Paper Boats

American Stories

2010-07-09T21:14:00.001-04:00

These two books don't actually have much in common. I just read them around the same time and had sharply differing reactions to them.

Although I had somewhat mixed feelings about the previous Geraldine Brooks novel I'd read, People of the Book, I was excited to read March. I have vivid memories of being in second grade, sitting on the swing during recess and reading Little Women. At the time Pizza Hut was doing some kind of reading promotion with elementary schools and if you read enough books you got free pizza, It was a giant hardcover copy of some 600 pages and when I was done I was rather proud of my accomplishment and got so many reading credits that I got a free personal pan pizza for that book alone. So it's a fond association. Also I like historical novels and think the history of the Civil War is interesting.

March has a lot going for it. It's well--if unremarkably--written and tidily constructed. There are no loose ends, no bits of story that go wandering drunkenly off. One feels that their reading experience is in the hands of a thoroughly competent novelist. In the end though, I felt like the connection to Little Women was tenuous, even gimmicky. There seemed little narrative reason for the protagonist to be Mr. March as opposed to some other man not featured in a classic novel. And although, by centering the story around an abolitionist during the Civil War Brooks takes as her subject what is arguably the most important war, the most important period of American history, the book feels small. Under a veneer of thoughtfulness, it's an safe, comfortable novel that doesn't challenge readers. Maybe if Marmee were a real person she wouldn't be as supportive and perfect as she seems in Little Women--it can't be! Abolitionists were well meaning but still blinded by white privilege and even racism--surely you jest!

One of the great joys of reading fiction is that the author can reveal something new and truthful to the reader through their work. Your world can suddenly expand in small but noticeable ways. You can learn something you never expected to. A book doesn't have to do that, of course, to be enjoyable. But I think that a novel that asks the reader to take it seriously--to devote time and thought to it--should. It ought to challenge its audience in some way.

The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart is a far messier book than March. But it has a delightful energy and sense of risk that made me want to forgive it all its flaws and just go along for the ride. Rather than feeling like the author is simply showing the reader things he or she already knows, M. Glenn Taylor introduces a story in which the elements are familiar but skewed in such a way as to make them feel new.

Like many ballads and folk tales, this one presents us with the story of its protagonist's life from birth to death (at a very advanced age). Divided into three sections--roughly speaking, youth, middle age, and old age--it begins more strongly than it ends and takes odd detours along the way. Trenchmouth Taggart is a larger than life figure, a sharp-shooting union man, a snake charmer, and a harmonica player, among many other things. At its best, the novel is a modern tall tale and feels quintessentially American. The story is one that couldn't take place anywhere else because it so clearly springs from the culture and landscape of its setting.

It makes sense then that the first and longest section, which embraces the oddness and distinctiveness of both the characters and the rural Appalachian setting, is the strongest. In middle age Trenchmouth becomes a bit Forrest Gump-ish, constantly encountering famous historical figures, and by the end of the book he slips into the cliche of an elderly man uncomfortable with the modern world. One can't help but wish that the focus had remained on these earlier years and people. But by that point the novel has earned so much good will (at least from me) that these flaws can be forgiven.

All-Ashton at ABT (with bonus complaining about hockey)

2010-07-01T22:56:00.005-04:00

Today was not a good day for Sabres fans (make sure the sound is on when you follow that link). I hate days like the trade deadline and the beginning of free agency because the Sabres never do anything exciting (unless one counts losing players as exciting). Which would only be partially bad except certain Sabres fans (not linked to here) then proceed to flip out about the lack of activity even though said dullness has been the GM's m.o. for years and is therefore entirely predictable. It makes me cranky.

On the other hand--and be prepared to admire this incredibly smooth transition--I did have a lovely evening at the ballet last night. I went to see American Ballet Theatre's beautiful All-Ashton program. Having never seen any of Ashton's work I was excited to go and was even more excited when the box office sold me a student ticket for a seat toward the front of the orchestra. So different from sitting in the Family Circle and watching the tiny dancers.

The first ballet--Birthday Offering--featured roles for seven female soloists and costumes gaudy enough that they might have been improved by watching from the Family Circle. But I loved how distinct each of the seven variations were and particularly liked Misty Copeland's, in which she repeatedly flicked her feet rapidly in front of and behind the knee as if knitting with her legs. And Stella Abrera and Eric Tamm looked wonderful both separately and together. They're two dancers I'd so like the opportunity to see more often.

I was much less sure of the partnership of Sascha Radetsky and Hee Seo in Thais Pas de Deux. The pas de deux achieves a delicate exoticism without veering as sharply into orientalism as other ballets do although the orange costumes don't help. Seo looked graceful and soft and otherwordly but her beautiful lines made Radetsky's look short in comparison and he couldn't match her air of mystery. I usually like him very much--I just think this role might not serve him well.

The second pas de deux of the evening was the Awakening from Ashton's Sleeping Beauty which I don't think works particularly well as a stand-alone piece. Although maybe it would with a more charismatic pair of dancers. Particularly problematic for me was that Paloma Herrera seemed so much the stronger of the two. Cory Stearns seemed almost superfluous when partnering her; it felt as though she could do all the same things with no help at all. Maybe if he had been more authoritative it would have helped. I feel as though my lack of knowledge when it comes to dance really hurts me at times like this. I don't know if my problem is the choreographers or the dancers and I don't know if my problem is something technical or if it's just that I'm watching dancers that don't quite do it for me for whatever reason. Well, it's something that I imagine I'll understand better the more I see.

Even if I hadn't enjoyed the first three ballets of the evening though, it would have been more than worth it to see The Dream. I particularly appreciated the clarity of the storytelling and the way that the dancing constantly moved the story forward. Maybe it's the result of having no background in dance but the utter frivolity of so many story ballets can drive me crazy. I sit there wondering why I'm watching a variation in a particular place or what purpose some bit serves other than obstructing the story or if it was really quite necessary for the dancers to do that move again. Then again, maybe it's just that a lot of these ballets are very silly indeed. But with Ashton's take on The Midsummer Night's Dream there was none of that. The dancing--coupled with the lovely set and costumes--served to create characters and atmosphere with very little that felt like excess. And such dancing from all involved (I saw the cast with Herman Cornejo as Puck and David Hallberg and Gillian Murphy as Oberon and Titania respectively)! I felt fortunate to be sitting in the theater, watching people who are capable of creating something so beautiful and funny and charming.

Miscellany

2010-06-23T20:59:00.004-04:00

Having fried myself at the beach over the weekend (and I thought I was being so good about sunscreen too) I've spent all my non-working hours this week lying in bed trying not to move too much. So I've mostly been doing a lot of puttering around on the internet at night reading things.

Like Laura Miller's article on the growth of self-publishing and the fun of slush piles, which brought back cringe-worthy memories of reading for a literary agency:

People who have never had the job of reading through the heaps of unsolicited manuscripts sent to anyone even remotely connected with publishing typically have no inkling of two awful facts: 1) just how much slush is out there, and 2) how really, really, really, really terrible the vast majority of it is. Civilians who kvetch about the bad writing of Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer or any other hugely popular but critically disdained novelist can talk as much trash as they want about the supposedly low standards of traditional publishing. They haven't seen the vast majority of what didn't get published -- and believe me, if you have, it's enough to make your blood run cold, thinking about that stuff being introduced into the general population.

Everybody acknowledges that there have to be a few gems out in the slush pile -- one manuscript in 10,000, say -- buried under all the dreck. The problem lies in finding it. A diamond encased in a mountain of solid granite may be truly valuable, but at a certain point the cost of extracting it exceeds the value of the jewel.

I can't say reading through all those submissions is something I miss.

And today I also read the latest installment in Tobi Tobias's series of ballet diaries (all of which have been such a treat). In this case she's writing primarily about the retirement of two dancers--Philip Neal and Albert Evans--I have seen perform but not often enough to have formed any particularly strong impressions of them. Still, the best dance writing, much like great writing about the visual arts, seems to me to be an act of transformation--turning something that is visual into words on a page while still capturing something of its essence. Reading Tobias's post about the qualities of these particular dancers recalled to me the times I have seen them more clearly than would otherwise have been possible. Then again, perhaps that's a trick of the memory.

The most fun reading I've been doing, however, is ESPN's Off the Ball blog. Since I don't get to watch most of the games--although it appears that a large number of people at work are streaming the games at their desks so maybe I really can watch and just hadn't realized it until now--this is proving a nice supplement to live updates.

Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon

2010-06-13T15:31:00.000-04:00

I was out last night at a rooftop bar, which served to remind me of just how much I love the indoor smoking ban. I got home sometime after 3 am with hair that smelled of smoke and a sore throat. And now, in the mid-afternoon, I've washed my hair twice and am drinking tea with more than a little honey in an attempt to ease my sore throat while watching Germany take the Australians to school in a thoroughly entertaining manner. (As a side note, these guys are amazing. How is it even possible to be in such good shape?) We're having the perfect gray and rainy weather for a lazy Sunday here in New York though, which makes me feel far less guilty than I otherwise would about sitting around in my pajamas.

Happily, when I was reading Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon a couple weeks ago, New York was having positively summery weather. And while I, alas, read it in all the usual places--my home, the subway, on a plane ride home from Buffalo--it would make the most delightful of beach reads. It's warm and lightly satirical and ends, as a great comic novel ought, not entirely predictably but happily.

If the makes it sound like a shallow novel, it's unintentional. The story has two strands: an upcoming election that pits the old guard of cacao planters against a modernizing newcomer from Rio and a love story that revolves around the titular Gabriela and Nacib, bar owner and friend to all. Amado concerns himself with a number of serious topics--the position of women in society, the formation of culture and society, class--while skillfully avoiding didacticism. In fact, such self-importance is cheerful sent up throughout the novel. In one of the most entertaining sequences a self-important poet comes to town to give a lecture that all the book's important characters attend.

Tonico broke the silence:
"Do you know the title of the lecture?"
"No, what is it?"
"Tears and Longing."
"Good title," said Ribeirinho, "We'll be bored to tears and longing to go home."

It's a feeling that Amado's readers (and anyone else who has attended their fair share of lectures) is surely familiar with. And a reminder to be grateful for books like this one, the first goal of which is to entertain.

As much as I enjoyed the book though, Gabriela herself, the object of everyone's desire, full of charm and childish whims, resolutely herself in the face of those who would try to change her, struck me more as a plot construct than a character. She exists, it seems, to illuminate the character of those around her and, at times, to provide a catalyst for events. I found myself entertained by, but not terribly involved in, the romantic thread of the novel and not particularly concerned with what happened to Gabriela. Fortunately, the pleasure I took from reading about the political machinations and the healthy dose of comic relief Amado provided in the form of spinsters and philanderers and lovestruck scholars among others more than compensated for that.

It's a thoroughly winning book. The sort that demands little of the reader and yet pays you back richly for your time and attention and reminds you just what a pleasurable experience reading can be.

Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Ghostwriters

2010-06-12T17:43:00.000-04:00

You know those books that sit on your shelf for ages, patiently waiting for you to summon up the motivation to actually start reading them? This was totally one of those books for me. My grandfather gave it to me, oh, three or four years ago and I was somewhat interested, sure, but not interested enough to actually read the thing. Maybe it's because the Nancy Drew books don't really hold any special place in my heart. I read them, of course, like pretty much every little girl. In fact, Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase was the first chapter book I read on my own (my father read me Nancy Drew and the Old Clock). But I can't say I remember any of them particularly well or that I've thought of them much in the years since reading them. I was fonder of the Boxcar Children series and the Black Stallion books.

Even without any particular nostalgia though, I did find the idea of reading about the creation of a character who is, in many ways, the most important heroine in American literature interesting. So finally, after years of guiltily avoiding Melanie Rehak's Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her I finally buckled down and read it. It turns out that, for me at least, it was one of those perfectly fine books that you're not sorry to have read but also are not particularly happy to have read.

Girl Sleuth is a dual biography of two women: Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and Mildred Wirt Benson. Adams was the daughter of Edward Stratemeyer, who founded a syndicate that produced series books for boys and girls using ghost writers who were provided with outlines and who created Nancy Drew. After her father's death she--along with her sister--put together the outlines for and edited the Nancy Drew books and eventually, years later, she took over writing the Nancy Drew books. Benson was the hired hand who wrote most of the early Nancy Drews.

Dual biographies are a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, a writer can illuminate her characters through their relationship to one another. On the other hand, you often wind up with a hero and a villain . . . or at least with one character who comes off as far more likable than the other. In this case, I was far fonder of Benson. Both women were pioneers of a sort, striking out into male-dominated fields and finding personal success outside the home at a time when married women were not expected to work. But Benson was the more modern of the two and comes off as being largely responsible for Nancy's can-do attitude and independence. Adams's Nancy is more feminine and lacking in rough edges which, as a modern reader, feels like a step backward. And Adams, toward the end of her life, takes credit for things she wasn't responsible for in a way that makes it seem like her grip on reality wasn't entirely firm. Again and again I found myself far happier to be spending time with Benson than Adams.

What's more, while Rehak clearly loves the Nancy Drew books and she does an excellent job of depicting their cultural importance--although perhaps not for the current generation?--in the end I'm not sure if her book made me appreciate the series more or less. It brings into high relief just how studied and commercial a creation Nancy Drew is for all her good points. And while that's not surprising, I might have preferred to leave the wizard(s) behind the curtain.

Miscellany

2010-06-07T21:46:00.004-04:00

1. am New York and I are totally on the same page about the World Cup:I may not know who the favorites are. I'm pretty sure I don't understand all the rules. But I'll certainly be watching.

2. In order to make some extra money I've been working for the US Census--which, if it were a permanent job would drive me to alcoholism in no time flat--and that means that I now how to deal with the management office of the apartment complex where I live. Which is staffed by some of the most unpleasant people I have ever encountered in a professional capacity. So in preparation for having to get information from them tomorrow I am baking them some of the most fabulous cookies in the world. Not thanks to my baking skills--the recipe is just that good. I dislike the people in management so much that I'm having a tough time coming to grips with giving them cookies though, so this had better inspire them to be nice to me.

3. I'm moving in a couple months and while I'm only going to another area of the city, I'm trying to use it as an opportunity to get rid of things I don't want. It turns out that I'm quite good at getting rid of clothing and very bad at getting rid of books. Even books that I bought for 50 cents because I liked the covers and am never, ever going to read. I think that I'm going to need my sometime roommate to go through them with me and remind me that it really is a good idea to pass on books that I didn't even remember I owned in the first place.

My Dream of You

2010-06-05T18:42:00.000-04:00

At times, My Dream of You resembles nothing so much as Philip Larkin's "This Be the Verse" born again as a novel and dolloped with sentimentality. If only the protagonist's parents had been sufficiently warm and involved in the lives of their children there might be no story at all.

Kathleen de Burca is a single, middle-aged Irish expatriate who has organized her life in response to the pain of her youth. She has no real home, few friends. A travel writer, she has shut herself off from the world even as she visits far-flung locales, writing invariably cheerful and witty missives from places that are often anything but. Then her closest friend dies suddenly and this new heartbreak, coupled with the encroachments of age, seems to shake something loose in Kathleen. In short order, she leaves her job and the basement flat she's lived in for decades and heads back to Ireland to research a book.

O'Faolain interweaves the story of Kathleen's return to Ireland with that of the book she begins to write while there--an account of an affair between an Irish servant and the wife of an English landlord during the potato famine--to mostly good effect. What Kathleen wants to find in the events of the past is the kind of idealized passion she has always sought and felt was so absent in her life. History, though, is never so convenient and the story grows steadily more complicated.

I feel like in order to really enjoy this novel (and I find this is often the case with books written in the first person) I would have needed to care about the main character. But I couldn't quite manage to do so. It's not that Kathleen, intelligent and honest although only intermittently capable of self-examination, not unkind though thoughtless and selfish, is somehow beyond the pale. She's not a character who ought to repulse one's sympathy. And yet I found it impossible to summon up much in the way of fellow-feeling. For me, her pain was too often rendered in shorthand: Her father was absent and dictatorial. Her mother, always pregnant, weak, and ill, had little to offer. And this, in the world of the novel, explains everything about Kathleen.

Reading My Dream of You, I began to think that perhaps my experiences, age, and preoccupations are simply too far from hers. These gaps, however, are all things that novelists can overcome; the opportunity to step outside oneself is one of the great joys of reading. I think the problem is that, for Nuala O'Faolain, it seems like the most natural thing in the world that Kathleen would end up the way she does. There's no need to interrogate the subject. So it isn't until the end of the novel that O'Faolain actually made me understand the source of Kathleen's anger and pain. The historical background the author provides is focused on the potato famine--which I actually knew quite a bit about already--and not the Ireland of the mid-20th century which I know virtually nothing about. And that's fine. I'm sure many other readers didn't need more information. But it made me feel that I, a generation or two younger, from a different country and economic background, wasn't the audience for the novel.

Which is a shame, because there was a lot about the book that I liked, starting with writing that is decidedly unfussy and yet vivid, particularly in its evocations of setting and descriptions of nature:

I knew this Atlantic where it broke on western coasts, all the way down to the curve of the earth. I could picture ten or twelve places I’d been where this same ocean met land, from a sturdy village among artichoke fields in Brittany, to the baking sand dunes of Namibia. I’d watched the fog roll in from it every day when I was writing a piece about golf courses in Portugal. I’d lived a few feet from it in a run-down tourist camp on a beach in Senegal, where the crabs clacked around the legs of my bed all night. But I had never before been on the west coast of an Atlantic island, at the turn of spring into earliest summer—never before seen such a wide slope of small fields, their grass patched with the brown of weeds and rushes, fields of a muted and glowing green that lulled the eye, that then was shocked by the huge vista of the turbulent, turquoise sea beyond.

Kathleen sounds like a real person and, more than that, like a travel writer. Observant and occasionally prosaic, she has a knack for picking out a few small details that create a picture. Even if you don't like her, she's a solid, believable character. And as her protagonist changes, coming to terms with both her present and past, O'Faolain explores relationships between women in a way that is genuinely touching, if secondary to the story. The other lives Kathleen could have lived are right there in front of her in the form of her sister-in-law, an elderly librarian helping her with research, and the daughter of an innkeeper, among others.

But if you don't care much about her emotional journey the story begins to feel a bit leaden and repetitive. There's simply not all that much going on and Kathleen spends a lot of time spinning her wheels. Eventually the reader, too, feels stuck in neutral.

Vacation

2010-05-29T22:30:00.000-04:00

I'm just got back from a vacation up at my parents home outside Buffalo. It's a rare thing for me to get up there at this time of year, which is too bad as there's really no better season to be there. Particularly with the hot and sunny weather they had this week. Nice to be out of the city. Particularly this spring when I've been feeling thoroughly worn down.

It's so easy to forget things when you're away. Like the fact that summer evenings last just a bit longer up there. Or how strongly it smells of freshly-mown grass and garden mulch on the bike ride to my father's office. Or how quiet it is. It's not that I have any desire to live in the suburbs, really. It's just that there are days when I'm so tired of living on top of people and below people and being jammed up against people on the subway every day. It's good to have a little space.

I helped clean out junk drawers and my bedroom and got a good bit of knitting and reading done. I swam laps for the first time in about eight years, took a class called Body Pump after which my legs were sore for three days, went running and rollerblading. Despite all the activity, it was the most relaxing vacation I've had in ages.

On my last day there my mother and I went to visit Forest Lawn, which is a large Victorian cemetery. It has lots of open green space, a creek running through it, and the graves of famous Buffalonians like Millard Fillmore. My mother and I had talked about going to see it for a few years and looked into taking a tour. They weren't running any until June though, so we just wandered around, semi-successfully avoiding a group of school children there on a field trip.

It turns out that it's a lovely place, but not exactly making the list of the most interesting cemeteries we've seen. It does, though, feel like exactly the sort of cemetery you'd expect to find in Buffalo. And it's hard to complain about taking a walk with family on a beautiful spring day.

And now I'm back in New York (after what was probably the least problem-beset flight into JFK I've ever been on) and on all sorts of post-vacation and pre-summer errands. But feeling much more equal to the many tasks at hand.

Books that Defeat Me

2010-05-26T11:29:00.002-04:00

Despite the fact that I majored in history in college and minored in classics, pretty much everything I knew about Claudius prior to starting I, Claudius came from A Scandalous History of the Roman Emperors by Anthony Blond. This was also the book that taught me that Romans ate things like sow's nipples in tuna brine and fermented fish sauce. Exhibit A in the argument that the more you learn about history the happier you are to live in the hear and now. Anyway, this lack of knowledge was probably because I got my classics minor by taking four semesters of Latin for my language requirement--of which I remember next to nothing--and one class on the Roman republic for the aforementioned history major. This is what I knew:

Claudius probably had cerebral palsy.
Unlike pretty much all the other Julio-Claudian emperors, there don't appear to be questions about his heterosexuality.
Despite the fact that he's popularly thought of as being one of the more benevolent Julio-Claudian emperors--not a role for which there is much competition--he was actually a bloody ruler who had a crapload of people killed.

So I figured that, given my fondness for historical fiction, I, Claudius would be a good way to dip my toe into the historical waters (theoretically made more entertaining by a heavy dose of make-believe) before taking the plunge into an actual history. Which I still think is a good theory. But three years later I'm only about 150 pages into the book. And it's not a short book. I think it might be time to admit defeat.

And normally I would have no problem with this. I stop books part way through on a regular basis. After all, why waste time on something that is giving you no pleasure? But somehow I got it into my head that this was a book I should read. And then, in year two of my struggle to read it, I decided that I needed to finish it because I'm not a quitter. But now, in year three, my relationship with the book is entirely adversarial and there's no way I'll ever enjoy it at this point in time because it's an obligation above all else. So fine, Robert Graves, you win. Your writing has defeated me and the appeal of your classic work of literature is beyond me. And now the time I spent pretending to read your book will be spent actually reading something I enjoy. So maybe I win too?

Turning the Lights Out

2010-03-02T21:59:00.005-05:00

There's an interesting conversation going on over at WNYC's Performance Club sight about an incident that took place at P.S. 1 on Saturday when a performance artist was censored by the art gallery, which chose to turn the lights out during her performance. (Part I, Part II) Not being familiar with either the artists in question or, really, performance art in general, I don't have anything insightful to add.

To be honest, the thing I think of when I hear about someone turning lights the lights off to end an altercation is this:

Of course any punches thrown at P.S.1 were purely metaphorical.

Armory Show

2010-02-21T14:35:00.002-05:00

Last Friday I joined the P. Club at a performance of Moving Theater's Armory Show. I was particularly looking forward to this one because I'd never been to the Park Avenue Armory before and was excited to see it (and it was worth the excitement).

Several days later I'm still having trouble thinking of the show as a cohesive whole. But I was certainly interested in all the constituent parts. I particularly liked the way they addressed history and militarism in a space rife with both.

Go here for the Performance Club post and discussion.

Notes on the Olympics

2010-02-15T22:36:00.000-05:00

My apartment has been about 82 degrees the past few days (with the windows open) which is making it a bit torturous to watch the Winter Olympics. All that snow! All that cool air!

These Alexandre Bilodeau features make me teary. Also, let me just say that having a disabled brother--mine has Down syndrome--never inspired me to any sort of greatness nor instilled within me any particular motivation. Oops.

Related: I love it when the entire crowd at an event sings O Canada. I also love O Canada.

Things I hate about NBC: Their refusal to show anything live. Their insistence that I love figure skating. The fact that they spoil the results of events they have yet to show right on their homepage so that when you go to look up their stupid broadcast schedule said results are spoiled for you. They're showing ice dancing on the main channel rather than the Canada-USA hockey game which means those of us without cable (see: me) can't watch the hockey game. Their sappy features that take away from time they could spend showing the sports that the Olympics are theoretically about.

Winter Olympics: Fewer black people than the Republican National Convention?

From Amy comes the news that the IOC wants to make Ryan Miller remove certain things from his mask. Things like the tribute to his dead cousin. I don't think that's a PR war the IOC wins.

A lot of winter sports look terrifying yet fun. Cross-country skiing just looks like it would make me throw up.

Despite all my complaining I love, love, love the Winter Olympics.

What I'm Reading, etc.

2010-02-06T21:51:00.004-05:00

The nice thing about writing a blog pretty much entirely for one's own benefit is that you don't have to feel guilty when you step away for, say, a month and a half. I felt like I was so crabby all the time and I wasn't particularly enjoying writing about my own crankiness so I can't imagine it was in any way interesting to read about. But I've since managed to plant myself in a cheerier place. So I'm back, if not with anything particularly substantive. But here are a couple things I've read recently:

Google and the New Digital Future

The terms of the settlement will have a profound effect on the book industry for the foreseeable future. On the positive side, Google will make it possible for consumers to purchase access to millions of copyrighted books currently in print, and to read them on hand-held devices or computer screens, with payment going to authors and publishers as well as Google. Many millions more—books covered by copyright but out of print, at least seven million in all, including untold millions of "orphans" whose rightsholders have not been identified—will be available through subscriptions paid for by institutions such as universities. [...]The negative arguments stress the danger that monopolies tend to charge monopoly prices. Equally important, they warn that Google's dominance of access to books will reinforce its power over access to other kinds of information, raising concerns about privacy (Google may be able to aggregate data about your reading, e-mail, consumption, housing, travel, employment, and many other activities).

Adam Gopnik on J. D. Salinger

In American writing, there are three perfect books, which seem to speak to every reader and condition: Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and The Catcher in the Rye. Of the three, only Catcher defines an entire region of human experience: it is—in French and Dutch as much as in English—the handbook of the adolescent heart.

I don't, as it happens, entirely agree that these books speak to every reader. Gatsby, for example, didn't particularly speak to me at the time I read it. Perhaps it would now. Like so many people, I read all three books when I was fifteen or sixteen. Huckleberry Finn was the one I loved and is, along with Moby Dick, my Great American Novel. Catcher did speak to me, but I think it's far less universal than Gopnik claims. Rather, I think it's a book that one often has to read at a certain point in life, in a certain state of mind. For the most part Holden Caulfield doesn't speak to adults. That's why he can speak so clearly to teenagers. Surely that's not a bad thing.

The Good Thief

2009-12-19T23:49:00.000-05:00

New York is slowly being carpeted by fine snow tonight. Not nearly a blizzard but just enough to make a person want to stay inside with a cup of hot chocolate and read an adventure story. Or, in my case, post about an adventure story I read at the beginning of the month. It's the kind of weather that lends itself to adventures of the mind while the body tucked up in a chair.

I can understand why a person would read comparisons to Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson and think that's totally the book for me. What I can't understand is why I would read them and think that. I don't like Dickens at all and I got all of one chapter into Treasure Island. But I read about The Good Thief on some "best of the year" list at the end of 2008, something about the description captured my imagination, and I decided I just had to read it. I think it was the fact that it was set in a kind of alternate New England that appealed to me.

I put it out of my head for awhile but when I saw the paperback (which has a rather less appealing cover) I couldn't resist. Nevermind that I was in the middle of any number of other books and trying to use the library more. I had to buy it because I just knew I was going to love it. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, I wound up disappointed. It's not that I didn't like the book--I did--but that I wanted it to be more than it was.

Tinti creates an engagingly creep, gothic New England full of giants and grave robbers and sinister, behatted men, and it's never short of entertaining. But I wanted the scope of the story to be larger. I wanted to be swept away into the world I was reading about and emotionally invested in the fate of the characters. Instead I felt like it didn't go much beyond a fun, very nicely constructed plot. Which is nothing to sneeze at, really, but I keep insisting on getting my expectations up and then I'm disappointed about books I otherwise would have liked.

Uncommon Arrangements

2009-12-05T16:51:00.000-05:00

You would think that a book about marriages within the Bloomsbury group--the famous "circle of friends who lived in squares and loved in triangles"--would be interesting. Or I would think that anyway. At the very least the gossip should be good. So why was Uncommon Arrangements so boring for me?

I'm not hugely familiar with the work of the Bloomsbury group outside of Virginia Woolf--of whom I'm just not hugely fond--but I did visit Charleston a few years back and found the home, long inhabited by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, beautiful and charming and fascinating. It's why I picked up this book. And my enjoyment of that place is also what made me particularly disappointed by how little I liked the book.

A large part of my issue is that I disliked the structure of the book. Each of the seven couples Roiphe discusses gets a chapter of roughly equal length, and these seven chapters are bookended by an introduction and a postscript. This means that roughly equal time is devoted to each couple even though some are a good bit more interesting than others. It also means that while certain people--Virginia Woolf, for one--flit through a number of the chapters, the central couple in each often feels divorced from their social and artistic milieu (two things that are, after all, not so different with from one another when it comes to the Bloomsbury group).

But more fatal still, for me, is the fact that while you'll finish Uncommon Arrangements with a good idea of how people like H.G. Wells and Vanessa Bell constructed their romantic relationships you won't be much the wiser when it comes to the connections between their work and their views on relationships. Roiphe writes with great insight about the feelings, the ideas, the negotiations, etc. that formed the seven relationships under consideration. But she has less to say about the work that keeps us interested in these people. Well, some of them anyway.

It's not particularly fair to judge a book on what you want it to be rather than what it intends to be. But I don't think fairness has much of anything to do with reading enjoyment. And while Roiphe no doubt succeeded on her own terms--by which I mean she examines the nature of marriage by looking at the unusual arrangements of these famous literary figures--Uncommon Arrangements isn't the book I wanted it to be.

Endings

2009-11-08T23:00:00.000-05:00

I put Pyramus to sleep on Friday, October 30th and today I picked up his ashes. Which seems terribly final. I was there when he died and they wrapped him up in a towel and carried him away and you would think that would be final enough. But I've been walking in the door every night half expecting him to be waiting for me. The cremation company puts the ashes in a little tin then wraps them up like a gift and sticks a brochure in the bag detailing all the fancy urns you can buy. But lest you think that's rather capitalist of them, the brochure also informs you that there's a private funeral room and an on-site grief counselor. Which all seems over-the-top to me because I don't tend to think of animals as little people. But then again I'm the atheist who needed her cat's ashes so she can bury him in her mother's garden so I don't exactly have a monopoly on logic here.

I'll spare you the stories about what a spectacular cat he was--though they would be true, of course--but I do want to write a little about his death. He was small and sick and mine and I spent so much time in the last year focused on his health that to suddenly find myself free of that concern is disconcerting. It's a lonely thing to suddenly have no beloved obligations waiting at home. When I get up in the morning and realize that there are no pills to be cut into fourths, no supplements to be measured out, no food to be portioned, I'm not quite sure what to do with myself.

I came home that night to all the things that needed to be cleaned up: opened cans of cat food with which I was trying to tempt him, chicken breasts in the freezer that I won't eat, open cans of tuna that I drained in order to give him the tuna-flavored water, clothes on the bathroom floor that I didn't pick up because he'd taken to sleeping on them, litter, his bottles of medicine . . . And then there were the things that I needed to just store away: litter boxes, the scratching post, the cat carrier, the water fountain. It was all a little overwhelming.

All that is taken care of now though. The things that needed to be tossed have been tossed. The things that can be saved for a new cat somewhere down the line are stored in closets and cabinets. So it's nice to have the tin with his ashes in it, tucked away next to the plants because he always liked them and that seems like as good a place as any to keep them for the time being. It's still sad, but it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it, and now at least everything seems neatly wrapped up.

On the Nobel Prize for Literature

2009-10-13T18:07:00.003-04:00

I can't say that I'm ever particularly excited to find out who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. It just doesn't generally seem like an effective way to discover new authors whose work I'll actually enjoy. There's a nice essay on Literary Kicks though about the predictable dismay--in the English speaking world, that is--that has greeted Herta Müller's win. Dedi Felman writes:

The problem many non-specialists (and here I count a large swath of publishers, press, booksellers, lovers of literature and non-Germanists etc) have with Herta Müller isn’t that she isn’t known. It’s that, at least until they’ve all had a chance to read her and perhaps discover differently, she’s not better loved. She’s critically acclaimed in Germany, but she’s not a bestseller. She’s topical, but it’s unclear whether her writing is all that accessible.

I think it's a good point that gets lost in all the vaguely (or not so vaguely) nationalistic, decidedly provincial hoopla surrounding the award.

Also I totally agree re: the delightfulness of Wislawa Szymborska. Her Nonrequired Reading is just about the most perfect subway commute reading I can imagine. You know, in case anyone was looking for a recommendation.

American Ballet Theatre at Avery Fisher

2009-10-12T23:50:00.003-04:00

I found the choice of Avery Fisher Hall as a performance space frustrating. The cheapest unobstructed seats were $40 and while normally I'd just suck it up and deal with the obstructed seats I couldn't do that this time around because I was bringing my elderly grandmother. So that was a blow to the budget. While none of the Lincoln Center buildings I've been in are particularly beautiful, Avery Fisher, with its odd glass enclosure around the auditorium and its mustard-colored seats, is particularly unappelaing. Also, I had an allergy attack while there so that was nice. Still, the hall wasn't entirely without its advantages as we could see well from our seats at the back of the third tier and it was fun to see the dancers warming up during each intermission. Whether they enjoy having an audience for that I don't know—I imagine they're entirely indifferent—but it was an interesting peek behind the scenes for us.

Ratmansky, more than any other choreographer whose work I'm familiar with, is one whose new work I'm always excited to see. Even when he fails ("Pierrot Lunaire," which I found miserable) or gives us a flawed work ("On the Dnieper" which I adore despite its flaws) there's a sense that he's at least trying to do something interesting within the context of the ballet tradition. His dancers seem to relate to one another as people first and dancers second. He puts characters on the stage and then has them interact with one another in ways that seem quite natural. In doing this he clearly gives genuine consideration to who his dancers are and where their strengths and weaknesses lie. They're neither interchangeable nor faceless and so it's easy to care about the people in a Ratmansky ballet. But in presenting these characters he doesn't neglect the need for interesting, varied movement and into his streams of steps he inserts small, happy surprises and motifs to which you're delighted to return. There's a balance to his successful choreography that makes it comfortable to watch without being easy.

"Seven Sonatas" is probably the least ambitious of the Ratmansky ballets that I've seen. He's certainly not reinventing the wheel here. And yet its beautifully crafted. Could it have been a tad shorter--say "Six Sonatas"? I think so. But that could very well be my own personal lack of patience. Although reminiscent of Robbins ballets like the larger "Dances at a Gathering," I think “Seven Sonatas” lacks the (occasionally bitter)sweetness and nostalgia that give that ballet its power. Rather, this ballet feels like it takes place very much in the present with three distinct couples living out their own personal dramas. And yet, because no one exists in isolation in a Ratmansky ballet, these pairs occasionally overlap in the Venn diagrams of community life. Herman Cornejo and Sarah Lane were the flirty fun couple (of course, they're short and in ballet that means they're the fun ones), while Stella Abrera and Gennadi Saveliev seemed weighted down by some undefined sorrow. David Hallberg, meanwhile, was often left searching for an elusive Julie Kent. But over the course of the ballet all three couple step outside themselves to interact as a community. It's an entire small world on stage and you feel richer for having experienced it.

Coming after "Seven Sonatas" Aszure Barton's "One of Three" felt impoverished both in feeling and in movement. It seemed like she didn't quite know what to do with her talented dancers. Why bother using Gillian Murphy if all you're going to have her do is look lovely in a long white dress and lift her leg in the air? Why did all the men seem so interchangeable? Surely it wasn't just the suits. I feel like it's not fair to say only that something isn't interesting, because that's a conversation killer. If you're simply bored by something then what more is there to discuss?But the truth is, I just wasn't interested in this ballet.

The most ambitious ballet of the evening—which followed Clark Tippet's enjoyable, but in my opinion too long, “Some Assembly Required”--was Millipied's “Everything Doesn't Happen at Once.” Although I didn't love it, I also didn't think it was as much of a mess as many of the critics did. Certainly it was the crowd pleaser of the evening and that's not inherently a bad thing. It sent the audience out happy while at least attempting to do something of artistic value and that in itself seems like a plus for an art form that struggles to find an audience and often resorts to impressive levels of tackiness in its attempts to draw people into the theater.

My grandmother and I speculated that maybe the view of this ballet was actually better—clearer, less confused--from our seats than it was from those closer and lower seats that the critics occupy. We thought that from lower down the stage might seem muddled and confused to a greater extent than it did from the third tier. (If this wasn't the case, please don't disillusion me, I'm enjoying that fantasy that I had particularly desirable seats for a change.)

To my untutored eye the ballet had three major problems. The first is that the space was just a bit too small. I don't think that it needs a large stage, but it needs a stage that's a touch larger. The second is that the transitions from section to section seem somewhat slapdash. And the third (which I actually think is the root of the second) is that the central duet is just not strong. All that seems to matter here is the mechanics of the dancing. Marcelo Gomes is a delightfully charismatic dancer with a strong stage presence and yet the only thing the audience gets to see is what he's physically capable of doing. Which is impressive, but he brings so much more to the table. I'm less familiar with Isabella Boylston but she seems like a lovely dancer. Surely she too is capable of projecting more personality if only she's given the material to work with. These problems undermine any coherence and leave the viewer with a ballet that has a lot of excitement but lacks clarity.

That's a shame, because I actually thought there was a lot to enjoy here. Of all the choreographers, Millipied seems to have thought most about how he could use the unusual dance space in an interesting way. I liked that he used white flooring to lend a degree of definition to the performance space and I also liked that he allowed the borders of that space to remain permeable. The regimented way in which he mobilized groups of dancers was intriguing and I loved the way he employed applause-machine Daniil Simkin to add and element of chaos and bringing light to what was otherwise a dark piece.

I thought you could feel Millipied working through problems throughout the ballet. I just wish it were a work in progress as opposed to a finished ballet because I think that what it needs is not a trip to the scrap heap but a little editing and rethinking. Unfortunately, I'm not under the impression that ballet choreographers have much opportunity to revise their work. It's a shame because I think that what we saw should be, "Everything Doesn't Happen at Once: First Draft," and I'd be eager to see the second version.

The National Parks

2009-09-28T18:21:00.003-04:00

If you missed the first episode of the new Ken Burns documentary The National Parks--or, like me, don't have a working tv--you can watch it online here.

I've had the good fortune to visit quite a few of the national parks and honestly don't have the adjectives to describe them. They really are spectacular and, at the risk of seeming obnoxiously preachy, something that all Americans should be both proud and grateful to have. So anyway, what I'm saying is that I'm pretty excited to watch the documentary.

Edited to add: Well I certainly hope this improves in later sections because an hour in I am utterly unimpressed. Disappointing.

Going-to-the-Sun Road, Glacier Nat'l Park

Grinnell Glacier Trail, Glacier Nat'l Park

Miscellany (part whatever)

2009-09-26T18:39:00.003-04:00

1. When The Millions began posting their "Best of the Millenium" list last Monday I was excited that it seemed evenly divided between men and women. Equal representation on a best-of list isn't exactly common. And several of the women were people whose work I'm not familiar with as well. But then 9 of the top 10 were men. So, in the end the panel put together a fairly typical list when it comes to gender representation. And the list put together by Millions readers was roughly the same. I'm in no way criticizing the panelists or the readers; a quick glance at my shelves is enough to remind me that a list I put together would be roughly the same in that respect.

I also find it interesting that more than half of the six books by women on the panelists' list are short story collections. Meanwhile all but one of the books written by a man are novels. The readers list--also featuring six female writers--only has two short story collections by women. But none at all by men. I don't really have an explanation for this, but I do wonder if we, collectively, are judging literature by standards that are disadvantageous to women.

2. Alastair Macaulay seems a little baffled by the reception some of the performances are receiving at Fall for Dance. I think there are a few things at work here:

The tickets are only $1o so people are generally going to be happy whether they love something or not.
The wine is $2 a glass and nearly everyone is louder after a few drinks
To a greater extent than at other dance performance you have a mixed crowd that includes not only people who go to watch dance all the time but people like myself who attend performances regularly but not frequently and people who almost never see dance. So if something features terrible cliches or whatever a large portion of the audience isn't going to recognize that those things are so done.
It's kind of a loud, relaxed atmosphere.

I haven't actually seen any of the Fall for Dance shows this year, but hey, that's not stopping me from making conjectures.

Basin & Saddleback

2009-09-22T21:32:00.003-04:00

As long as I'm posting Adirondacks pictures I thought I'd throw up a few from the hike I went on back in August...

A view from Basin.

Basin again, with clouds rolling in.

Part of the very steep climb up Saddleback from Basin.

And a view from Saddleback.

Gray & Skylight

2009-09-21T20:22:00.007-04:00

Fall is here. I'm listening to hockey on the radio and wearing a jacket to work and this past weekend I went on what I think it's safe to say was my last hiking trip of the year. Also, one of my favorite hikes I've done in the Adirondacks.

I took the train up to Saratoga and met my father there. We then drove to the Upper Works, an abandoned mining town, in the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks.

An abandoned house by the trailhead.

When we went a bit later in the season last year the leaves were mid-change but there was also snow and ice. So we went a few weeks earlier this year in order to avoid the wintery weather, but it also meant going before the leaves really changed. Given that we were backpacking this time around that's a trade-off I'm happy to have made.

Friday afternoon we took the Calamity Brook trail--the calamity was a hunting accident in the mid-1800s--from the Upper Works to the Flowed Lands. I'd never been to the Flowed Lands before but have been a little in love with them despite that because I think the name sounds like something out of the Anne of Green Gables books. Of course the actual origin of the name isn't at all romantic--the lake was formed when a river was dammed up to divert water to a mining company's blast furnaces, I think--but that seems irrelevant.

The Flowed Lands on Saturday morning.

We spent a chilly, windy night in a lean-to at the Flowed Lands and then packed up in the morning and hiked a mile to Lake Colden where we set up camp. I'd been to Lake Colden before--it was the first backpacking trip my sister and I went on, a decade or so ago. It had been a dry summer and the bears were out in full force. At the time they didn't require backpackers to use bear canisters the way they do now and they were getting food off of people left and right (not ours). Also, we didn't particularly know what we were doing and made everything harder for ourselves than it needed to be. So anyway, it had been awhile. It's a beautiful area though and there are a lot of hikes that are convenient from there, so it's easy to see why it's such a popular place to stay.

Lake Colden

Our plan was to hike to the top of Skylight and Gray. As it turns out, that's a pretty easy hike and thoroughly enjoyable. The trail goes up past Lake Tear of the Clouds, which is the highest source of the Hudson River. Also, apparently, where Theodore Roosevelt was when he learned that President McKinley was dying and started his trip to Buffalo.

Lake Tear of the Clouds

The path up to Gray--not a terribly exciting peak--begins just before the lake and is fairly steep. The path to Skylight, which begins shortly after the lake, is probably one of the most moderate trails to a High Peak of the ones I've climbed (not many) and isn't the least bit treacherous. Really, it's just completely enjoyable.

The top of Skylight. You have to stay on the path to avoid harming the alpine vegetation.

And the view is fantastic. Generally speaking, every time I've climbed a mountain in the Adirondacks that's known for it's great view it's been a) surrounded by clouds or b) so fucking miserable weather-wise that I didn't enjoy it all that much. But Saturday was an absolutely glorious day. The view is so much more awe inspiring than it looks in these pictures.

A fraction of the view from Skylight. I think you can see Sawteeth, Basin, and Gothics here. Not sure what else.

We had a lot of time and very little to do on Sunday so we took our time breaking camp and getting set to hike out.

Getting lunch together Sunday morning.

Although warmer than it had been Saturday morning, it was still cold enough that there was frost on the bridge across the end of Lake Colden and ice rimming the edge of the lake. So what better to do than sit around drinking hot chocolate while waiting for it to warm up a little?

All in all a very successful trip.

2009-09-12T18:07:00.001-04:00

A couple things that I'm thinking about:

I realize that Patrick Kane looks like a preteen. But nevertheless I'm not sure that "Most Patriotic Grade School Portrait" is a great look for a professional hockey player who will likely be participating in the Olympics this winter. Particularly when it's only one in a series of truly terrible photos. I mean, I'm not insane so I don't expect great things from USA Hockey or anything, but really, someone got paid to do this. I could do better and I'm really not a particularly talented photographer and just barely qualify as knowing how to use photoshop.

Time Out New York reviewed Sondra Lee's new book and said that readers might be familiar with her from the orgy scene in La Dolce Vita. I've seen the movie but certainly didn't remember she was in it. I do, however, remember her as Tiger Lily the Mary Martin starring Peter Pan. My sister and I used to watch an old tape of that whenever we went to our grandparents' country house.

It's been a long time since I thought about it but it's something tons of people watched as kids, no?

Sometimes the internet is an amazing thing...

2009-09-02T01:38:00.005-04:00

For some reason today I was thinking about a book I read about fifteen years ago. I couldn't remember the title or the author or the plot. The only things I could remember were that it was about a strange boy and I loved it. It was driving me up the wall though and so I tried googling "young adult book strange boy" and didn't see anything familiar. But then I remembered that the word "alien" came into it somehow, added that to the google search and voila: The Only Alien on the Planet.

Somehow I suspect that this is one of those books that doesn't hold up so well once you're past childhood though.

Augustus

2009-08-31T22:40:00.004-04:00

My summer has been going pretty much the way every other season has been going for the last year, which is to say that, for the most part, if it can go wrong it will go wrong. That applies to things both petty (all the shoes I wear to work are falling apart) and more serious (my apartment is a disaster story and my cat is broken), but to top it all off, I'm in a total reading rut. To be fair, I've actually been having decent luck on the nonfiction front. It's just that my feelings about the fiction I've been reading lately have ranged from indifference, to irritation, to irrational loathing. I have to admit, I was even more than a little relieved to read that other people are also experiencing the reading doldrums this summer. But unfortunately, as is usually the case with the whole misery-loves-company thing, that hasn't made my own problem (or my desire to whine about it) go away. I thought I'd write then, about the last novel I completely enjoyed.

There's nothing particularly original about what John Williams does in Augustus. That's not a complaint. I'm just saying that the epistolary novel has been around for about as long as the novel itself, at least in Western literature, and to write about Augustus Caesar is to go down a well-travelled path. But that doesn't matter here.

Augustus covers, roughly speaking, three separate subjects in the life of Augustus Caesar: his rise to power, the exile of his daughter, and his death. John Williams tells the story through letters, diaries, and memoirs. In the first two sections of the novel, these are the works of Augustus' contemporaries. Only in the final section does Williams give voice to the emperor himself.

In his author's note Williams wrote,"if there are truths in this work, they are the truths of fiction rather than of history." Augustus isn't meant to be a biography, fictional or otherwise, and Williams isn't interested in presenting facts. He understands the limits of fiction and nonfiction and chooses not to tell us what happened or why but instead concerns himself with an exploration of power and duty and the sacrifices those twin gods demand. He illuminates the interior worlds that history cannot show us with a broad-minded empathy and in doing so tells us something about who we are--our loves, our needs, our friendships, the way we govern ourselves and the way we are governed--without asking the novel to carry a greater burden than it can bear.

There's something restorative about an author for whom writing is a means of communicating and not a chance to show off their talent for linguistic acrobatics. Williams style is modest and draws no attention to itself. His writing is clean and clear, neither spare nor overwrought but perfectly balanced. This quality seems most refined, appropriately enough, toward the end of the novel, when Williams gives us Caesar through his own eyes.

Letter: Octavius Caesar to Nicolaus of Damascus (A.D. 14)
August 9
Though it was nearly sixty years ago, I remember that afternoon on the training field when I got the news of my Uncle Julius's death. Maecenas was there, and Agrippa, and Salvidienus. One of my mother's servants brought me the message, and I remember that I cried out as if in pain after I read it.

But at that first moment, Nicolaus, I felt nothing; it was as if the cry of pain issued from another throat. Then a coldness came over me, and I walked away from my friends so that they could not see what I felt, and what I did not feel. And as I walked on that field alone, trying to rouse in myself the appropriate sense of grief and loss, I was suddenly elated, as one might be when riding a horse he feels the horse tense and bolt beneath him, knowing he has the skill to control the poor spirited beast who in an excess of energy wishes to test his master. When I returned to my friends, I knew that I had changed, that I was someone other than I had been; I knew my destiny, and I could not speak to them of it. And yet they were my friends.

At this point in the book, we have witnessed the scene where Augustus learns of Julius Caesar's death before. Williams has unfurled the story of the emperor's life already. Early on this particular moment was described by Salvidienus Rufus. He describes a cry, "grating and loud and filled with uncomprehending pain, like the bellow of a bullock whose throat has been cut at a sacrifice," and Octavius alone, "a slight, boyish figure walking on the deserted field, moving slowly, this way and that, as if trying to discover a way to go." But now, with Augustus at the end of his life, we reflect back with all the clarity of hindsight. It's an elegant conceit, and effective because it feels utterly natural. This moment, horrible and marvelous and world-changing, deserves to be revisited and enriched. In his old age, Williams's Augustus can see so clearly, he has become a kind of oracle who knows what will come of all he has built, the limit of his power, and accepts it. It's a beautiful thing in its way.

It's surprisingly hard for me to write about Augustus. Here I have this beautiful object in my hands, this work that is complete and whole, and I find that I don't want to pick at it too much. I've been working on this post for much longer than I'd like to admit (because something with this much time devoted to it ought to be less half-assed). So it goes.

How I Spent My Weekend . . .

2009-08-25T01:00:00.004-04:00

Unfortunately, my camera is broken so this picture was taken with my phone. The tall mountain in the center is, I believe, Marcy (as viewed from Basin). I don't think I've ever been so happy to get out of the city.

Martha Wainwright and Morphoses

2009-08-17T23:53:00.000-04:00

I always forget how much I dislike Central Park SummerStage in between visits. The view is bad enough to begin with but once you factor in the number of reserved seats shows like this one have, well, the hoi polloi just isn't going to be able to see that well. And the only time bleachers are remotely comfortable is when you have lots of space around you. Definitely not the case Friday night. Still, it seems churlish to complain about the seating you get at a free show and I am glad I went.

When I first heard about this particular performance I thought it was a fairly odd combination that wouldn't show either party at their finest. Part of the appeal of Wainwright's shows is their slightly ramshackle, undisciplined feel. They tend to be warm and down to earth. And the way she changes up her songs live is another of the delights. For the most part though I think those concerns were misplaced as the show was something of a mash-up of concert and dance performance, with each getting their moment in the sun.

The first half felt mostly like filler on the dance front. There was a nice little solo to "Far Away" and "Whither Must I Wander" was one of those pieces that features the woman being partnered all over the stage and not dancing much on her own to feet, while "Bleeding All Over You" brought us a dance with Teresa Reichlen and four men that showed off her long legs but wasn't particularly interesting choreographically. "Love is a Stranger" was upbeat and fun at least. Wainwright also, to my surprise, played a number of songs without dance accompaniment. I was glad that she replaced "Tower Song" (not one of my favorites of hers) with the more upbeat "When the Day is Short" with her mother Kate McGarrigle playing piano. It's always a family affair one way or another with the Wainwrights.

The second half of the program was more rewarding. It opened with Wheeldon's "Fool's Paradise," which despite its at times excessive partnering is more interesting and innovative than any of the too-brief dances of the first half. It really sort of felt like the dance portion of the program began there. Afterward Wainwright sang a few songs without dancers, including her delightfully over-the top rendition of "Stormy Weather."

And then we got the piece of the evening, the world premiere of "Tears of St. Lawrence," choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon and Edward Liang. Here I thought the musical collaboration worked much better than in the first half of the evening--where it wasn't so much a collaboration as the choreographers setting movement to songs Wainwright has been singing for some time--as the greater length gave Wheeldon and Liang time to develop ideas in their choreography and create an arc. At the same time though, I'm left with the same impression I get from so much of the Wheeldon choreography I've seen: It's perfectly pleasant to watch, I'm interested, and then 48 hours later it has evaporated from my memory. Or at least everything but the ending tableau has (both "Fool's Paradise" and "Tears of St. Lawrence" close with scenes that stick in the mind, though in different ways). While I'd be happy to see the ballet again, I'm more interested in hearing the music again. I couldn't focus on it or get an impression of it as a whole to the extent I might have liked and it seemed on first listen to be lovely and moving.

As a side note, Alistair Macaulay complains about the program notes in his review. He actually lets them off easy; the bios on the back were shoddily written as well. Even if the program creators are operating from the assumption that well-written program copy doesn't matter, you'd think they could bother with a spot of copyediting.

Lazy Sunday

2009-08-16T14:32:00.002-04:00

Not so much for me (I've been cleaning the apartment) but certainly for him.

2009-08-14T23:50:00.003-04:00

I managed to come down with a nasty cold at the beginning of August and as soon as I started feeling fully functional my cat managed to hurt the feline equivalent of his wrist. Which sucks for numerous reasons, including the fact that I had to cancel a trip to the Adirondacks with my father to take care of his pathetic, barely-upright self. And as if that weren't enough to deal with, my mother has been in town. Which is fantastic, actually, because I love seeing my mother, but has also contributed to my feeling like I have a lot on my plate. On the bright side though, I'm more caught up at work than I've been in at least a year. Our summer interns? They are fabulous.

So while I haven't been doing much that's interesting to blog about here in the dog days of summer, I have been reading.

The -Ookies are counting down to hockey with fabulous pictures that make me wish that my camera wasn't broken. And that it was better. And that I could take such nice pictures. And that I had jars of chocolate chips.

The Millions tackled Malcolm Gladwell's (shabby) stab at literary criticism. The main problem, as I see it, is that Gladwell doesn't really seem to appreciate the difference between the kind of fun cultural criticism he normally does and writing about literature. He tackles the two things the same way and treats the characters as if they're real historical people, the novel as if it's artless. And his conclusion is particularly egregious: "A book that we thought instructed us about the world tells us, instead, about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism in Maycomb, Alabama." Even if we accept the idea that To Kill a Mockingbird "instruct[s] us about the world" in a way that's different than the way that all great literature and art does so--a conclusion I'm not particularly inclined to agree with--we're still left with the fact that telling us about the limits of Jim Crow liberalism in a particular place in time is instructing us about the world. Not the way we're instructed by a history class though--the way we're instructed by a novel: through thoughtful reading and fierce attention.

I'm not fussed about Gia Kourlas saying bad things about the program Tulsa Ballet performed at the Joyce. I didn't see it so I'm not in the position to agree or disagree with her, but if she didn't like it she didn't like it and should say so. But I do wish she hadn't started her review with a somewhat condescending paragraph that begins by saying, "State government doesn’t normally shut down for ballet, but you wouldn’t have believed it judging by the dignitaries who spilled into the Joyce Theater on Monday night," and finishes up by claiming, "It was surreal—the whoops that erupted as the curtain was raised were a bit much—but it was also sweet to see such hometown pride." It just feels to me like she's looking down her nose at the Oklahomans. Of course small cities are proud of their cultural institutions. Of course they're going to come and support said institutions when they perform in a cultural capital like New York. It's a big fucking deal when it's something they only do once every few decades instead of all the time. I can't say I'm at all surprised that Oklahoma bigwigs came. And as for the whooping at the curtain raising . . . yeah, that doesn't surprise me either. People tend to be a bit more vocally enthusiastic outside New York. It doesn't mean they need to be portrayed like they just might be overexcited yokels.

I just read most of Love Begins in Winter. Then it became the first book in quite some time that I actively chose not to finish. Van Booy's writing is full of lovely lines and scenes, moments of genuine beauty, but they seem to come without real regard for the stories themselves. This one for example: "In the far distance, Sunday parked over the village like an old mute who hid his face in the hanging thick of clouds." I don't even know what that means. That it was quiet and foggy? That the author is trying rather too hard on the evocative imagery front? That he thought up that line and had to get it in there no matter what? Some combination?

My big issue though, is that there's so much that just doesn't feel true to me. The story that really killed me though is one that contains a scene wherein the protagonist and her boyfriend go on a trip to the Adirondacks. They hike nine miles “up into the white breath of the mountain” go off trail to a river with a large and flat enough rock for them to make love on, which isn’t soaked although it’s just been raining because “it’s amazing how quickly the sun dries the earth after it has been washed.” Now having spent some time in the Adirondacks I find it hard to believe that if it's just been raining you're going to be amazed at how quickly the sun dries things. Or that you'll feel like said rain has cleaned anything. Because you'll be hiking in mud. And if you've been hiking up for nine miles you are a) on a hell of a long day hike and b) probably not near any rivers large enough to contain a rock that sizable and flat. It doesn't seem real; it feels like Van Booy just wanted the scene. Particularly because while they've been busy having sex and taking a nap, their champagne glasses have rolled off into a rock pool where they stand upright. There, we are told, “Each glass held the weight of an entire river without knowing where it came from and how much was left.” Say what? That sounds nice and serious and all but it doesn't mean much of anything, which is pretty much how I felt about so much in this story collection.

The Nimrod Flipout

2009-07-28T22:31:00.001-04:00

We had a briefly impressive storm here in New York on Sunday night. I had to run around closing windows and by the time I got to the balcony door--I leave just the screen door shut pretty much all summer, rain or shine--there was a puddle on my kitchen floor. Yesterday morning there were big branches covering the sidewalk near my apartment. I don't think there've been any storms like that in the time I've lived in New York so it felt a little bit like being back in Buffalo.

I finally read a book that cured my case of the blahs. Unfortunately that's because I really didn't enjoy it. It's an awfully slim book--about 160 pages--and yet it includes thirty separate stories. And they all start to seem awfully similar pretty rapidly. The names are different, and the details of the story are different, but really, underneath the frippery, they're the same: anxiety-ridden, jittery, relentlessly modern. The characters are glib and disconnected, the storytelling truncated. And, with the exception of the sameness, there's not really anything wrong with those things. It's a sort of fiction that's not really to my taste, but I think it's good that someone's writing it and I think it engages with the present day in a different way than a lot of the fiction I like best.

At first I thought maybe it was the length, or lack there of, that was giving me a problem. That the stories didn't have a chance to develop properly. But the longer stories--and "longer" is relative here--get tedious quickly. Maybe it's the prose that throws me. It's not a prose style I'm particularly fond of and that probably contributes to my boredom. I'm reading this in translation and speak no Hebrew whatsoever so it's hard to know where exactly the problem lies for me. But nevertheless, the stories have a very distinctive (and consistent) tone.

One story, "Glittery Eyes," starts:

This is the story of a little girl who loved glittery things more than anything else in the whole world. She had a glittery dress, and glittery socks, and glittery ballet slippers. And a glittery black doll named Christy after their maid. Even her teeth glittered, though her father insisted that they sparkled, which wasn't quite the same.

In the story the little girl wants glittery eyes to go with her glittery dress, and her glittery teeth, etc. But she can't have them. Another story, "A Thought in the Shape of a Story" features a similar theme, and that one begins like so:

This is a story about people who once lived on the moon. Nowadays, there's no one up there, but up until just a few years ago, the place was mobbed. The people on the moon thought they were very special, because they could think their thoughts in any shape they wanted. In the shape of a pot, or a table, or even in the shape of flared pants. [. . .] It was all very impressive, all those shaped thoughts, except that as time passed, all the people on the moon came to a kind of agreement about how every thought should look.

There's a man on the moon and he wants to think his thoughts into different shapes. But he doesn't get what he wants. Both stories are about three pages long. They're not next to each other in the book, and are separated by a good number of stories, but they're close enough that you can easily read them in one sitting and they're not the only two such stories in the book anyway. Individually, I don't dislike the stories. In fact I find the ending of the one about the people on the moon oddly, beautifully sad. they're not really as interesting in combination as they are on their own merits.

I think that's what was particularly frustrating about this book for me. Keret has something to say and the skills to say it. But actually sitting down and reading my way through The Nimrod Flipout made me want to toss it out the window. Perhaps it's a book I would have been better off dipping in and out of rather than reading straight through . . .

Mary Stuart

2009-07-17T20:21:00.000-04:00

Sunday was my monthly dinner-and-a-show outing with my grandmother--although this time around we daringly mixed things up and made it lunch and a show. We ate at a Greek restaurant on 42nd that had delicious food. More specifically, good baklava (just so my priorities are clear here).

The acting in Mary Stuart was of that stylish, stylized British variety where the audience gets to sit and watch the actors declaim--beautifully, of course--from the stage. It's a sort of acting that I sometimes like and often dislike, but it works quite well when the focal point of the play is a conflict between two of western history's most famous queens. And it's elegantly written and crafted and feels like it should be so much more powerful than it actually is.

Mary Stuart is about any number of things--power, appearances, penance--but one thing it's not about is history. Which isn't a bad thing or a good thing, per se, but I often feel wary of work that seems intent on using history to speak to the present day. And the modern ambitions of Mary Stuart--or at least this production--seem evident in everything from the set (stark, black brick, wooden benches) to the costumes (the men are dressed in the suits of today, although the women are in Elizabethan-style dresses). Yet for all that the show attempts to drag these characters into the present day, the production isn't doing anything innovative or daring and perhaps as a result it feels stranded between the two eras.

In the end though, I'm not sure if my inability to feel anything more than a kind of detached admiration is based entirely on the play itself of if the book reading ennui I wrote about earlier is in fact a more generalized entertainment ennui. That would be too bad.

A Woman in Jerusalem

2009-07-09T22:31:00.001-04:00

I love my family, but oh do they make me long for quiet (well, the loud side of my family anyway, which is the side I mostly spent this latest holiday with). I got home and it was totally quiet and such a relief. Of course my apartment is a train wreck and my cat is essentially dying of a nice heart disease/kidney failure combo (although hopefully he's dying very slowly--keep your fingers crossed, folks) so you can't have it all.

Between the bus rides to and from Virginia though, and some stolen moments during my stay there, I was able to finish A Woman in Jerusalem by A. B. Yehoshua. It's not that I didn't like it, but I had the same problem with it that I've had with most of the books I've read so far this year: I enjoyed it, but I could put it down; it had as its subject an interesting topic, but it never seemed to go as far as it needed to; I wanted to like it but was, in the end, was left with vague feelings of dissatisfaction.

Jerusalem explores issues of societal responsibility, the kinds of love--most particularly those sudden and inexplicable bursts of fellow feeling, sympathy, and affection that can take us unawares--that tend to get short shrift both in literature and in life, and guilt. By identifying the characters by occupation or position in life--the human resource manager, the emissary, the ex-wife, the consul, etc.--Yehoshua seems to be making a sort of gesture toward universality as well as situating his characters within a larger society. It's not an uninteresting set of preoccupations for a book. The problem is that it's so damn tasteful (even the jacket cover is polite). I feel like it's a book that needs a bit of dirt under its fingernails.

Still, I'm beginning to wonder if the problem is really the books or if it's me. Am I too distracted or preoccupied to appreciate what I'm reading? Have I become a lazy reader who wants to be hand fed? Am I just doing a shitty job of choosing books that will speak to me? Whatever it is, I hope my reading luck turns around soon because I could really use some time with a great book just now.

Twelfth Night

2009-07-02T23:10:00.000-04:00

Prior to last weekend, I'd never been to Shakespeare in the Park in New York City. I went to the one in Buffalo regularly growing up, but that's pretty different. They use the same set every year, the acting is not particularly good, and you certainly don't have to line up. You just show up kind of early with your lawn chair or blanket and some food and sit on this little slope. At intermission the actors come around collecting donations and while I don't know if it's still there, there used to be an ice cream place nearby in the park and we always made an intermission ice cream run. It's fun and summery and totally laid back.

Getting in line at central park at 6:10 in the morning--and being well back from the front of said line--is pretty much the opposite of laid back. And that's not even taking into account the fact that they have a security guy policing the line and explaining the rules. Which isn't to say that it was a drag or anything. We were right across from a big open space, which was nice.

Right across from our spot in line.

Early in the day the park is full of big dogs running around off leash, and my friend and I had fun watching them play. And there are worse ways to spend a beautiful Sunday then hanging out in Central Park snacking, reading, and playing games. Actually, I can't think of many better ways to spend a Sunday in late June.

Bananagrams

We collected our tickets--our seats were near the back but not too far from the center--and walked over to the farmers market behind the Museum of Natural History to buy lunch. A lunch which included some fantastic strawberries. Then right back to the park where we hung out until my friend's parents met us for dinner and the show.

I'd had a nice day anyway, but the fact that this production of Twelfth Night is as good as it is made it pretty perfect. It was funny and full of music and acted with great humor and clarity. I liked the entire cast. Also, this production, which is rather traditional, does a particularly nice job of balancing the comedy with the more serious aspects of the love and loss in the story. And to be honest, I tend to prefer my Shakespeare traditional, particularly when it's being performed in this kind of setting where people just want to enjoy the show after spending a day in line and out in the sun.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the whole day, although it can't hurt that it was such a pleasure just to have a beautiful day after the weather that plagued us for pretty much the entire spring. It's something I'll look forward to doing again (next year).

Lewis Forever

2009-06-29T20:25:00.002-04:00

The most recent Performance Club outing was to see Lewis Forever at the New Museum. While I'm not sure it really went anywhere it was a fun show to attend. We got to color and put together our own stick puppets, drink, throw things . . . I do like it when performers bring that sense of play into their work. And the audience participation was nice, although somewhat undermined by the fact that our actions didn't really seem to have a reason behind them--or at least not a reason that became clear to me. The performance itself lacked cohesion. Some parts weren't terribly engrossing, perhaps because it seemed unclear how they fit into the whole, others were fun (a bit related to Back to the Future, for example), and even oddly lovely. On the balance though I had such a good time though and you really can't complain about that.

The Performance Club discussion post is here.

The NHL Draft

2009-06-26T15:59:00.001-04:00

So here we are, on a Friday in late June, and I'll be watching the first round of the NHL draft tonight. And the thing about that is that the NHL draft makes for truly tedious television. Last year I paid a little bit of attention beforehand since I was going to be at the draft and all, but this year I haven't bothered. My draft prep has pretty much amounted to reading the Interchangeable Parts ladies' Not On the Road with IPB series. Still, there's a lot you can predict without knowing more than 10 names:

About 30 18-year-olds, all excited, most awkward will get up on stage and put on a sweater and a cap to pose for pictures.
Gary Bettman will be booed. Loudly.
Pierre Maguire will make people all over North America uncomfortable. And he will do so with enthusiasm.
When Darcy Regier gets on stage Sabres fans will be crossing their figures and toes, hoping that he drafts someone who could not be described as small, or short, or as another member of the fucking midget brigade.
I'll spend most of the show wondering what possessed me to spend my Friday night watching this crap.

This prediction gig is easy. You just have to set the bar low.

The Woman in the Dunes

2009-06-23T23:08:00.001-04:00

My office has summer Fridays, which means I get out at 1:00 every Friday between Memorial Day and Labor Day. And every Friday this year I've made plans about the things I'm going to do with my free time: I'm going to go see the High Line, I'm going to wash my windows, I'm going to find a father's day gift . . . but every Friday I've gone home and taken a long nap. This week I'm blaming The Woman in the Dunes for that. Seriously, even the cover makes me feel like sleeping.

The story here is that an amateur entomologist spends the day at a beach looking for some kind of beetle, only to have the residents of a nearby village entrap him in a pit. There he is to help a woman shovel away the ever-encroaching sand that threatens to destroy her home. He plots various ways to escape--sometimes rather hysterically--only to pass up an opportunity at the end of the book. This is no surprise to the reader, not only because he seems like a fairly incompetent person but also because we were told at the beginning of the book that he was declared dead after being missing for seven years.

For me, the book was mostly a reminder of just how much I dislike novels where symbolism and allegory take precedence over character (and how little I enjoy existentialism in novels). Here we are, the people in the sand pit, endlessly shoveling away a la Sisyphus. Oh, the meaningless of life. The way the daily grind wears down any desire we have for freedom or joy. Blah fucking blah.

I'm being dismissive though, of a novel that doesn't deserve such treatment. It's not a bad book, just not to my taste. Abe is an evocative and stylish writer and the plot is neatly constructed and spare. The sand, pervasive, unrelenting, corrosive, becomes a character. After his first night in the sand pit that is to be his home, our protagonist wakes coated by sand:

Quickly he jumped up. The sand that had accumulated on his face, head, and chest fell away with a rustling sound. Around his nose and lips sand was encrusted, hardened by perspiration. He scraped it off with the back of his hand and cautiously blinked his eyes. Tears welled up uncontrollably under his gritty, feverish eyelids. But the tears alone were not enough to wash away the sand that had become lodged in the moist corners of his eyes.
[. . .]
The whole surface of [the woman's] body was covered with a coat of fine sand, which hid the details and brought out the feminine lines; she seemed a statue gilded with sand. Suddenly a viscid saliva rose from under his tongue. But he could not possibly swallow it. Were he to swallow the sand that had lodged between his lips and teeth would spread through his mouth. He turned toward the earthen floor and spat. Yet no matter how much he ejected he could not get rid of the gritty taste. No matter how he emptied his mouth the sand was still there. More sand seemed to issue constantly from between his teeth.

The combination of the unpleasant nature of the sand and its inescapability is unpleasantly vivid. After all, most things become nearly unbearable when constantly present but anyone who has ever been to the beach knows how badly you want to wash the sand off after leaving. Reading the book I felt itchy and grit-covered myself. And any desire to go to the beach in the near future? Gone. (Convenient given the shit weather we've been having here in New York of late.) For me though, the quality of the writing wasn't enough to make up for the fact that I just didn't care about the characters or what happened to them.

Two Ballets

2009-06-20T19:44:00.000-04:00

La Sylphide had been on my (unwritten, highly informal) list of ballets I most wanted to see for awhile now. Alexandra Tomalonis wrote about it extensively in her biography of Henning Kronstam and I've wanted to watch it ever since because I have a weakness for magical creatures and Scottish reels and all that sort of thing.

At its heart it's the story of a man who falls in love with a being that is not quite of this world, and of the tragedy that ensues when he follows her instead of staying home where he belongs. In fairy tales--and La Sylphide, which comes complete with a witch stirring a cauldron and mimed triumphal laughter, feels more like a fairy tale than most such ballets--it's never a good idea to go chasing supernatural beings into the forest.

Herman Cornejo is a dancer I've often felt like I admire more than enjoy. It's utterly unfair of me, but I often find myself distracted from just how good he is by just how small he is. In this case I wasn't bothered by that, and his dancing was fantastic--as it always is, as far as I can tell--but I didn't believe the character. In her book, Tomalonis quote Kronstam talking about the role of James:

James can be a man who is so infatuated with the Sylph that he abandons everything to follow her. Or he can be a Romantic soul who is looking for the beauty of life and he sees that more in the Sylphide than in a household. Or he can be very impulsive [. . .] James has his doubts, and he has his fears of what he is going to do, but he cannot help himself. Or, if you do it differently, its that he wants to get away. It's not that he is unhappy; it's because he wants to get out.

What's clear is that there's any number of variations when it comes to the characterization of James. But in all those variations his character is such that the events of the ballet become inevitable. This is who he is and so this is how it ends. The problem is, in Cornejo's interpretation the character of James isn't fully embodied; he's merely a sketch and you never quite know who he is. And that lack of clarity undermines the story as a whole.

Natalia Osipova was more convincing as the sylph. She's a less complex character--a creature really. And because she's a magical being associated with weightlessness and flight, Osipova's particular talents serve her well. She jumps so high: One second she's on the ground and the next second there she is, hanging in the air, without having seemed to put any effort into getting there. And then she comes down quietly and feather light. It's as though being in the air is the easiest, most natural thing in the world for her.

So there's a lot to enjoy. In the end though, for all the wonderful dancing--there were also lovely performances from Gemma Bond as James's fiancee, jilted at the altar, and Jared Matthews as Gurn, who loves her (and seems rather more deserving of her love than James--the ballet didn't entirely hold together as theater on Wednesday night.

The evening had opened with Paul Taylor's Airs which I enjoyed in the sort of abstracted way that I've enjoyed the few other Taylor dances I've seen. His dances have such a sense of fun and play, which I love because being able to depict such things without seeming saccharine is a particular strength of dance as an art form. It also seemed to be a good pairing with La Sylphide in terms of tone. I do prefer the weightier quality his own dancers give his choreography though.

Weird Bugs

2009-06-18T18:20:00.003-04:00

I went backpacking in New York and Connecticut last week with my sister, who is currently hiking the Appalachian Trail. I'll write more about it later, but in the meantime, here's a video of some weird bugs (which google tells me are wood wasps). Now if only my point and shoot camera took better videos while zoomed in I'm sure the Discovery Channel would be calling any day now. After all we clearly have the gravitas and calm typical of nature documentarians.

Things That Make a Girl Peevish...

2009-06-14T16:18:00.002-04:00

My apartment building has been having water problems pretty much all year and I can deal with that. I can even deal with the brown water and sediment spitting out of the pipes. I felt a little like the Laura Ingalls Wilder of the East Village last weekend when my water was out all day and I was heating water in the kettle in order to bathe and I wasn't totally aggravated although I wouldn't say I was thrilled. But when I got home from vacation today to find my toilet not working, I was not at all happy. I just spent time backpacking, people . . . all I want this afternoon is a toilet that actually flushes without my dumping 5 gallons of water into the tank.

On the Dnieper, etc.

2009-06-02T23:46:00.001-04:00

I was at BEA Saturday and am very grateful that my job doesn't actually require me to spend time there, because I find it pretty overwhelming. Also, someone tried to hard-sell me these weird insoles for my shoes. What's with that? Are people at BEA really all about the gel-filled insoles? Somehow I doubt it. Then on Sunday I got all hardcore with my backpacking training and walked about 8 miles. Shock of shocks, I gave myself blisters. So by the time I found myself at the Metropolitan Opera house on Monday night I was very ready to spend an evening off my feet in a darkened theater.

The real draw of the evening was the premier of Alexei Ratmansky's first ballet for ABT, On the Dnieper, which was also the last ballet. I so enjoyed this ballet and, while it wasn't perfect, thought it was very good. The plot is neither awful nor inspiring: A soldier (Marcelo Gomes) returns home from World War I and finds that he no longer loves his fiancee (Veronika Part), but instead wants another girl (Paloma Herrera) who is herself engaged to someone else (David Hallberg). Tragic and not terribly subtle, it's exactly the sort of material from which you expect ballets to be made. But what Ratmansky does with it is often fantastic.

Apollinaire Scherr has a review up on her blog, and I basically agree with her criticisms--the score was too short for the female characters and situations to be fully developed. At times the plot itself seems to rush forward, which goes hand with the previous. "Wait," I wanted to say, "how can they be in love already? They should fall in love longer. This tension should build more."

But the score is what it is, and the work has so much to recommend it that I can easily overlook those flaws. Both major male characters are fully developed and both have wonderful solos. Alice Munro writes short stories in which she creates an entire world and characters that feel so real you think they must exist, just as they are in the story, somewhere in the world, in just a few pages. They're small miracles of writing; it seems like it should be impossible to get things so exactly right, and yet there the story is in front of you. The solo for Gomes that opens the ballet, and the solo for Hallberg in the second part of the ballet are like that. These characters are real individuals and watching them dance you feel that you understand them; you know who they are. And the community of which they are a part feels genuine in the same way. Ratmansky's characters don't exist in a void: they're interconnected parts of a community.

The great gift of the ballet though is the fact that unlike so many things that ABT dances, particularly the new ballets that are made for them, in On the Dnieper Ratmansky gives the dancers choreography that genuinely utilizes their prodigious abilities. Gomes and Hallberg, who are so frequently fantastic, were as wonderful in this as I've ever seen them (Gomes throughout, Hallberg in that great solo). Ratmansky told Robert Hilferty of Bloomberg that Gomes was, "very inspiring," and it's not hard to understand why. And although their characters were less clearly sketched Herrera was lovely and Part does despair as beautifully as anyone.

I also thought that, though the lighting could stand to be brighter, the sets were beautiful. I like the cherry trees and loved the fences that were moved around to redefine the space.

In addition to Apollinaire Scherr's review, Alastair Macaulay reviewed it for the New York Times, Tonya Plank has a post up, and Robert Johnson reviewed it for the Newark Star-Ledger (and hated it to a degree I find utterly baffling, but he also thinks that Ratmansky isn't a "genuine choreographic talent" so we're clearly on very different wavelengths).

And one more note before I move on: I don't know who writes the synopses for ABT's program, but "the villagers enjoy lively dancing and boisterous cheer"? Really? I have every confidence that it's possible to do better.

The evening had started with Balanchine's Prodigal Son, which I was excited to see but found that I didn't love. In retrospect it's not so surprising. When it comes to art movements, I've really never liked Primitivism and I can't say Constructivism drives me wild either and there's an abundance of both in the ballet. And then there was the fact that I forgot my opera glasses and we were sitting so far away (Family Circle). Being closer and able to see more detail would surely have helped, particularly for a ballet like this.

Michelle Wiles--who I really wish I enjoyed more than I do--just didn't work for me in this role. She's certainly commanding. Particularly so when towering over Herman Cornejo (the size difference there is something else). But I felt like she should also seem alluring and predatory and that really didn't come across. The connection between Wiles and Cornejo seemed awkward but I imagine that will get better in subsequent performances. Cornejo was dancing in place of an injured Ethan Stiefel, and I expect that he and Wiles will polish their performance as the week goes on.

One thing that did help me to appreciate the ballet more than I otherwise would have, was Nancy Goldner's essay on Prodigal in her Balanchine Variations. She writes:

The desire to bring industry and art, the functional and the decorative, under one tent extended to making an amalgam of beautiful and ugly movement, and high and low art--that is, dance and circus.

Thinking about the pas de deux between the Siren and the Son as a circus-like performance, and the drinking companions as grotesques helps me to understand this decidedly unclassical ballet.

About the second ballet of the evening I really have very little to say. Desir was one of those ballets where you can see why it was made but it's awfully hard to figure out why it's being revived or picked up by other companies than the one it was made for. The costumes are pretty, the music is pretty, a good bit of the dancing is pretty (and also pretty repetitive). And that's just about all there is to it. It's theoretically about relationships and desire, but it doesn't feel particularly human or individual. Ultimately it was kind of inoffensively boring.

The photo for On the Dnieper was stolen from this Wall Street Journal article and the the photo from Prodigal Son from the New York Times review.

Blather and a Poem

2009-05-29T20:41:00.001-04:00

This backpacking training is exhausting, folks . . . I did so many flights of stairs yesterday and I've been running which is something I haven't done since high school gym class. Between the exercise and my allergies (or rather the Benadryl I took for my allergies) and worrying about Pyramus' latest health issues (a urinary tract infection [probably], a worsening heart problem, and unexplained weight loss), I am one tired person. I'm also well on my way to being one broke person seeing as my cat is pretty much a pharmacy with fur.

Which is all to say that I'm feeling a bit worn out. So in lieu of a coherent post please take this poem by Louise Glück:

Parable of the Hostages
The Greeks are sitting on the beach
wondering what to do when the war ends. No one
wants to go home, back
to that bony island; everyone wants a little more
of what there is in Troy, more
life on the edge, that sense of every day as being
packed with surprises. But how to explain this
to the ones at home to whom
fighting a war is a plausible
excuse for absence, whereas
exploring one’s capacity for diversion
is not. Well, this can be faced
later; these
are men of action, ready to leave
insight to the women and children.
Thinking things over in the hot sun, pleased
by a new strength in their forearms, which seem
more golden than they did at home, some
begin to miss their families a little,
to miss their wives, to want to see
if the war has aged them. And a few grow
slightly uneasy: what if war
is just a male version of dressing up,
a game devised to avoid
profound spiritual questions? Ah,
but it wasn’t only the war. The world had begun
calling them, an opera beginning with the war’s
loud chords and ending with the floating aria of the sirens.
There on the beach, discussing the various
timetables for getting home, no one believed
it could take ten years to get back to Ithaca;
no one foresaw that decade of insoluble dilemmas—oh unanswerable
affliction of the human heart: how to divide
the world’s beauty into acceptable
and unacceptable loves! On the shores of Troy,
how could the Greeks know
they were hostages already: who once
delays the journey is
already enthralled; how could they know
that of their small number
some would be held forever by the dreams of pleasure,
some by sleep, some by music?

Balanchine-Tchaikovsky Spectacular

2009-05-27T22:03:00.002-04:00

I meant to write about this last week but I was wrapped up in packing for a camping/hiking trip and then I was actually on the trip and time just got away from me. Of course now I'm trying to get in shape for four days of backpacking with my sister the hiking machine next month. I actually went for a run today, which I can tell you is nowhere near a regular occurrence. But anyway, on to talking about people who are far more fit than I'll ever be . . .

This seemed to me like a program put together with marketing in mind as opposed to audience enjoyment. Which isn't to say that each of the ballets isn't a pleasure in and of themselves, but that there was a certain sameness to them and I was longing for a bit more variety. There were two ballets I'd seen before ("Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux" and "Theme and Variations") and two I hadn't ("Allegro Brillante" and "Mozartiana") and perhaps my preference for the two I'd seen previously had something to do with a greater level of familiarity. But I think it also had to do with the performances.

I normally like Gillian Murphy a great deal but in "Allegro Brillante" she and Ethan Stiefel left me a bit cold. It's so fast and the architecture of the dance is interesting, but it didn't seem like much fun somehow. There they were, doing the steps with their usual proficiency and looking a little bit like they were ticking off boxes on a form. It was refreshing then, to see Paloma Herrera and Marcelo Gomes look like they were genuinely enjoying themselves. They brought a spontaneity and sense of fun to "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux" that fit well with its flash and showoff-y quality. Also the first time I saw this ballet I whined about the costume for the man, so I guess I should say that I dislike ABT's costume far less. (Granted, they make up for that with "Theme and Variations," but more on that later.)

I'm conflicted about "Mozartiana" though. I think Veronika Part is an absolutely gorgeous dancer: She has beautiful lines and is so musical. And it's nice to see such a womanly looking ballerina. But I think I need to see the ballet again because the first time around it didn't make much of an impression but at the same time I think it's a ballet I could work my way into as a viewer.

My favorite ballet of the night though, was "Theme and Variations." I'd never particularly enjoyed Michelle Wiles's dancing, so I'm very glad that I did this time around (although I do feel like she'd benefit from dancing with someone who doesn't look like he could be her twin--a little contrast would be nice). And David Hallberg was wonderful, but that won't be news to anyone who has seen him dance. This looked so much nicer and more expansive and impressive on the big Met stage than it did at City Center.

What I don't understand though is why the ballet world feels the need to dress men up so they look like like, for example, a watermelon that's been attacked by a bedazzler. As in the pictures below.

David Hallberg, etc. from this New York Times slideshow

Daniil Simkin and Sarah Lane from this New York Times slideshow

Now, I'm not saying there's something wrong with a man being dressed up in a tacky, glittery outfit per se. But when the role is that of a noble cavalier I don't think it particularly works; at the very least it isn't in keeping with modern sensibilities. And as such it only serves to emphasize the museum piece quality that so much ballet has. Isn't this a problem? Is it really so hard to manage costumes that aren't silly?

Oh well. The next ABT performance I'm going to is the All-Prokofiev evening, which I'm very much looking forward to.

3 Dancers, 4 Chairs, 26 Words

2009-05-21T23:11:00.000-04:00

I attended this on Saturday with performance club and very much enjoyed it. It felt like such a fragile thing . . . so contained and particular and carefully crafted. The performance club post and discussion is here.

Desire Under the Elms

2009-05-19T19:40:00.000-04:00

My grandmother and I went to our monthly dinner and a show on Thursday. We ate at the sort-of expensive restaurant we sometimes go to when my grandmother can get double air miles by eating there. The food is good enough, but I'm really in it for the apple crisp with cinnamon ice cream. Priorities, right? I mean, that was totally the highlight of the night. And while, admittedly, food is often a highlight for me, the problem here was that I really didn't like the play.

Anyway, it's not that I didn't know that Desire Under the Elms is a depressing play. I knew that. But it's so goddamn stagey. The dialogue, the plot, the way the actors--Carla Gugino excepted--speak . . . it all rings so false and strips the play of whatever power it might have. And the staging and set seem calculated to make the play feel less dated, but it doesn't really work. Mostly the set looks expensive and attention grabbing. Granted, it helps create a feeling of claustrophobia and heaviness, but I'm not sure it's necessary to have a giant house hovering above the stage to create that feeling. I don't know, the play as a whole wound up feeling kind of bland and tiring to me. Tedious, even.

It was one of those nights where you sit in the theater thinking what am I doing here and why are they reviving this instead of doing something new. And that's never a good feeling. Sure, Gugino is fantastic. But I would have preferred to see her be fantastic in something else.

Cezanne and Cheesesteak

2009-05-13T22:52:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago now I went to Philadelphia with friends to see the Cezanne exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The only place in Philly that I'd ever spent any time was the train station so when a friend said asked me if I wanted to join them on their trip down I jumped at the chance.

You couldn't have asked for a better day to see a new city either--the weather was absolutely gorgeous. You could, however, ask for slightly better planning on our part. By the time we got to the museum the earliest available tickets to the Cezanne exhibit were for around 4:00. Which was pretty much the time we were planning on leaving Philly. Oops.

We spent the morning wandering around the museum--which is fantastic and worth the trip on its own--and then took a break from the high culture stuff by getting cheesesteaks for lunch. These places--Pat's and Geno's--had been featured on a TV show (I didn't see it) and are right across the street from each other. So we had to try both in a not-terribly-formal taste test.

Pat's is the very old-school, no-frills looking place:

Geno's is all bright orange and neon:

Never having had a cheesesteak before that day (or cheez wiz for that matter) I'm not at all qualified to judge. But if I were to go back, I'd probably go to Pat's.

After we'd finished eating it was finally time to go back to the museum and actually get in line at the art museum for the Cezanne exhibit. The long line.

Happily it was a good enough exhibit to make that worthwhile. I'd seen paintings by Cezanne before, of course, and liked them well enough but I can't say I'd ever given him much thought or considered how he might have influenced other artists. But this show did a great--if extremely literal--job of illustrating his influence on later artists, some of whom appear at first glance to be very different from him. And was just the right length. Sometimes these art shows are so long that you're just dead on your feet at the end. This one felt complete without taking you to that point. And had a very good audio guide to boot. Totally worth seeing.

PEN World Voices: Pétér Nádas

2009-05-11T23:45:00.000-04:00

I had originally wanted to see this "conversation" (aka interview) because Daniel Mendelsohn was supposed to be asking the questions and he's such an interesting critic. As it turned out though he wasn't able to make it, and unfortunately I didn't catch the name of the woman who was pinch hitting for him. I'd never heard of Pétér Nádas before but learning about authors you've never heard anything about is kind of one of the things that makes the PEN festival fun.

Anyway the interviewer began by asking Nádas how much of his own life experience showed up in his writing and also asked him to speak about confession and memory. Nádas--who spoke through an interpreter--explained that he uses his own life as a "point of orientation," and that his aim was navigating between imagination and reality without going into port on either side. His own life, he said, was an important element but only as a mechanism of control. Something that allows him to check whether the products of his imagination are "acceptable." The character then is not him but also not entirely imaginary. "An imagined common."

The interviewer then asked if he was searching for Truth, and if imagination got him closer to that than his own reality did. Nádas said that he was searching for something more "object-like. Declarative." And that would ideally contain elements of Truth. When the interviewer asked what that object was he provided a list that, one got the feeling, was in no way intended to be definitive. Thought...a feeling...an act...a series of acts...a series of events...the entire arc of a plot...

They then talked about the intimacy and politics of his writing and the way the two intertwine. Is such intimacy exhausting? It's exhausting to live so it's also exhausting to write. He said that he didn't think his profession was more exhausting or demanding than others but also that, "things can't be pushed aside.

She asked about the fact that his Book of Memories was held by the censors for five years and wondered if maintaining a private life separate from the state was a political act. Nádas said that it was a test of how certain things operate under a dictatorship. And also that it's hard to separate the private from the public because you, "can't just take a pair of scissors and cut." There is less space for a private life under a dictatorship and he wanted to see how much space was left for love and if the dictatorship infects even that. He was exploring whether or not love might be freedom. But it's not so.

The interviewer then asked about the excitement of the Hungarian Revolution and, I think, if it was still exciting (I think I missed something with this question). Nádas said that there is no excitement anymore. Perhaps sadness or despair but even that not very much. He claimed that the era of revolutions has ended and "many things have ended with it." He described the Hungarian Revolution as the last European revolution and when the interviewer asked about the revolutions in the 80s and the fall of Communism he said that there was no revolution there. The Soviet Union collapsed. It wasn't even Communism that collapsed because there were no communists left and "it's hard to say that Communism collapsed without communists."

She then asked him about his decision to write explicitly about sex which is apparently atypical in Hungarian literature (having never read any Hungarian literature I wouldn't know). Nádas said that it was part of the attempt to engage the dictatorship by lending the private life authenticity. How was the homosexuality received? People wrote about the book without taking any notice, this being possible because Hungarian doesn't have gendered pronouns. He said that not a single review mentioned it but a couple alluded to it and excused him as just writing about love (which was his aim anyway). Was it easier to write about two men? No. More difficult because it was provocative.

They spoke a little about the Hungarian language which he said was full of opportunity because it is a young literature. That in the great languages of literature it's hard to create something new. He also said that it's hard for translators because they are always looking for an "existing formula" but when you use these formulas it, "doesn't represent the object in movement. About his writing process he said that if he can't surprise himself with something in his writing then it's not a good work day. He also said that while he worked on Book of Memories in a state of great depression he, "doesn't think depression is the enemy," and while in certain professions it is probably a good thing to fight depression in his he needs to work through it.

The interviewer than asked him about being compared to Proust and Mann. He said that the diplomatic answer is that it's a great honor and of course he has to refute it. What he actually thinks though, is that it's an easy way out for the critics and allows them to avoid analyzing his work. He said that he has explored things they did not, wrote about things they did not, forms they considered forbidden.

This was followed by an audience question and answer session during which there was the usual parade of uselessness and self-involvement (I really hate these question and answer sessions at events like this). The one question that did elicit a particularly interesting response thought was a request to elaborate on what has been lost along with revolutions. Nádas answered that Western European and American societies are ones of opportunism. And this took the place of a quest for enlightenment. He talked about the "renunciation of the possibility that we can say something new to one another as people or artists," and said that the summit of that is post-modernism. An absence of critical thinking creates the space for this opportunism and causes the confusion between what is real and what is virtual.

These author interviews can be kind of hit or miss. Sometimes the authors have interesting things to say about literature in general and their own writing in particular and sometimes they don't. I think you want to leave these things thinking about how you'd really like to check out so-and-so's books, but sometimes you leave them thinking, man, what a douche and that you have no interest reading anything they've written ever. So I was glad that Nádas had insightful things to say and left me more interested in reading his books rather than less.

Pen World Voices: Women Translating Women

2009-05-05T23:54:00.004-04:00

I'm a totally stereotypical monolingual American. I have no natural talent whatsoever for languages and instead of struggling through it I took Latin in high school and college because I figured then I wouldn't have to try and speak in another language. Which was, as it turned out, and accurate assumption. But also not a great decision, all in all.

Anyway, this is all to say that I think one of the reasons translation fascinates me is because I can't do it myself. Good translations seem like alchemy. So I was hoping PEN's panel on women translating women would be particularly interesting. But for the most part it wasn't particularly. Some of what the translators had to say about translating from gendered languages to English was neat but it didn't necessarily seem particular to translating the work of women and for the most part I didn't feel like having a panel of female translators brought all that much to the table that a more general panel wouldn't also have brought. And I think maybe that's at the root of the fascination for me since it's something I could never do.

Still though, once I revised my expectations I did enjoy the panel. Esther Allen talked about the way in which translation lets you, "leap beyond what you are in everyday life," and, "posits that we are not limited by our present context," which is something I had never thought about before. Because who you are physically becomes irrelevant a translator can transform him or herself into someone he or she could never otherwise be or pretend to be.

Enchantress of Florence

2009-05-03T21:20:00.000-04:00

This seems to be a polarizing book. The people who hate it--and they are numerous--really, really loathe it. The New York Times review said that the novel, "revels in writerly self-congratulation," and even if you, like me, wind up liking it, I don't think you can argue with that. That Rushdie is a flashy writer isn't a surprise at this point. He likes to show off, to pull literary tricks our of his hat, to draw attention to just how good he is. That's a feature of even his best books like Midnight's Children and there it's a part of what makes it a great novel. But here there's no restraint and it leads to a book that's fun but horribly overwritten.

The real problem with this--setting aside the eye-rolling moments--is that it's all surface. There's a lot going on but nothing getting done and you don't really give a shit about the characters or what happens to them. So I guess how much you like the book depends on how much you care about that.

Dribs and Drabs

2009-04-29T01:36:00.004-04:00

So much to say and so little time to say it. Isn't that always the story. A few things:

I like to talk but don't definitely don't love to hear myself talk. Still, I loved listening to the Performance Club audio that Claudia just put up. Despite cringing when I heard my own voice (I find that so unnerving) I liked revisiting bits of conversation with more distance from the performance and also hearing things I missed. And selfishly I hope that these audio recordings are done for more events, particularly ones I can't attend with the P. Club, because the post-show conversations are such an enriching experience for me and it would be fun to sort of eavesdrop when I can't take part.

I'm really enjoying New York magazine's "Vulture Reading Room." I have no desire to read Charlotte Roche's Wetlands. It sounds genuinely awful, and not in a fun way but in a just-plain-atrocious way. But reading about it has been genuinely entertaining and this back-and-forth particularly so. Hopefully they'll continue the feature for other books.

My younger sister is hiking the Appalachian Trail right now and the other day she did 29 miles. Seriously. In one day. I, meanwhile, walked to Central Park and, entering from the southeast,went up around the Great Lawn, and back. I promised I'd hike with her for a few days later on, you see, and I need to train. So far? Not such a good start.

PEN World Voices has started and as always I'm looking forward to it. Although it's a disappointment that the NYPL doesn't seem to be taking part this year as their panels, etc. are usually particularly interested. Tomorrow--today, really--I'm going to watch a panel about women translating women. I'm looking forward to that.

A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space

2009-04-23T12:15:00.001-04:00

There are so many books published every year, such a deluge of good, bad, and indifferent writing, that it's easy for books--even very good books--to disappear. They get tucked onto shelves, or added to reading lists only to be forgotten about. And eventually time passes and they haven't become classics so they fall out of print. Which is all to say that there are more good books than there's time to read and as a result, every reader has their little--or big--mental list of books that aren't as well known as they deserve to be and/or are out of print when they should be in print. Kathryn Cramer's A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space is one of the books on my list. I bought it several years ago at a Strand sidewalk sale where you could fill a bag with books for $10. I've been thinking about the book lately and was surprised that I'd never blogged about it before. I must have read it just before I started this particular exercise in solipsism.

Published in 1984, Handbook now feels very much like a product of it's time. It opens describing a war that isn't the Cold War but resembles it:

The war had been going on for some time now, through sun and sleet, through lenient days when the buds bloomed according to the old seasons and the light breeze rattling windows and doors brought thoughts of white triangles scudding across a blue surface, through March thaws when the heavy, wet snow slid from the tankslike blankets from people asleep.

No one knew when the war had started, by whom or with what purpose. It had not been declared. Those who tried to join up could not discover where to present themselves. They knocked on doors of official-looking buildings, wrote letters to the government, but received no response. The government appeared to draft its forces according to some rationale not divulged to the public. Nor did it provide information about the progress of the war; ambiguous reports occasionally appeared in the newspapers but were printedin the back pages among advertisements for notepaper and knitting wool, so that onehad to look hard to find them. Tradition, people complatined, entitled them to more than vague uneasiness--someplace to volunteer their services for the wounded, a slogan or two, a battle hymn. But in this war there was nothing to do except wait around to see what would happen next.

An apocalyptic novel (which is normally really not my thing) that revolves around the disintegration of the traditional world and of meaning, Handbook slots in nicely with contemporary post-modern novels like White Noise. Except without the pop culture reference piled atop pop culture references (which are also really not my thing). Instead Cramer gives us a memorably quirky royal family in exile, about as far removed from popular culture as it's possible to be.

"Royalty in exile is a curse, like insanity or an enherited inclination to murder," the woman who had called herself the Crown Princess Theobalda said on her deathbed. "Find the cure!" she whispered hoarsely, and expired. (This was in New Jersey, in 1902.) But her son Langoustino (so named in tribute to one of the Crown Princess's gastronomical fondnesses, not by way of a clue to the Ludwickers' country of origin) was more impressed by the cleverness of his mother's epigram than by its entreaty and did little during his unofficial reign to advance the family cause. His only contribution was to produce, with the half-hearted assistance of a frivolous but apathetic local girl named Jeannine, four children to carry on the Ludwicker line.

The Ludwicker family lives in isolation from the rest of the world, and whenever they leave their estate they upset the balance and bring chaos with them and this clash between old and new is what the book revolves around. But as nutty and divorced from normal people as they are, they do, on a certain level, represent tradition. They're a stand-in for modern people, overwhelmed and unable to comprehend the pace at which the world has changed around them. This is all a tremendous oversimplification of course, and it doesn't sound terribly appealing. I mean, if someone told me about this book I would probably think hmm . . . doesn't sound like my thing. But I love Handbook despite that. Or perhaps because of that. Unexpected loves are always particularly satisfying.

Fort Tryon Park

2009-04-22T21:25:00.000-04:00

Saturday was such a gorgeous day here in New York that it would have been criminal to spend it inside. So I took the subway up to Fort Tryon Park, which is one of my favorite parks in the city--I love the hilliness and the views of the Hudson--but also one I never get to because it's so far from me. It was a perfect temperature and there were a lot of people there, but it wasn't too crowded. I probably spent more time on the subway than at the park, but I'm still glad I went.

A Brief Hockey Moment . . .

2009-04-21T21:45:00.004-04:00

Well fuck you, Bucky Gleason. That out of the way, and only because I'm so annoyed that I feel the need to write about this all over the damn place, here's my problem with Bucky Gleason's latest.

Here's the meat of what he had to say:

Twenty years ago, when the economy was weak but stronger than today, when the population had decreased but was higher than today, Buffalo fans were tougher and more judicious with their money.
Their voice was stronger. Their backbone was thicker. Their collars were bluer, and they demanded the same from their teams. They wouldn't have tolerated, let alone contributed to, what they're getting these days from their teams. [. . .]
The passion for the Bills and Sabres is no weaker, but the landscape has changed. Buffalo fans have lowered their standards and settled for mediocrity. [. . . ]
Marketing has played a huge role. The Bills haven't reached the playoffs since 1999, but they're masterful in selling the game experience. The Sabres' variable-pricing system is the best in the league, a terrific power play to be sure.
But attendance also remains strong because enabling fans feed the beast. There was no real urgency to keep Jason Peters last week. Why would the Bills spend $10 million a year on a left tackle when they've proven they don't need him to fill the stadium? Why make any real changes to the Sabres when it's obvious that fans will keep coming? [all emphasis mine]

I think this idea that Buffalo fans are somehow unique in tolerating mediocrity seems endemic to the Buffalo News. For example, see this Top Shelf interview with Harrington where he claims that Buffalo fans are just different than fans in other cities. That annoys me, but it's far less offensive than Gleason's condescension toward the fans because it doesn't carry the same implication that we fans are somehow complicit in the crappiness of our sports teams and doing the wrong thing if we support them. I'm sorry but it's not the job or duty of the fans to somehow hold ownership or management accountable for the quality of the team they put on the ice (or the football field). We're fans because it gives us pleasure, not out of some kind of obligation and it's insulting to claim that we're somehow responsible for mediocre teams.

If fans decide to let their season tickets lapse or buy fewer tickets because they're not happy with the product on the ice they're not bad fans. They're just choosing not to spend their money on a product they no longer enjoy. And if they keep their season tickets or keeping buying tickets to games because they still have fun going to the games, they're not necessarily stupid idiots who buy the management's excuses. They're not ignorant, or weak, or willful enablers. They're just fans who still enjoy going to see live hockey (or football) even when the team isn't good. Bucky Gleason doesn't get it. That's his problem, not the fans' problem.

Hawksley Workman, St. Matthew Passion, Death is Certain

2009-04-20T22:39:00.000-04:00

I've loved Hawksley Workman's music for years. He's pretty eclectic and, frankly, his work is fairly uneven, but when it's good it's really good. So I was looking forward to seeing him perform live, particularly since he doesn't play in New York very often. As it happened, he was ill and the performance was pretty so-so, although the talky guy who got to go on stage and play guitar for one of the songs seemed thrilled. And I was tired enough that even if it had been an awesome concert I would have probably felt sort of blah about it. Fortunately it was at Joe's Pub and started at 7:00 then ended by 8:30-ish.

That was Wednesday and on Friday I went to BAM to see St. Matthew Passion (why no apostrophe in that title?). Which was a bit too much Jesus for me. I mean, I'm not stupid so obviously I knew it was about Jesus. But still. That's more religion than I've subjected myself to in quite some time. Which would have been fine, I think, if the guy singing the role of Jesus hadn't bored me so much. I know nothing about music and for all I know he's actually fantastic. But he just seemed kind of lumpen (his presence not his singing since, again, I certainly couldn't judge anyone's singing and wouldn't know what constitutes lumpen singing anyway). I did think the circular staging was neat and also liked that everyone was dressed casually. And I very much enjoyed the guy singing the Evangelist--Rufus Müller--probably at least in part because I could understand everything he was singing. What I really loved though, were the chorale parts.

As a sidenote, I sat next to a very nice man who gave me a cough drop during the intermission (the two of us had a little two-person chorus of allergy-related sniffling during the first act) and chatted with me. Also, there was a guy on the subway Friday afternoon asking me about my e-reader (I have it for work) and then I ran into him at BAM as well. Which has nothing to do with anything but was kind of funny in a small world sort of way.

Then on Saturday, wrapping up my happening week, I went to see Jack Ferver's Death is Certain at St. Mark's Church, which was a Performance Club outing (P. Club post here). I'm not really sure what I thought of the performance as a whole but there were a lot of things going on that I was interested in; I felt like there was a kind of overflowing of ideas which is far preferable to watching something that's lacking ideas. And there were numerous times when I felt emotionally engaged/invested in these people and scenarios I was watching. I also spent a lot of time thinking, ooh, that even sounds painful. You could really hear the dancers hitting the floor, hitting each other, etc. At one point Tony Orrico (one of the three dancers in the performance) was shaking Ferver hard enough that you could hear Ferver's cheeks flapping and I was a bit worried that it could cause whiplash. What I liked best though was the way the piece explored how the same people can be both a burden and a support, at one time pulling you back or obstructing you, at another time lifting you up, the ways we have power over one another. Or maybe this is too literal an interpretation? Anyway, I'm really glad I went.

Beowulf: 1000 Years of Baggage

2009-04-16T21:24:00.000-04:00

This was one of the performance club shows this month. I wasn't able to go with the club but I did go on my own. The performance club discussion is here. I started writing this blog post days ago and if I had started now instead I might have written something slightly having read the comments over there. As always, they've given me all kinds of things to think about. But I'm lazy, and my general take on the show hasn't changed, so you're pretty much going to get what I wrote before. (This is what happens when you leave your taxes to the last minute. I did them Tuesday night and was so tired that I fell asleep at about 8:45 yesterday [that's a little sad and maybe shouldn't have been admitted publicly].)

I'm a bit conflicted about this. On the one hand, I thoroughly enjoyed the show. I thought it was fun and funny. On the other hand, I felt like what I was seeing was Beowulf divorced from its context and that this was being put forth as more desirable--less "stifling"--than academic study. The three academics featured throughout the show are basically caricatures. But was it really less stifling? The poem is part of a formulaic Old English literary tradition. And also related to a body of interconnected Scandinavian work that features the same people and places. Does knowing that--being familiar with these traditions--turn the work into a museum piece or does it deepen and strengthen one's appreciation for it?

In the musical* the story rarely felt full-bodied. It seemed like they didn't necessarily believe in the strength of the source material. The biggest victim of this is Beowulf himself, who is portrayed through much of the show as a musclebound idiot--like the dumb jock in a high school comedy--which seemed to me like a strange choice in part because I don't think the violence is really the most remarkable or noteworthy feature of the poem. I mean, that's kind of a feature of Europe in the early middle ages, no? And shouldn't Beowulf be so much more than that. So it's not so unique to see it represented in literature.When the performance focuses less on the aspects of the story that can be reduced to cartoons--or action figures in this case--it starts doing something interesting and distinct from what you'd find in academia. Instead of attempting to understand Beowulf as it was created, it seems to be addressing the ways in which the story can speak to a modern audience across the years.

Toward the end of the musical, Beowulf challenges the most straight-laced of the three academics (who up to that point has pretty much been a caricature), saying that she hasn't experienced the kind of violence she's describing, a sword slicing flesh, etc. It's true of course, but it's also true of pretty much everyone who is going to read Beowulf or see a play based on it. These people and their concerns are pretty alien to us; we can't really understand them. And maybe that's the point. Or maybe it's not. Still, it feels at the end like they want to be doing something more serious, but because the show up to that point hasn't really gone below the surface it can't really support the reach for something more significant.

*They call it a songplay, which I found obnoxious until I realized that "songplay" was kind of a kenning and therefore pretty appropriate to a musical based on Beowulf. So now I find the term tolerable--score one for academia and formal teaching there--but not so much so that I actually want to refer to the work as anything other than a musical.

Tea Party Robocalls?

2009-04-11T19:08:00.003-04:00

I just got a robocall that asked if I was aware of the "tea parties" taking place around the country and asking me to "please take notice today." I've gotten a lot of robocalls in the last year, but I have to say, this one reached new heights when it comes to awkward reading.

Also, if I'm going to attend a tea party I require tea and scones at the very least. Maybe some nice pastries.

A Couple Things

2009-04-04T23:36:00.005-04:00

1. I went to see Adventureland Saturday and thought it was good but far less funny than I expected. I mean I laughed and all, but it mostly made me sad. Which is fine, except a little warning would be nice. I like to go in expecting the whole sad thing. (I also like to read the last pages of books ahead of time; I'm not so big on surprised).

Adventureland also made me miss driving. Which is strange, I suppose, but one of the things I miss most about living in the suburbs is driving home late at night with the streets nearly empty and your headlights sweeping across the road, maybe a sad, quiet song playing. I loved that.

I was three in 1987 (when Adventureland is set) and I certainly never worked in an amusement park, but the world of the movie still feels totally familiar--an experience I expect many people will have.

2. In a 280 word review of Buffalo Lockjaw, TONY's Drew Toal manages to say that Buffalo is as grim and frostbitten a city as one can find in the continental U.S. (someone doesn't know their grim and frostbitten cities very well, I suspect), refer to it as a "bleak upstate land," and reference the 0-for-4 Superbowl run. Now if he'd also managed to wedge in Brett Hull's skate and the Appalachia-esque economy I might have been impressed by his "Buffalo is a miserable hole" dedication. But as it is it's just lazy reviewing. I mean, he says that the "scenes of high-blood-alcohol regression flirt with Northern-gothic clichés"--I might argue for realism there*--but then manages to spit out a review where he regurgitates the most hackneyed cliches about Buffalo despite his limited space? How tedious.

*I haven't read the book yet so I can't really say, but I would bet Ames isn't exaggerating when it comes to Buffalo and drinking.

Richard Wilbur (again)

2009-04-01T22:58:00.002-04:00

On bad days--and today was a bad day--I find Richard Wilbur's poetry particularly comforting. His poems aren't mannered but they are mannerly--neat, contained, structured, witty, urbane. They're not tortured; they don't demand anything of you. More than anything though, his poems leave you with the distinct impression that Wilbur is, essentially, an optimist who thinks the world is, in the end, a good place filled with good things. But they do so in a way that is affirming rather than intrusive. Which is exactly what I need on those days when things don't go as they should.

STILL, CITIZEN SPARROW
Richard Wilbur

Still, citizen sparrow, this vulture which you call
Unnatural, let him but lumber again to air
Over the rotten office, let him bear
The carrion ballast up, and at the tall

Tip of the sky lie cruising. Then you’ll see
That no more beautiful bird is in heaven’s height,
No wider more placid wings, no watchfuller flight;
He shoulders nature there, the frightfully free,

The naked-headed one. Pardon him, you
Who dart in the orchard aisles, for it is he
Devours death, mocks mutability,
Has heart to make an end, keeps nature new.

Thinking of Noah, childheart, try to forget
How for so many bedlam hours his saw
Soured the song of birds with its wheezy gnaw,
And the slam of his hammer all the day beset

The people’s ears. Forget that he could bear
To see the towns like coral under the keel,
And the fields so dismal deep. Try rather to feel
How high and weary it was, on the waters where

He rocked his only world, and everyone’s.
Forgive the hero, you who would have died
Gladly with all you knew; he rode that tide
To Ararat; all men are Noah’s sons.

Rambo Solo

2009-03-27T23:15:00.001-04:00

I went to see this on Wednesday with Performance Club and think that it was the first thing I've attended with the group that I didn't enjoy. It's not that I hated it or had a particularly negative reaction to it . . . I just found it frequently tedious. At first I thought that the fact that I've never seen Rambo nor have I read the novel, First Blood, upon which it's based might be what prevented me from being more actively engaged. But it turned out that many people were equally unfamiliar with the source material but enjoyed Rambo Solo much more than I did. It might have been partially that I was uncomfortable. We were all sitting on this shag carpet with cushions and unless you were sitting against the wall--which I wasn't--there was nothing to lean against. By the end of the show I was fairly cranky about that. But at the same time, some of the parts where I was most bored were toward the beginning, before I was all that uncomfortable.

I think that sometimes it's hard to say why you're bored by something that other people enjoyed. I just had trouble getting into the story and for quite some time felt like I wasn't interested in having it recounted to me. With books I'm pretty comfortable saying that something--however great it may be--just isn't for me. With performance I'm often much more anxious about doing that; I feel as if I'm just missing something or being a lazy viewer. But in this case I think it really is just that the show wasn't my cup of tea and I feel pretty much OK about saying that.

I'm not saying that the show doesn't have value for me. There were moments I loved, particularly in the way Zachary Oberzan used his apartment as the setting for the story. There was a very childlike sense of play in his crawling under the futon or pretending the loft bed was a cliff (not to mention throwing M & Ms). In a sense he seemed to be transposing the make-believe games of childhood into an adult setting where they are no longer so normal and expected and where willing co-conspirators are thin on the ground. I haven't gone crawling around on my floor for any purpose other than cleaning it in years, but watching the show reminded me how fun that had been when I was a kid.

I'm also much more interested in Rambo Solo in retrospect than I was while actually experiencing it. As the retelling of the story came to its climax, I became more engaged. I grew interested in Rambo Solo as a portrait of an obsession and I actually wanted to know how it would end, since I didn't already know the story. It's also a testament to the way in which books can influence us. How they can get under our skins and into our heads. Even when they're not very good books. Or at least not of any particular literary value. But by the point when I actually started to be interested in these things my tailbone was killing me and I didn't feel like the payoff was enough for my prior boredom.

The way I felt was far from universal though, and to read the interesting-as-always Performance Club conversation go here.

Also over on the WNYC blog: a post about The Wooster Group's La Didone where the comment thread has focused in part on the use of technology in live performance. I haven't been able to get to the show--much to my disappointment since I thought it sounded pretty awesome--but I've been following the discussion closely as these multimedia, technology embracing performances are something I'm kind of conflicted about.

Bits and Pieces

2009-03-24T19:28:00.003-04:00

I just now got around to watching the series finale of Battlestar Galactica and it kind of sucked, huh? I mean, talk about preachy and unbelievable. Which is a shame given that the series, generally speaking, was neither of those things. At least insofar as a sci fi series ever seems plausible, Battlestar Galactica did because it featured great, complex characters who made credible choices. Until they didn't in the end. I mean, it's not totally surprising that the finale was anticlimactic because this season in general has been pretty uneven, I think, but it's still disappointing.

I've read a few thoughtful and interesting reviews of Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones--Daniel Mendelsohn's for The New York Review of Books and Garth Risk Hallberg's at The Millions were particularly good--and yet for all that I'm interested in reading about the book, I find that I have no interest in actually reading it. It's something that happens to me fairly frequently lately.

One book I do want to read is Greg Ames's soon to be published Buffalo Lockjaw. I'm not at all convinced I'll like it, but I'll read it anyway because it's set in Buffalo. And because the cover is really pretty perfect--if slightly cliche--for a book that takes place there. The beer and the font keep the whole snow scene from looking too quiet or classy. Neither of those are very good reasons to read a book that otherwise wouldn't really appeal to me, so we'll see how this goes.

My Grandfather

2009-03-18T23:46:00.000-04:00

I was going to post about books today, but my grandfather died this morning and it seems appropriate to write about that instead. It wasn't terribly surprising as he was both old and unhealthy and I'm sure it must be awful to be blindsided by death so I'm grateful for that, particularly for my grandmother's sake. But, of course, it's still sad.

The last time I saw my grandfather I had gone out to my grandparents' apartment in Queens for the night. It was during what was the low point in my whole bed bug ordeal. I wasn't really eating and I'd go to sleep by 8:30 or 9 only to wake up at 4 in the morning still horribly tired. And returning to my apartment after work pretty much made me cry. Every day. (Yeah, I didn't deal with that so well. I am definitely not an example of how to handle a particularly stubborn bed bug infestation in an emotionally healthy manner.) Anyway, I was treated for bed bugs late in the day and my apartment was just a wreck. I had to be out for three hours because of the pesticides and the idea of coming back in fairly late in the evening and putting it all back together so I could go to bed was too much to bear. So I put some money and my metrocard in a ziploc bag with a toothbrush and a book that I knew hadn't been exposed to the bugs, changed into freshly laundered and therefor bedbug free clothes, and headed out to Queens.

My grandmother was just getting over being ill but had dinner ready and over the first real meal I'd eaten in a couple weeks my grandfather told me about the time he'd had "bedbugs." Apparently, during World War II he'd taken a lovely blanket from a dead German soldier. And this would have been great. What luck! But the blanket turned out to be infested with bedbugs. Who migrated over and set up residence in his chest hair. Until he got rid of them by pouring a gallon of gasoline over himself. Now, given that bedbugs don't live on people, I pretty sure what was living in his chest hair was not bedbugs. But a little bit of perspective goes a long way.

I slept on their couch that night and the next morning my grandfather made me eggs and bacon for breakfast. Everyone in the family always loved when my grandfather made breakfast. My grandparents took such good care of me that day. I'd felt so alone standing in my chemical-filled mess of an apartment, and going to stay with them for the night reminded me of how many people I have in my life who love me and are there for me at a time when I needed to remember that. So I've been thinking about that a lot today.

There are so many other things as well . . . all the little and big things that make up a life. But that seems like enough for tonight.

2009-03-12T21:14:00.002-04:00

Chautauqua!

2009-03-10T21:22:00.003-04:00

This past Friday I went to see Chautauqua! with Performance Club. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Others did not. There's a lot of discussion going on over at Claudia's discussion post on the WNYC blog. All of it far more interesting than what I could come up with on my own to post here.

I will say that I think my unfamiliarity with downtown performance--and really with performance in general--definitely causes me to miss things but probably also, at times, allows me to enjoy things that people who've seen more don't because it's still all new to me. It's been a lot of fun to discover things that are new to me.

Growth Report

2009-03-08T01:23:00.004-05:00

It's a good thing spring is on its way. Winter is hard on my aloe plants, which always look a bit the worse for the wear after months inside. They're happier out on the balcony. And both my bamboo plants are looking a bit raggedy: one because the cat decided to eat off its leaves and the other for reasons unknown. But at least one of my plants is doing surprisingly well. Back in December I mentioned that I had acquired a cutting from my sister's Rat Tail cactus and didn't know how it was going to do. At the time it looked like this:

Well apparently my form of benevolent neglect is right up its alley, because it's at least doubled in size.

Hey, it's the little things, right?

Such a Long Journey

2009-03-07T20:07:00.000-05:00

This wasn't entirely unlike the experience of reading White Tiger in that I was consistently engaged, and I actively enjoyed reading the book, yet at the end I was left feeling like the book was, well, just a book. That's probably not the clearest description. What I mean is that I feel like the best fiction has a life outside the pages it is printed on. It doesn't just capture your interest; it makes the world it describes feel real and immediate. I'm not saying that all the books that do this or great, nor am I saying that the same books will work for everybody, but I do think the feeling I'm talking about is an important feature of the books I love best.

So at first I thought that my problem with Such a Long Journey was that I was intellectually engaged but not emotionally engaged, and was privileging the latter over the former. That's probably true to an extent. But the more I consider it the more I think that the real problem lies elsewhere. It seems to me that Mistry undermines the many good things he is doing with his heavy-handed symbolism. His characters have to do double duty as people whose actions evolve naturally and people whose actions are so rife with symbolism that they become weighted down. I want them to be human beings and I want the things that happen to feel like they happen not because they have some preordained meaning but because this is the life the characters are leading. But Mistry forces his characters and events to be more than that in a way that is so subtlety free that it makes them less than human even as it imbues them with meaning. And I spent time thinking about the choices of the author instead of immersed in the world of the book. Something that, for me, is always at least a bit of a disappointment.

Founding Choreographers II and Short Stories

2009-03-04T00:33:00.000-05:00

In the past couple weeks I went to a couple of programs at the New York City Ballet, the first consisting of Ballo della Regina, Davidsbündlertänze, and Glass Pieces and the second consisting of Swan Lake, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, Romeo and Juliet, and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. So no more Vienna, happily. I'm not sure that I was in the mood for any more of that.

I was particularly interested in seeing Ballo della Regina again because although I've seen it before it's always been with ABT on the smaller City Center stage. It was a pleasure to see it with more room to spread out. And Davidsbündlertänze was beautiful although something I need to see again while Glass Pieces was so energetic and felt so much, for all it's Egyptian whatever, like a ballet born from New York.

I think though, that the program was something that would have been more enjoyable from, well, somewhere other than the cheap seats. It doesn't normally bother me--hey, you get used to your spot--but for this particular program I think the lower angle would have been nice. Partly because I would have liked to see Davidsbündlertänze from closer and partially because I think it would have made the silhouette effect in Glass Pieces nicer. Also, I really need to find my little opera glasses. They're in a bag somewhere in my apartment (much like most of my possessions) but I certainly have no idea where.

I enjoyed the Short Stories program rather less for the most part. I like Maria Kowroski fine, but didn't particularly love her as Odette and I didn't like the corps that much either for all that the choreography they've been given isn't the problem. The way they used their arms felt sort of perfunctory to me and didn't quite create that poetic feeling that Swan Lake seems to call for. And then you've got The Steadfast Tin Soldier which is a nice little bit of fluff and the Romeo and Juliet pas de deux, which was bland through no fault of the dancers. I was glad I went though, because Slaughter on Tenth Avenue was a lot of fun. I'd never Robert Fairchild dance before that I can recall but I thought he was great tapping away. And I'm always happy to see Sara Mearns who I think is wonderful (not exactly a controversial opinion there). I normally think of her as being the perfect dancer for romantic roles and parts that call for a smooth, flowing quality of movement, so Slaughter isn't really something I would expect her in. Yet she was fantastic in it.

Speaking of dancers doing well in unexpected things, it's something that Macaulay touched on briefly in his season wrap-up of NYCB. But it's mostly other things he wrote that are stirring up the discussion. (A few links to commentary about it: Turned In, Swan Lake Samba Girl, Dancing Perfectly Free.)I don't necessarily disagree with his comments about several of the dancers--in fact I agree with most of them--but I do wish that he'd used the space to write about things he hasn't written much about previously, rather than returning to that well again. Anyone who reads the dance criticism in the New York Times regularly knows how he feels about those dancers. I'd rather not be bored.

A Letter

2009-03-01T02:55:00.003-05:00

Dear Sabres,

That was a lousy, pathetic excuse for a hockey game. I paid $70 to witness that shit in person and I hope you're properly ashamed that anyone would have wasted their money on watching that. I may have had fun tonight but it was no thanks to you. (Lalime, you're excused. You were fine and it's not your fault the team clearly loves playing like absolute trash in front of you.)

I mean, the Islanders are the worst team in the league for a reason. And tonight? They played like the Islanders. And yet you were shut out. If I was that shitty at my job I wouldn't have a job. I'm just saying.

All the best,

Meg

Waltz with Bashir

2009-02-22T22:43:00.001-05:00

I went to the Lincoln Center Theater early in the evening on Wednesday, having taken a vacation day since I've got some left over from last year, intending to see The Class. But since the times were inconvenient, I wound up going to Waltz with Bashir instead. It had been raining and I've worn through the soles of my shoes so I sat there cold in the thankfully-only-part-way-full theater in my wet socks, eating a bucket of popcorn and using my coat as a blanket.

I hadn't been totally sure I wanted to see the movie because I haven't been feeling totally up to seeing depressing things lately. But I'm so glad I saw it, and in the theater. It's an oddly beautiful movie, not just about war but also about the nature of memory and history. And it's so difficult to watch but at the same time never feels like a chore.

I think that the ways in which we construct our own histories--both consciously and unconsciously--are fascinating. History is most interesting when we consider it as a narrative that we construct. And that is the framework within which Waltz with Bashir plays out. The protagonist is trying to reconstruct his own past using the faulty memories of his compatriots, and in the process shows us the tragedy of the 1982 Lebanon War. As a story told in dreamscapes and recollections it has a surreal air, and yet it always feels like you're seeing something truthful. That truth, though, is a personal truth, the tragedy one of individuals as well as nations, and the film acknowledges the importance of that at the same time as addressing the broader subject of war and how people forget and remember, how they lie to themselves and others.

The only thing I was unsure of was the sudden switch from animation to live action newsreel footage. It was as if the filmmaker was trying to remind us that this was something that actually happened and not a work of fiction. But I don't think it ever felt like fiction in the first place. And I don't think it was any less truthful because it was drawn not filmed. It felt like we were being provided with proof--see, this was awful, this was real--but I think that with a work of art so consistent in its aesthetic and so emotionally engaging, we don't actually need any proof to believe in it.

The Winter's Tale

2009-02-16T12:53:00.003-05:00

I'm not really sure what the thinking behind The Bridge Project's production of The Winter's Tale was. Let's solve this bifurcated play by making it completely schizophrenic? I can understand the desire to move Shakespeare's plays forward in time, but I'm not sure it's so effective when you have a classical setting complete with a statue that comes to life a la Galatea. And then to take the second act, different enough as is, and insert a folk-singing, anachronistic Ethan Hawke among our frolicking shepherds and nobility in disguise the former of whom perform bawdy dances with balloons? It's like Mendes looked at the play and figured, "Well screw it. It's not exactly Shakespeare's best work so why even bother trying to create a cohesive theatrical experience?"

If that's the case, I don't entirely disagree. It's definitely not one of Shakespeare's masterpieces. In fact, it's not really that good a play at all. You might as well try to do something with it. I'm just saying, maybe pick a thing instead of doing all different things and making it seem even less like one piece than it already does.

Cookies

2009-02-14T23:22:00.000-05:00

I started this entry almost a week ago and I'm only now finishing it. I did mean to be blogging this past week but instead I decided that, now that the series is almost over, it was high time I started watching Battlestar Galactica. So that's how I've been spending all my spare time. A girl has got to have priorities. (Just not necessarily good ones. [Not that watching Battlestar Galactica is a bad thing to do. But it would be a good thing to take breaks.]) Anyway...

My mother baked with my sister and me all the time when we were little but our repertoire was pretty limited. We mostly made tollhouse chocolate chip cookies, apple pie, rugelach, and gingersnaps. Which are all excellent things to make, really. But I think of two of those types of cookies as seasonal to begin with and I've never really enjoyed making cookies, and I'd rather have pie or ice cream, so I haven't really baked a lot of them.

Still, the little section of the office where my cubicle is located was having a cookie day Monday. Which is how I ended up searching the fantastic Smitten Kitchen for cookie recipes. I wound up making Dorie Greenspan's World Peace Cookies and Green Tea Shortbread cookies (minus the white chocolate ganache because I don't care what it's supposed to be complimenting, I don't like white chocolate). The World Peace Cookies were fabulous. The Green Tea cookies were...fine.

Normally February would seem like a great time for baking. The only problem is my apartment management and I have very different ideas on what constitutes a livable temperature. Combine that with the run of warm weather we had and I'd like it to be a good 15 degrees cooler than it is. When the oven was on for awhile it got up around 87 in the kitchen. So that made things a little less fun than they otherwise would have been. Oh well.

The dough for the World Peace Cookies was a cinch to make. And it only requires ingredients I generally have around the apartment anyway. I love it when I can bake without going shopping. Also I'm trying to save money these days so the fact that the recipe doesn't call for anything fancy or expensive is a definite bonus. I mean I'm sure you can use expensive, fancy chocolate and the cookies turn out glorious but I used fairly middle-of-the-road stuff and the cookies still tasted awfully good.

Making slice-and-bake cookies from scratch is a new thing for me and while forming the logs was easy, it turns out that I have no idea how big an inch-and-a-half is. I made these cookies again today and used a measuring tape this time around and as a result I can say with some confidence that the first time I made these the logs were easily over two inches wide. Oops. To compensate and make sure I had enough cookies to bring to work, I cut them a bit thinner than the half-inch wide they were supposed to be. So the cookies ended up being broader and flatter than they were meant to be. But as long as things still taste good I just figure that mistakes aren't that big a deal. I do have to admit though, that I like them best at their prescribed size and washed down with milk. Like that, they're about as satisfying a cookie experience as I can imagine.

The Green Tea cookie dough was also easy to make but did require me to go out and buy matcha. And since I couldn't find the unsweetened kind the recipe called for I ended up cutting back on the powdered sugar in the recipe just a tiny bit to compensate. It's not an overly sweet cookie, which is good since I don't have all that much of a sweet tooth.

I have to admit that I was a little concerned also, by the rather unappetizing color of the dough. And it was a fucking pain in the ass to roll out. First it cracked and then it stuck horribly. I ended up rolling it out between a couple sheets of plastic wrap. And once they were baked the cookies were a much more appealing green than the dough had been. They're light and crisp with just a delicate taste of green tea. Not so much as to be overwhelming but distinctly noticeable nevertheless. Now if only I liked shortbread better.

A Bend in the River

2009-02-07T21:23:00.001-05:00

Naipaul is, for me, a particularly good example of why it's not necessarily conducive to your reading enjoyment to know too much about an author. (My less literary example being Orson Scott Card: I loved Ender's Game in middle school. Now I wouldn't be able to read one of his books.) The thing is, I think Naipaul is a fairly brilliant writer--which isn't to say I could get through The Enigma of Arrival--but I have a difficult time separating his fiction from what I know about him. I don't really know how one does that.

I mean, how do you read a book set in Africa and not let the knowledge that the author is a racist alter the way you read it? I shouldn't put it that way, really. I don't think that's desirable. But I also don't think that you want that knowledge to occlude your ability to appreciate all the genuinely good things about a book. And for me it does.

On Books and Other Miscellany

2009-02-01T10:28:00.000-05:00

With all the eulogizing of Updike this week I've been forced to think about the fact that I've only read half of one of his books (Rabbit, Run, assigned reading for a 20th century American lit course) and, quite frankly, decided that was more than enough. How convenient then, that there's a recent post on The Millions about glaring gaps in the reading of the contributors. The most interesting part of that post to me--and, seemingly, to a number of critical commentors--is this:

When it comes to playing readerly "I Never," there are rather a lot of burly man-authors, chiefly twentieth-century man-authors, whose work I've never read. Hemingway (other than the 4 page story "Hills Like White Elephants"), Kerouac (a bit of his poetry; enough of On the Road), Roth, Updike, Kesey, Heller, Burroughs, Cormac McCarthy, Vonnegut, Pynchon, Moody, and Foster Wallace all fall into the category of authors I haven't read. Many of them fall also into the category of authors I have no interest in reading. Perhaps it is that I intuit (or imagine - not having read them, it is hard to say) a masculinist, vaguely misogynist aura that has put me off; Or, as in the cases of Pynchon and Foster Wallace, a virtuousic formal complexity or grandiose heft, that I also associate with the masculine artistic mind. [ . . . ] Well-founded, my prejudices certainly are not, but I do not apologize for them or intend to renounce them.

Well, I've read at least a bit of a bunch of those writers over the years--Roth (The Plot Against America), Vonnegut (Breakfast of Champions), Pynchon (Crying of Lot 49 aka the short one), Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), Heller (first 70 or so pages of Catch-22), Kerouac (On the Road)--and I can't say grouping them together makes a whole lot of sense to me. But despite that, I tend to think, good for her. If reading something doesn't give you pleasure on some level, why bother? If the idea of reading a book doesn't particularly interest you why pick it up when there are so many other good books that do interest you?

Personally, I tend to at least try to read everything and then just give up part way through if I'm disinterested. Which is usually pretty quickly. I never even made it to the crime in Crime and Punishment. And I recently told my cousin I would read A Confederacy of Dunces but I've stalled out a couple chapters in and really might as well return it to the library. It might actually serve me better to just skip these books I don't have much interest in reading in the first place and am only looking at because of some misguided idea that I should read them. Food for thought.

Various notes:

According to the New York Times there's going to be a new advertising campaign aimed at getting locals to go to more Broadway shows. My suggestion? Find a way to lower the ticket prices. Significantly. I don't know how they should do it--hey, it's not my job to get people to the theater--but they should find a way. Because the prices are just too high.

I broke a mirror last night. I'm not superstitious, but I was put out since it's my roommate's mirror. I've never liked it much at all, but I still feel guilty. I've been such a klutz lately. In the last month I've broken two glasses and now this.

Somehow I ended up with plans to go to my grandparents house this evening to watch the Super Bowl with family. I've watched approximately 0 minutes of football this year, but I read Margee's Girls Guide to Choosing Your Super Bowl Team (Part I, Part II) over at SportSquee, so I figure I'm set. Right?

Four Voices @ NYCB

2009-01-25T23:50:00.000-05:00

I had planned on going to the ballet Friday and just picking up a ticket when I got there. Then I was so enjoying the book I started on the subway ride to Lincoln Center that I almost turned around and went home so I could keep reading. (I bought the two John Williams books I didn't already own the other day--I figured if I'm googling interviews with him at 4 o'clock in the morning it's probably a sign I should read more of his books--and I just started Augustus.) Anyway, I did end up going because I very much wanted to see Concerto DSCH, but while sitting through the first couple ballets I seriously questioned that decision.

Well, I questioned that decision while not busy thinking about how my hands smelled like bleach and how sad it was to be thinking about that rather than enjoying what I'd paid to see (during Chiaroscuro) or how I really wished I hadn't worn stockings because my left foot was itchy and I couldn't itch it properly (during Papillons). I'm not, as a general rule, opposed to seeing things I dislike, but I found myself feeling a slight bit resentful when it came to these two. I mean it's one thing to see a new piece that isn't good. Or to see something that just isn't to your taste. Or even something that fails in an interesting way. But I'm just baffled as to why these first two ballets were revived: It's not that they're awful, it's just that they're bland and somewhat tedious. And since the audience didn't seem particularly full and the applause was tepid compared to what the other ballets received I can't imagine it was the huge audience demand either. Well, so it goes. I'm sure there are people who enjoyed it far more than I did.

I was glad then, that it was all uphill from there, and particularly that I liked Concerto DSCH as much as I did. I love that the dancers are shown as normal people, in a way; they're doing incredible things but they're not elevated. And while many people have already noted this, it's a treat to watch the community Ratmansky creates on stage. And the dancers look like they're having a great time. Who knows if that's actually the case--not I--but the impression makes it fun for me as a member of the audience. I also enjoyed the variation of tone over the course of the ballet. And getting to see Wendy Whelan who, solely by chance, I haven't seen that much of but always enjoy when I do see her perform. I feel a little Vienna-ed out between the Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet and Vienna Waltzes. The last movement with Sara Mearns and Amar Ramasar was a blast. So the night at least ended on a high note.

The Cherry Orchard

2009-01-21T23:46:00.000-05:00

I think BAM's Bridge Project is an interesting one. Not so much because I care about the differing performing styles of British and American actors or anything like that--frankly I don't know enough about acting styles to know what difference it makes--but because it's an opportunity to see good (or in the case of some, like Simon Russell Beale, great) actors in new productions of classic plays. And hopefully some of those productions will be fantastic.

The Cherry Orchard was more good than fantastic. The performances ranged from good to excellent, but the direction was heavy-handed at times, which really wasn't necessary. The play is from 1904. You don't really have to be particularly knowledgeable about history to realize that the changes that occur in the play are related to much bigger changes down the road. So the overdone foreshadowing seems entirely unnecessary. I also wasn't in love with the set, which didn't really provide a sense of place for the most part. It seemed like it could be anywhere.

What you end up with is a nice looking production (the costumes, in particular, are gorgeous, although I'll cop to a general fondness for clothes from that era) that's well acted and funny where it's supposed to be funny and tragic in its characters inability to cope with the world as it is. All the boxes have been checked, I guess you could say. And yet in the end it doesn't become transcendent in the way that great theater can.

The Shipment

2009-01-19T23:52:00.000-05:00

This was one of the January shows for Claudia LaRocca's Performance Club. It was something I never would have wound up going to on my own. I would have (possibly) read the review in the times, thought oh, that sounds interesting, and then gone back to reorganizing my kitchen cabinets or whatever and never gotten around to actually getting a ticket. I have motivation issues. But knowing that I'll have the opportunity to talk about what I've just seen with other people is exciting and makes attending things so much more fun.

Last month I was a bit nervous because so many of the people are involved with performance as as more than just a sometime audience member and so very much more knowledgeable than me. But everyone's been so nice and easy to talk with that it was soon clear my worries were misplaced. Instead, I feel like I'm expanding my performance-viewing horizons while learning from other people and having a really good time. So it's basically a win-win-win situation. And on top of that, I've genuinely enjoyed both things I've gone to so far, which certainly isn't necessary, but it a plus.

But about The Shipment. I've been trying to think about what exactly I have to say about it. Or rather, how I can organize my thoughts about it well enough to write about it in a cohesive, worthwhile way. As much as I enjoyed it, I'm still turning it over in my head (a good thing, no?). The cast was wonderful and the show itself definitely made me think about my own preconceived notions of race but also about my own discomfort with talking about race in anything other than a politically correct way. I didn't think everything worked equally well, and I'm not sure how to interpret some things, but other things really intrigued me, particularly in the way Lee raised questions about how our expectations and preconceptions influence media representations of African Americans and vice versa?

The Performance Club post for discussion of The Shipment is here..

John Williams

2009-01-18T05:40:00.003-05:00

For whatever reason I woke up at 3:30 this morning and haven't been able to get back to sleep. Before I gave up on falling asleep again. I started thinking about John Williams. No idea why. I mean, I loved Stoner and I've thought of it frequently since reading it, but nothing about my day brought it particularly to mind. So I turned on the computer and started googling, because I needed something to do with myself and didn't have the energy for either of the books I'm in the middle of. And I found this interview from the early 80s, in which Williams says:

"I write for the reader, more than I write for myself. The reader who puts down ten or twelve bucks for a book—really much more than that now—deserves some respect and consideration. We're arrogant about this, and people are more intelligent than we think they are. The so-called `common reader' is sometimes an 'un-common reader' and can click in and understand and like things more than most of us think they can."

I love that (and several of the other views Williams expresses in the interview).

I also dug up The New Yorker's 1965 review. It was a very positive review of the book but kind of a terrible piece of literary criticism even making allowances for "Briefly Noted" form. Funny that.

All Balanchine + Coppelia

2009-01-15T23:56:00.001-05:00

Getting myself to the ballet on Saturday was a bit of a comedy of errors. I was planning to head out early so I could buy a ticket and then head over to Barnes & Noble for a bit (I have a gift certificate). Thanks to that plan, while I didn't make it to the bookstore, I did manage to get to Lincoln Center on time.

The problems started when I decided that I wanted to bring Nancy Goldner's Balanchine Variations with me so I could re-read her essay on The Four Temperaments during the subway ride. (As a sidenote, if the world were a perfect place someone would offer Goldner an exorbitant sum of money to write about many more Balanchine ballets, because her book is wonderful but I wish it were three times the length.) Unfortunately, during the bedbug invasion I became thoroughly paranoid about my books getting infested--it does happen!--so I heat treated all of them and put them in ziploc bags. But they don't all fit on my bookshelf to begin with and the bags are slippery so I can't stack them on top of the shelf like I used to. Thus there are piles of books all over the apartment. Unsurprisingly, it took a while to find Goldner's book--behind the kitchen table, shoved up next to the shelf the plants live on. It was in a ziploc with a biography of Henning Kronstam, so I was clearly employing some kind of logic in my bug-addled state.

Anyway, then I went to get on the subway and the F & V weren't running in either direction due to a "police action." So I had to walk a ways to get the D in the--admittedly minimal--snow and while wearing not terribly practical shoes. I eventually got there and got my ticket with just enough time to look over the program before the start so it was all fine.

I'm not sure how I feel about Chaconne. I enjoyed Maria Kowroski--she's such a beautiful dancer--but didn't particularly like Marcovici as her partner. I wanted him to be smoother and more expansive so he would be a better match for her. For the most part though, the ballet just seemed perfectly lovely but no more and no less than that.

The Four Temperaments though, I loved. And to go back to the Goldner book, reading such a clear-eyed exploration of the work is something that's so helpful to a person like me who has very little technical knowledge because it gives me things to look for and focus on. So much writing about ballet is flowery and metaphor-filled and I get that, because dance is hard to describe in writing (I certainly can't do it well), but it doesn't help me much. Goldner's descriptions are so concrete that it's easy for me to know what she's talking about. Here, for example, she writes about the three initial duets:

Whereas the drama in the last four parts resides in its play on emotive qualities, the first part is most dramatic for its play with the academy. The knee, for example, is all but invisible in textbook ballet. It is prominent in The Four Ts from the start, when both of the dancers in the first duet move with one knee on the ground. It's just one step they take, but its slight awkwardness brings what could be a transitional move into high relief. Placing a woman on pointe with a bent knee is even more unorthodox, since the very point of dancing on pointe is to create a streamlined image. Balanchine develops the bent-knee motif as the three duets progress, starting with big ronds de jambe, moving to pirouettes, and finally to pirouettes in which the woman plunks her foot on top of her supporting bent knee.

Well I can understand and appreciate that. It gave me something to look for, and think about, while watching. Later, she writes about the roles of the temperaments themselves. Here too, she's clear without being either fussy or authoritarian. Of Melancholic, she writes:

His main problem is that he can't get anywhere, can't get out of his own body. And when he's not thwarting himself, the ensemble of six women does the job for him.

I like that idea. I liked watching the Melancholic variation and considering the ways in which he is stuck, and incapable of forward progress. It's not that I particularly want someone to tell me what to think about particular ballets. I don't, because that would be boring. But I do like to be given things to think about. That provides me with an entry point of sorts into these non-narrative ballets.

Vienna Waltzes I liked, but I think it would be possible for me to like it more. I thought I would after the first section with Sara Mearns, who is one of my favorite New York City Ballet dancers among those I've seen and seemed perfect for the role. And I enjoyed the second waltz and the polka as well. But the Merry Widow section didn't particularly work for me. And then came the last section, which was thrilling once the ensemble was dancing--although I think the mirrors probably create a more dramatic effect for those below the fourth ring--but not so much before that. The solo sections with Darci Kistler didn't seem fully realized. So there was kind of a dip there for me.

All in all though, it was one of those days when I left the theater happy to have been there and seen the show, which is always a good feeling to have.

I also went to Coppelia (on Tuesday) and it was cute enough--Megan Fairchild makes a perfect little pretend-doll; the peasants are, as is usually the case in ballet, very happy--but I had a headache by the third act and was mostly just ready to go home. (This week has been a long one for me because I've been feeling generally not good.) Teresa Reichlen was beautiful as Dawn. And, in a somewhat related plus, it meant I missed watching the Sabres lose to the Red Wings. That was definitely a good thing.

Pyramus' Latest Obsession

2009-01-12T20:15:00.004-05:00

Awhile back, Pyramus decided he no longer liked drinking from his nice, clean water bowl. Instead, what he truly, desperately wanted to do, was drink from the toilet. At first Wendy and I were moderately OK with this, being the sort of people who clean the toilet bowl regularly. But then we decided that the plumbing in our building is not particularly sanitary and cut him off. He hasn't taken kindly to this, and comes running whenever he hears me in the bathroom, in the hopes that he can get himself some toilet water. Failing that though, he has decided that anything must be preferable to the water in his bowl, even warm bath water.

After nearly taking a swim shortly after this picture was taken, he embarked upon a period of experimentation, eventually deciding that he was more stable if he adopted a wide stance and kept one or both front paws on the ledge of the tub.

Nevertheless, he had some pretty wet paws by the time he was satisfied.

August: Osage County

2009-01-12T00:56:00.000-05:00

Damn what a long and overstuffed play. And you know, I get that functional families are, generically speaking, less interesting than dysfunctional ones. Still, it seems a bit much. Watching the play is kind of like being bludgeoned while someone stands around telling you jokes. It seems appropriate that there t-shirts on sale in the lobby with lines from the play like, "You have to be smart to be complicated." After all, it's the quips that count in this one.

And hey, if you go to the Web site you can totally play a find-Mom's-pills game!

44 Places to Go

2009-01-11T12:07:00.005-05:00

BuffaloPundit points out that Buffalo made the New York Times list of places to go in 2009. Naturally I went to see what they had to say. In part:

With the exception of senatorial hopefuls, many New Yorkers write off the rest of the Empire State as a cultural hinterland. But the chilly rustbelt city of Buffalo now has something to thrill cultural junkies other than its scattered specimens of pioneering early 20th-century architecture: the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

It then goes on to talk about the Burchfield Penney's Buffalo-centric collection. It's great to see the museum get the attention, but it's also a funny write-up.

I went to the new Burchfield Penney when I was in Buffalo for the holidays. I say "new" because the museum has in fact existed--first as the Charles Burchfield Center, then as the Burchfield Art Center, and finally as the Burchfield Penney Art Center--since the 60s. It's the building which is new, not the Center, although you wouldn't get that impression from the Times mention. Still, it's very nice and by all accounts a huge improvement. And don't get me wrong, I think the new Burchfield Penney is a lovely addition for Buffalo and totally worth seeing.
But it doesn't suddenly turn Buffalo into destination travel. And, while the New York Times makes it sound like it's such a great thing that Buffalo can now include, when they couldn't previously, a nice art museum in it's collection of tourist-worthy sites, that makes for strange reading, because it's not even the best art museum in the city. That would be the art museum, oh I don't know, right across the street. Also not a new museum. (Although it could use some new building space as well).

That's not to take away from the Burchfield Penney or their pretty (on the inside) new building. I'm just saying that Buffalo wasn't any more or less a cultural hinterland before it was built than it is now. Still, it's nice for the city to be on a places-to-go list with the likes of Vienna and the Red Sea, I'm sure. If nothing else, it's a much cheaper trip.

Let the Right One In

2009-01-10T20:59:00.000-05:00

This movie wasn't really what I expected. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, but it wasn't what I got. I guess I didn't think it was going to be quite as slow as it was. That's not a complaint though.

I loved the quiet tension and the way the frozen, wintery landscape framed the story. Not only because it's a refreshing change from the overheated, Gothic-lite Louisiana setting that I associate with modern vampire stories--so was Twilight, although it was less effective--but because that hushed, snow-coated world seems much more frightening to me.

I was skeptical of the reviews claiming the movie was both scary and touching, but I did find that I agreed. Although not, to my relief, all that scary. Or gory. I don't do particularly well with scary movies. I was also relieved that it was so good, as I'd gotten friends to come with me and I'm always worried that people won't enjoy things I ask them to go to with me. Fortunately they liked it as much as I did.

I can't stop watching this . . .

2009-01-04T18:10:00.003-05:00

What the heck was that? Alexander Semin . . . the source of so much amusement.

(Video of this is all over the hockey blogosphere today, of course, but I stole the link from Alix)

People of the Book

2009-01-03T13:32:00.000-05:00

I really wanted to read March, which I saw in my parents' bathroom when I was home, but my mother, frustratingly, was in the middle of it, so I took Geraldine Brooks's most recent novel, People of the Book, instead. My mother loved it; I thought it was a page-turner but I'm not sure I even liked it. (That's one gorgeous cover though. All that gold seems perfect for a book that centers on an illuminated medieval book.)

It's one of those books that has a split narrative: One is the primary, contemporary story of a woman charged with conserving an old, illuminated Haggadah; the others tell us about key episodes in the book's past. The problem I always have with that sort of book is that I'm much more interested in one section than the others. This time around I was much more invested in reading about the contemporary woman than the people from the past--there was really not that much suspense there since we know the book survives and Brooks doesn't really do much to make the episodes in the past absorbing, unfortunately.

If the main story was brilliant I think that would be OK, but that's not the case. Instead, it all leads up to a plot twist that's too convenient by half, with a hard to credit, deus ex machina ending. I stayed up late reading only to find myself annoyed enough by the ending that it ruined the book for me. It's like Brooks thought there needed to be more plot excitement in there and shoehorned it in even though it didn't belong. Frustrating. She should have just trusted her subject to be interesting without suddenly trying to turn it into some kind of international thriller at the end.

Vegetable Pie

2009-01-03T00:12:00.000-05:00

A couple months ago when I was up in Ithaca visiting we pulled a recipe for a vegetable pie out of one of my sister's Moosewood cookbooks and adapted it rather loosely. Mainly because the cookbook recipe calls for a cup of mushrooms (which I hate), half a cup of peas (which I like fresh but not cooked and certainly not in pies), half a cup of corn (which I like on the cob but not in things and not when it's not fresh), two cups of cheddar cheese (which my sister isn't wild about), and spices we didn't have. Also, because we couldn't be bothered to deal with a regular pie crust for the bottom and then a crumb crust for the top, so we just made regular (yet wheaty!) crusts for both bottom and top. This time around I adapted it a touch more and the end result was wholesome and delicious. And I love cooking pies because they're so simple and forgiving, so I'm glad that I like this one.

The crust is really a pretty standard pie crust but half whole wheat:

1-1/2 cups white flour
1-1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
6 tbsp ice water (or a bit more since it's got whole wheat flour in it)

The filling probably really works with any vegetables you like, which I figure makes it the perfect recipe for picky vegetable eaters or for getting rid of whatever is in your fridge. This is what I did:

1 large (yellow) onion, chopped
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 potato, diced
1 yam or sweet potato, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 cup asparagus, chopped (I might do a full cup next time--I love asparagus)
1/2 tsp paprika (the original recipe called for sweet Hungarian paprika which I don't have)
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried marjoram
salt and pepper to taste

You just saute the onions until soft then throw in the carrots, potatoes, paprika basil, and marjoram and cook for 10 minutes. Then you add the bell pepper and asparagus, salt and pepper, cover it and cook for 5-10 minutes until the carrots get tender.

I'd never made a roux before but that's simple too.

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp white flour
1 cup milk
1 tsp mustard (the original recipe called for dijon but I just had honey mustard so I used that and it didn't taste gross or anything)
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 cup grated cheddar cheese

You melt the butter, add the flour, and stir constantly for 3-5 minutes. Then whisk in the milk, mustard, and nutmeg, and stir over low heat until it's hot and lightly thickened. Remove from heat and whisk in cheese. Kind of a pain but I suppose you'd have a dry pie otherwise.

You just dump it all together then and cook it at 375 degrees for 40 minutes. My kind of cooking.

How I Spent My Day . . .

2009-01-02T01:02:00.004-05:00

Scraping peeling--and cracked but not yet peeling--paint off the fucking bathroom ceiling. Wendy and I thought, it can't be as bad as last time, the bathroom hadn't been repainted in AGES last time we did it, a mere 2-1/2 years ago. We'll totally be able to do everything today. Well, let's just say that Wendy and I do not have fabulous powers of prognostication. Those pictures are from about 12:30, an hour into the progress. We finished scraping after 5. We got the plastering done as well, but I still need to sand down the plaster, prime, and paint tomorrow.

Since it's probably hard to tell from these shitty cell phone pictures, the tiles on the wall are yellow, the tiles on the floor are grey as are the tub, sink, and toilet. For that reason we'd initially painted the walls and ceiling to match the lighter grey floor tiles. This time around we're going for a shade of green called "palm breeze" (which I do not think is a very appealing name).

The White Tiger

2009-01-02T00:29:00.000-05:00

The Booker, not at all unlike the Pulitzer for fiction, more often than not goes to perfectly enjoyable, not terribly earth-shattering books that are reviewed as if they're set to blow you away. I'm not saying their bad books. In fact I've loved some of them and liked others. Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, of which The Ghost Road won the Booker, stands out in my mind as particularly marvelous. But as often as not they leave me thinking, was this really the best book eligible? really?

Anyway, The White Tiger: It was a fast read--I finished it pretty quickly just reading it on the short subway ride to and from work--and enjoyable enough. But it felt a bit thin. Yes there's a compelling narrative voice and a not great, but interesting enough plot. And it is an aspect of Indian life that's not generally written about. But none of those things make it a great novel. And I'm a little baffled by all the praise for it. The quotes were fantastic. (And yes, reviews can be manipulated to an extent, but pulling quotes for books is something I do regularly and I'm pretty confident that you don't get quotes that good without some fabulous reviews. I wish.) So I expected--or at least hoped--that I would think the book was better than fine, but not so much. Oh well.

Happy New Year!

2008-12-31T19:44:00.001-05:00

May the year to come be better than the one now passing (hey, I believe in setting the bar low).

How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken

2008-12-31T18:29:00.001-05:00

I ordered this from the library and there was a waiting list so it took me forever to get it. And then, between the distractions of other books and the holidays and my bugs, I read it very slowly. So at this point I might as well have bought the damn thing in the first place and not had to wait.

I felt like it was a rewarding read, though perhaps better suited, at least from my perspective, to dipping in and out of rather than reading it all in one go. One of the things I particularly like about his writing is the sense of a consistent aesthetic. In his introduction Mendelsohn writes of the title:

Interestingly, Williams phrase occurs in a stage direction not about the play's set design but about a certain musical leitmotif he has in mind, one that (he writes, in his typically meticulous directions)
expresses the surface vivacity of life with the underlying strain of immutable and inexpressible sorrow. . . . When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken. Both of these ideas should be woven into the recurring tune.

I suppose that one reason that this haunting line struck me with such force when I first came across it is that it acknowledges, with perfect simplicity, the inevitable entwining of beauty and tragedy that is the hallmark of Greek theater, and is a consistent element in the works that have always moved me the most, from the plays of Euripides to the History of Thucydides, from the light comedies of Noel Coward to the films of Pedro Almodovar. As the Greeks knew well, it is the potential for being broken--which boils down to the knowledge that we all must die--that gives resonance and meaning to the small part of the universe that is our life. The necessity, in the end, of yielding to hard and inexplicable realities that are beyond our control is a tragic truth; without that, all you've got is mush--melodrama, and Hallmark sentimentality. That so much of contemporary culture is characterized by this sentimentality, by a seeming preference for false "closures" over a strong and meaningful confrontation with real and inalterable pain, is a cultural crisis. That crisis is another theme that runs through many of the essays here.

But in my mind Williams's haunting phrase illuminates not only the nature of certain works that have preoccupied me, but also something of the nature of critics who judge those works. For (strange as it may sound to many people, who tend to think of critics as being motivated by the lower emotions: envy, disdain, contempt even) critics are, above all, people who are in love with beautiful things, and who worry that those things will get broken. What motivates so many of us to write in the first place is, to begin with, great passion for a subject (Tennessee Williams, Balanchine, jazz, the twentieth-century novel, whatever) that we find beautiful; and then, a kind of corresponding anxiety about the fragility of that beauty.

I always like to know what a critic is looking for or how they approach what they criticize. As a reader, I think it allows me to get more from their work. I had a history teacher in college who absolutely drilled into us that the first thing we should ask when reading was, "what's their bias?" I figure that pretty much works as a question for all kinds of non-fiction writing. Anyway, Mendelsohn is clear on where he's coming from--although I do wonder how he defines beauty, since I don't think art necessarily has to or should be beautiful--and I appreciate that. Liking his approach wouldn't be worth much though if I didn't also think Mendelsohn was a fantastic critic (who also has the advantage of writing for the New York Review of Books where he has lots of space). He's insightful and thoughtful and informative. I can tell you one thing: I know a good bit more about Greek theater now than I did last month.

I think that any time you read a compilation of criticism--particularly one that encompasses such a broad range: movies, plays, books of fiction, books of non-fiction, opera--there are certain subjects that you'll be more interested in than others. While I eventually read everything, I skipped around reading the essays I was more interested in first. Unsurprisingly, I particularly enjoyed reading about the plays and movies I had also seen and the books I had also read. Mendelsohn's essays on The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire helped me understand why watching the plays seemed so dead compared to reading them (I've seen three Tennessee Williams plays on Broadway and been disappointed every time). I loved Medea when I saw it but Mendelsohn calls the production, "grotesque, giggling, wrongheaded," and I understand the play better for his critique of it although it doesn't lessen my recollection of it. And I felt like I had a richer view of Colm Toibin's The Master, a book I enjoyed after reading what he had to say about it.

That's not to say that I enjoyed everything. I found his dissection of Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe a slog. Academic review and critique is certainly necessary, but there's no pleasure in reading the thorough dismantling of a work over a decade after it was first published and after it's author's death. Also, as interesting as I find medieval history, I can't summon up that much interest in medieval Christian liturgy. I imagine the essay was included in this book because it seems relevant to current political debate. But I can't help but feel that its relevance is only surface deep. And I had to spread out the Greek theater because I can only take so much of that in one go.

What I liked best about the book though, is the way in which Mendelsohn examines what the works he's reviewing tell us about our own culture. I found that analysis particularly interesting.

Notes from the Homefront

2008-12-29T23:38:00.000-05:00

1.) The night I got in to Buffalo, my brother (who is 18 and has Down Syndrome) asked me to give him back his Ultimate Spiderman comics. My father took them away ages ago because my brother isn't always so good at recognizing the line between fact and fiction, and stashed them somewhere in my room. I don't know where though and even if I did I wouldn't give them back. So I told him that I didn't really know what he wanted from me and a few minutes later, I got this note:

Ultimate
theef
bich
you
took
my things

Now obviously it would be better if he were writing me nice notes, but being able to express himself in writing like that is a pretty new thing so we're all pleased (and amused). It's particularly nice because it's not like anyone ever taught him how to write "bitch" so he obviously sounded it out on his own.

2.) My father took me to a Sabres game while I was home. Fortunately they won, if in an unnecessarily ugly way. Last time I went to a Sabres game in Buffalo was the ice bowl last year. There were an awful lot fewer people yelling, "You suck, Vanek!" this year. Also, we got ice cream, which makes any day better.

3.) My parents have what appears to be an infestation of excessively stupid mice. Not only have they set up residence in a household that has a fairly talented feline hunter, either the cat has taken to putting them there, which we doubt since he's previously shown a preference for eating his kills, or they keep drowning in the dog's water bowl. 5 dead mice between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thankfully there were none in the week I was home.

4.) I am now in possession of a passel of new plants which I will hopefully manage not to kill. The first is a bamboo plant that was a Channukah gift from my brother. We don't actually exchange Channukah gifts, but he couldn't wait until Christmas to give it to me. The other two are cuttings from other plants.

The bamboo (obviously).

A cutting from my sister's Rat Tail Cactus,
which will hopefully not die since it really didn't cure long enough.
They end up looking really neat.

A cutting from my grandparents cactus,
which they've had for over 30 years
and just cut down for the umpteenth time.

5.) I'm glad there was snow when I arrived because the rest of the week was so warm and damp that it all melted and a lake formed in the backyard. On Sunday morning it was so windy that tiny rippling waves were running across the pooled water and you could feel the wind pushing against the car as my sister and I drove toward New York City. Briefly, around the time we passed Rochester, it looked like it was going to clear up. A sharp streak of lighter sky appeared at the horizon, as if the lid of a pot were being lifted up. Instead the rain came back.

6.) Driving up to the Holland Tunnel totally sucks.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-24T23:37:00.003-05:00

Unless you celebrate Channukah, in which case, Happy Channukah! Or you could be like my family, celebrate both, and host a Channukah-celebrating dinner on Christmas Eve. We are, it's safe to say, very festive here today. Well, whatever you celebrate, have a good one!

Today's Calvin and Hobbes...

2008-12-21T15:09:00.001-05:00

on GoComics.com. I know it's cut off on blogger, but just click to see the whole thing.

I particularly love that it looks like a giant ant. Kind of like Them with bed bugs instead of ants. How scary would that be?

P.S. Don't actually use Raid on bed bugs, imaginary or otherwise.

Autobiography/Biography: Narrating the Self

2008-12-17T19:47:00.004-05:00

I went up to the Philoctetes Center last Saturday to see this roundtable discussion. Partly because I like biographies--generally speaking I'm less wild about memoirs and autobiographies--and partially because I loved Simon Winchester's two books that revolved around the creation of the OED. I thought it was a thought-provoking discussion, so if you're interested in the subject I totally recommend watching it here. (I think it's fantastic that they not only offer these events for free but also put video up on the Web. I wish I'd heard about them earlier.)

I do, however, recommend turning it off before the audience Q & A starts. It was an interesting afternoon up until that point, but the questions were downright painful and if I hadn't been sitting so far from the door I would have left then and there. Honestly people, if your question is all about you no one in the audience really cares. That means if it requires a two-minute set-up in which you talk about the book you wrote 10 years ago and its critical reception, no one wants to hear it. Skip the personal stuff. If it all comes down to whether or not you should fire the editor you've hired because of a disagreement about ellipses, no one gives a shit. If it involves you wittering on about your opinions at length only to say, "Don't you agree?" at the end, that's not even a real question in the first place and you've only succeeded in showing off what an ass you are. Get a grip, folks.

The McGarrigle Christmas Hour(s)

2008-12-14T18:59:00.005-05:00

I suppose it's a mistake to try and force the Christmas spirit, because about half way through this concert Wednesday night I was wishing that I'd just gone home after my office Christmas party and sat down with a book and a cup of tea. Which is such a nice feeling after one has spent money on tickets, no?

I do think, though, that the problem wasn't all me. The ramshackle, disorganized nature of the evening would play better in a venue more modest than Carnegie Hall. It feels like it should be taking place in someone's living room or a community hall, but it's impossible to make Carnegie Hall feel like anything other than a huge concert hall and moments get lost. Particularly when you're up in the cheap seats squinting just to figure out who's who. More problematic was the uneven nature of the material. I mean, was it really necessary to make us all suffer through Rufus Wainwright's (awful) Christmas is For Kids? And the Vincent Dow spoken word piece, which was also on the CD that came out a few years ago, wasn't particularly worthwhile the first time I heard it, much less now. A little editing would probably come in handy.

Still, there was a lot to recommend about the show: Laurie Anderson's spoken word; Martha Wainwright's contributions, particularly the French carol; Jimmy Fallon's imitations of Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, and David Bowie; Rufus's mic-free rendition of "O Holy Night"; and so on. So it's a shame that I spent most of it wishing I were somewhere else as the hours dragged on. Lesson learned, I suppose.

At the Whitney

2008-12-13T20:00:00.000-05:00

I met up with a friend at the Whitney Sunday because she wanted to see the Calder exhibit and I wanted to see the Eggleston exhibit. I was somewhat familiar with Calder's mobiles, which were interesting but my least favorite part of the exhibit, and his wire sculptures. Although I'd only seen the ones that are portraits of people and it was his animals that I loved.

The best part of the exhibit by far though, was the video of his witty, clever Circus. A video with clips:

My favorite part of the video isn't in this clip though. A knife thrower comes out and throws knives at a woman standing in front of a curtain. Eventually one of the knives hits the assistant knocking her down. Two little stretcher-bearers trundle out, and the woman is carried off on the stretcher.

I liked the Eggleston exhibit although I thought it was a bit variable. His color photos, with their intense hues, are more interesting than his black and white shots. There was a room full of posed portraits which seemed far less evocative than his more snapshot-like photos. His pictures of the South though, drenched in color and atmosphere, are worth the price of admission. Looking at them is like looking at the world through someone else's eyes: at once familiar and deeply alien. (NYT slideshow here)

Not going to lie though, my dinner of an open faced sandwich with cheese and asparagus, hot chocolate, and apple tart was the best part of the day. Winter always makes me want to eat particularly good food and since I don't really cook and am trying to save money by not eating out, I haven't been doing much of that. I'm totally counting down the days to the time I'm back in Buffalo, eating my mother's food.

2008-12-07T00:39:00.002-05:00

It might be a little (ok, a lot) sad to spend Saturday night cleaning out your fridge, but I've got to tell you, I'm really enjoying looking at my clean, extremely organized, and rather empty fridge. I feel so accomplished.

2008-12-04T20:26:00.003-05:00

Holiday time is when we find out what writers are reading it seems, and the Village Voice has an article where authors recommend their "most favorite" obscure book (which is different than their favorite how?). It's a nice concept, but I really couldn't care less what Ethan Hawke or Anne Rice like to read. Couldn't they choose a more interesting selection of authors?

I was happy, though utterly unsurprised, to see that Harold Bloom recommended Little, Big, which really is that good. The recommendation I liked best though, was Hannah Tinti's of a graphic novel adaptation of The Great Gatsby in which, "The characters are not human—they are strange creatures. Nick is some kind of tadpole/lizard/frog; Daisy is an exotic bird/cottonball; Gatsby is a seahorse." I like seahorses. I would totally read that.

What Girls Want

2008-12-03T22:09:00.000-05:00

So I was reading Galleycat yesterday morning and followed a link to this much-blogged-about Caitlin Flanagan article in The Atlantic. It's really a (very positive) of the Twilight series. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I haven't read the series, so I really can't comment on that beyond saying that I am one of those who feels that anything that gets young people--or old people, or any other people for that matter--reading is a good thing. But Flanagan's article covers a lot more than just the series so I can comment on it.

I didn't read much YA fiction even when I was a young adult. So I'm not exactly an expert. But despite that, I think her essay rings false from the opening paragraph.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS ABOUT divorce—which are unanimously dedicated to bucking up those unfortunate little nippers whose families have gone belly-up—ask a lot of their authors. Their very premise, however laudable, so defies the nature of modern children’s literature (which, since the Victorian age, has centered on a sentimental portrayal of the happy, intact family) that the enterprise seems doomed from the title.

It's rather small-minded to claim that books about unhappy, broken families defy "the nature of modern children's literature." More than that, it seems completely untrue. I can think of many books, going back years, that center around families that are not happy and or intact. To choose just one particularly famous example, L. M. Montgomery's books, with their orphans and motherless children, so often focus on the attempt to create such a family where one does not exist. It seems as if, for Flanagan, an awful lot of children's and young adult literature was just never written.

It doesn't get better from there.

The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life—one that she slips into during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs—to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others—are met precisely by the act of reading.

I loved reading as a teenager. My father used to ground me from reading because my room was a mess or I wasn't doing my math homework and I'd go and hide in my basement, or some corner of my room and read the day away. But I wasn't aware that when I was reading The Son of Tarzan or Deryni Rising I was working out the big questions in my life. I was going on adventures and imagining different lives for myself outside my suburban milieu. I wasn't entering the emotional lives of others but transporting myself. Which seems to me to be an equally valid reason to read. I like to think there's more than one reason for people--yes, even if those people are teenage girls--to read.

And that's really the biggest problem with the article (which is chock full of all kinds of problems). It's generalizations piled on top of generalizations. What young adult books are about, what young adult books should be about, what teenage girls are like, what teenage girls want, and so on. Wouldn't the world be boring if everything and everyone really were that alike?

As a side note, on what was, after all, not a good day in the world of publishing, let me remind everyone that books make great holiday gifts because there's something for everyone. And also that your local independent bookstore is a fabulous place to shop. I'm just saying.

Milk

2008-12-02T20:38:00.003-05:00

It's funny that a biopic should feel so impersonal. Particularly one as fantastically-acted as this one. That's not a complaint, exactly. It just felt more like a movie about a movement and a moment in time than a person. In other words, the subject was not Milk's interior world but his exterior world. I think that's a perfectly legitimate tact to take, and certainly the movie is engaging, both intellectually and emotionally (false dichotomy alert). But I do think that it has a distancing effect, particularly for someone like me who wasn't born when these events took place and doesn't have any personal investment in them. And it robs the climax--the assassination itself--of some of the power it might otherwise have. Because it's the movement that matters in the movie, and we know that that continued.

That said, it's the best movie of gone to this year (although I've gone to very few movies) and I really did think it was excellent. Fairly conventional but the subject and performances make it extremely rewarding.

Thanksgiving

2008-11-26T17:45:00.004-05:00

I have to admit, I'm not exactly a bottomless pit of thankfulness these days. It's been a rough year and an even rougher fall. And I'm certainly not alone there because I know things are tough all over and there are a lot of people a hell of a lot worse off than me right now. So I thought I would try to make a list of things (and people) that I'm thankful for this season.

My wonderful family, without whom I would be even more of a wreck than I am right now. I've been spending a good amount of time wishing my parents lived a few hundred miles closer, but they're still there for me and my grandparents are close by. I'm a very lucky girl.
My job, complete with a totally understanding boss and coworkers I like. Also, the fact that I hadn't used up my days off before this shit began.
Having the money saved to hire an exterminator (or two, if my next/fifth visit doesn't solve the problem).
My roommate's mother, who is yet another person on the list of people who have done all they can to help me deal with this bed bug nightmare.
The fact that the people I love are, if not all in great health, all still around and kicking.
The fact that Thanksgiving means I'm getting out of my not-presently-much-loved apartment for nearly three days and will instead be spending time with people I adore somewhere where I can actually sit on the couch.

I hope you all have a fantastic, refreshing holiday filled with all kinds of good things.

Little Bits

2008-11-25T19:26:00.001-05:00

I'm still infested but with my apartment all caulked up, my laundry all done and bagged, and everything as decluttered as I can get it without getting rid of my roommate's stuff I have more time to blog. A bit anyway. So here are a few things that have caught my attention over the recent busy time.

Every time I think Paul Gaustad couldn't be any more likable, he goes and does something like name checking Louis Grachos in an interview:

I mean, most of the hockey players who live in Buffalo can find nice things to say about the city--it's not hard--but most hockey players don't talk about how the director of the fabulous local art museum shows them around. Also, I don't like touching fish or worms either, so I find that totally endearing.

Also on a hockey note, I've been so busy and distracted that I didn't really notice just how lame the Mutinous Peons were. So I've done some full-scale revamping. I'd already traded Brad Boyes to Schnookie in exchange for Tomas Holmstrom (who promptly got injured). Today I got rid of Phillipe Boucher (clearly having a rough year), Dustin Byfuglien, Peter Mueller (who?), Dan Ellis (just bad), and Josh Harding (never, ever plays). They've been replaced with Teemu Selanne (can't believe he was available), Mikko Koivu, Jason Chimera, Mike Commodore, and Nikolai Khabibulin. Let's just hope this works better than real life NHL revamps do.

The fact that Pushing Daisies got canceled? So very not cool. (Also not cool, the fact that logger doesn't seem to let me make photos little anymore. It's totally annoying.)

I'm catching up on my True Blood watching. I don't think the show is particularly good but I like watching it anyway. I had to take a little break because I couldn't bear to watch things with all kind of bloodsucking for awhile there.

I have such late library books right now. I got them out before I understood the infestation and I haven't been able to renew a couple of them but I didn't want to return them if they possibly had bed bugs on them. I've got a way to decontaminate them now though, so they'll be going back shortly. So that's something to be grateful for anyway.

Magic Mountain Lite

2008-11-24T22:19:00.000-05:00

I love Andrea Barrett's short stories--I once, somewhat embarrassingly, spent part of a flight to Savannah weeping silently over a story about Linnaeus--but am less wild about her novels. I still like the way she writes about science and history but somehow over the course of an entire book things can start to feel a bit slack. And somehow her novels seem to have less weight than her short stories. I read The Voyage of the Narwhal a few years back and decided I would stick to her short stories. But I was going visiting and needed a book that hadn't been spending time in infestation central, so I picked up The Air We Breathe at the bookstore in Port Authority.

Of course, any book set among the patients of a sanatorium is going to have The Magic Mountain looming over it. Even more so if it's set right around the first world war. As interesting as the time period and location--the Adirondacks around the turn of the century--is to me, it seems like an author is setting herself up for failure with that, well, setting. And indeed, the novel does feel slight.

In the novel Barrett acknowledges that The Magic Mountain was the initial inspiration:

At first I imagined a kind of low-rent, democratic version of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. As the setting was transposed to America, so the rich patients would be transposed to impoverished immigrants in a public sanatorium. As The Magic Mountain takes place just before the outbreak of World War I in Europe, so I thought this might be set in analogous time, 1916 and 1917, just before the American entry into the war. But the initial conception changed a great deal, even before I started writing.

That's an interesting concept. And what Barrett ends up exploring--the ways in which feeling threatened creates a kind of xenophobic group think whether that threat is disease or war--is also something that interests me. But the problem is that she can't really get away from The Magic Mountain and that serves to highlight the fact that she doesn't delve deeply enough into the characters or the social setting. No one is any more fleshed out than they would be in one of her short stories and most of the characters actually feel less fully realized.

I had no trouble getting through the book and even enjoyed it while I was reading it, but in the end, The Air We Breathe is about as shallow as a swimming pool and that's too bad because it should have been a better novel.