Lewis Forever

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

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

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

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

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...

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 . . .

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

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.