Liars and Saints

She had excuses, if she wished to use them....Her husband had been remarkably handsome in a preppy kind of way--tall, with a thatch of blonde hair that flopped elegantly across his forehead.....   "Monogamy" is an unusual new novel by an American legend, Sue Miller.  Graham, the affable owner of a Cambridge bookstore, has a roving eye. Though Graham is happily married to an artist, Annie, Graham has big appetites, and he would maybe prefer an open marriage. Graham manages his appetites with an occasional affair; late in life, he begins seeing Rosemary, a friend and recent survivor of a divorce. Elated, sickened, Graham can't help but share the details with a male colleague. "Rosemary waxes herself down there," he says, then he immediately feels repelled by his own tackiness. When Graham dies, Annie begins a standard "mourning process"--or so she thinks. Having spotted an extremely weepy Rosemary at a memorial service, Annie "puts two and two toget...

 We had a block party.    My husband likes to find "the other gay couple" at any given party--and make a beeline for that couple. Me? I prefer to stay home and watch reruns of "The Good Wife." This is a tense bit of subtext in any party Marc and I attend--Marc knows I am silently asking, Why can't we be home watching "The Good Wife"?-- and, anyway, we manage the tension as best we can. We stood with the gays. Lea Salonga's "A Whole New World" was playing, in the background, for the children, and my husband loudly acknowledged that he had wanted this for our wedding song. Looks of horror passed briefly over all of the faces around us, and then the conversation moved somewhere else. In Covid times, there is a standard story you hear at any gathering, and we did encounter it here: "My elderly mother in Queens thinks she is immune to coronavirus. She wanted to travel out to some special ethnic grocery store for high-grade mozzarella. I s...

 We're celebrating the five-year anniversary of the Deaf West Broadway production of "Spring Awakening." This is a show that has a special place in my heart. The original Broadway production--years before Deaf West--launched three now-massive names: Lea Michele, Jonathan Groff, and Tony-winner John Gallagher. Also, the score has several canonical moments for theater nerds: "The Bitch of Living," "My Junk," "Mama who Bore Me." Any story involves a stranger coming to town, and in "Spring Awakening," the stranger is puberty. The kids in the show--residents of 1800s Germany--have no understanding of sex or childbirth; if they ask an adult about conception, they're told this just happens "when you love someone very, very much." Alienation and miscommunication and pain lead to tragedy: One boy, drowning at school, ends up committing suicide. Another student winds up dead during a botched abortion; like Rapunzel, she hadn...

 We could talk about Amy Barrett, or we could be frivolous. Sometimes, frivolity is therapeutic. A thought. My top three stories this week: (1) "Ratched" and "Fargo: Season Four" both seem to be dead on arrival. Ah, well. (2) Promoting "Ratched," Cynthia Nixon appeared on TV with Sharon Stone. The fabled "SATC III" script came up. This script is so great, people can't just let it go. "I think Sharon Stone would make a fabulous Samantha," said one viewer. Stone became excited. Shrewd Cynthia Nixon cleared her throat. "That would be wonderful," she said. "But Kim Cattrall has made clear that she would like a person of color in the role." And indeed: Kim has mentioned both Oprah and Tiffany Haddish. Stay tuned. (3) Michael Riedel's theater book, "Singular Sensation," will come out in November. This will chronicle the drama of Broadway in the 1990s. To prepare, I've dug up "Variety" review...

 Jerry Pinkney worked on a collection of Aesop's Fables--years ago--and, after that, he found himself returning again and again (in his thoughts) to "The Lion and the Mouse."   This is a standard tale of two unlikely friends assisting each other. (It took an aquatic form in William Steig's "Amos and Boris.") A mouse flees an owl and plunges into the fur of a majestic lion. The lion ponders this situation. He could have a mouse for a snack. But he is magnanimous; he releases the mouse. Later, his kindness is repaid. Poachers ensnare the lion. But the mouse--recalling earlier generosity--runs to the lion and chews through various knots. The lion is freed.   Pinkney says--as a child--he mainly admired the mouse. That clever guy--asserting some power over a lion! But, in adulthood, Pinkney recognizes that the lion is just as enchanting as the mouse. To have great brute force, and to choose *not* to use that force in a punitive way: That's a sign of nobility....

I've never written about one of the all-time classic Sondheim songs, "I'm Still Here," partly because I sort of think the song is too long. (Heresy! I know!) But, given the awfulness of the news, I find myself thinking of "I'm Still Here": Good times and bum times.... I've seen them all, and, my dear.... I'm still here. Plush velvet sometimes; Sometimes, just pretzels and beer. But I'm here. Sondheim talks about form matching content--and you see that with the constantly repeated, "I'm here." "I'm still here." It's almost irritating--just as we imagine the speaker needed to be a bit irritating, at varying points in her life, to survive. (When the words in a sentence are repeated but shift their position in the sentence? That's chiasmus. "Plush velvet sometimes; sometimes, just pretzels and beer....") I've stuffed the dailies in my shoes.... Strummed ukuleles, sung the blues.... Seen all my dre...

 "Lilly and Friends" is out, and it's glorious. I'm not a Henkes expert, so there are big gaps in my knowledge. The new omnibus taught me a few things, right away: (1) The major mice books are often spaced apart by a few years. (2) There hasn't been a landmark Henkes mouse book in several years. (3) Lilly has a significant role in many books, not just the books with "Lilly" in the title. Take "Chester's Way," where two fastidious mice--Chester and Wilson--have a solid friendship. They enjoy certain predictable activities: daily jam-and-toast, raking leaves, adamantly refusing to pelt one another with snowballs, using hand signals while biking. Then Lilly arrives. Flamboyant Lilly strays from the norm. She enjoys disguises, and she always carries a water gun. She cuts her sandwiches into stars and bells; she doesn't just cut on the diagonal. She exclaims, "I LOVE EVERYTHING!" And she sometimes has fruit for breakfast--not bread...