Liars and Saints

  I started watching "Mindhunter" for Jonathan Groff, but it's Holt McCallany who is holding my attention. HM plays Bill Tench, whose problems are among the strangest I've seen on any TV series. Tench's little adopted son is difficult to "reach." But the son is watchful--and he is aware that his father drafts profiles of serial killers. There are photos of mangled corpses in the house. During Season Two, the dead body of a toddler is discovered on "Tench terrain"--it's found within a house that Mrs. Tench is trying to sell. It turns out that (allegedly) some kids were playing rough with the toddler--and the toddler died by accidental suffocation. The Tench boy--an observer (not a participant)--then thought it would be smart to crucify the toddler on a wooden plank. Maybe--like Jesus--the toddler would come back to life. (Parts of this make me recall the death of the boy Garrett Phillips in Potsdam, NY. There have been rumors about the invol...

  In my childhood, I had a coffee table book about the history of Broadway. The part that stunned me was a segment on Hal Prince. Having taken on "Cabaret," Prince constructed massive mirrors--mirrors that would "confront" the audience. Thus the members of the audience would stare at themselves throughout the night. Prince was saying: "Don't think you can detach yourself. You likely would have been complicit in history--if you were wearing Sally Bowles's shoes." Twisted little boy that I was, I also felt drawn to "Night, Mother." Every evening, Kathy Bates would announce her intention to commit suicide. Two hours would pass. Then, Bates would commit suicide--the end of the evening was (also) the end of her life. I had this book before I "found" Sondheim. Something in the DNA told me, You should just pay attention to this information about Liza Minnelli and Pearl Bailey. And the stats about Zero Mostel. If you're very young, ...

  "Happening" is a memoir by Annie Ernaux; I chose it at a time when I couldn't read anything lengthy. It was listed among great novellas, though I don't think it is fiction. It's intimidating to read something by a Nobel winner--why not start with a novella? Ernaux begins with an HIV test. She sits in a waiting room and listens as a biologist speaks into a phone. "No, your cell count is normal, perfectly normal." She immediately understands what is being not said but instead implied: "You have AIDS, and I can't comfort you. But  perfectly  is a word with three syllables. It takes a long time to say. So I might just say it several times." Immediately, Ernaux is sending a subtextual message: I'm a writer, and I notice things. She proceeds to make a character out of herself. In her fury and terror, she imagines that a particular man she just saw ("half-heartedly") is a villain from a comic book; he roams the streets of Europe; h...

 I'm delighted that "Hadestown" is having so much success this week. The proshot knocked me over. First, there is the witty costume design: the Earth tones of the laborers, the black/silvery style for the Fates, the seasonal shift in Persephone's "look." Second: the ending. The Pulitzer winner Wesley Morris--focusing on "Ragtime" and "Giant"--recently argued that new Broadway productions refuse to challenge or disturb a ticket-buyer. By contrast, "Hadestown" doesn't let us comfortably despise any of the characters. And it has a brutal ending--a courageous choice for the writers. Third: Patrick Page. I was not alone in watching the proshot and thinking Patrick Page deserved the Tony Award. Andre De Shields was excellent, AND Page still deserved the Tony win. My old writing teacher likes to say that she writes about "the space between the sidewalk and the curb." The liminal space. When you're neither here nor the...

 My daughter has fallen for "The Magic Tree House," and I can see why. These books recreate the past; they are not simply history lessons. By putting Jack and Annie in the middle of a dinosaur stampede, Osborne grants every child-reader an important wish. Let me actually *travel* in space and time. The very first sentence fragment in the very first book is brilliant. "Help! A monster!" How do you beat that? Susie demands a rereading sometimes. Twice, we have wandered through "Mummies in the Morning." There is spookiness--a tomb robber, a ghost-queen, a mirage. Occasionally, there is a villain; the "pirate" segment involves a "Captain Hook" figure. What you do not find is humor, character development, or stylistic innovation. Susie doesn't mind. If the book is too frightening, Susie then needs to sleep with her door open. (In childhood, I always felt that if I covered my ear with a blanket, I would grant myself immunity from any vill...

  James Dailey had a rough time in Vietnam, came home, watched his life unravel. He was like the speaker in Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA." Struggling with addiction, he lost his family. He began hanging out with unsavory characters. One of those characters--Pearcy--took a 14-year-old girl out for a drive. He tried to rape her, but he was impotent. In a moment of confusion, he believed that the kid was starting to laugh at him. In a frenzy, he stabbed her over thirty times and left her corpse in a puddle. To confuse the police, Pearcy claimed that he was with James Dailey on "the night in question." This was false. But the story gained momentum. The DA recruited a group of jailhouse snitches. Various secret promises were authored.  Testify against Dailey, and we'll offer perks. Dailey has thus spent decades in jail. At one point, Ron DeSantis declared his intention to execute Dailey. The murderer himself declared that Dailey was innocent. All but one ...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZvsjbF785g&pp=ygUTbWFkZGllIHRyYWlsZXIgMjAyNg%3D%3D&ra=m I thought "Maddie's Secret" was mind-blowing. It never *works* to make you laugh. The writer/director never seems to break a sweat. Instead, the movie is a singular vision. It's like you're handed "alien goggles." And you see the world in a new way. We begin with Maddie skipping down the streets of L.A., occasionally sniffing jasmine. She is like Maria von Trapp. The world is wonderful! But she needs to make more money if she wants to start a family. So her partner pressures her to share one of her cooking videos with the world. Fame arrives--and its impact is pernicious. Maddie immediately faces criticism because of her weight. She had a traumatic childhood, in which her mother blamed her for family difficulties. (Her mother would often assist with purging sessions--Mom would hold the ponytail so strands of hair didn't dip themselves in the toilet water.) ...

  My main reason for seeing "The Lost Boys" was Shoshana Bean. And I had a great time. It's a bad musical. In a way, that doesn't matter. People are up there taking big swings--it's difficult not to feel excited. Shoshana Bean invented her own career. After "Wicked," she did not wait for others to invite her to a recording studio; she figured out how to make her own pop album, and she did the work. It's strange how pop stardom is denied to some and not to others. Bean has the head voice, the belt, and the riffing capabilities of a new Whitney Houston. But--also--who cares? If the pop world doesn't want Shoshana Bean, then Broadway *does* want her. My favorite Bean song is "No One," by Alicia Keys. It is reimagined as a mother/child duet, and it makes me think of my own kids. I know people will search the world To find something like what we have. I know people will try -- try to divide Something so real -- So, till the end of time, I...

  In Amy Bloom's story "Silver Water," a troubled young woman goes with her family to family therapy. The session doesn't flow smoothly . The therapist is icy and judgmental, and the young woman starts picking her nose. "I wonder," says the therapist, "why your daughter is behaving that way." The narrator jumps in. "Maybe because she doesn't like that you're talking about her in the third person." The other day, a paraprofessional handed my son off. "You may want to put that water bottle in boiling water," she said. "For some reason, HE decided to throw it in a trash can. Hope he does better tomorrow." And one part of me wanted to shrug. To say, "HE probably senses that you hate your job, and in turn HE doesn't like you very much. And walking to the trash can was one way to express all of that. Clever guy!" I can feel frustrated that the YMCA lied and claimed to be able to handle a case that was b...

  I really dislike my child's school district -- simple communication becomes baroque, certain employees fail to even pretend to listen, and there is an overall impression of "trying to chat with a black hole." When I fight with the school district, I remember the phrase "pearls before swine." To show real emotion is to give these fellow citizens something that they do not deserve. What they deserve is strictly superficial conduct. Nikki Giovanni writes: If i can't do  what i want to do  then my job is to not  do what i don't want to do  It's not the same thing  but it's the b est i can  do If I can't reform a broken system, I can at least promise to myself that I won't betray a sense of neediness. I will save my energy and act like a robot when that is what is called for. If i can't have  what i want . . . then  my job is to want  what i've got  and be satisfied  that at least there  is something more to want In other wor...

  "The Odyssey" is the story of Circe, a witch on an island. (In a 1990s version, Circe was Bernadette Peters, but I have to admit that Samantha Morton is better.) Having endured sexual assault, Circe trusts no one. She feigns generosity, then sets a trap. As Odysseus's men eat Circe's stew, Circe casts a spell. She turns the men into pigs. In a great twist, the current "Odyssey" imagines that the transformation involves *physical* labor. Circe sculpts the pigs as if sculpting clay. It's like something from "The Fly." Really appalling. Odysseus pleads with Circe--these men intended no harm, and in fact they did not harm Circe. But Circe does not miss a beat. "They WOULD HAVE harmed me," she says. (And I think everyone in the audience will agree with Circe, not with Odysseus.) Circe refers to a human form as a "disguise"; her guests are pigs, and she has simply removed the disguise. There is a parallel between Circe and Oydss...

 We live in the wilderness--sometimes, this is cute. It's cute when groundhogs frolic in our backyard. Or bunnies. Or when my daughter tries to talk to the birds. I'm reminded of the woodsy interludes in "Snow White" and "Sleeping Beauty." The moment when Aurora shares her deepest feelings with a barn owl. Things are less cute when I consider the problem of waste disposal. One of the most horrifying things I've ever seen is a "garbage can invasion" on a Friday night. My spouse and I were returning from a film. One raccoon popped out of the trash can. Then--I swear--I saw ten or twelve more. One after another after another after another. Spilling from the can's bowels. I'm led to think of that moment in "Alien," when an encephalopod "births itself"--the "cost" is one young man, and specifically that man's abdomen. Like many other issues, garbage in my town is an opportunity for virtue signaling. A prefer...

  "The Lost Boys" is a musical about Ronald Reagan. He appears on a TV screen, giving a lecture about family values; later, he takes the shape of Broadway star Paul Nolan, a nerdy guy in a suit who talks about what happens when the country is "overrun" with single moms. (You might think, why does Paul Nolan have such an apparently small role? Just you wait.) Pitted against Paul Nolan is Shoshana Bean, who just wants a job, a romance, an intact family, and a sense of instant community. Bean's desperation leads her to make questionable choices--should she really agree to work at a video rental outlet without anything like a basic "candidate interview"? If a new friend makes approving remarks about Goldwater, should Bean stick around? Bean becomes aware of her mistakes; before it's too late, she grabs a stake and murders a trickster vampire. This raises questions. Bean may have eliminated Ronald Reagan--but is she any closer to a job, a romance, an in...

  "The Invite" is a showcase for Seth Rogen, who just wants to remember what it's like to have sex. Penelope Cruz has questions about Rogen's self-esteem. "Do you like yourself?" she asks. "Would you have sex with yourself?" "Yes! I'm the ONLY one who fucks me. I fuck myself often!" I get the sense that Rogen's best lines may be improvised. Having learned that his noisy neighbors like to host orgies, he tries to negotiate. "It just gets very loud. Maybe take the BIG sex parties offsite, to a motel. You know, if it's a birthday or an anniversary. Or Arbor Day...." Penelope Cruz wonders aloud which particular birthday Valentina--a favored sex partner--celebrated at a recent dinner. "Next time you're preparing to enter her," says Rogen, "you should just count her rings...." Rogen's performance reaches its climax when he tries to perform a sultry dance, then trips, falls on a stack of books, a...

 Maggie Haberman's title--"Regime Change"--is multi-faceted. It's a reference to some of Donald's Tweets in the buildup to the conflict in Iran: "Time for a Regime Change!" It's also a reference to one of the classic books in the "current events publishing" world: "Game Change." Finally, it's an invitation to think about the word "regime." We might imagine that the change was from Biden to Trump. But--in the Biden years--had the Trump regime really ended? Is it possible that it simply changed? Trump 1.0 was somewhat cautious--at least when you compare him to Trump 2.0. Haberman suggests that America would have been better off enduring two Trump terms back to back; the 2020 Trump would have been unpopular and therefore hamstrung. Instead, Trump 2.0 could profit from American dissatisfaction toward the (deeply dissatisfying) choices of Joe Biden. Trump 2.0 is like Ursula the Sea Witch--*after* she has morphed and assum...

 I don't live in Montclair, but I'm there often. A feature I dislike is the canonization of one resident, Stephen Colbert. Anytime there is widespread adulation for anyone, I become skeptical. Colbert's slightly patronizing ads for the "Montclair Film Festival" drive me batty. A better facet is the Montclair Book Center. This eccentric bookstore may or may not carry all of the current major titles you'd expect, but it does have tattered four-dollar mass market editions of forgotten Golden Age mysteries. Also, hardcover editions of old titles are kept *separate* from the paperbacks--so you get the thrill of discovery TWICE. It's like two bookstores within one building. The last thing I'll say about Montclair is that there are several "Bosch" houses up in the hills. These are upside-down houses--they are perched almost on top of Manhattan. Sometimes, the "consumption" of volume and surface area is astonishing; it's exciting just t...

 The NYT says that "West Side Story" is Bernstein's classic mix of "discord and schmaltz." Bernstein likely believes, deep down, that he is constructing an opera--and that is suggested by his self-conscious song title, "Quintet." We are meant to think of Mozart. I love "Quintet" above all the other numbers because the discord and the schmaltz are right there together. Singing on his own, Tony can be just a bit insufferable: Oh moon, grow bright-- And make this endless day, endless night-- Tonight! But Anita cuts through the nonsense, thinking about her *own* lover: He'll come in hot and tired. So what? Don't matter if he's tired-- As long as he's hot. Sondheim could simply have the rival gang members puffing themselves up, but instead he chooses to look at self-deception. He has the gang members half-acknowledge their plans to use illegal weapons. "Well, IF things start to go too far...." With this kind of writing, S...

  I know a wealthy WASP. She attended Saint Ann’s and Yale; she then became a stay-at-home mom. The family owns multiple properties on various continents. The WASP’s parents—two elderly alcoholics—host elaborate parties with baffling rules and codicils. If you violate a rule, the WASP family speaks laughingly about you as if you aren’t in the room. If someone wrongly suggests that you know a great deal about Jane Austen, then the WASP produces trivia questions to stump you. Once you are stumped, the WASP seems satisfied. She then hands you supplemental Austen material—“as a gift.”   The WASP’s mother likes to pretend to complain about when the WASP was a child star in the City Opera revival of “A Little Night Music.” Of course, “Claire Bloom had the Gingold role—and Claire was  not  friendly.”   These are all terrible behaviors—and I was happy to see them parodied in “Pineapple Street.” A wealthy couple leaves their townhouse to one child and his “gold-digger” w...

An annoying thing happened at my child's school. His teacher inexplicably disappeared for three months--and the district, frantic for coverage, hired a sixteen-year-old replacement. No, she was not sixteen. But she was pretty close. My shrewd son quickly sussed out the truth--the new teacher was not adequately familiar with her "steering wheel." No one was captain of the ship. This caused distress for my son--who could not express his distress in complex sentences. So he began to pull down his pants. Pulling down one's pants is a not uncommon choice in the context of a speech delay. But the choice was terrifying for the sixteen-year-old--who chose not to share her concerns with my spouse or with me. To me, this choice has just a whiff of (unexamined) homophobia. It's hard to believe--if my child had a mom--the situation would have been handled in the same way. Long story short. My son essentially lost three months of instructional time because the classroom was sp...

  Alice Munro married Gerald Fremlin and began writing about him. He inspired the central man in “Labor Day Dinner”—he was the man making fun of Roberta’s body. Speaking with a reporter, Munro said, “My husband doesn’t read my stories.” And Gerald made a correction: “I read them. We just don’t talk about them.”   Gerald popped up as Orpheus in “The Children Stay,” as Ladner in “Vandals,” as the murderer in “Dimension.” Although Rachel Aviv does not mention “Floating Bridge,” I think Gerald was there, too—he was the emotionally abusive partner. He was the suicide case in “Comfort.”   After Gerald died, Alice asked not to be buried near him. While senile, Alice mentioned that she never “wanted that pedafil”—she seemed to invent a word somewhere between “pedophile” and “pitiful.” Rachel Aviv writes about cycles of trauma—Alice once moved far away from her own mother, and later, Andrea Skinner detached herself from Alice. Skinner once observed a vacancy in Alice’s eyes; “it w...

  Critics are celebrating Matthew Rhys for his WTF fuck. It’s a great face—but all Rhys faces are great faces. Rhys in horror, yes, but also Rhys in discomfort, Rhys in frenzy, Rhys in anger. The Rhys of “Widow’s Bay” is sweaty, desperate, and needy—he is relatable. There must be a cost to exposing so much inner weakness. What a gift Rhys has.   In “Widow’s Bay,” Rhys has lied to his adolescent son: “Your mother died in childbirth.” In fact, the mother lived for years, and her schizophrenic letters are waiting to be discovered. Rhys learns that he can lift a curse on “his” island—to promote tourism, he just needs to murder a certain tainted citizen. (There is an elaborate story about a poisoned bloodline.) The problem is that the citizen in question is Rhys’s octogenarian receptionist—can he really bring himself to smother her with a pillow?   People have written about “Widow’s Bay” and its relationship to history. In America, we try to build industries on nostalgia—but, ...

  Sondheim writes big iconic introductions--some of the most famous intros in Broadway history. "The Jet Song," "Comedy Tonight," "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd." These songs establish a mood; they tell us what we're going to get.  When you're a Jet-- You're the top cat in town. You're the gold-medal kid With the heavyweight crown! When you're a Jet-- You're the swingin'est thing. Little boy, you're a man. Little man, you're a king! By contrast, the opening of "Sunday in the Park" initially feels small. It's a rare case in which we do *not* start with a choral number. We get two people--one singing, one making bitchy comments. Dot does not want to model so early in the morning. She also has doubts about George's romantic commitment. This doesn't interest George--who is comically over-invested in making a perfect sketch. Given that this is Sondheim, Dot drowns in ambivalence. She finds George's pric...

  Growing up, I enjoyed "To Kill a Mockingbird," and I dreamed of living in some version of Harper Lee's community (without the racism). Lee--an obvious talent--transformed her own memories of childhood into a kind of picture gallery. All the denizens of the town presented themselves on various sunporches. The mean old lady addicted to opioids, the upright lawyer, the quirky gay kid, the "scandal" family. In the novel, little Scout learns about human behavior by studying her neighbors. By observing what is said and what is *not* said. My own hometown had characters. One mom would not allow her kids to play "Sega Genesis" because the brand name seemed to include a veiled allusion to the serpent in the Bible. A lonely old man distributed candies--maybe because of a warm heart, maybe because of certain unsavory wishes. A widow--a former soldier's wife--comforted herself by staring at her tricorn flag. She would ask me to march around with it while the...

 Recently, I saw an ineffective movie called "Pressure," in which Dwight Eisenhower tries to predict how the weather might impact the Normandy invasion. The weather is not a great "big bad"--that's because you can't fight the weather. You just wait to see if it does what it seems to want to do. By contrast, "Jaws" is a masterpiece. You *can* fight a shark. The movie is structurally unusual. We begin with a town in its entirety. The mayor doesn't want to concede that a celebrity shark is dangerous--shutting down the beach would mean losing profit-making opportunities. (In this way, "Jaws" seems to be an ancestor of the buzzy series "Widow's Bay.") Meanwhile, local kids cause chaos by "becoming" the shark; they purchase fake fins and hide underwater. (Spielberg seems to be offering a self-portrait here; we perceive the director's empathy, his sense of a connection with his own childhood.) But here is what I m...

 My daughter is falling for books. Not reading. She has no interest in phonics (and in this way she reminds me of me). But she likes to listen--especially to the tales of Jack and Annie in the Magic Tree House. I love what Susie herself does with words. She knows that her doctor--Dr. Buono--is friendly, so she has invented a kind of shorthand; the doctor is now "Dr. Elmo." Susie knows that a hotel is a source of excitement, like "show and tell." So a hotel is now a "hoe and tell." Aware that dragons are a common wellspring of terror, Susie sometimes speaks breathlessly about Boris Karloff and "Victor Dragon-stein." So I appreciate Donna Leon's recent thoughts on words--she has written about how words become seductive (below). One of the best kids' books I know of is--literally--nonsense. It's James Marshall's "A Pocketful of Nonsense," and it features Marshall in a "Dr. Seuss" mode. There was an old man of Blac...

 Scientists write about "deep holes" in your personal timeline--moments when you seem to age by ten million years. You were thirty yesterday; today, you are one hundred years old. In my youth, I would have skimmed over this--but, now, I see the brutal reality. In various photos, I have a full head of hair--then, suddenly, I do not. "A receding hairline can be charming," says my shrink, because, yes, I talk about this in therapy. (Joyce Carol Oates recently complained about inane navel-gazing in fiction. "I'm reading Percival Everett on the history of lynching--then I have to read some white man's thoughts on his latest divorce?" ....I empathize, but maybe not every rough patch in a life has to be tantamount to a history of lynching.) There is no universe in which I will feel charmed by my own receding hairline--so I just change the subject. My spouse and I go to see the movie "Tuner," which features a young man named Leo Woodall. And Wood...

  The NYT is celebrating 50 years of Sandra Boynton in print. I'd like to nominate one Boynton title as the greatest--it's "The Belly Button Book." In this tale, a group of hippos celebrate their belly buttons. We always like to get balloons... And I know why. Do you? It's because we like to think balloons Have belly buttons, too. Boynton then moves the action to "Belly Button Beach": Where hippos like to stand around In bathing suits too little-- Because we hope you will admire  The button in our middle. But life's pleasures are fleeting, and Boynton has a brutal conclusion, surprising and inevitable. We love to show our belly b's-- We show them off with pride. But not in chilly wintertime-- When belly buttons hide. No, not in chilly wintertime-- When belly buttons hide. A mic-drop kind of performance. Not a word is wasted.

 I have made clear that my own personal Broadway diva is Victoria Clark. I'm a great fan of Clark's intelligence and cunning--her watchfulness. Good acting--which is rare in a musical, even a Broadway musical--involves a magic trick. You have to have full control over your eyes; the eyes have to telegraph a message. I am actually in the place and in the time that the words of this musical are referring to. I am not in New York City, in a theater, in 2026. Whether she is speaking or not, Clark has "Olivia Colman" eyes. She is a brilliant performer. All that said, Heather Headley is also on my Mount Rushmore. Headley's slightly mannered performances feel "extreme"--they remind me of the work of Liza Minnelli. Either you love Headley or you do not. I think she gets away with intense melodrama because she conveys a sense of utter conviction. Here--for Miscast--she is performing a colleague's big number, "Endless Night." On one level, she is sin...

 It took me a long while to get to "Mindhunter," because I prefer procedurals. I get nervous if something is billed as experimental. And "Mindhunter" has problems; it has one of the most tedious "opening credits" sequences I know of. It features a gay actor whose gayness seems almost palpable--yet no one speculates about the related character being possibly "in the closet." (Knowing David Fincher, I'm sure that the casting of a gay actor, Jonathan Groff, in an apparently "heterosexual" role is part of a bigger strategy. The strategy is unclear to me for now.) But there are things I like very much. One genre of old movie--"let's put on a show"--dramatizes the conflicts within a group of creative people as we move from "table read" to opening night. That's essentially what "Mindhunter" is. It's the story of a creative act. Three oddballs decide that they are going to rewrite the rules of murde...

 What we lack is a terrific blockbuster scary movie. Last summer, quite early, we were all treated to "Final Destination: Bloodlines," an experience of pure pleasure. There is nothing like "Bloodlines" right now. Summer should mean thrills--that's because of Steven Spielberg. That's because of "Jaws" and "Jurassic Park." Spielberg's current offering--"Disclosure Day"--is bloodless and boring. At a recent screening, my spouse and I both fell asleep. The best I can offer in terms of Spielberg-ian wonder, at the moment, is the soundtrack from the Broadway musical "Six." My family listens in the car. Why--asks my daughter--why would Henry VIII murder people in his own clan? I explain that he sustained a head injury in a jousting accident; this led to bad choices, and because he was King, no one questioned him. My daughter then wants to know how--if two of the Queens are dead--how is it possible that they are singing on...

  "The Best Minds" is worthy of the hype; it's an astonishing story told by the *correct* storyteller. As the NYTimes observed, it's "pin-you-to-your-couch" storytelling. Michael is a bright and egotistical kid in New Rochelle. He is interviewed at the school paper's office; if he were offered the spot of managing editor, rather than editor-in-chief, would he accept? Despite the fact that the editor-in-chief will be his close friend, Michael throws a tantrum. This moment of poor judgment does not hurt in the long term; Michael is offered a spot at Yale. He lives in Silliman College and graduates in three years. Summa cum laude. Phi Beta Kappa. He goes off to work at Bain, which pays Yale graduates to spend long weekends memorizing all of the operational details that form the skeletons of various industries. (The Bain employees then offer their consulting services.) At this point in his life, Michael has started imagining that flames are licking the floor...