Liars and Saints

 Everyone has a colonoscopy now and then--so this is not like a report from the epicenter of 9/11. The doctor appeared to be a small child, and I liked him. He had an inelegant way of speaking. "Who knows if insurance will cover this?" he wondered aloud. "If you had a more dramatic family history--if your father were, like, dying of colon cancer, then you would be a slam dunk...." He briefly considered my small daily intake of Adderall. "I mean, you *could* ingest that before a colonoscopy....but that's like pissing into the wind...." (OK, he did not use that simile--but I *saw* the simile. I saw it in his eyes.) The unpleasant part is the waiting. I worked my way through every Christmas carol I know--then moved on to Sondheim. "Johanna," "Anyone Can Whistle," "Losing My Mind." Oscar Hammerstein. Frank Loesser. "I spend sleepless nights to think about you...." Did Sondheim think that this was an odd way of using ...

  This season of "SVU" has not been flawless, but it has mostly been delightful. Then April 23 happened. Oscar nominee Melissa McCarthy plays Jesmyn Jewell, a star on the ultimate fighter circuit. I'm pretty sure that most--if not all--of McCarthy's lines are improvised. (She is channeling her "Bridesmaids" character.) Famously, on "The Simpsons," the yard work sequence from "Cape Feare" made the cut only because the writers needed one full minute of padding. I believe we're seeing something like that in the McCarthy scene from "SVU." Jewell immediately falls in love with Olivia Benson (who just wants some simple information). Jewell keeps derailing the conversation to talk about Benson's "yams," her "baby browns," her talent for "being spicey." Jewell wants cash--but if cash is unavailable, "some other arrangement" could be designed. The scene would not work if Mariska Hargitay st...

 Anne Fadiman's extraordinary personal essay, "Under Water," is an adventure story. In her youth, Fadiman goes on a rafting trip. A young man gets his foot wedged between two rocks. Here, you might expect a successful rescue. But that's not the tale. Fadiman and her friends attempt to reach the victim--but the attempt is a failure. Next, the *adults* arrive and make an attempt--and they also fail. In other words, the kid dies. What makes a personal narrative special is the depth of the writer's thinking. A banal lesson might be this: "Don't ever go rafting." Or this: "Carpe diem." But Fadiman takes an odd, shocking path: The victim's shirtless torso was pale and undulating. I thought, he looks like the flayed skin on St. Bartholomew in the Sistine Chapel. As soon as I had the thought, I knew that it was dishonorable. To think about anything outside the moment, outside Gary, was a crime of inattention. I swallowed a small, sour piece of ...

  We aren't moving. Not for many years. But there is a distraction available if you cannot purchase new real estate. You can *re-make* your current house. In the Raymond Carver story "Boxes," Carver's mother repeatedly violates her lease agreements. There is nothing wrong with any of the towns she has chosen, but she herself is unsettled. "Wherever you go, there you are." This is the subtle message of the story. Raymond has to pretend to agree whenever his mom blames the town for her ills. My husband and I are considering new paint colors for the exterior of our home; you would think that this color question is the key to our future happiness. If we choose correctly, we will never, never have any other issues to contend with. Never. We send each other photos from Google searches. We "feed" our current house to ChatGPT, which spits out "reimagined" versions with varying color schemes. At a Buddhist shrine in Newark, I could not think, ...

  In "Wants," Grace Paley makes several odd choices. She decides to return some overdue books but then parks herself on the steps leading to the library's entrance--she seems to be a daydreamer. When she spots her ex, she refers to him as "my life." (Could this be deliberately antagonistic?) The ex says that the marriage died because "you never invited the Bertrams to dinner"--and instead of calling the accusation absurd, Grace shrugs and says, "That's possible." We can imagine that Grace may be simmering with rage; her way of managing life is to detach. The story never *tells* us to reach that conclusion. One of the smartest touches is to show Grace observing the librarian. This minor character reveals that Grace has been a "person of interest" for eighteen years. The librarian has "more to tell"--but the ex ploughs ahead with a disruption. In this moment, Grace seems to identify with the librarian--she knows how it f...

 This is an amazingly shallow movie -- it makes the Bobby Darrin musical look like Shakespeare. If you choose to make a film about a monster but overlook all the evidence of monstrosity, then you're severely limited on the job. The Ebert site's one-star rating seems generous. (That said, because the movie reproduces several of Michael's dance routines, the experience is ridiculously entertaining.) Generally, a coming-of-age story involves the discovery of sex; it's the exploration of sex that lets the protagonist begin to form an adult identity. Janet Jackson is a sturdy example; her recorded works are like a Bildungsroman. She is energetic and charming in "Escapade"--but it's "Love Will Never Do" that throws on all the lights. You put Djimon Hounsou in a little white Speedo, and there's no turning back. Janet's adult entanglements with heartache, death, disappointment, mental illness, cheating--all these feel "relatable." Janet...

 Yesterday, I had a sitter who arrived quite late. This sitter is a teenager--she isn't amazing. Her lateness interfered with a client appointment I had; nothing annoys me more. Essentially all I ask of a sitter is that she will arrive when she says she will arrive. It's stunning to me how difficult this is for so many people--and now *I* am one of those people because I did not hire a notably professional sitter. This was a minor event, but it raised some questions: How kind can I be as an employer? What role does a "power differential" play? (It's easy to take out frustration on a teenager.) If I'm openly impatient, am I giving the impression that I myself have never screwed up at work? (This would be a false impression.) In Season One, the best move of "The Pitt" was to give us Dr. Langdon, a white, handsome, confident man. Langdon was challenged by a new hire, an abrasive, non-white, sometimes foolish woman. Here, "The Pitt" was playing...

 My husband sometimes meets celebrities, but really the only one who has excited him is Jeni, owner of Jeni's Ice Cream. Certain stories from this encounter have become a kind of Biblical text in my house. Each time I hear one of the stories, I act like I'm hearing it for the first time. This teenager was working at the counter, and he said, "If you come back tomorrow, be sure to note that we close at 8...." And Jeni gave him a deadpan look and said, "Who do you think *I* am?" Also: Jeni invented salted caramel. Before her, it truly did not exist. (I have some doubts about that factoid, but I keep quiet.) Also: Jeni is a close friend of Joe Biden's. Of course, one thing we know about Joe is this: The man loves his ice cream..... In my house, there is a partial ban on fruit-flavored ice creams; like the writer Anne Fadiman, I feel there shouldn't even be a hint of anything "healthy" in an ice-cream flavor. The only legitimate options are the...

 Joshua Henry's impending Tony win has me thinking about "Violet"--the one and only show to place Henry next to Sutton Foster. In "Violet," Henry plays Flick, a somewhat conflicted young sergeant traveling through North Carolina on a Greyhound bus. It's the 1960s; several people on the bus are praying. One hopes for domestic harmony; another wants a "successful" visit to a faith healer. By contrast, Flick *argues* with God. Too bad we don't see eye to eye, Lord-- We could pass the time of day. Flick befriends the titular character, who claims that her faith healer will repair her damaged face. (Violet has suffered a terrible accident involving an axe.) Flick--having grown up impoverished and Black in the 1950s--immediately understands Violet's anger. He offers advice (and we suspect that, on some level, he is really advising himself): My family never had too much-- Made the best of every day. Ate what's on our plate, you know-- Never th...

  Tom Perrotta is a name I'll always notice; among his novels, "The Wishbones," "Election," "The Leftovers," and "Joe College" are my favorites.  Perrotta's special skill is his ability to describe moments of mundane discomfort. We all live through these moments; we just don't commit them to the blank page. In the new novel, "Ghost Town," a young man, Jimmy, meets a stranger and bluntly concedes that his mother has just died. But then he thinks he sounds glib, so he offers a few sentences about his mourning. And he realizes that the sentences might be what they (in fact) are: nervous, meaningless throat-clearing. Life goes on. "Ghost Town" is set in Garwood (called "Creamwood"), NJ, in the 1970s. Everyone is white; everyone smokes cigarettes. A dispute might involve a schoolteacher and a hippie at the local McDonald's. "I understand your  flat feet  kept you out of Vietnam...." In this small...

 To feel more "involved" in my community, I've been listing the suburban quirks that I hate the most. See below. *The blowout toddler birthday parties. This is an entire industry--I'm guilty of participating. You pay four hundred dollars to a slovenly stranger, so that he can produce oddly shaped bubbles from a dirty vat. The *kids* don't need this--the kids are fully entertained by a stick and a cardboard box. Whom is the "bubble man" really for ? *Our bookstore is closed on Mondays. I find this so profoundly irritating. Imagine if "Three Lives," in Greenwich Village, suddenly, inexplicably, reduced its hours of operation by one-seventh. It's absurd. *I have a new nemesis. Let me explain. A few years ago, the actor Zachary Levi made a billion enemies by suggesting that Gavin Creel's death was linked with Creel's decision to get the Covid vaccine. And Laura Benanti said, "I always knew Levi was an obnoxious bully. He made every...

 Over the weekend, the NYT named Victoria Clark one of the actors you have to see. In other words, if Clark's name is in the ad, you just buy the ticket. I can't argue with that. The mini-essay claims that Clark acts *through* the notes, not on top of them. I think I know what this means. Here are three examples: *"Before I Go." Clark sings, "Maybe you'll see me while I'm still here. I'm still here." By the end of the line, she is running out of breath--the fight to get to the last word conveys a sense of exhaustion and exasperation. It's not that Clark doesn't understand breath control; she could easily "reengineer" her delivery so that every note is fully supported. But the choice she makes tells us something about her character. This is deliberate. *"Yes, you can." The climax of "The Light in the Piazza." Clara is fretting that she cannot steer herself through the adult world. Clark's Margaret cuts thr...

 Before "Hamilton," I saw Renee Elise Goldsberry in "Two Gentlemen of Verona," "Good People," "The Color Purple," and "Rent." This wasn't by design. She just kept popping up. She was consistently a standout--she earned an Outer Critics Circle nomination for "Good People." But--if she had stopped--no one would have cared. That's what fascinates me about the arts. You really need a will of steel. After Sondheim flopped with "Merrily We Roll Along," he considered quitting. And his agent said, "Sure. Stop writing--literally no one will lose sleep over that." The new film about Goldsberry--"Satisfied"--isn't very good. At times, Goldsberry is so goopy-celestial that she seems to be doing self-parody; she seems to be playing Wickie from "Girls5eva." The documentary does that annoying thing where the star is asked to "recreate" a pivotal moment, and we're all forced to...

 The Headlines: -Sondheim wrote "Into the Woods" while falling deeply in love with cocaine. This makes sense. "Woods" has always seemed overstuffed and sloppy. It's a show that may make you think, "Here, the writer was abusing cocaine...." -Many lyricists make grammatical errors. Tim Rice, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Steven Sater: These are all writers who have trouble with grammar. But Sondheim is an exception. So the following line always bothered me. "Nice is different than good." I now know that Sondheim *deliberately* made this error--he believed that Little Red would not say different from ....Sondheim insisted on the choice he had made even when others questioned the choice. -Daniel Okrent offers a smart reading of the song "Finishing the Hat." The money note occurs in the bridge--you get a startling jump from the bottom to the top of the scale. "And how you're *always* turning back too late from the grass or the stick or th...

  I have been hired to teach reading and writing to a student -- there is no ISEE, no SAT, attached. This sort of thing fills me with terror, because there is no built-in structure, no test date, no bubble sheet. I had a writing teacher in college who would enter class in a serene way, with chocolate-covered blueberries, and who would then just speak eloquently about Raymond Carver for ninety minutes. She did not have an advanced degree. She had bottomless depths of self-confidence; she was mesmerizing. My current student, a fifth grader, is working on her own newspaper. She interviews residents of her town and publishes her findings. Since Mother's Day is approaching, she has chosen to interview a mother -- and her thought process is straightforward, unimpeachable. "I chose K, three doors down from me, because she has three kids. No one else has *three* kids. So K must be the most interesting mother." My student and I ran through the standard soft-ball questions. "W...

  Laura Linney's career-defining role--in "You Can Count on Me"--requires her to be tightly wound, teetering, furious. It's like a "Laurie Metcalf" role. In one of my all-time favorite movie scenes, Linney has just one word--and she fits a world of hopefulness and terror into that word. (She has picked up a phone, and after a moment, she says her brother's name. "Terry.") "American Classic" allows Linney to revisit her famous role. The show is like a variation on a theme--for Linney. Once again, Linney is outwardly poised, impatient, well-meaning, somewhat ridiculous. Her character, Kristen, will not listen to her daughter's wish to say "no" to the University of Pennsylvania. Kristen is eager to sabotage herself; when her critics say she should resign from her office, she quickly decides that they are right. In certain funny, climactic moments, Kristen refuses to participate in the absurd "truth circle" that th...

 "Down Time"--by a writer I love, Andrew Martin--is a novel in which very little happens. It's almost shocking that something so "unresolved" still found a publisher. On the website "Book Marks," literary novels rarely earn a "pan" designation. But one magazine did actually "pan" this book. And yet I really liked "Down Time." The center is Aaron, a gifted writer of short stories who is drinking himself to death. "I think I might need to go back to a place," he says to his spouse, Cassandra, after having thrown himself into a bonfire at a party. But, in rehab, Aaron meets a troubled young man, Xavier, and discovers that he (Aaron) enjoys gay sex (first exclusively on the top, but ultimately in every possible position). In the months after rehab, Aaron continues to see Xavier but keeps this a secret from Cassandra. The disturbed marriage endures several months in a "pandemic pod" with Aaron's stepmoth...

 We went to the Museum of the American Indian, in Bowling Green. It's not great. There is far too much text; also, the announcement that my child's small stuffed dinosaur required an anti-terrorism X-ray scan struck me as just slightly silly. But the museum is free. My son was mostly intrigued by the bathrooms; he is deeply interested in the "men/women" distinction. By contrast, I did what I always do at museums; I pretended I owned all of the square acreage. "Welcome to my drawing room," I murmured, as I wandered through the rotunda. Perhaps I had not fully learned the lessons of Disney's "Pocahontas." ("You think you own whatever land you land on...The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim!") I see so many parents struggling to make this sort of experience "kid-friendly." How often I hear someone say, "You're going to notice something in this room! Put down that phone and notice something!" ...This always ...

 Like James Marshall, Tomie dePaola enjoyed fairy tales, nursery tales. DePaola gathered many of these into anthologies. (DePaola's attention span seemed limited, at least in this way.) An exception is the Cinderella story, which dePaola uses for a full-length book. His twist is to move the story to Mexico. Mexican talavera-style tiles frame the pictures. Instead of a slipper, Cinderella has a rebozo, an important shawl. "Once upon a time" becomes "hace mucho tiempo...." DePaola--throughout his career--shows deep curiosity about the world's cultures; his works include explorations of Passover, the St. Patrick legend, Las Posadas, Hanukkah, the Queen Esther legend, the legend of the Persian carpet, the legend of the Indian paintbrush. It's easy to imagine why he chose Cinderella; like "Bluebonnet" or "Indian Paintbrush," "Adelita" features an oddball character who endures hardship without a loss of morale. I'm especially ...

 "Guys and Dolls" is so masterful, it's able to break the rules. Famously, it assigns its 11:00 number to a minor character. This is not "Rose's Turn." It's just a high-energy diversion shortly before the conclusion of the evening. Nicely-Nicely Johnson, an unreformed thug, needs to find a stalling tactic at a prayer meeting. So he imagines what a conversion experience *might* look like. And he does some playacting. I dreamed last night I got on the boat to Heaven-- And, by some chance, I had brought my dice along. And there I stood, and I hollered, "Someone, fade me." But the passengers, they knew right from wrong. This show is a celebration of language: "So nu?" "I got the horse right here," "Luck, be a lady tonight," "Take back your mink," "If I were a banner, I'd wave." I imagine Frank Loesser did a little dance of joy when he landed on the following: "Someone, fade me." And it...

 Curtis Sittenfeld made the ultimate pitch for "The Americans": You think it might be about geopolitics. Really, it's about marriage. This show has the great luck of enlisting two astonishing actors--Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys--who create a plausible version of a partnership under stress. She really believes in the Soviet cause; he has doubts. She wants to recruit her daughter for the family business; he does not. She has very little trouble toying with American lives; he seems (at least sometimes) haunted by the ethical implications of his bad behavior. A brilliant decision behind the show is this: Choose a foundational belief so deep, it would seem to justify evil. If you fully believed that the Soviet philosophy was "the only way," then wouldn't you do all you could to defeat the decadent American empire? Another thing I like is that no one cares whether we fall in love with the main characters. These two suburbanites are amazingly terrible; they are l...

 My son is learning to survive on the basketball court. This is entirely my husband's project; the effort sounds exhausting, and I admire the commitment of both gentlemen (Marc and Josh). Here is my limited understanding of basketball. It's potentially fun if you have the ball. (That said, I have vivid memories of being mocked for my effeminate approach to the "bank shot"--and I'm so, so happy that I never have to play this game again.) Basketball is *not* fun when you are *waiting* for the ball--and this is where Josh stumbles. He grows bored. He tries to steal the ball even when it is in the hands of a teammate. Josh's cleverness is such that he chooses the exact behavior to make the most people upset in the shortest amount of time. The other day at the Newark Museum, he had grown tired, and he knew he would have trouble competing with the fabulous artifacts of the Ballantine House. So he said, "Look, I took my pants off." And--yes--that *did* catc...

 Some Things I Didn't Know About Ruby Ridge: *The Weaver family actually lived on "Caribou Ridge," but a journalist decided that the term "Ruby Ridge" sounded more poetic. This is really what happened! *Randy Weaver survived for many years after the violent deaths of his wife, son, and dog; Weaver became an atheist. *In the early nineties, the Ruby Ridge incident seemed random. A historian had predicted "the End of History"; with the death of the Cold War, all would be peaceful and ho-hum. Then: Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City, January 6. Ruby Ridge now seems like the *start* of an era. *Randy Weaver had been summoned to court, and he was not paying attention to the summons. This was the inciting incident at Ruby Ridge. If it's permissible to ignore a summons, then the American "rulebook" begins to deteriorate. At least on the surface, no official was deeply interested in Weaver's anti-government views, his antisemitism, or his belief...

  This is a polarizing film--and let me start by saying my enthusiasm was less than that of my husband. That said, I still half-liked the movie. Life is really absurd. However serious your choice of subject, you still have to contend with the fact that life is absurd. Is this true even in a world where mass shootings occur? Yes, it's still true. In her teens, Emma Harwood decides that she is so unhappy, she wants to murder several of her classmates. She chooses to film a self-important statement of intention: "I'll bet you want to know why I did it...." But, as she struggles with her phone camera, the battery keeps dying--and she finally gives up on the filming session. On the day of the planned attack, *another* shooting occurs at a nearby mall. This doesn't fit into Emma's narrative--she feels upstaged--and so she abandons her mission and becomes an anti-gun activist. Years later, when Emma's fiance Charlie learns all of this information, he has a meltdo...

 What is particularly galling about my doctor is his "session note": "learning about healthy weight." I find this condescending. First, my weight was exactly at the dividing line between "normal" and "overweight." I think this fact should be included in a footnote. Second, I didn't do any "learning." It's not like I walked in thinking, "French toast is a wiser choice than salmon--this is true from every possible angle." I know what happened. Last year, I discovered bacon. I would travel to the Frick Collection--and, en route, I would eat bacon. I think that, in my head, the virtuousness of the Frick mission "cancelled out" the bacon. Once this was established, I found myself straying even more. Bacon could yield to steak and eggs or to buttermilk pancakes or to pancakes- with -bacon . After the Frick, I would treat myself to a snack--and the snack would not be apple slices or unsalted peanuts. The snack would...

 There is a new book on Sondheim -- considering the writer in the context of his Jewish heritage. Sondheim doesn't often write explicitly about God. But he once acknowledged that his big anthem, "Being Alive," can be seen as a prayer: Make me confused. Mock me with praise. Let me be used. Vary my days. I think that's also true of the song "Take Me to the World," which is about fleeing a sense of stultifying comfort. Let me see the world with clouds-- Take me to the world. Out where I can push through crowds-- Take me to the world. A world that smiles-- With streets instead of aisles-- Where I can walk for miles with you. The speaker craves sensations--walking without boundaries, pushing, seeing clouds and streets. It's interesting to emphasize the word "smiles." The speaker is essentially a mannequin--she rarely has a reason for joy. She imagines something revolutionary outside her store; she will smile, and the entire world will return that fa...

 One of the most compelling characters in Grant Ginder's new novel is Nina, who doesn't like herself. She enrolls at Northwestern for business school and talks and talks about the program. ("My cohort was asked to pack a bag--and just show up at the airport for a mystery trip!" "When two people within my cohort get married, the rest of us say it's a joint venture ....") Nina briefly works on improving school lunch health in the Bronx, mainly so she can talk about her virtuous efforts (efforts that become a source of tedious monologues at parties). When Nina realizes that her Bronx project is never going to secure her a house in Sag Harbor, she just switches to an easier job at Google. One evening, alone, Nina discovers that an old frenemy is living nearby. She invites herself for dinner--and for a game of Celebrity. ("I'm really great at Celebrity," says Nina, to no one who cares.) Later, having intruded on a private conversation, Nina is c...

This film has two stars: Ryan Gosling and Ryan Gosling's dermal filler. The filler is distracting. It does actually impair one's ability to suspend disbelief. If Gosling would like to become Tom Hanks, then the filler may be a problem. Another problem is the idea of a trajectory. Gosling's character--Ryland Grace--needs to start in an "embittered" place. It's the love of an alien that allows Grace to really embrace life. But--via Gosling, in this movie--Grace seems immediately charismatic and selfless and charming. (He is a beloved teacher of middle school!) So the movie has Grace move from "likable" to "likable." Not the most satisfying journey. What happens here? A great deal of nonsense. The sun is dying. There is a special element that could sustain life on Earth. Before his middle-school career, Grace was a trailblazing scientist. For some silly reasons, it emerges that Grace is the one and only human who can save the planet. Out in sp...

  The secular Easter stories can't really compete with the Passion Play. Look at the Gospels. You have Judas, who is maybe sexually drawn to Jesus. Judas betrays Jesus for cash--Jesus gets murdered--Judas hangs himself. Peter--apparently a role model--nevertheless forgets "his best self." Then: the resurrection. This is Caravaggio territory. By contrast, in the 1970s, Fred Astaire and others tried to write a "bunny story." I think, by this point, Astaire was running on the fumes of his own talent. In "The Easter Bunny Is Comin' to Town," a spirited bunny wants to expand the capitalist reach of a particular troubled village. The village has one gift--excellent eggs--so the bunny tries to take the eggs to a rival town. But in that town, a villainess queen has severely restricted everyone's diet; only beans are allowed. So a smuggling operation occurs. The eggs are dyed bright colors--to confuse the queen. I'm not making this stuff up. My daug...

  Otto Penzler has a terrific idea: Draft French journalists to cover significant crimes in American history. Crime writing is, by definition, sociology; by looking at a murder, a journalist is looking at a society and its perversions. It's possible that an "outsider" is clearer and sharper than Katie Couric or Rachel Maddow. Chandra Levy disappeared shortly before 9/11. She was working as an intern in Washington, DC, and she was having an affair with the congressman Gary Condit. Condit lied--many times--about the affair, so he began to look like a murderer. (It doesn't matter that there is at least sometimes a difference between being a liar and being a murderer. Americans tend to jump to conclusions.) After the Chandra Levy affair ruined his life, Condit became the owner of a Baskin Robbins outpost; eventually, Baskin Robbins asked to be removed from all of Condit's merch, signage, and paperwork. But Condit continued to call himself the owner of a local "Ba...