Liars and Saints

 I have read four books by Jill Ciment--"Consent," "Heroic Measures," "The Body in Question," and "Half a Life"--and each has been perfect. It's like she is incapable of making an error. And yet her name is sort of obscure. A memoir tends to have two storylines--one in the present, one in the past. An upsetting event in the present requires the writer to relitigate events from the past. "Half a Life" isn't exactly in this tradition, but it's close enough. A woman has been estranged from her father; she is forced to resume "the conversation" when the father discloses that he is reaching the end of his life. And so various memories bubble up. There are a few things that make Ciment's opening so effective. First, the setup is bizarre. A woman is preparing to mock an odd TV personality--when she discovers that the TV guy is her own father. Second, Ciment thinks about physical details. Hilary Mantel says, when you...

  We're all used to the choices the literary world makes when representing a wedding: we see the toast, the first dance, the kiss, the selection of the bridal gown. So Jim Barne already has me on his side by defying expectations and choosing to focus on the "early life" of the wedding cake. Writers are constantly using elisions. We rarely see characters visiting the bathroom, shopping for socks, folding laundry. I really like when a writer bucks a trend. Going to pick up a cake can involve a brief nostalgic stop outside the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, an awkward Uber ride, a challenging bit of sedan-to-curb choreography--all of these moments are explored in the new musical "Two Strangers." The actual care and maintenance of the cake is a process that allows Robin to reveal a few secrets, discover that she can have a good time with Dougal, and take steps toward a total meltdown. The ultimate fate of the cake--something so small--is a moment that c...

 As far as I recall, there aren't many filial/parental struggles in "Little House in the Big Woods." Papa comes home--and he has a story about wrestling a bobcat or falling off the rim of a canyon--and the children listen attentively. Storytime works differently in 2025. "You have to give your children the illusion of control," says the special needs counselor. (In "Big Woods," Pa does not have a special needs counselor.) And so, to trick my daughter into enjoying the story I've planned for her, I give her a fictional job, "story boss." Her task is to order the other members of the family to find comfortable spots. Josh chats and dances during the story--and I'm told to accept this, because "different people process a narrative in different ways." Again, I can't help but imagine that Pa Ingalls would have stern words for the special needs counselor. We are reading "A Boy Called Bat," but my son thinks that the ...

Two giraffes meet for a romantic evening. But one has a confession: he is, in fact, a weasel (in disguise). The artist is Jason Katzenstein--a student of my old teacher, Amy Bloom. Since Bloom is a known disciple of the picture-book writer James Marshall, it's not a shock that Katzenstein's debut comic has a "George and Martha" feel. George is frequently lying to Martha: he isn't afraid of scary movies, he isn't afraid of the high dive, he is committed to his new no-sugar diet. Martha must tolerate the silliness, because living creatures are imperfect, and love is love. Katzenstein's memoir--about obsessive rumination--suggests that he himself frequently feels like "fifty-eight weasels in a trenchcoat." This first cartoon is a display of Katzenstein's compassion for himself--an example of making something from one's own experience.  

 Great writing sometimes seems prophetic; "Caroline, or Change" described New Orleans's "sea level issues." These descriptions arrived on Broadway *before* Hurricane Katrina. "Caroline" also imagined the toppling of Confederate monuments--imagined this long before the George Floyd years. Tony Kushner's extraordinary creation, Caroline Thibodeaux, is damaged by war, racial injustice, and domestic abuse. She has a working heart and mind--but it's simply too costly to show her heart to the world. She says this explicitly to the audience: "Some folks go to school at night--some folks march for civil rights. And I don't....I can't hardly read...." Caroline's nervous breakdown seems to be a tip of the hat to "Gypsy." The title of the song even echoes "Rose's Turn"; Kushner uses the tag "Lot's Wife." But "Caroline" takes a step beyond "Gypsy," because it adds a musical Epi...

  My favorite TV writing tends to have a moral center; the characters themselves may not behave in admirable ways, but the writer clearly has an interest in moral questions. I think the gold standard is Sharon Horgan, who wrote "Catastrophe." In that series, the male lead begins a kind of emotional affair; he isn't exactly guilty, but he isn't exactly innocent. The fallout from this affair becomes a high point of the series.  Adam Goldman is a student of Sharon Horgan's; he cites her as a personal hero. The start of Goldman's series, "The Outs," is superficially focused on the absurdities of Brooklyn life. A delivery boy mocks a customer for being too lazy to walk across the street; a waiter must choose where to leave the bill while pretending that the two patrons in front of him are not loudly fighting. But beneath these moments there is a *moral* story. The main character, Jack, has lost a friend. He wants to re-recruit the friend. The specifics of...

  What do you do with children? They like swimming pools, animals, and ice cream. And so my family has traveled to "Crystal Springs," a massive hotel in a town called Hamburg, NJ.  My son thinks that Santa is the creepy man in the adjoining room, whose voice we can hear throughout the day. My daughter's favorite activity is to give "magic water" to her parents, who immediately fall asleep. This happens again and again. At the "animal viewing," an enthusiastic young person waves toads and snakes in my face. This young person makes me think of the sort of expert who would sometimes appear on Letterman: "Dave, I'd like you to meet my chimp!" The animal experts always seem to be bubbling over with joie de vivre. They seem to understand something about life that the rest of us may miss. My daughter blithely declares that she fears nothing--this is her favorite refrain. She gives a "high five" to Fred the Frog. She strokes the scales ...

 Joni Mitchell sometimes seems to be reading aloud from her diary; a song begins with a "where" and a "when." 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. A song will grow out of an observation about the neighbors: It's coming on Christmas-- They're cutting down trees. They're putting up reindeer-- And singing songs of joy and peace. In a diary, you may argue with yourself. This is what Joni Mitchell does in "River." At the start of the song, it's the external world that is unsatisfying. "It don't snow here." Also: "I'm gonna make a lot of money--and I'll quit this crazy scene." "I wish I had a river I could skate away on." But this initial brattiness/petulance gets discarded. It's not California that is disappointing. It's Joni Mitchell herself: I'm so hard to handle. I'm selfis...

  When Ann Packer was very young, her father had a massive stroke; a few years later, he killed himself. This is the sort of event that makes an artist. If Packer's early years had been untroubled, I'm not sure she would have started writing. "The Dive From Clausen's Pier" begins with a young man throwing himself into a pond. He has misjudged the pond; he makes contact with the Earth. The crash is of the sort that makes you permanently paralyzed. Like Ann Packer's father, this young man (Mike) is subsequently drawn to suicide. He pleads for the right to die.  Mike is not the central character in this novel. That title goes to Carrie, who (I think) is the Ann Packer stand-in. Carrie was ambivalently dating Mike when the big accident occurred. Now--at the hospital--does she have to stay with him? As Carrie wrestles with her problem, she behaves in recognizable and sometimes monstrous ways. The setup seems sensational, but actually this is a very quiet novel. A c...

  It's called Words; among its strengths is its popularity. There are always browsers. It's a great source of joy for me just to go and eavesdrop. The other day, I was trying to talk myself into reading "The Correspondent"--when I heard one buyer saying to another, "I just really, really love reading about serial killers." This was like a clarion call.  "You don't actually want to read literary fiction," I said to myself. "You want to read about a killer." And I chose a sinister tale of real estate mayhem, "Best Offer Wins." The other thing I love about Words is its occasional surprises. Yes, it has the Reese Witherspoon novel, and it has the new memoir about Jeffrey Epstein--but it also has a small Scottish book of essays about winter. The book is called "Winter"--by Val McDermid. No one in America will read this book. No one will even hear about it. But there it is at my bookstore--connecting me to Europe and to ...

 Watching "Heated Rivalry," I can't help but think of "The Outs," a better gay series. In "The Outs," two young men meet and start dating. They both begin to get their respective acts together. The most moving scene has one of the guys getting ready for a job interview. He recalls an episode just outside the subway; as he had packed his backpack, he had omitted his stash of drugs, because he had recently started giving actual thought to his choices. (This is a function of being in a healthy relationship.) At the subway turnstile, cops were checking bags. The young man saw that his day--in fact, his life--could have taken a bad turn. But it didn't. This is just a small moment between two characters, but it feels like real life. Someone with a laptop computer gave careful consideration to this scene. In another interlude, a young man is living in Brooklyn with a roommate he doesn't really know. Topics for chit-chat are banal: a gross colleague wh...

 First: A classic Tomie de Paola book is sensationally beautiful. The use of color is not restrained. The characters are well-defined; the number of lines seems to be exactly correct. There is a sense of authority and pleasure. Second: De Paola does some of his best work when he uses the legend format. In a legend, some kind of biological or meteorological phenomenon is linked with a story. We have arachnids because Arachne was an insensitive weaver. We have winter because Hades interfered with Demeter and Persephone. De Paola explains the existence of poinsettias through the tale of a little girl, Lucida, who needs a present for the Jesus doll in a local parade. She can't offer a blanket, because her mom is sick and wool gets tangled too easily. Lucida is told that any gift is wonderful if it comes from her heart; she presents weeds, because that's what she can manage. Because of Lucida's sincerity, the weeds become star-tipped; they become poinsettias. As a student of S...

  In her twenties and thirties, Sutton Foster had musicals written for her. They often weren't very good--but they happened--one after the other after the other. "Little Women," "Young Frankenstein," "Shrek." Then, a shift occurred. I don't know if this was deliberate. After "Shrek," Foster turned her attention to revivals. In a big way. On and off Broadway. "Anyone Can Whistle," "Into the Woods," "*Violet," "The Music Man," "Sweeney Todd," "Sweet Charity," "Once Upon a Mattress," "Anything Goes." At times, it seems as if Foster is on a mission to do *every* canonical role. The "Sweeney" phase--where Foster was Burnett by night and Lansbury by day--was particularly exciting. I have a list of roles I'd now like to offer to Foster. Desiree Armfeldt, Phyllis in "Follies" (notice how the word "Phyllis" sounds like "Folly,...

  It was useful to me to hear Laurie Anderson talking about art. Anderson said she is most interested when she can feel the intense presence of the artist--even though the artist is absent, his or her soul is somehow communicating through the object in front of you.  My favorite image at the Whitney right now is "Ketchup, Thick and Thin," by Claes Oldenburg. It makes me think of recent drawings on view at the Frick--a soldier getting hanged, a preparatory sketch for the Comtesse d'Haussonville, a group of hunters in a vast landscape. By contrast, there is nothing inherently beautiful or dramatic about ketchup. It's not even "natural" in the way that a flower is natural. But who in history--before Oldenburg--had ever thought to sketch different kinds of ketchup? It's a memorable part of the Oldenburg show. Normally, I would skip the Whitney--but a gift of marriage is that you see things you might overlook (because maybe your spouse is a Whitney fan). Marc...

 I don't want to be a crabby old man, always saying, "Things ain't what they used to be." But the news that Bernadette Peters's successor may be Ariana Grande is a little distressing to me. I'll live. Sondheim says content should dictate form. This idea reaches new heights in "Sunday in the Park." In the opening, George orders Dot "not to move the mouth"--so the final lines of Dot's song are, literally, a rebellion. Dot's mouth attains a life of its own: slowly, slowly, it begins to disobey George. Once again, toward the end of Act One, Dot's mouth does something interesting. Dot wills herself to accept Louie the baker--she stuffs Louie down her own throat. This is made literal through the ingestion of a pastry. While she should be eating, Dot is still talking; she is talking *around* the lump of pastry. She can't bring herself to stop her performance-for-George. Sondheim underlines Dot's desperation: The bread, George! ...

  Janet Malcolm, Mary Karr, Judith Thurman, Claire Bloom, John Updike, Primo Levi--these are the starry "supporting players" in a newish biography of Philip Roth.  When Roth spent time with Primo Levi, he imagined that Levi "had his act together." He wrongly inferred that Levi's marriage was functional. Later, when Levi committed suicide, Roth was reminded that we really do not know anything about one another. "We are wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. We carefully reconsider--and then we are wrong. That's how we know we are alive." Roth was a terrible narcissist--he seemed to think he was entitled to a Nobel Prize. He spent some of his "last lap" drafting a bitter screed against Claire Bloom--only the intercession of a wise friend helped to ensure that the screed would not see the light of day. Roth cheated on Bloom, then wrote a book about his affairs--which caused Bloom to vomit. Roth then denied that there was any truth in the ...

 For a long while, I have been working with kids on the ISEE, the SAT, the SSAT, and the college essay. Here are a few things I've learned in the past year: * The writer of the test is not your friend. This seems obvious, but it's amazing to me how easy it is to think, "Ah, four intriguing answers to this reading comprehension question! Each one seems to be on or near  the mark ...." The student becomes seduced by the test; an alluring wrong answer seems to beckon, beckon, beckon. I really think that a certain naivete is what troubles many kids on this portion of the test--I think it's this sketchy idea, "People are here to  help  me." I blame Mr. Rogers. A particular level of cynicism is helpful when you're in the land of "reading comprehension." * Kids are just more interesting than adults. One of my students--a fifth grader--expresses a sense of wonder about quadrilaterals. "I was loitering in a square-shaped park, and my friend sa...

  To me, the most exciting scene in "Little Bear Ridge Road" happens early.  Ethan is visiting his dead father's house; he wants to see if there are items that could be sold. (He is particularly interested in whether or not a buzzsaw is still functional. A Tony Award should be available to Laurie Metcalf just because of the interesting things she does with the phrase "checking on that buzzsaw" ....) It's never easy to "divide the estate." Ethan clearly wants some kind of healing moment at the house--and this moment is not going to happen. There is nothing in the house that can be sold. The buzzsaw won't "deliver." As Ethan becomes increasingly agitated, we know this scene isn't headed to a happy place. The tension mounts. Aunt Sarah wanders into the kitchen--then immediately returns. She is troubled. There is a dead cat in the kitchen, and evidence suggests that it was a corpse even while Ethan's dad was still alive (and playi...

  One of Sondheim's main ideas was that musicals can be about grownups. Musicals can express grownup emotions. His fellow Williams alum, Bill Finn, agreed; like Sondheim, Finn built many songs on sex and ambivalence. I don't look for trouble. I do not accept blame. I've a good and a bad side-- But they're one and the same. Ask me to arouse you-- I will rise and obey. These are the games I play. Whizzer in "Falsettos" is comfortable being a fuckboy -- even his name, "Whizzer," seems to be a sign of immaturity. Having become involved with a semi-married man, Whizzer finds that he must wrestle with adult moments of sadness. He is irritated by this -- but he clearly isn't stupid. It's tough with love. Love's tough to show. Let me face the music-- It's a song that I was waiting to hear so long-- So long ago. Although a part of Whizzer would like to continue just masturbating and playing canasta, another part is interested in being half of ...

  Anne Lamott says that a story is simply a character traveling to a bad place--then traveling to a good place (home, once again). In "Anything Goes," Reno Sweeney is briefly troubled by romantic chaos; she thinks she wants Billy, and Billy does not want her. But in fact Reno is meant for Lord Evelyn, whose sexual dynamism is just waiting, waiting to be discovered. Happy ending. It's not exactly "King Lear." Reno describes her own journey in Biblical terms: Once I was headed for Hell. Once I was headed for Hell! But now that I have seen the light-- I'm good by day and I'm good by night. So I said, Satan? Farewell. And now I'm all ready to fly-- Yes, to fly higher and higher. 'Cause I've gone to the brimstone-- And I've been through the fire. And I've purged my soul--and my heart, too-- So climb up the mountaintop-- And start to blow, Gabriel....Blow! A happy ending can be a religious awakening--but it can also be sexual fulfillment. W...

 I fired the behavioral therapist. Here was the craziest moment in this chapter--the moment that made me think of Amanda Seyfried in the upcoming psychological thriller, "The Housemaid." After the "termination text," I had visions of this therapist arriving at my front door, wielding an axe. Job termination is like a breakup, at least for me. In the ensuing minutes, I felt giddy. I had taken action! I never had to see this person again. But then regret set in. Had she really been that bad? She was--she is!--a human being. It was I--I!--who seemed to be monstrous. This made me recall that great scene in Disney's "Tangled" when Rapunzel detaches from Gothel; one minute, Rapunzel is euphoric, and the next, she is despondent. And so on. (For the next five to seven years, all of my allusions will include a moment or two from Rapunzel's story in "Tangled.") Now, I'm in my Cardi B phase. Said, lil bitch, you can't fuck with me if you wan...

  Sometimes, an idea is so shrewd, the movie seems to write itself. In "Rebuilding," Josh O'Connor lives somewhere west of the Rockies. A wildfire destroys his ranch; he relocates to a trailer on FEMA-owned land. This, then, is a migration story; it brings Tony Kushner to mind. She was.. ...not a person but a whole kind of person, the ones who crossed the ocean, who brought with us to America the villages of Russia and Lithuania - and how we struggled, and how we fought, for the family, for the Jewish home, so that you would not grow up here , in this strange place, in the melting pot where nothing melted. Descendants of this immigrant woman, you do not grow up in America, you and your children and their children with the goyische names. You do not live in America. No such place exists. Your clay is the clay of some Litvak shtetl, your air the air of the steppes - because she carried the old world on her back across the ocean, in a boat, and she put it down on Grand Conc...

  Mary Roy feels ambivalent about child-rearing. We know this because she has harsh words for her son, when he fails a class: "You are ugly and stupid. If I were you, I would kill myself." Also, Mary Roy berates her daughter, Arundhati, for having failed to impress a visiting architect. "You couldn't think of one intelligent thing to say?" When Arundhati publishes her Booker-winning debut, "The God of Small Things," Mary says, "I struggle to imagine what all the fuss is about...." Arundhati initiates a seven-year period of estrangement--"not so I could escape my mother, but so that I could continue to love her." Mary never asks about these seven years; Arundhati doesn't dwell on this. "I lived. I was fine." Arundhati feels admiration for Mary--"my gangster"--because Mary starts an astoundingly successful school and actually wins a feminist legal battle. Mary changes an important law in India. She teaches boys...

  We're watching HBO's "Heated Rivalry," which is basically soft-core porn featuring two hockey players. The affiliated studio is called CRAVE--a name that leaves very little to the imagination. When I saw an ad for the show, I immediately noticed the frenzied groping and shirtlessness. It would be difficult not to notice. "There's something about the cinematography," I said to my spouse. "Or maybe the lighting? I just think you'll enjoy this. It's a true technical achievement." Call me crazy, but the "stakes" are somewhat mysterious to me. The rival hockey players love each other--but they cannot be forthright about their love, because it's a feeling that dare not speak its name. But aren't we in 2025? The current climate is different from that of Victorian England, right? Maybe I'm being obtuse. But we have Tom Daley in the world. And we have Nico Keenan, the Olympic field hockey player. No one is trying to burn ...

The NYT recently highlighted "There's a Boat" as one of the apex moments in musical theater history. People say this really belongs to an opera, but lines can be blurry. "Boat" is a sales pitch. Sportin' Life wants Bess's company. He is trying to win her away from Porgy. He lures her with promises of an exciting new life in Manhattan; the promises are purely superficial. There will be nothing meaningful in New York City, but there will be sequins and bright lights. I'll buy you the swellest mansion-- Up on upper Fifth Avenue. And to Harlem we'll go struttin'.... We'll go a struttin'..... And there'll be nothin' too good for you. I'll dress you in silks and satins-- And the latest Paris styles-- And all your blues you'll be forgettin'... You'll be forgettin'.... There'll be no frettin'..... Just nothing but smiles.... Sportin' Life shows his contempt at the end of the song. "Don't be a f...

  If there is one substantial flaw in "Merrily We Roll Along," it's the failure to look closely at the character of Frank, Jr. Yes, Jr. is approximately six years old in his final scene--but six-year-olds have wild and colorful interior lives. Ask Beverly Cleary. Since we don't get to know Frank, Jr., we have to do our own work to imagine what it's like to experience Junior's absence (year after year after year). I blame George Furth. The omission is important, because a big part of Mary's final meltdown has to do with Frank, Jr. In a sharp exchange, Mary "casually" mentions that Junior has thanked her for attending "the big high-school graduation." When Frank, Sr., peevishly observes that he wasn't invited, Mary has the right response: "Neither was I." She doesn't have to say anything more. This particular moment is the "apex" moment: It's the height of Senior's monstrosity. The entire show is an eff...

 Jen Hatmaker is gifted with a computer; hand her a laptop, and interesting things happen. In her recent memoir, she recalls a moment of discovery; at some point, she just understood that she could make other kids laugh. This was a superpower--it pointed her toward her adult life. (A similar event happens in Patti LuPone's memoir. In high school, LuPone is singing. Her teacher bluntly says, "You have a gift, and your entire life will be about the exploration of this one gift.") Hatmaker has another powerful memory from childhood. She remembers a male teacher caressing her shoulders in a way that makes her recoil. In this memory, she is an obedient member of an evangelical church; she believes that her duty is not to make waves. She doesn't say anything. Years later, she learns that the teacher in question assaulted at least one child. This discovery imparts a lesson: Occasionally, my body "knows" things, and I should pay attention. But the obvious set-piece ...

  We tried Tot Shabbat--but it involved a long drive, and it wasn't a "homerun." The central text was the Noah story--which, like most of the rest of the Bible, is essentially a horror film. But, at Tot Shabbat, the story became a cute opportunity for a song about animals. Something was left to be desired. The reason I like Judaism much more than Catholicism is that--at least in my memories of college--certain forms of Judaism involve doubt, skepticism, questioning. I had a terrific literature professor who invited me to his home for Rosh Hashanah; what followed was a kind of seminar about the Bible, in which people basically said, "We don't have any answers, and that's fine." In the Noah story, God becomes a homicidal maniac because He is irritated by His own creations. Whose fault is it that humans are bratty? One would have to assume it's God's fault. And yet the answer is murder and mass destruction? Some people say that an answer to despair ...

  Is it possible to invent a new plot in 2025? Ann Packer's late-career opus, "Some Bright Nowhere," has a startling setup. A couple has been reasonably happy for decades. The wife--Claire--is now dying of cancer. She asks her husband to move out; she wants to spend her final weeks with two female friends. Is Claire a monster? It's not really a question that can be answered. Oprah has said this: "I was totally annoyed by her, and by her lack of empathy for her spouse." I agree. But people in the real world do annoying things. They are annoying and self-absorbed all the time. How surprising to take this particular case of self-absorption and mold it into a novel. What results is sort of a divorce and sort of a non-divorce. Eliot continues to visit Claire in her house. He tries to be patient with her faux-doula friends. Sometimes, he eavesdrops on them. He attempts to defend his spouse when one child--Abby--raises loud and forceful objections to the new living...

  Joshua Henry contributed a terrific mini-essay to the NYTimes. In that essay, Henry argues that the key to all musical theater is Victoria Clark's "Fable." This is, of course, correct. Adam Guettel has limitations--but one thing he can do is write an outstanding 11:00 number. He did this with "How Glory Goes," and he did this again with "Fable." (The producers of "Chess" might learn from this. One problem with "Someone Else's Story" is that it doesn't belong at the end of "Chess." There is literally no reason why Florence would sing these words at this moment in the show. By contrast, "Fable" is like an eruption. It has to happen when it happens. Context is everything.) "Fable" has a simple premise. A woman has been damaged by love; she still has to accept that her unusually vulnerable daughter is going to attempt her *own* love story. Victoria Clark's character is now permanently cynical:...

 Long ago, I wrote about a contractor who made inventive speeches about why he could not work: "My bowels are malfunctioning," "I've injured my eye," "Terrible traffic en route to the post office..." This man, Eddie, is gone from my life, but now I feel I'm meeting his spiritual twin. Her name is Y, and she is a kind of teacher/governess for my son. Except that she often can't do her job, for the following reasons: *"I need to pack a suitcase for my trip to the Philippines." "Changing diapers is out of the question because I've just applied eczema cream." *"Changing diapers is out of the question because I dropped one of my nitrile gloves." *"My husband has a cold, so whaddaya suggest as a plan for looking after *my* baby?" *(Perhaps my favorite) ... "Another client asked to boot you from your timeslot tomorrow. Is that cool with you?" Y is captivating to my spouse and me--and it feels crumm...