Liars and Saints

  Jesse Green has a fun new piece about Broadway in the seventies. "A Chorus Line" went up against "Chicago." This wasn't really a contest. "A Chorus Line" had very little to say. (Its main message--"Performers are sort of needy"--didn't count as news.) By contrast, "Chicago" suggested that most of what you had learned in civics class was an elaborate fiction. "Chicago" seemed to predict the OJ Simpson trial--decades before the OJ Simpson trial.  Though "Chicago" lost the Tony Award, this was like "Next to Normal" winning the Pulitzer over Sarah Ruhl. Michael Bennett's Tony win has not "aged" especially well. Celebrating "Chicago"'s birthday, i'm reminded of some of my favorite lines: Give them an act with lots of flash in it-- And the reaction will be passionate. Also: The folks atop the ladder are the ones the world adores-- So boost me up my ladder, kid, and I'...

A couple of friends sent to me, yesterday, the fun NYT piece about the secret gay history of children's writing. (Arnold Lobel, James Marshall, Tomie DePaola, Maurice Sendak and several others were all gay. DePaola is still gay; he's still alive.) I had no idea the list was so long. I guess this should not be shocking; it seems to me that these men were writing, and drawing, at a time when a concern for a child's development was viewed as somewhat feminine. (To some extent, we're still living in that time. It seems more common, in Manhattan at least, for gay--rather than straight--men to work with little kids. I think that's because gay men don't care whether people view their work as feminine.) This isn't to say all men who have written for children are gay--but a surprising number *are* gay. I hadn't known anything about James Marshall--really--except that Ed Marshall was actually a nom de plume. In other words, there was one guy--doubling as BOTH ...