Liars and Saints

  Elmore Leonard said that interesting writing is dialogue. If your book isn't mostly dialogue, then you're in trouble. The crime writer Janice Hallett has taken this advice to extremes; Hallett's novels are just transcripts from email exchanges, text exchanges, voice mail recordings. So--in a way--the writing is *all* dialogue. There are always two parts of a message: the content of the message *and* the style of delivery. Hallett has fun with passive aggression, terseness, crazy effusiveness, sloppiness, neediness. Hallett generally has two or three investigators working through a bundle of documents. The documents contain a mystery. We, the readers, see the documents, but we also see the exchanges between the investigators as they do their interpretive work. The documents need to support the investigators' conclusions. But the documents also need to seem to tell a different story--a *wrong* story--so we can understand why the investigators were needed in the first pl...

  Fran Kranz made an interesting debut with "Mass." It's a movie about language--groping for language. That's the entirety of the movie. Two couples meet at a church. Clearly, something terrible has occurred. The couples try to find words. They do a little dance involving a potted plant. It's a gift from Ann Dowd to Martha Plimpton. Does Martha have to accept it? Where should it sit in the room? Is it to be "interpreted," or is it just a potted plant? What emerges is that Ann Dowd's son has murdered Plimpton's son. Dowd's son was essentially Dylan Klebold; there is a "Columbine" story in Dowd's past. Kranz has done his research. Two offshoots of the Columbine story involved diagnoses and God. (1) Do we say Klebold was evil, or that he was in pain? Some people argue that the "psychopathy" diagnosis is meaningless--it encourages us to stop asking questions when we should keep asking questions. (2) What to make of the Chr...

  I went to the Spirit Halloween store and bought "Ghostface" socks. They feature the iconic killer from "Scream," one of my favorite movies. On certain pairs, Ghostface is bathed in blood. On others, he is more "stylized"; sometimes, less is more. My daughter purchased a witch's broom (which she then began to carry, nightly, to her bed). My son bought many yards of synthetic "spider web" fabric; the choice puzzles me because my son hates spiders. Or he *claims* to hate spiders. Spirit Halloween has an annual theme. Last year, we all were treated to "the haunted subway." This year, if you visit an outpost, you'll see a spooky summer camp, with a witch, a Michael Myers, and a talking scarecrow, among other inventions. I have to deduct points from East Hanover's store because certain animatronic creatures were "mute." In other words, you would step on the "activator," and nothing would happen. It's stra...

 Recently, the NYT named its top fifty thrillers of the century (thus far) -- one of the titles was "You" by Caroline Kepnes. This is like an update of "The Talented Mr. Ripley." Almost every character is insufferable but also cunning (and so the book is sort of entertaining). "You" unfolds in the present tense. A troubled business-owner, Joe, meets a damaged aspiring writer, Beck. Joe writes in the second person -- the book is like one long letter to Beck. This makes you feel like you're in the middle of a Taylor Swift song. Things become crazy right away. Joe murders Beck's lover, a purveyor of hipster seltzer water. Beck seems interested in Joe -- but she keeps cancelling plans so that she can be with her deranged frenemy "Peach" Salinger, a descendant of J.D. Salinger. Peach eventually tries to rape Beck. The "bad faith" complications multiply. Eventually, one of the two stars is confined to a subterranean cage -- and the ot...

  This movie begins within the world of a TV show--it's really the world of "Barney the Dinosaur." But Barney is now Buddy, and he is a unicorn. I love when several people are forced together on a campus--and "BarneyLand" is a campus I have not seen in a movie before. The children mostly get along; there is also a talking backpack, which might be a reference to "Dora the Explorer." A nurse and mailman are on the periphery. Buddy the unicorn demands that everyone learn to dance. When one little boy refuses, Buddy commits murder, then covers up the corpse. The story begins to feel like a comment on Harvey Weinstein. Buddy repeatedly says, "I am the one with the power, and you will believe each of my statements." One suspicious child begins to doubt his own suspicions--the world works in a certain way, and if there is evidence to the contrary, the evidence must be wrong. We then make a jump to the real world, the actual world. Cristin Milioti is...

  In a musical, you will generally see an emotional shift right before the end of Act One. The stakes need to change. One of the most effective examples is from "Kimberly Akimbo." Right before the curtain, Kim decides that she is going to make a birthday demand: If her parents really want her to have a good day, they can promise to be different people. (Less drinking, less self-absorption, less flakiness.) Kim is essentially a child; she thinks these sorts of promises have value. We, in the audience, can sense a trainwreck in the future. Terrific dramatic choice. Another celebrated example is "Defying Gravity." Elphaba realizes that the Wizard is not what he claims to be; she decides she will wage war to free the animals of Oz. The song should feel both exhilarating and nightmarish. Hard to beat the flying, belting Elphaba. "Six" does something unusual. We don't get a curtain that "divides" two acts. But--really--there is a curtain. It falls ...

 One of the best hours I had this summer was an instructional hour; a third grader and I worked on a diorama. We had been reading "The Cricket in Times Square" by George Selden. Many of my curricular ideas come from my old mentor, Sara, who believed third graders *should* be exposed to George Selden. But Sara's third graders were New Yorkers; my own third grader has never been to Manhattan (and this is amazing to me, because my student lives in Maplewood). It's abundantly clear why "Cricket in Times Square" is a classic. First, the setting. A cricket and a mouse exchange ideas by a newsstand underneath Times Square; we're on a subway platform. The subterranean world of Tucker Mouse is wonderfully vivid; if you're a tiny mouse, then you notice every piece of detritus next to the trash can. Every candy bar wrapper is a treasure. This world is contrasted with the glamour of Times Square and Chinatown; Mario, a little boy, is the "tissue" that ...