on. (A Bart Simpson tee shirt popped up all over America.  "Underachiever," and Proud of It!  ....Some felt that Matt Groening should not glorify the idea of failure. Groening pointed out that "underachiever" was in quotation marks--because the people assigning the label to Bart were obviously wrong. But this reasoning was a bit too elaborate for certain American politicians--like Bush, Sr.--who tried to attack "The Simpsons.") Bart's F results from a book report. We open with Martin giving a stirring talk ab...

 "Your standards are too low. You're so desperate for help, you'll accept  anything . You think you can't have care that is both (a) professional and (b) responsive to your child. But you can. You can cover both bases." This is the family counselor--the therapist to help me manage the other varied therapists. I think what she is saying here is bullshit. If you become extremely picky, then suddenly care is suspended for two weeks. It's easy not to think about this if you're dispatching advice from your Zoom launchpad in Chicago. Harder if you're in the trenches. We turn to a recent incident at the ice cream parlor. I was there with my child; no other patrons were visiting. My child was being loud; the dumb teenagers employed by the parlor began chatting in an audible way. "That kid is so  loud ." I considered saying, "Fuck off," but this seemed like a great deal of work. So I stewed--which was, of course, *more* work than a public co...

 The star of Michelle Huneven's new novel is Sib, who resembles Olive Kitteridge from the Strout stories ("Olive Again," "Tell Me Everything," and so on). Sib becomes an elementary-school teacher, and she feels frustrated by her colleagues' lack of ambition. She has a child, Sandro, who won't speak in class. She has another child who is capable of high-school math. She essentially bribes the math kid: I'll teach you algebra if you get Sandro to talk. Everyone wins. Despite her talent, Sib is flawed. She is an alcoholic, and she shares mean stories at the family dinner table. Having learned the IQ results of every child on the street, she tells her own daughters that they are superior. Sib delights in a tale about the neighbors but does not seem to notice undercurrents of domestic abuse within that tale. Enraged by the world, Sib stops turning up for her annual cancer screening--so she gets cancer. She decides on suicide. Her daughter, Katie, is drown...

  An early scene in Alex Garland's savvy script traces the journey of one piece of bacon. Aaron Taylor-Johnson has prepared it for his son. "Dad, you should have some," says Little Son. But Taylor-Johnson claims he ate his own portion of bacon *while* preparing it. This is sort of sweet--but it's also clearly a lie. So we learn something about Taylor-Johnson. He lies. Little Son then takes the bacon to his mother, who is sick and possibly dying. She is too addled to eat the bacon--so it rots. And we learn something about Jodie Comer. She cannot feed herself. All of this information is evident to us--and it's *not* fully evident to Little Son. He will continue to worship his father, until various signs are too overwhelming to ignore. Little Son will continue to make attempts at "feeding" Mom, until Ralph Fiennes delivers an important speech at the eleventh hour. Stripped of illusions, Little Son becomes an adult. He helps to send his mom on her journey to...

  In "The Simpsons," when a charismatic huckster tries to sell a monorail to Springfield, it's only Marge who sees clearly. But Marge doesn't seem heroic; she seems pitiably "square." You wish she'd just drink the Kool-Aid. Live a little. My daughter's school does a really bad job with musical performances. They are not particularly well rehearsed; I know this, because my son, who is only one year older, attends a much more functional school. I have a metric for comparison. The worst part of an endless pre-K music performance is that each child--each and every child--is required to recite a solo observation about the year-in-review. The children are terrified and unintelligible--and even if they *were* intelligible, it's not edifying to hear three hundred versions of one bland sentence. " I liked seeing the caterpillars." My daughter's principal is a deranged narcissist--and it really is a treat to see him. "You'll forgive ...

Amy Bloom's new novel is about a young woman, Lily, who finds herself married to a much older man. This isn't about love; the older man is lonely, and he wants to feel younger. Lily thinks this can work--until it really can't. She becomes intoxicated with rage. She begins to anticipate the man's next move, almost with eagerness, just so she can have something new to feel enraged about. One day, Lily sets a tupperware container next to the leftovers. The man looks helpless, and he feebly pushes the tupperware halfway toward the ceramic plate. He looks at Lily with imploring eyes, and Lily says, "You are capable of dumping the food into the tupperware container." And the husband says, "This just isn't working." And he disappears from her life forever. Later, Lily has a dizzying romance at an academic conference. But--like Simon in the story "Simon's Luck"--the man has a terrible accident. He dies on the road. Lily, now besieged with g...

 "Next to Normal" is unusual because it's a musical about divorce. As common as divorce is, it doesn't often get the "pop culture" treatment. Shows like "Parenthood," "The Sopranos," and "Breaking Bad" flirt with the idea of separation--but then the protagonists end up reunited, or semi-reunited, under one roof. "N2N" is pretty brutal in establishing that its two characters are trapped; American family life, which is so often finessed as "good," immediately "good," is in fact a kind of prison in Yorkey's musical. Notice how blunt York's characters can be: Everyday, this act we act Gets more and more absurd. And all my fears just sit inside me-- Screaming to be heard. I know they won't, though-- Not a single word... And notice the wife: It's like living on a cliffside-- Not knowing when you'll dive. Do you know? Do you know-- What it's like to die alive? As flawed as "N2N...

 My daughter is under the spell of a charismatic frenemy; let's call her R. I sense danger. R has strong opinions, and she doesn't withhold them. I get only one side of the story; I get the story that my daughter offers. "R told me that I do not have a mommy." "R said it's *wrong* for me to say that *you* are my mommy." Some people have a gift for tolerating odd and antagonistic behavior. I remember working for an administrator who had an angry parent on his hands. He shrugged and said, "Let her be angry with me." And this seemed like a magic spell. Could my boss really function in this adult and philosophical way? I do not have this gift. Lacking a strong sense of self-worth, I very much want to believe that I am in no way causing offense to others around me. So I understand my daughter's anxiety. R feels weird about my daughter's domestic arrangement. How can Susie respond??? It's possible that I'm sort of growing a slightly t...

 A student asked me to name my favorite movie; the answer tends to change, but right now it's "The Silence of the Lambs." This is a classic Hero's Journey story. Clarice must pursue a magical elixir--i.e., the senator's daughter, who has been imprisoned by Buffalo Bill. She resists the call; mainly, the resistance happens in her eyes. But ambition wins the day. Clarice wants to wield the power of Scott Glenn. A Hero's Journey tends to involve a trickster, someone who can't quite be trusted. I think Bruno in "Encanto" is an example. Or Maria Reynolds in "Hamilton." Or Adriana in "The Sopranos." But "Silence" has the greatest of all tricksters, Hannibal, who will offer you advice and then eat your face. Hannibal is, literally, a shape-shifter; he stitches the skin of a corpse onto the surface of his own skin. He wants to chat with you about the Duomo--but, also, he wants to insult your accent and to share mean inferenc...

  Erica Jong gave birth to Molly Jong-Fast and disappeared; Molly was raised by nannies. Although famous for her feminism, Erica was mostly focused on men; she auditioned a series of boyfriends, who would befriend Molly, then evaporate. Erica wrote several books in which little Molly was a supporting player and Erica was the hero; Molly refused to read the books ("they would not help me protect myself"), but strangers would often approach her to discuss her secrets. Through these interactions, Molly identified the bits of her own life that had been offered up in print. Erica described her parenting as "benign neglect," but Molly questioned this label. Is Mom benign if she misinterprets your actions and mocks you in a novel? People in Molly's life demanded that Erica spend an hour per day with her daughter; the expectation was too harsh, so it was downgraded to half an hour. Molly became an addict but saved herself; somehow, in her late teens, she dragged herself...

 I return to Facebook, again and again, as if picking at a scab. "YOU NEED TO EDUCATE YOUR WHITE CHILDREN RIGHT NOW. THREE WHITE BOYS JUST PASSED BY MY DAUGHTER, AND THEY MADE SLANTY EYES. EVEN IF YOU *THINK* YOUR WHITE CHILDREN ARE INNOCENT, THEY ARE NOT." Immediately, various white parents perform their virtue, or faux-virtue, by responding. "I'm so sorry!" "Very sorry that happened to your daughter!" What do I gain from reading this stuff? And yet I can't turn away. "I was on the phone on a public bench, having a conversation in Spanish. And two women came by and said,  This is AMERICA. Learn to speak ENGLISH.  And, I swear, it took my breath away...." "I was just trying to offer feedback about a neighbor's parking job at the Stop and Shop, and he called me a KAREN. And I wonder, ARE MEN OKAY???" What's that? Making concrete plans to write a novel? I just don't have any time....

 This was one of the first commercial songs to use the word "God" in its title, and it maintains a "cosmic" theme throughout: I may not always love you-- But as long as there are stars above you-- You never need to doubt it. I'll make you so sure about it. God only knows what I'd be without you. As long as we're thinking about stars, we might as well think (additionally) about one entire planet: If you should ever leave me... Though life would still go on....believe me: The world could show nothing to me. So what good would living do me? God only knows what I'd be without you. I always like to notice "the anxiety of influence": moments when one literary work "rewrites" an earlier literary work. Though I'm certain that Brian Wilson meant his own words to be read in a simple, direct way, the writer Dustin Lance Black had other ideas. Black used the Beach Boys for his Mormon drama--"Big Love"--perhaps because of that on...

 No one planned on "Rose's Turn"; the end of "Gypsy" was going to be a kind of ballet. But the creators ran out of time. So Sondheim said, "Why don't I piece together a soliloquy? I'll use little musical scraps that have made their appearance earlier in the evening. Saves time." "Rose's Turn" then became a kind of template for Sondheim's career. There would be an extraordinary musical--full of canonical numbers--and somehow, in the last five or ten minutes, there would be a solo that managed to outshine the previous two hours of material. The solo would feature a speaker at war with herself or with himself: Rose, Bobby in "Being Alive," Sally in "Losing My Mind," Desiree in "Send in the Clowns."  Rose is not a reliable narrator. When she says, "I dreamed my dream for you, June," we aren't meant to take this as the gospel truth. When she claims, "This time, boys, I'm taking t...

  One of many areas in which I fall short is playground behavior. A Maplewood Mom recently expressed horror that her friend used *only one* playground on a regular basis. And I thought, what the fuck? It's not enough to drag yourself to the swingset. You also have to diversify the portfolio: There must be a new, and newly stimulating, playground with each new sunrise. Fuck that. I think I should receive a prize just for exiting my house. I'm with the late essayist David Rakoff, who observed that he moved to New York City just so that he would never, never need to interact with nature. "There are entire segments of the city that you can travel through without ever leaving an underground tunnel...." My hatred for the playground has to do with the swingset. I know that this should feel like a Zen exercise; I should focus on my breathing or some similar nonsense. But all I can think is this: Right now, we *could* be watching a Disney film. The main compensation is the tro...

 For me, one of the most thrilling episodes of "The Simpsons" has always been "Cape Feare." It first aired when I was young enough to be really, really entranced by TV; I'd never seen anything like this. I was genuinely afraid of Sideshow Bob. The new book "Stupid TV, Be More Funny" digs into "Cape Feare" (among other things). Someone on staff had seen the Scorsese/Nolte/Lange film and wanted to write a lengthy parody. This was unusual because all previous "Simpsons" parodies had been the length of one scene or one interlude. Suddenly, the cartoon was really digging into Scorsese's work; certain pages of dialogue very closely aligned themselves with actual Nolte dialogue from the cineplex. I'm also fond of "22 Short Films"--particularly the exchange about "steamed hams"--and now I know that this script was a response to Quentin Tarantino. The writers were thinking about "Pulp Fiction" and about ...

 "Dangerous Animals" has been called "Silence of the Lambs" on a boat, and that's accurate. But its focus is not on Hannibal Lecter; its focus is on Buffalo Bill. Like Buffalo Bill, the Jai Courtney character has a lengthy, upsetting dance sequence. And Jai Courtney keeps souvenirs. He films his victims as they are devoured by sharks -- then he stores the footage on his boat. In the opposite corner, we have Zephyr, a hardened surfing addict who looks and sounds like Jennifer Lawrence. Zephyr meets a young man who shares her fondness for Credence Clearwater. But the young man likes "Ooby Dooby," while Zephyr has time only for "Fortunate Son." She says, "That's a REAL song. A song about capitalism and exploitation." And the young man pushes back. "'Ooby Dooby' is about love. What is more profound than love?" When Zephyr finds herself imprisoned on Jai Courtney's boat, she gets creative -- with a plastic piece...

 "Three of four marriages with  special needs childcare  situations end in divorce." This is like the opening salvo in "special needs childcare" family counseling. I'd prefer not to be here. I have to take notes to force myself to pay attention. When the counselor sees me taking notes, she says, "You don't have to do that -- I'll just mail this information to you." And I want to explain that the note-taking gives me something to do with my fingers. But I don't explain that. At times, I feel like Joe Biden, attempting to filibuster during my "hidden documents" investigation. I complain that there is no script for childcare. If someone had said, "The art of diagnosis is murky, and often we don't fully know what we're doing..." If the speech therapist had done her research before shooting down various therapies.... The counselor cuts me off. "That's life isn't it? You don't know things--until you kn...

 As the Tony Awards approach, I want to highlight three performances that matter to me. Not one won a Tony Award. (In Joy Woods's case, the win was impossible, because the production was off-Broadway.) And yet who cares? Great work is great work. Any spotlight on the theater industry is important. *Abby Mueller, "Heart of Stone." I reject the premise of this song -- Jane Seymour, married to a murderous psychopath, is just totally smitten. Nonsense. And yet the song is incredibly well written. That's the secret of "Six": It works because its songs are just better than other songs on Broadway. They use proper scansion. They are witty comments on Adele, Celine Dion, Nicki Minaj. And they're surprising. Mueller's number introduces a spin on the idea of being "stone-hearted." It's not about coldness. It's about being unwavering. I also really enjoy the use of the present perfect tense in this song: When the fire's burned-- When the w...

  The new movie "Jane Austen Wrecked My Life" has been marketed as a rom-com but in fact is a drama; misogyny, and possibly *internalized* misogyny, leads artists to mislabel their work.  ("Girls" and "Better Things" were both dramas, but someone decided they were "less dramatic" than "Friday Night Lights" or "Mad Men." The latter set of shows was *not* marketed as a set of comedies....) "Jane Austen" concerns Agathe, who once lost both of her parents in a car accident. Agathe works at Shakespeare and Company, in Paris, but really she's a writer. Her life seems frozen; she doesn't date, and she can't complete a writing assignment, although she has talent. Mostly, she sits at the kitchen table and watches her more vibrant sister, who can't keep track of her own bedmates. ("Agathe, this is Raphael. Or is it Gabriel? Gabriel? Raphael?") A friend secretly submits Agathe's work to a kind of ...

  Every week, I meet with a particular student; years have passed. We have walked through the AP World History exam, through the PSAT, through the SAT. As usual, the student is more gracious than I am. If he makes an error when joining clauses, I get slightly impatient. If I myself make an error with verb tenses, he is notably magnanimous. My student reminds me that it's sort of unpleasant to be a junior in high school. You yourself have no interest in grammar rules, and it's at least questionable that these rules will be necessary in adult life. But you have voices in your ear, making demands. Sometimes, the SAT questions seem gratuitously tedious: Is there a Totozoquean origin for the Choctaw word that means "corn"? FreshDirect offered to open offices in Long Island City right *before* local elections. And it offered to open offices in Pittsburgh right *after* local elections. Does the timing have an impact on a standard municipal response to an offer from FreshDire...

  Often, in pop culture, murder is shown as the end result of many weeks or months of physical abuse. In "The Sopranos" and "Big Little Lies," there is an escalation of violent acts that ends with a killing or a near-killing. But sometimes--in situations of "coercive control"--there isn't this notable buildup. As far as I can tell, coercive control is about *emotional* abuse. Fotis Dulos did not physically attack his wife *until* the day of the murder. Instead, he terrorized her by dragging the underaged children to impromptu "driving lessons" in unsafe conditions, purchasing a gun and making it accessible to the kids, berating her throughout zero-sum divorce arguments, and repackaging his girlfriend as "a new mom" (despite court orders that required the girlfriend to make herself scarce). The actual murder was in no way an "I just snapped" situation. Fotis Dulos plotted and plotted. He altered a license plate to make it i...

  James Marshall is among my favorite writers; when I imagine a "best case" voice for a storyteller, it's pretty close to the voice of James Marshall. Marshall is droll, gay, inventive, slightly bitchy; his main concern is what people say, and do not say, to each other. His stories are so much smarter than your standard picture book, it's as if he worked in his own bizarre field, population of one. There are James Marshall books; then, there is everything else. When "The Complete George and Martha" was published, an essayist noted that Marshall's own life resembled his stories. The essayist pointed to the pea-soup tale, in which George stains his shoes in an effort to hide his friend from a painful truth. The essayist recalled that he and James Marshall had a date, and Marshall bowed out because of "an injured leg." When the essayist spotted Marshall on the sidewalk--with a fully functional leg--he suddenly felt as if he had become Martha the h...

  A same-sex marriage means that you're going to talk about Patti LuPone. In my view, both Patti and Audra have been disingenuous. It was disingenuous for Patti to pretend she had handled the "Hell's Kitchen" issue in a professional way. The moment you take your complaint to the ticket-buying public--"That show is just too loud"--you are crossing a line. (It seems to me that if Patti had spoken only with the HK producers, she might have avoided her mess.) But--also--Audra's saying, "If there's a rift between us, I don't know about it" seems like nonsense. If you side with your friend's antagonist in a very public dispute, then you are straying into "rift" territory. Even if nothing happened ten or eleven years ago, Audra's 2024 "emojis" were clearly, emphatically a negative comment on Patti LuPone. They were "rift-making." Come on; admit it, Audra McDonald. My husband points out that, despite all of...