"To Kill a Mockingbird" Wins NYT Best Book Contest

 Last October, to mark the 125th anniversary of its Book Review section, the New York Times asked readers to nominate the best book published in a variety of different categories during that time frame,

In its Dec. 29, 2021 edition, the Times announced that after tallying more than 200,000 votes from all 50 states and 67 foreign countries, the winner for fiction was "To Kill a Mocking Bird," by Harper Lee.

I've written about "To Kill a Mocking Bird" (and arguably its very different first draft, subsequently published as "Go Set a Watchman") here, here and here. 

Those interesting in taking another look at "Mockingbird" might find it interesting to consult what I have written about it before doing so.

By the way, back in 2012, "To Kill a Mockingbird" came in second on a 200-best-books list offered by the British Broadcasting Company -- just after Jane Austin's classic "Pride and Prejudice."   You can find that list here.

Thanks to Amber and Mary for Rating "Gina/Diane" Highly

 I would like to take a moment to thank two women -- Amber and Mary -- for giving my novella "Gina/Diane" five-star ratings on "Goodreads," where Kindle versions of the book were recently awarded to 100 applicants in a promotional giveaway. 

I thought this might be a good time to promote the book because it is about the consequences of a then-illegal abortion. While it is inspired by something that actually happened, it is a work of fiction.

As readers surely know, the U.S. Supreme Court is currently in the process of revisiting the issue of abortion rights currently enshrined in its 1973 decision known as Roe v. Wade. Given the makeup of the court, abortion-rights advocates have expressed fears at least some individual states will return to the sort of environment that adversely affected my heroine.

"Enjoyed this storyline and read," Mary said about "Gina/Diane."  I'm grateful for her having taken the time to do so -- and I'm grateful that Amber took the time to rate the book as well.

The Methodology of "A Lot Of Things Have Happened"

 One of the age-old questions is: should a work of art, such as a short story, be able to stand on its own, without explanation, to be valid? In other words, if its creator has to explain it, is it a failure?

In general, I think that's a good general proposition, but there are exceptions, and such is arguably the case with respect to "A Lot Of Things Have Happened," a short story by Adam Levin in the Dec. 27, 2021 issue of The New Yorker. It's a string of awkwardly unpleasant, or downright disgusting, incidents that take place over a period of years to a college instructor, first with a girlfriend and then with his wife.

Curiously, he is named Adam Levin, or at least that's what his parrot calls him -- sometimes just "Adam," other times just "Levin," but in the last two words of the story: "Adam Levin." The complete name out of the parrot's beak seems to imply that we now know everything we need to know about Mr. Levin. The preceding set of incidents in the story paint him in full -- as someone who, if you don't happen to know him, you don't need to.

In the usual New Yorker author interview, Levin (the author) is asked how he went about constructing his story and this is where matters get more interesting.

In reply, Levin, a seasoned writer, said that he had recently gotten more interested in trying to figure out how to put anecdotal material together without "artful transition." 

"With this particular story, the first thing I did was write a handful of fictional, largely disconnected, first-person anecdotes as sparsely and impactfully and comically as I could, each one in the same voice. Once a certain number of these anecdotes accrued—a greater number, to be sure, than appear here, in “A Lot of Things Have Happened”—I began to notice some commonalities between the anecdotes (example: tools kept getting misused) and adjusted the volume on those commonalities so as to make the anecdotes more continuous with one another. In the course of doing that, I began to discover what the larger story wanted to be (or what I wanted it to be), I cut away the redundancies and distractions as best I could, and rearranged the order of the anecdotes till (hopefully) they fell into the sequence that best served the whole."

Interested readers can decide for themselves whether Levin was successful in putting together a compelling work of fiction, but his methodology is worth thinking about. I think one often stumbles across, or comes up with, a vignette that seems worthy of writing up, only then to wonder: "What to do with it? "

Goodreads Giveaway for Gina/Diane, a Book About Abortion

 

Above is the cover of my second novella, "Gina/Diane," first self-published several years ago. But because it is about abortion, I thought it might be a good time to make a small promotional effort, given the U.S. Supreme Court's current agenda and very recent deliberations.

"Gina/Diane," inspired by what happened to a woman I once knew, looks back to a time -- not that long ago -- when abortion was illegal in the U.S.  This is not that woman's story per se. It's fiction, set in an entirely different location: an out-of-season North Carolina beach community. But the more poignant aspects of it are all too true with respect to at least one life, and I suspect others as well.

The promotional effort took the form of a Goodreads giveaway for books available on Amazon's Kindle platform, which is to say either on a Kindle reader or on a computer or a smartphone equipped with a Kindle app. 

One pays about $120 to have Goodreads, an arm of Amazon, run a month-long promotion of the type I purchased.  Results were reported to be as follows: 533 people entered the drawing of which 100 were awarded a free Kindle edition of the book and 465 people supposedly put it on a "want-to-read" list. 

 Based on the results of a similar giveaway I ran for my first book, "Manhattan Morning" back some time ago, that doesn't mean much, if anything at all.

(By the way, if you click on the link above, you can now get a free, illustrated edition of "Manhattan Morning" in an easy-to-read PDF format. As Manhattan is changing, the book is gradually becoming a document of some historical relevance as well as a good story for those disinclined toward violence, weird sex, etc. etc. And the ending closely tracks a real-life incident.)

In my experience, a Goodreads giveaway is a poor way to market a book (the best way is to somehow become a member of the Literary Industrial Complex at which point the New Yorker may publish an excerpt masquerading as a short story and interview you with some softball questions. But a Goodreads giveaway is easy, leaving one plenty of time for other pursuits.

As for "Gina/Diane" itself, what can I say other than: "I highly recommend it!" 

The Nature of Women, and Sociopolitical Observations

 "What do women want?" is an age-old question and one that is particularly relevant for writers of fiction -- male authors in particular, I suppose.

With men it is easy: they want power, money, sex and celebrity in no particular order since one of those objectives often brings all or most of the others along with it.  Endless books revolve around such themes. 

With women it has been more of a puzzle, but two articles in the Nov. 11, 2021 New York Times may be of some help. Both -- one in the arts section and the other in the sports section -- involve violence on the part of women toward other women.

The arts section article concerns "Yellowjackets," a film about to appear on "Showtime" that depicts first what happens when a place carrying a U.S. girl's soccer team crashes in a remote location and then what happens to the survivors. Essentially, as the NYT article suggests, it's a gender-reverse version of "Lord of the Flies." Instead of young boys turning against each other in a sadistic fashion, this time it is girls.

"It argues for the savagery of girlhood -- with or without an aviation disaster -- and how that savagery reverberates throughout women's lives," the article says.

Let's pause for a moment and consider a major current of sociopolitical thought these days: that white males are responsible for most if not all of the world's ills.  Suppose the patriarchy is successfully toppled; what sort of a world are we in for next?

"The show abounds with strong women, none of whom you would want to share a bottle of chardonnay with," is one observation contained therein. Another is: "There's a very specific feminine way of brutalizing each other."

But even before the plane crash, some of the girls are depicted as malevolent at home in up-scale suburbia. One betrays a friend and another grievously injures a teammate.

Which brings me to the NYT sports section article. It reports on the arrest -- and subsequent release -- of a French professional woman soccer player suspected of being instrumental in the beating of one of her teammates by a couple of thugs who concentrated on injuring the victim's legs while stealing nothing from her. The accused woman was described to be an understudy of the victim and, indeed, replaced her as a starter when the victim, a French national team veteran, was unable to play in a subsequent match.

While no charges have been filed, an investigation by French authorities is continuing,

It is now necessary to pause for a second time and consider another prevailing sociopolitical issue: racism.

The two NYT articles on the incident -- reporting the arrest and then the release -- did not mention the race of either of the two women, but large photos accompanying the pieces showed clearly that one -- the suspected perpetrator based on names in the caption -- is black and the victim white.

Let's think about that for a moment. If this incident had occurred in the U.S. and the race of the victim had been black as opposed to white and the alleged perpetrator white rather than black, this incident would have been trumped as another example of the endemic racism that is said to characterize American society.

A Couple of Reasons to Read "Hello, Goodbye" by Yiyun Li

 Did you meet someone in your first year of college who became a friend for life?  Are you a parent who has difficulty, or memorably had difficulty, dealing with the wisdom of young children?

If the answer to either of those questions is "yes," you might enjoy Yiyun Li's short story in the Nov. 15, 2021 edition of The New Yorker entitled "Hello, Goodbye."

The story, like a lot of  contemporary literary fiction, doesn't go much of anywhere at the end of the day, but it's well written. It's a partial exploration of certain interpersonal relationships as opposed to a tale that ends in the resolution of a plot or a set of issues.

The friendship is between two women, Nina, a daughter of Chinese immigrants, and Katie, who is apparently white and of European descent. Brought up in Kansas and Indiana, respectively, they went to U.C. Berkeley and ended up saying in California, both working in marketing (of course) for Silicon Valley firms. This was back in the late 1990s.

After that backdrop, the story jumps 20 years or so forward, into the current pandemic. Nina has a couple of precocious young daughters and a reliable, but boring husband. Katie, who has never had a child, wants to get out of her marriage to a wealthy jerk considerably older than she is and arrives on Nina's doorstep in need of help. Nina tries to balance her friend's needs with those of her children, the latter exacerbated by the pandemic and her husband's rather passive attitude toward parenting. 

If that sounds interesting, perhaps because you can identify with one or more aspects of the situation, I recommend "Hello, Goodbye."  The dialog in particular is good. If not, forget it. 

Perhaps the most memorable sentence in the entire story comes near the beginning. It goes as follows: "Nina was 27, not helplessly young, yet far from being trapped in a mildewed marriage, as she tended to believe many middle-aged women were." Readers can decide for themselves the extent to which she may have ended up in one. 

In the usual New Yorker author interview, Ms Li said that when it comes to relationships, she believes "muddling through" is better than wrecking things by opting for more extreme measures. The story is definitely in that vein.

Anna Sui, G.F Handel And Girls Who Are Careless of Time

Do you ever read an article and have a phrase jump out and get you thinking about something different?

That happened to me recently when I was reading a profile of fashion designer Anna Sui in a recent edition of "T, the New York Times Style Magazine."

The clothes she makes aren’t totems of some inaccessibly glamorous life but an invitation: to join the party, to be one of those girls, careless of time and most alive in a crowd, in the crush and heave of friends and strangers who by the end of the night will also be friends.

"One of those girls, careless of time" is the phrase that jumped out at me and got me thinking of an outstanding performance of George Fredrick Handel's first oratorio, "The Triumph of Time," which premiered in 1707 in Rome.  The performance was by Seattle-based Pacific Musicworks and you can listen to it by clicking on that link.

The libretto, a cautionary tale, was written by a Catholic Cardinal named Benedetto Pamphili. In essence, beautiful women are warned against devoting themselves to earthly pleasure and urged to instead make them themselves fit for heaven before it is too late. Delay is dangerous because Time will inevitably triumph.

Could an Anna Sui dress be dangerous, making a woman "careless of time" in the vein of Handel's oratorio?  Or perhaps the author had something else in mind when penning that phrase, but what could it be?

Time, of course, does eventually triumph when it comes to mortals and Handel, himself, eventually succumbed.  Interestingly, a revised version of "The Triumph of Time," with the libretto reworked into English by Thomas Morell, was performed in 1757 when Handel was blind. He died in 1759.

My Response to John McWhorter on Black Opera

On Oct. 19, 2021, the New York Times published a piece by John McWhorter, a Black professor of linguistics at Columbia University, entitled: "Go See These Black Operas -- Several Times." You can read it by clicking on that link.

What follows is my response to that piece:

Dear Mr. McWhorter,

Your Oct. 19, 2021 piece in the NYT on opera conflated at least three, arguably distinct issues and in the process turned out to be something of a dog’s breakfast. It was sufficiently provocative nonetheless.

The easiest issue is whether Black composers and librettists (as opposed to singers) have been unfairly denied access to the Metropolitan Opera (and various similar organizations) and thus it is high time the Met staged something like “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” I think we can stipulate that is true. On the other hand, just because the piece is a true Black opera (not an opera about Blacks written by a white person) doesn’t mean it is particularly good. As is the case with all other operas, time will tell.

Second are questions of cultural appropriation, or misappropriation – a trendy and highly “woke” topic. If you failed to bring this up, you would be viewed as seriously out of touch by certain constituencies in the current sociopolitical environment.

Artists have always depicted cultures other than their own, or been influenced by them and incorporated the narratives or aesthetics of another culture in their own work. There is, I personally believe, nothing at all wrong with this. The current cultural appropriation wars arguably have little to do with art and much to do with sociopolitical power.

(This is a different issue than what happened in the jazz era and beyond when white musicians and entrepreneurs basically stole music, or most of the revenues accruing to it, that had been originated by Blacks.)

Third, and in my case by far the most interesting topic, is the prevailing state of opera, no matter what the race or cultural background of the creators. Here, you seem to think you “should” like what opera has become although you are far from sure you actually do. Join the club. Why do you suppose opera companies stage only a limited number of contemporary pieces while relentlessly re-staging the old favorites?

In a nutshell and with broad generalization, in contemporary opera the singers serve the music. In most of the older forms of opera, the music served the singers. Singing, or extraordinarily virtuosic vocalization, was what it was all about. The stories were secondary and often somewhat ridiculous, or set well in some often mythic past, in large part because the threat of censorship was always present. Patrons largely bought tickets to hear their favorite singers sing particular roles, and to compare such performances to that of other prominent singers. The rest was spectacle.

That is far from the case at present, and as such raises the question, why opera? Why not just put on a play or make a film, the latter if you insist that background music adds to the story as opposed to at least partially obscuring it – as may be the case in the two operas under consideration in your article. You urge readers to listen to them repeatedly, not to hear great singing, but simply to make sense of them, which is apparently difficult otherwise. Oh well, there is nothing new about the notion of art for the sake of art. Viewers have frequently been told, for instance, that when gazing at abstract art: “it means whatever it means to you.”

You seem to wish that Blacks could, in effect, find a third way that they could call their own: opera somehow different from that characterized by the stand-alone arias of the past and more approachable and more broadly appealing than most contemporary opera. Something that would appeal to and be understood by an audience beyond those who attend because they think they “should” for one reason or another, but different and presumably more “high brow” than musical theater. “Porgy and Bess,” but written and composed by Blacks and with a story that avoids stereotypes? Porgy and Bess survives, of course, because the songs (or arias) are so good one (such as Angel Blue) can overlook the rest. Oops. There we are, back to opera as great songs and great singers with everything else secondary. Well, good luck.

One can argue that contemporary opera started or got into high gear with Wagner and his “it’s all about me” approach. Don’t give the singers arias that put them first and foremost. Make them serve my “total work of art” instead. Well, OK, that’s one approach and it arguably worked for Wagner (whatever one things of him), but less so for most of what has come in his wake.

That’s a sharp contrast to Handel who would regularly alter his compositions, and even drop parts of a story, or add new parts, so that a particular singer would come across at his or her best. That’s what the ticket buying public was paying for and Handel had to sell lots of expensive tickets. Mozart regularly wrote arias with the capabilities of particular singers in mind. And so forth and so on.

Everyone these days seems hung up over the race (or sexual orientation) of the creators and performers. As for me, where did I put that fabulous recording of Kathleen Battle singing G.F. Handel’s “Semele?” (I’m more than happy to overlook Ms Battle’s cultural misappropriation of the role and sorry I missed Angel Blue singing Mimi in “La Bohème” at the Seattle Opera as a result of the pandemic.)

Keep up the good work, and with my very best wishes. Maybe you’ll be able to make sense of it – for ALL of us – someday.

Fowler W. Martin

(P.S.  No surprise: there has been no response from Mr. McWhorter.)

 

 

Sally Rooney and The Literary Industrial Complex

 Sally Rooney, a self-described Marxist, appears to be willingly serving as the latest tool of what some call the Literary Industrial Complex, a capitalist dream come true.  Basically, it uses the public's infatuation with celebrity to sell a lot more books than would otherwise be the case.

Ms Rooney, author of the best-sellers "Conversations with Friends" and "Normal People," and who has just had her third novel "Beautiful World, Where Are You" published, offers a glimpse of this phenomenon on page 228 of the Hogarth paperback edition of "Normal People."

Therein, the book's chief male protagonist, a young man named Connell who appears to be getting a writing career started, muses over the nature of literature and concludes that books are purchased primarily so educated people can feel superior to the uneducated.

Even if the writer himself was a good person, and even if his book really was inciteful, all books are ultimately marketed as status symbols and all writers participated to some degree in this marketing.  Presumably that was how the industry made money. 

Those were some of Connell's thoughts at the conclusion of a book reading he had been attending at college.

How then does Ms Rooney participate -- beyond just making herself available for interviews, such as in the New Yorker when an except from "Beautiful World" was published there shortly before the book was released -- evidently as part of the marketing effort?

One way is by authorizing a host of branded merchandise to be released around the time of publication -- and making sure it gets into the hands of opinion leaders and with their names then associated with it, out onto social media.

The New York Times described the effort in an article entitled "Beautiful Merch, Where Are You?" (By the way, the title of the "Beautiful World" does not finish with a question mark. probably because there is no answer in Ms Rooney's view.)

As the release date has drawn nearer, anticipation has approximated streetwear-drop levels. In August, Ms. Rooney’s publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, distributed yellow bucket hats and tote bags (featuring the novel’s cover illustrations, by Manshen Lo) to celebrities, journalists and other so-called literary influencers. They have been encouraged to post about the book using the hashtag #BWWAY.

Lena Dunham, Maggie Rogers and Lucy Dacus are among those who shared photos of the book and its promotional swag on social media. Sarah Jessica Parker was photographed reading it between takes for the “Sex and the City” reboot. In an interview, Delia Cai, a correspondent at Vanity Fair, called it “the status galley of the summer.”

And further ...

Emily Temple, the managing editor of Literary Hub, described the ongoing Rooney-mania as nearly “unprecedented” for a literary fiction release. To her, it calls to mind “Ferrante Fever” — the obsession with the pseudonymous author Elena Ferrante, whose Neapolitan Novels, beginning with “My Brilliant Friend,” made her an international celebrity.

And so forth and so on.  Publishing is first and foremost about marketing and marketing is about celebrity. The manner in which Ms Rooney's latest book was launched, and how she participated in it, while decrying capitalism would make excellent fodder for her next novel -- and its collectable swag.

"Eleanor Rigby," "The Umbrella" and All the Lonely People

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

That's the famous opening line of "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy and while clearly not strictly accurate, the notion contains a certain truth that encourages readers to tackle the remains of this very lengthy book: we are far more interested in things that go wrong than in things that run smoothly.

One of the former is human loneliness, far more pervasive, one might argue, than it ought to be given the fact that homo sapiens are fundamentally social animals. 

To paraphrase Tolstoy, each lonely individual is lonely in his or her own way, which is fodder for fiction and for the arts more generally. Which brings me to a couple of entries in the Oct. 25, 2021 New Yorker.

First is an article by Paul McCartney explaining how the Beatles' hit song "Eleanor Rigby" came to be written. A masterpiece of minimalism, the chorus goes:

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

As for the article, it is more about how the Beatles came together than how the song came about, but, short in length by New Yorker standards, it is worth a read.

Second is "The Umbrella," the English translation of a short story by Danish author Tove Ditlevsen, who died in 1976. Yet another example of the New Yorker's role as an avenue for marketing by the publishing industry, the story is part of an anthology of translated works by Ditlevsen due out in March 2022. Instead of an author interview, this story is accompanied by an interview of the translator.

There is little about "The Umbrella," essentially the story of what might be called a vacant marriage, that is particularly interesting unless, perhaps one can relate to it on a personal level, By the end, one senses that the chief protagonist, a woman named Helga, is as responsible for her loneliness as anyone else. She seems as little interested in her husband as he is in her.

Each lonely individual is lonely in his or her own way, and this is one of them. In that sense, I suppose the story is in the nature of a collectible.

I Can Just Hear the Screams of Cultural Misappropriation

 Suppose John O'Hara, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart had all been Black Americans, wrote a musical set in a black community in 1940s Chicago, called it "Pal Joey." and saw it performed on Broadway more than once and also made into a film.

Suppose then someone came along and said "let's reset this in a white community in Chicago in the 1930s" and bring it back to Broadway in that fashion.

Can't you just hear the screams of cultural misappropriation?  Yet another example of white Americans ripping off Black creativity.

Well, of course (according to the Oct. 5, 2021 New York Times), the situation is the reverse.  The three men mentioned in the first sentence were white, the original was performed with white actors and it was set in the 1930s.  A new version, apparently headed for Broadway has remade the musical Black and set it in the 1940s.

There are apparently a host of other changes as well, including the addition of several songs that weren't in the original.

I'm tempted to say all of this has left me "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," but in fact, it has left me simply wondering when what is bad for the gander will also be bad for the goose (or vice versa).

Miscellanea: Evergreen "Ulysses" and Our Three Lives

 I sometimes clip out a newspaper or magazine article thinking I would like to write about a topic contained therein, but not immediately. More often that not, such clippings sit in a pile and eventually get thrown out.

One such article was "Tales of Female Trios" by Megan O'Grady in the Feb, 23, 2020 issue of T, the New York Times Style Magazine.

A couple things jumped out at me.

After discussing some of the books she read during her youth, such as "Little Women," Ms O'Grady said: "Meanwhile, the books my brother read were by and large structured as heroic journeys. Even his fantasy novels, with their large casts of characters, starred a lone adventurer overcoming great hardship to reach his goal."

In other words "Ulysses."  

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

At a later point in her article, Ms O'Grady, talked about the "rule of threes" she said occurs in much of Western literature. After noting Freud's division of the human persona into id, ego and superego, she said: "All of us have three characters within us: the one we display publicly, the one we actually are and the one we think we are."  That, she explained is a paraphrase of a notion put forward by 19th-century French critic Jean-Baptiste Alphones Karr.

Well, that brought to mind Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, who said: “All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”

That, I think, makes more sense than Ms O'Grady's reading of Karr.

I shall now consign my copy of Ms O'Grady's article to the recycle bin, somewhat relieved that the act of saving it did not go totally to waste.

Ong Comes Up Short In "The Monkey Who Speaks"

 To use the words of its author, Han Ong, the Sept. 6, 2021 New Yorker short story "The Monkey Who Speaks" is about a woman who has a job "where the professional can't help but bleed into the personal."

"I was interested in that slippery border" he said in one of the usual New Yorker author interviews. 

It is indeed an excellent subject for fiction, and Ong does a respectable job depicting the life of a young Filipina named Flavia who works as a home health aid for a predictably difficult, well-to-do, elderly white male named Roscoe, aided by Roscoe's fair-minded, accommodating daughter Veronica.

While the story is commendably free of transgressive behavior -- the stock-in-trade for far too much contemporary fiction -- Ong fails to do much with the slippery border in question.  One expects a situation to arise where Flavia has a difficult choice to make that involves a significant moral or ethical dilemma, the resolution of which is not just compelling reading, but also illuminative of the woman's cultural background.

But none does. There is a twist or two centering on the identify of the talking monkey, but they are of little consequence and based on her responses, Flavia could easily have come from somewhere other than the Philippines.

The New Yorker, like other similar publications, is evidently feeling a need to demonstrate a commitment to greater cultural diversify and in principle, this story would seem to fit the bill.  But in practice, it provides readers with little if any new insights into how demographic changes are impacting the U.S.

"Being from the Philippines, I've wanted for some time to write about an industry where Filipinos are well represent, even over represented," Ong said.

Well, that's about it. As such, it's not a bad story, but it's not a particularly interesting one, either.

"The White Lotus" and a Downside of Human Nature

 I was reading an Aug. 19, 2021,  New York Times feature on the television show "The White Lotus," which HBO has apparently decided to run for a second season, and getting more and more depressed in the process.

In a nutshell, the show offers what appears to be popular entertainment by depicting two young women who continually amuse themselves by making scathing judgements about other guests at a luxury resort.

Well, ok, this is a luxury resort so those who can afford to go there (including the college girls in question) have undoubtedly ripped the public off in one form or another (or their families have), so they deserve every insult or take-down they can get. Right? 

This notion evidently gives the show the sort of "pass" a similar show in which two young women continually derided people in a homeless encampment wouldn't get.

The point is: in human society, the perceived shortcomings of others are fair game for those who see ways of profiting from them.  In "The White Lotus," the profit is apparently only the notion that the girls can think better of themselves by putting down others, but in other instances, such behavior can bring wealth and power.

Consider, for instance, Donald Trump whose stock-in-trade consists of deriding and belittling virtually everyone who crosses his path, and many who don't. 

Or, consider Amazon Prime's wildly popular show "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel."  I watched it because a young woman I know wants badly to become a stand-up comedienne or at least write comedy for others and as one episode followed another, I was reminded again and again of Trump.  Mrs. Maisel's stock-in-trade was similar to that of the former President: she looked for shortcomings or sources of potential weakness in everyone she knew, or encountered, and exploited them for personal fame and profit, letting the chips fall where they might in the process.

There's nothing new about this, of course.  The examples above can be considered akin to the long-standing German concept of  schadenfreude,  or pleasure derived from the misfortune of others.

No wonder we don't seem to solving most of the problems currently confronting humanity.

Virginia Woolf on Politics

 In her 1928 gender bending novel "Orlando," Virginia Woolf had the following to say about politics:

"No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party -- for what do they battle except their own prestige? It is not love of truth, but desire to prevail that sets quarter against quarter and makes parish desire the downfall of perish."

I'll probably add more to this post in due course, but that's it for now.

 

"Superstition:" The Subliminal Power of Culture & Religion

 "Superstition," a short story by Sarah Braunstein, in the Aug. 2 New Yorker is about the lingering claims of culture and the almost subliminal power of religion.

Two teenage boys, conventionally dismissive of anything but what strikes their prevailing fancy, live with a permissive, understanding father, perhaps excessively so because the mother of the boys died some years earlier. They have been indulged with all manner of toys and youthful paraphernalia, now no longer valued. 

As is often the case with children in general, and particularly teenagers, the boys are into testing boundaries and at one point discover eBay. The story is set relatively early in the Internet age, before the advent of social media. 

One of the boys, named Lenny, suspecting the public is easily duped, makes up a lucky-charm story about a plaque-mounted fish he had once bought at Goodwill for a couple of dollars and sure enough, after a round of bidding, someone buys it for over ninety dollars. 

James, his brother, is impressed and wants to do likewise, but struggles to come up with something to sell about which a convincing story might be told.  Until he recalls a cross that he received at his first communion, kept in a velvet box.  Eventually he comes up with a story -- it had been in the family since 1915 and, when in the possession of a somewhat distant family member, had been blessed by Pope Pius XII, a controversial figure, James knows, because he "had been reluctant to intervene as a genocide unfolded in Europe."

As far as the plot goes, I will stop here so as not to spoil Ms Braunstein's tale, but suffice to say that James is far more entangled in the cultural and religious background of his family than he would care to admit if, indeed, he understands the genesis of his emotional crosscurrents. 

It's a story that is more interesting than initially appears to be the case and, no surprise, the New Yorker, in the usual author interview, fails to explore the seminal issue. (These interviews are frequently disappointing.)

The ending is an allegorical short cut, necessarily, I suppose because this is a short story. Ms Braunstein's topic is complex and as such, deserves a more sophisticated denouement.

Plot Similarities: Thomas Hardy and Henry James

 About half way though Thomas Hardy's "Far From the Madding Crowd," I had a sudden thought: that the basic plot was remarkably similar to that of "The Portrait of a Lady," by Henry James.  Both revolve around attractive, independent women who have come into an unexpected, significant inheritance at an early age and who are pursued by three different men.  Both women make the wrong choice when it comes to marriage, but in the end, Hardy goes in one direction and James in another.

The similarities were so striking I thought: "I can't be the only one who thinks so," and, indeed, not.

An Internet search soon turned up a thesis on this very topic, written by a woman named Susan Shepeard in 1976 in partial fulfillment of a Master of Arts degree at William & Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia.

"The striking similarities in theme, characterization and imagery go so far as to suggest that Hardy's earlier work might have influenced that of James," Ms Shepeard said, and, indeed, there is evidence to suggested that such could have been the case.  When "Far From" first appeared in 1874, it got a distinctly mixed review from James. whose "Portrait" was published in 1881. In other words, he was very familiar with Hardy's story prior to writing his own rather similar story. In addition,  the two men knew each other.

Shepeard's thesis doesn't attempt to resolve that particular controversy, focusing instead on how the two authors progressed from similar starting points to differing views on love and marriage. As such, I highly recommend her thesis to those interested in such ideas and/or the two authors.

One notable difference between the two works is their settings: very rural England in the case of Hardy and rather glittering European society in the case of James, a difference that initially serves to obscure their similarities. A young woman owning and running a farm (albeit on leased land) and, in the process, engaging in a lot of work, is enough to put Bathsheba on a pedestal in "Far From."  In contrast, Isabel, an American, needs the vast wealth she inherits to set her apart in the rather jaded European social milieu in which she finds herself and she has neither need for nor thought of employment.

Each woman is initially pursed by a man attracted to her before she came into wealth and both reject the advances. Both are also pursued by wealthy neighbors whose motives seem not dishonorable if less than ideal for women determined to be more independent than such liaisons would likely permit. And both eventually marry flawed individuals they seem to think they can help, only to be taken advantage of. 

In Hardy's case, certain circumstances serve to give Bathsheba an "out" and she then marries the man she apparently should have in the first place, an outcome Hardy justifies by offering readers a definition of the nature of true love. I wrote about that here.

In the case of James, "Portrait" ends with Isabel in such dreadful, unresolved circumstances that Irish author John Banville not long ago decided a sequel was needed. Banville's effort, "Mrs. Osmond" (Isabel's married name) was published in 2017. It is an interesting if less than totally satisfactory read.

Does it Really Matter Who Choreographs a Ballet?

 An interesting question that has arguably been around for a long time, but which has gained considerable currency lately, is: when it comes to a work of art, if it satisfies a viewer, does it matter who created it?

In other words, once launched, does a work of art (and similarly, a work of intellect) stand on it's own?

While I've written about this a number of times, the latest iteration comes from a comment made by the newly appointed artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, a woman named Hope Muir.

According to an article in the  July 22, 2021 New York Times, she was an unexpected selection and as a result, Roslyn Sulcas, one of the paper's dance critics, asked her what kind of artistic vision she presented to the ballet company's search committee.

"There wasn't a vision statement as such," Muir replied. "They gave the candidates a three-year programming exercise that included various anchor ballets that you had to incorporate, as well as making sure there was representation of female choreographers, Canadian choreographers, and Black, Indigenous and people of color choreographers in each season."

In other words, just who choreographed a given ballet is to be a more important consideration for the National Ballet of Canada than the quality of the piece. An alternative approach would be, leaving aside the so-called anchor ballets, considering each piece on its merits without knowing the race, color, national identity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. of the choreographer and let the chips fall where they may.

Muir said she found the National Ballet of Canada's requirement fascinating and satisfying "because when you look at ballet repertory, you realize that most ballets are choreographed by white men." 

Well, let's think about those "anchor ballets," one or more of which must be present in every season -- ballets such as "Swan Lake," "The Nutcracker," "Sleeping Beauty," "Giselle" and so on and so forth. Why continue to mount such time-worn productions?  Well, they sell lots and lots of tickets since the public continues to love them. Choreographed by dead white males (a major target of "cancel culture" movements), they in effect subsidize the efforts of all the others.

The more I read about it, the less worried I am about "cancel culture" -- in the long run, at any rate. 

Ultimately, in the eyes of those members of the public that appreciate the arts, individual works will stand or fall on their aesthetic merits. White male choreography -- perish the thought -- will be with us for some time even if contemporary white male choreographers appear likely to find themselves far from "privileged" in the prevailing circumstances. Indeed, based on Ms Muir's comments, when it comes to the National Ballet of Canada, white male choreographers still alive and working can pretty much forget it.

William Faulker’s “Dry September” as a Possible Opera

           The opera takes place one exceptionally hot afternoon and evening in a small town named Jefferson in the American south just after WWI, perhaps around 1920 during the Jim Crow era of strict racial segregation.  A rumor is sweeping town that a Black man has done something transgressive to a local white woman, but no details have been forthcoming.

Principal characters:

           Minnie Cooper (soprano), an unmarried woman about 39, who lives with her ailing mother and a problematic aunt. She’s “on the slim side of ordinary,” frequently goes into town wearing new, voile dresses and tries to represent herself as younger and more desirable than she actually is, asking the children of friends she knew in school to call her “cousin” rather than “auntie.” That’s been the case for several years now, after she had a four-year relationship with a widowed bank clerk about 15 years older than she was. The affair, her first such relationship, ended when he left for Memphis without her and although he returns to Jefferson every Christmas, he has had no interest whatsoever in seeing any more of Minnie.

           Will Mayes (tenor or baritone), an attractive Black man, probably in his late thirties or early forties, who works as a night watchman at an ice-making plant outside of town. Little else is known about him in Faulkner’s story, but in the opera, he recently did an odd job for Minnie.

           Hawkshaw (tenor or baritone), a middle-aged white man who works as a barber with two or three other barbers in a shop in Jefferson. He claims to know both Minnie and Will and insists that if a negro was involved in the rumored incident, it couldn’t have been Mayes. He urges restraint until the facts are known.

            McLendon (bass), a man in his 30s who led troops in WWI and was decorated for his service. He is insistent that whether the rumor is true or not, the untouchable status of white womanhood, and thus of the prevailing order of society, must be maintained whether the facts are clear or not. He questions anyone who would believe a Black man before a white woman. Carrying a pistol, he declares himself the man to lead a mission of retribution and urges others to join him

 Prelude (in front of the curtain)

             There are brief scuffling noises of an indeterminate nature off stage left and Minnie, somewhat disheveled, appears. She starts to run across the stage, but suddenly pauses, quickly glances about, and then briefly checking her attire, tugging a shoulder strap or sleeve down a bit more. She then resumes running in an agitated state. She seems to be saying something, but nothing comprehensible.

 Scene One (a barbershop in town, late on a hot Saturday afternoon)

             The curtain rises on an animated discussion among a group of men – three barbers, a couple of customers in the chairs plus various other men awaiting their turns or just hanging about. Hawkshaw’s chair is downstage and he is shaving a client, evidently a traveling salesman known as a “drummer” passing through town. Prominent among the others is a poorly spoken, hulking youth called Butch.

During the discussion, which is mainly if not entirely sung, Hawkshaw, seemingly out of the blue, declares that if anything did happen, and he doubts it did, that Will Mayes was most definitely not the culprit. He repeatedly says he knows Mayes and that Mayes is “a good nigger.” Hawkshaw’s client accuses him of being “a hell of a whiteman” and the youth accuses him of being “a nigger lover.”

 Another man attempts to quiet the youth, who had lept to his feet. But the salesman backs Buck up, declaring “if there ain’t any white men in this town, you can count on me even if I’m a stranger.”

The man who first attempted to quiet Butch says there is plenty of time to look into things. But the stranger insists there can’t be anything that excuses a nigger for molesting a white woman. He accuses the man of being from somewhere up North and the man responds by saying he was born and raised in Jefferson.

During the course of the discussion, Hawkshaw says he also knows Minnie and implies she’s too much of a spinster to attract the attentions of a man.   Another man asks her age and Hawshaw says she’s about 40. No one says anything more about her.

The youth fulminates, struggling without success to explain his thoughts. (He’s clearly threatened if Blacks are allowed to advance.)

Suddenly a door bangs and there stands McLendon, heavy set, wearing an open white shirt, and a felt hat. “Well,” he sings,” are you going to sit there and let a black son rape a white woman on the streets of Jefferson?”

“That’s what I been telling them,” sings Butch, cursing and fulminating in a ever-more agitated fashion.

­Aria:  McLendon sings an aria in which he mentions his citation for valor in the recent war, says he is ready to lead an immediate mission of retribution and calls on others to join. During the course of this, he advances themes associated with what are known as “the lost cause” of the Confederacy and the Southern way of life, centering on the inviolable nature of fragile, vulnerable women. Such women, the symbol and essence of a superior culture, must be protected at all cost. Blacks, who must keep their place, can’t be allowed to think otherwise. It’s a slippery slope and any perceived transgressions must be nipped in the bud.

 "But did it really happen?” one of those present asks.

 "Happen? What the hell difference does it make? Are you going to let the black sons get away with it until one really does it?" McLendon says as he demand of the group: “Who’s with me?”

Butch jumps up eagerly and several others follow more reluctantly.  McLendon whirls around to head out, the butt of a pistol visible in his back pocket. Hawshaw hesitates for a while, looking at the other two barbers who have remained at their chairs.  Then suddenly, tossing down a towel, he heads after the group.

Scene Two (a deserted property, ice plant visible in the background, a bit later in the afternoon as dusk is just starting to fall.  A black man stands alone, thinking about things.)

 Aria: Will Mayes sings an aria about what it is like to be a Black man in the Jim Crow era. Among other things, he sings about the difficulty of getting an education and finding decent work (he’s about to start his shift as a night watchman). He sings of doing odd jobs for whites, most recently for Millie Cooper and her mother who needed porch steps repaired, grateful that they at least paid him promptly. He sings about wanting to get married and have a child, but also that he’s hesitant to bring anyone else into the world as he experiences it. But he ends on a hopeful note.

The men led by McLendon suddenly arrive, surprising Mayes who asks what they want.

“What is it captains?” Mayes sings, adding “I ain’t done nothing.” He looks at the men, mentioning some names, but not that of Hawkshaw who has claimed to know him.

“Get him into the car,” McLendon demands.

A brief scuffle ensues, during which at one point, Mayes lashes out, randomly hitting Hawkshaw in the mouth, who hits him back.  But he’s rapidly subdued and the men haul him off-stage toward the car (headlights can be seen shining).

 Hawkshaw at first starts to follow, then declares he isn’t going.  They leave him behind.

 Aria: Hawkshaw sings of the hopeless state of things and his own inability to effectively act on what he thinks is right. Society doesn’t have to be this way, but what can change it? What can one man do?

As Hawshaw is finishing his aria, a single shot rings out in the distance, off-stage – far enough away to be somewhat muffled, but still audible.

 Scene 3 (Minnie’s house. She is wearing a robe and bathing out of a tub on the floor. Her aunt is helping her while her mother sits nearby. She’s in an odd mood, a bit distracted, it seems, reminiscing about the past.)

 Aria:  Minnie (with her aunt and/or mother occasionally joining in) reviews her past life: how pretty she was as a girl, how things were going well until other kids started saying rude things about her behind her back (you didn’t understand our station, her aunt or mother sings. We’re proud people who can take care of ourselves even after your father died, but those others don’t think we’re as good as they are. Some families have been here a long time, some even owned slaves.) Minnie continues, singing about her friends pairing up, getting married, having children. They started getting their children to call Minnie “aunty.”  Then the bank clerk with the new car came along (Minnie brightens up) and started “courting her.” (that’s not how the town people saw it, her aunt reminds her. It was like adultery in their eyes).  Minnie bristles. His wife had died, he was a widower. I was still young and pretty, she insists, and he showed me off as we drove around in his car – the first in town.  I was ever so proper in my motoring bonnet and veil. (But he tired of you, picked up and moved to Memphis just like that, the aunt or mother sings). Comes back every Christmas, but not to see you. You’ve got nothing left but the whiskey he taught you to drink).  Minnie’s mood darkens and she starts to sing a different song, but there is a knock on the door.

Two of Minnie’s women friends arrive and the mother and aunt leave the room.

They tell Minnie they are so sorry about what happened and ask her if she feels well enough to go out.  She nods and asks if they can hand her first her underwear and then her new, pink voile dress, all of which is laid out near by.

“When you have had time to get over the shock, you must tell us what happened. What he said and what he did; everything,” one of her friends sings.

Aria:  (Minnie sings as she puts on her sheer underclothes and then her new pink voile dress). I’m not sure what I can tell you because I’m not sure just who he was. I was out back, in a laid back chair in the shade of the two big trees. It was so hot I felt faint and my eyes were closed. I think I was almost sleeping when I felt it like a dream – a hand on my breast. Just every so lightly, you know, that I didn’t move at first. But I awakened and tried to cry out as I rose up, but nothing came out.  The hand was gone and at first I was scared to turn around, but I did and no one was there.  I heard some movement, but couldn’t see anything because of the trees. (She shudders and stops in mid phrase).

"It's alright, Minnie," one of her friends assures her.

 “So he didn’t ….?

 “ … rape me? I …I … I …”

 “McLendon says he deserves to pay if he even thought about it.”

 “McLendon?”

 Minnie for some reason starts to laugh, tries to control it, but can’t. Her friends look confused, then worried.

Aria resumes: Minnie sings in what sounds like a confused state – phrases, then laughter, then phrases – something about men, what they want, what a woman pays, the bank clerk, children, she will show them – more laughter, more confusion – she did what she needed to do. And as she passed through town in her pink voile dress in the wake of the rumor, even lounging young men followed with their eyes. So Faulkner tells readers. So Minnie sings in feverish triumph.

 Minnie’s friends try to calm her.

 “I heard McLendon and some men have gone after Will Mayes,” says one.

 “Will Mayes?”

 “Well, he was at your place, doing some work for you, wasn’t he?”

 Minnie sits up, puts her hand up to her mouth, but can’t stop a hysterical laugh that rapidly turns into screams.

 “Go fetch a doctor” one friend says to another as Minnie’s mother and aunt reappear.

 Aria resumes: Minnie’s hysteria results in her “mad scene” aria along the lines of Lucia’s, or even better (in my humble opinion) the “mad scene” aria sung by Electra in “Idomeneo.” The society of which she is a victim has sacrificed an innocent on its behalf using her plight as an excuse for atrocity. Madness is a salvation.

[What’s going on here?  Minnie, increasingly sexually frustrated after having been abandoned by the bank clerk, a man to whom she sacrificed her reputation as well as perhaps other things, and upon realizing she is reaching the end of the line in such matters at only age about 40, loses her senses and commits a desperate act.

 She invented an incident to make society still see her as a desirable woman without considering the possible consequences. Learning what has transpired, she realizes she has in all probability just killed Will Mayes.

 The desperation of an abandoned woman, in the tradition of Medea, Dido and a host of other, is a  trope, if you will, most recently extensively mined by Elena Ferrante, author of  "The Days of Abandonment" and four novels known as "The Neopolitan Quartet." Abandonment is a major subject for her, Ferrante makes clear in series of interviews.

Minnie, in her days of abandonment, began drinking whiskey supplied by a clerk at a soda fountain, and continued to go out into town in her new voile dresses, insisting that the children of her friends call her “cousin” rather than ”aunty” to reinforce the notion she is still young and potentially desirable.  But it was no use. “Lounging men did not even follow her with their eyes anymore.”

Based on what Ferrante, if no one else, tells us about abandoned women, Minnie’s resentments were thus continuing to build along with, one can fairly assume, her sexual frustrations. Surely her four-year relationship with the bank clerk, given his background, age and likely desires, was not devoid of intimacy.

On the day in question, on the single afternoon and evening during which the story takes place, readers, though the narrator’s eyes, are allowed to see Minnie late in the day, feverish (presumably as a result of the rumored incident) and having trouble dressing while three seemingly sympathetic, but also salaciously curious, female friends await her story.

“While she was still dressing her friends called for her and sat while she donned her sheerest underthings and stockings and new voile dress.” Her friends told her (the narrator relates) that when she got over the shock, she was to tell them everything – “what he said and did.” Who was “he?”

In the eyes of a John McLendon, a WWI veteran who commanded troops and was cited for valor, any Black male would do. “What the hell difference does it make?” he asks when Hawkshaw suggests the sheriff investigate the rumored incident to discover who, if anyone, is to blame. “Are you going to let the black sons get away with it until one really does it?” (my emphasis), McLendon says.

But again back to Minnie: eventually she sallies forth, escorted through the town to a film by her friends, “fragile in her fresh dress” – pink in color readers eventually learn thanks to one observer.

And rather than the apparent lynching, about which readers are told nothing, what happened to Minnie is described in some detail. She wanted to break out laughing and hoped the film would help the laughter under control “so it would not waste away so fast and so soon.” She clearly wants to enjoy something she has apparently pulled off, but to no avail. Her friends hear her, take her home in a taxi “where they removed her pink voile and sheer underthings and stockings.”  They put her to bed and as her laughter, increasingly hysterical, turns to screams, send for a doctor, but since it was a Saturday evening, one couldn’t easily be found.

An abandoned woman, one might argue, is a force of nature. While Dido limited the destruction by killing herself with a sword Aneas, her lover and the founder of Rome, had left her as a souvenir, Medea murdered her own sons by Jason, who abandoned her, as well as various others.

“Can one continue to live if one loses love?” Ferrante asks in an essay contained in her book of miscellany called Frantumaglia. “It seems like a pretty much discredited subject; in reality it’s the question most crudely posed by female existence. The loss of love is a failure; it causes an absence of sense.” [my emphasis]]

 Scene 4 (About midnight, at Mclendon’s neat new, but very small house)

 Mclendon returns home and discovers his wife sitting up, waiting for him. He demands to know why, telling her he has repeatedly told her not to.

 Aria:  McLendon’s wife sings “what kind of a man have you become since you went away to the war?  I still want you, but I don’t know you anymore. Within you there is no longer love, but hatred.”

When she has finished, McLendon slaps her and pushes her half over the chair where she remains, sobbing.

McLendon walks over to a screened-in window and gazes vacantly outward, removing his shirt, which he uses to wipe down his sweat-coved body. The butt of a gun is visible in his rear pocket.

Curtain

 

 

 

 

"A, S, D, F" Is a Text That Flows From Childhood Sex Abuse

I hesitate to call "A, S, D, F," a recent New Yorker fiction offering, a story since it isn't much of one. Instead, let's just call it a text, which is how a contemporary literary academic would refer it to it in any event. It's a text not so much about childhood sex abuse as it is a text that derives from such abuse.

In a nutshell, it's about a man who is going nowhere in life, which, come to think about it, characterizes a lot of New Yorker fiction these days. Also, like most current New Yorker offerings, this piece is promotional in nature, It's taken from a book of short stories by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh called "American Estrangement" scheduled to be published in August 2021.  My guess is that in return for printing this, the publisher, W.W. Norton & Co., gave it to the New Yorker free of  charge and made the author available for the usual interview as well. As a subscriber, I can't help wondering if a subscription price discount might be in order.

The protagonist of the piece seems to have one notable talent: he can type 70 words a minute on a manual typewriter with commendable if not total accuracy and as such seems to be of value to his employer, the owner of what amounts to a vanity art gallery in Aspen. Colorado. From that comes the title -- the first four keys upon which the fingers of one's left hand typically rest as one gets ready to type.

Touch typing is muscle or body memory and unlike mental memory, is arguably never forgotten. In this case, the body memory of typing is an allegory for the body memory of childhood sex abuse, which also apparently can't be forgotten even if suppressed. I use the word "apparently" only because I did not experience any such abuse myself and thus hesitate to say anything definitive about it.

Well down into the text, readers are told, more of less in passing, that when the unnamed protagonist was a child, his mother once left him with  neighbor and something happened. "No name, no face, no address. In other words, nothing actionable. I assume the doctor would say the memory has intentionally been buried."  

But clearly, not entirely.

In the New Yorker author interview, one learns that Mr. Sayrafiezadehthe himself was sexually abused as a child and is still attempting to come to terms with it -- in part at least by crafting this particular text. It apparently wasn't easy because according to the author, "A, S, D, F" went through about 20 drafts before emerging in its current form. As such, does it ultimately make a lot more sense to the author than it will to most readers?  I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.

But then there is a familiar trope at the end: the protagonist, clearly submissive in nature, meets a woman of the other persuasion. Are they right for each other?  Not even the author knows, readers of the interview learn.

In Defense of Donald Byrd's Recent Offering for PNB

 It feels a little strange for me to come to the defense of Donald Byrd, a nationally known ballet and dance choreographer based here in Seattle whose work I have tried to like in years past without much success.

But I did enjoy a recent piece he did for Pacific Northwest Ballet called "And the sky is not cloudy all day" that was dismissed for a couple of reasons by Brian Sibert in an April 2, 2021 review published in the New York Times. 

I wasn't originally going to write about this, but PNB recently announced that one upside of its 2020/2021 all-digital season was that the programming attracted ticket purchasers in over 30 foreign countries as well as in all 50 U.S. states.  As a result, the company's forthcoming season will continue to be offered digitally at the same time PNB resumes performances before live audiences.

"And the sky is not cloudy all day" are well-known lyrics from a song called "Home on the Range" that was most famously sung by Roy Rodgers, known as king of the cowboys.  Byrd, recalling his boyhood dreams of being a cowboy, said he choreographed the piece to Aaron Copeland-sounding music by John Adams by way of nostalgia.

Danced by six men dressed in cowboy attire right down to their boots, the piece "presents a picture of something that existed only in my boyhood imagination," Byrd explained in the program notes. "It is like the 'dream ballet' in a Broadway musical. It steps out of time and reality to present a vision free of harshness, where the bloody narrative of the massacre of the Native people is not there."

Sibert, in his review, beat up on the piece for two reasons. First, he called it "not much of an idea" that came across as sluggish and sloppy "compounded by the way boots blunt ballet footwork."  In contrast, I found Byrd's choreography for men in boots surprisingly convincing from a balletic point of view. 

Secondly, Sibert, who is white, raked Byrd, who is Black, over the coals for being insufficiently woke, calling the ballet disappointing from a choreographer "who can usually be counted on for a strong point of view, especially on matters of history and race."

Seattle performing arts companies, especially in the wake of Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd atrocity, have been falling all over themselves to both include more people of color in their programming and to be more attentive to various long-standing grievances of American minorities. In that context, Byrd's choice of subject matter may have come as a bit of a shock to PNB artistic director Peter Boal who felt compelled to put the following in his program notes to "And the sky is not cloudy ...":

"Tragically the dream of one group resulted in the conquest and genocide of another. As we grapple with our failures as a nation of many people -- some privileged and included, and some persecuted and excluded -- we also look for strands of hope, inspiration, and even dreams." (The boldface emphasis there is that of Mr. Boal.)

While art over the ages has from time to time had a sociopolitical focus, that has not always been the case and it need not be always the case at present. Aesthetics, which has to do with beauty and good taste, has long been the principle domain of art and there is no reason individual works of art can't continue to reside therein. Because Byrd has choreographed one particular dance that is fundamentally aesthetic in nature does not at all mean that he is insufficiently attuned to social justice concerns. 

Once released, a work of art can stand on it's own terms, can make it's own statement, independent of prevailing social currents. "And the sky is not cloudy .,," is in no respect flawed because it apparently fails to take into consideration conquest, genocide, privilege, exclusion, etc. etc.

One can criticize it on other grounds and despite the fact I liked the piece, it could have been better. In my obviously insufficiently woke opinion, Bryd came up a bit short not on grounds of Political Correctness, but rather because he fell short on character development.  His cowboys needed to get beyond being just "a type."

Early in the pandemic, I watched a video offered by the American Ballet Theater in which former ABT soloist Sascha Radetsky taught his wife, former ABT principal dancer Stella Abrera, how to dance one of the three sailors in Jerome Robbins iconic ballet "Fancy Free," choreography that Robbins also used for the Broadway Musical "On the Town."  Both are about the antics of girl-chasing sailors on a very brief shore leave in New York city.

While Robbins' characters were most definitely "a type," he was careful through a host of often small variations in choreography to make sure they came across as three distinct individuals as well,

That's where Byrd came up short, but there is no reason he can't improve his piece for future performances -- if there are any. I think it has great possibilities.

The Literature of Olivia Rodrigo's "Sour" & Elena Ferrante

This is another post in which I look at the lyrics of popular songs from a literary point of view. It deals with a recent, very popular album called “Sour,” written and sung by Olivia Rodrigo, that consists of a number of closely linked songs akin to the chapters of a book.

The point of view is first person singular and genre is essentially “chic lit,” the topics being mainly those that would resonate with women in the teenage to Young Adult age spectrum. Despite certain shortcomings, I think it is a very commendable effort and perhaps even more so if one listens to the music, which I didn’t.

The topic is all too familiar: a girl has lost her boyfriend to another girl and in that context, it is interesting to compare it to the approaches taken by both Taylor Swift, who dealt with a similar  situation by way of three songs on her recent “Folklore” album, and with Elena Ferrante, author of a number of books, most famously four novels known as the Neapolitan Quartet.

Let's take Ferrante first because Rodrigo's effort is all about a young woman who has been abandoned by her boyfriend and that is a recurring theme throughout Ferrante's writing. Indeed, one of her novels is entitled "The Days of Abandonment" and asked whether it was feminist in nature, Ferrante replied:

"Yes, because it's sustained by the female reaction to abandonment, from Medea and Dido on. No, because it doesn't aim at telling what is the theoretically and practically correct reaction of the contemporary woman faced with the loss of the beloved man nor does it brand male behaviors as vile."

That's a comment one should keep firmly in mind when considering "Sour."

Shifting gears, Taylor Swift, who Rodrigo has said she greatly admires, tried to get to the heart of her breakup story by looking at what happened through the differing points of view of the three protagonists whereas Rodrigo sticks to just that of the abandoned woman. But in my view, Swift failed to take good advantage of her technique.

Both Swift and Rodrigo seem to have difficulty fleshing out the character of a man and that's one of the reasons their lyrics are chic-lit in nature. In both instances, their men are one-dimensional – akin to cardboard cutouts -- and it’s hard to see why the women who lost them found them attractive in the first place. They are simply foils for the expression of female emotions ranging from love to hate plus much in between, which is probably nothing new when it comes to songwriting. But as literature, it can be a major shortcoming.

In any event, “Sour,” like a good opera, opens in media res with our 17-year-old songwriter heroine – why not call her Olivia? -- proclaiming insecurity and wallowing in self-pity.

“I’m not cool and I’m not smart and I can’t even parallel park,” she moans, declaring her ego to be in such a crushed state that she wishes she could disappear.

 Life is brutal thanks to a traitor -- a boyfriend who has just left her for another girl. She’s a loser (this will be of considerable significance in due course) and that’s tough apart from lost love, or perhaps lost late adolescent infatuation. In short, she's been abandoned and as a result, is left feeling both highly vulnerable and in her view, justifiably angry.

The young man’s departure was apparently not all that unexpected. As the story proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear that he meant a lot more to Olivia than she did to him, but Olivia has trouble believing that and accepting the idea that what a person says can easily be situational as opposed to valid for all time.

A major reason she can’t accept what has happened is because she consistently failed to be true to herself throughout the relationship.

“I kept quiet so I could keep you,” she says. Winning is apparently what it was all about.

While her boyfriend was clearly no great prize -- “loved you at your worst, but that didn’t matter” -- she wasn’t either.

The young man in question has taken up with an older girl (even a couple of years can seem significant when one is 17) who is more sophisticated and more comfortable in her own skin than is our heroine.

“She’s everything I’m insecure about,” Olivia bleats.

And to make matters worse, the new girl – no need to give her a name because she’s essentially a trope – has blonde hair. Life is unfair, Olivia eventually comes to understand -- to her credit.

As a budding teenage songwriter, Olivia finds comfort in the power and validity of music. As such she can’t believe her former boyfriend can actually get along without her because of what he said in a certain song he wrote. Surely a song is where truth lies.

But with such thoughts predictably going nowhere, Olivia turns to more prosaic matters, revolving around a teenage rite of passage – a driver’s license.

Despite her inability to parallel park, she somehow managed to get one just the previous week. This was at the urging of her boyfriend who had wanted her to be able to drive over to his place as opposed to him having to spend time picking her up.

“I know we weren’t perfect,” she admits, which is undoubtedly an understatement.

Moving on is necessary, but not easy. At times, Olivia feels she is taking 1 step forward only to then take not just the usual two, but 3 steps back.

Much of this has to do with her acquiesce to subservient status in a relationship within which she felt “pretty” or “fun” only if her boyfriend told her such was the case.

“I hate that I gave you power over that kind of stuff,” she complains, without much justification. After all, as she says, she was the one who set things up in that fashion.

But then the story gets murky as self-abasement rears its ugly head.

Maybe, she says, she found it exciting to never really know how her boyfriend was going to treat her next: love her, want her, hate her, walk her to her door, send her home crying?

“The roller coaster is all I’ve ever had,” she tells us, the word “ever” suggesting her recent failed relationship may be just the proverbial tip of an iceberg.

In fact, Olivia may well be in therapy (she has told us nothing about her background) and perhaps that’s how she was able to find a therapist for her boyfriend, who she sees as having  benefitted from such help – far more than she herself has, it appears.  Olivia still believes she has to make herself into someone she isn’t.

Her former boyfriend is looking happy and healthy since he left her and is even a better man for his current girl. He has purchased a new car and his career is taking off, leaving her crying on her bathroom floor, his apathy salt in her wounds.

Good 4 u she thinks (tweets?), with sarcasm rather more hopeful than genuine.

Then Olivia steers off in a different direction. Perhaps it was fortunate her boyfriend dumped her, she decides to believe, depicting him as damaged goods. His new relationship isn’t so great. Rather, (pardon Olivia’s French) it’s déjà vu.

While the blonde boasts to her friends the young man is “unique,” Olivia sees his prevailing behavior (which she seems to know a lot about), as just a replay of the things he did with her.

Like trading jackets, or recycling jokes Olivia told him, or enjoying a particular Billy Joel song with his new girl, like they did.

“When are you going to tell her we did that, too?”

To his credit – although perhaps unfortunately for others – the young man remains true to himself, a characteristic Olivia finds infuriating.

While he made no concessions, she eviscerated her true self in an effort to become the person she thought he wanted. This, by the way, could be straight out of "Days of Abandonment" and Ferrante's depiction of her heroine, Olga.

Rodrigo's heroine wore makeup because she thought her boyfriend liked the Prom Queen look. She learned how he wanted his coffee and memorized his favorite songs. She read his self-help books so he would think she was smart.

“All I ever wanted was to be enough for you.” (Such was the case with respect to Olga as well.)

But the remake didn’t work (Olivia failed to become "exciting") and is left feeling “I just want myself back.”

Time goes by – it’s now a month later – and Olivia is somewhat more reconciled to the loss of  “all the sunlight of our past.”

The young man’s current girl friend is sweet and pretty and apparently also able to bring out the better in him, but perhaps to an insufficient degree. Olivia believes he is lying to her as well.

She can't give up the notion she and the young man had really been happy together before it all unraveled and, with a certain degree of noblesse oblige, even expresses hope he’s happy with the new girl, as long as he isn’t happier. In other words, Olivia still isn’t willing to admit defeat. She was the real thing; he just hasn’t figured it out. She isn't a loser!

But wait a minute: there's at least one more possibility. Perhaps society is to blame. What a concept!

Girls are pushed into presenting themselves with perfect bodies and white teeth and there they all are, out on social media, looking too good to be true.

Olivia, fixated with having failed to measure up, wants to throw away the phone upon which she views the competition – Instagram or wherever.

“I know their beauty is not my lack, but it feels like that weight is on my back.” 

She so desperately wants to be like such girls: happier, prettier, jealously, jealously. This is straight out of Edvard Munch. Olivia would fit right into "The Frieze of Life."

Well, those thoughts, too, are unproductive so it’s time for yet another tack. How about a notion of complicity?

Dumping her was her boyfriend’s favorite crime, she decides, but what if she was his accomplice? Only one person’s heart was broken, but “four hands bloody.” Knowing full well what he was capable of, she told lies and defended him to others “just so I could call you mine.”

That pretty much brings us to the end of the story, except that, like a good, old-fashioned tale, it has a moral to it.

Olivia has become a better person as a result of her misfortune in the sense that she is now able to see less fortunate members of society – a somewhat dorky boy she once knew and a lonely girl struggling to get away from dreadful parents – in a new light.

The aren’t the losers she probably once thought they were when she was riding high. They simply were unlucky – they got a bad deal of the cards of life when they were born as she herself did if for a girl, looks, and especially blonde hair, are pretty much everything.

She hopes the boy somehow converted his lousy hand into a royal flush and she decides the girl is commendably courageous in her attempt to “unlearn all their hatred.”

Nothing is forever, nothing is as good as it once might have appeared, and every door is hard to close. Those are Olivia’s closing thoughts as she realizes her setback was nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary in the grand sweep of things. She’s learned the value of empathy and compassion. A life worth living is not “all about me.”

Her teenage Dream was just that and her boyfriend’s behavior was not all that bad.

“We don’t talk much, but I just gotta say. I miss you and I hope you’re ok.”

Like Ferrante, Rodrigo does not ultimately brand male behavior as vile.

The ending saves it and as a result, I'd give this one a B+.

About Whether Works of Art & Intellect Stand on Their Own

 A topic I have written about in the past is:

Should a work of art or intellect stand on its own after it has been released to the public, or is its worth subject to reevaluation because society at some point takes a different view of the merits of its  creator?

The most obvious recent example of this on-going controversy was a decision by the publisher WW Norton to take Blake Bailey's massive biography of author Philip Roth out of print shortly after it was released because Bailey was then publicly accused of sexual assault or harassment by various women in earlier years. 

Before the accusations became public, the high-profile book received generally positive reviews in major publications, suggesting that readers interested in Roth (never a favorite author of mine despite his stature) would be well-served by Bailey's efforts.  That is presumably still the case. No one, before the accusations surfaced, seems to have said: "this book is flawed; it reads like it was written from the perspective of a sex offender and as a result, lacks credibility (or whatever)."

Technically, of course, Bailey is not a sex offender having not been tried and convicted of such an offense. But he stands accused and in the prevailing Me Too climate, that's enough. As a result, Baily's work of intellect has gone from praiseworthy to toxic, or so it seems.

Alternatively, I suppose one could view Norton's reasoning as: while the contents of the book are still valid, neither Bailey nor Norton deserve to collect any money from it because of Bailey's alleged past behavior. The publisher released its rights to the book, saying anyone else could publish it, and said it would donate an amount equal to the author's advance to  organizations that fight against sexual assault or harassment and make efforts to protect survivors.

I mention this in part because of a somewhat related curiosity. The New York Times just ran one of its "five minutes of music" features in the online edition.  This time around, a group of luminaries selected brief samples of their favorite Classical choral music so as to help expose interested readers to that genre.

One of them, Leila Adu-Gilmore,  a New Zealand performer/composer of Ghanaian descent, with a doctorate in music composition from Princeton, said: "As a woman of color and a composer, I struggle with the Classical period. Widely thought of as the height of Western European culture, this was a time full of violent colonization and slavery." 

In other words, the works of, say, Mozart can't be enjoyed on their own musical merits. One cannot consider anything written by a white European who lived in a time of colonization and slavery to be enjoyable or beautiful. If you like Mozart, that presumably means you approve of violent colonization and slavery.

So, instead, Ms. Adu-Gilmore chose an excerpt from a piece written by a woman born in 1098, which she said predates the age of violent colonization and slavery. The woman in question was a Christian nun and mystic named Hildegard of Bingen and her composition is of merit because by linking nature and the divine, it connects us as humans through time, Ms Adu-Gilmore said.

In response, in the comment section of the NYT feature, a person identified as Jeff from Toronto had the following to say:

"No surprise Adu-Gilmore didn't pick anything by Beethoven, who spent many years working on an opera about the struggle for freedom of a political prisoner. Why the racial stereotypes? And gender stereotypes -- there's no evidence that the racial attitudes of Hildegard of Bingen were any different from those of the men of her time, but Adu-Gilmore gives her a pass because she was female. OK, she says it's because Hildegard "predates" the colonial era and slavery, but so what, she still benefited from serfdom. As if that has any relevance to her music."

Further, here is a comment from JM, of the Northeast section of the U.S.:

"I was disturbed when I read the introduction by Leila Adu-Gilmore. I am a practicing musician and I have seen first hand how it is becoming increasingly fashionable to dismiss the works of "dead white European men" as one of my colleagues put it. Adu-Gilmore struggles with the Classical period because it "was a time full of violent colonization and slavery." She then points out that Hildegard predates all of that misery. She conveniently forgets that there was a thriving slave trade during the Middle Ages, and Hildegard was a member of the Catholic Church at a time when forced conversion, torture and religious military conquest was not unheard of. Should we all have issues with medieval music? That seems to be what Adu-Gilmore is saying. If we start rejecting our music solely based on the social or political environment in which it was written, there will be nothing left to listen to. No musical era is without abhorrent political events. The comment by Adu-Gilmore is musically irresponsible and sets a dangerous precedent."

So what do you think: should a work of art or intellect stand on its own terms, or should its worth be measured by the moral status of its creator or the by the moral status of the society in which it was created?

What will Ms Adu-Gilmore think about that piece of choral music if records surface that show Hildegard, in her role of head nun of an abbey, took advantage of her young charges in certain, inappropriate ways?  Will that be, as the saying goes, "the day the music died?"

"Balloons" in the New Yorker Comes Across as Trivial

 Thomas McGuane  has a style of writing that makes his May 3. 2021 New Yorker short story a pleasure to read, but "Balloons" is unfortunately a rather trivial piece of work. In the usual New Yorker author interview, McGuane talks about how he began writing the story without knowing how it would end, but thanks to a dream, something came to mind. Too bad.

Sex, in the familiar triangular configuration, serves as the framework for a  rather simple-minded plot: a man depicted as a bore and a buffoon in his seemingly successful prime degenerates into a pathetic mess when his unfaithful life leaves him.  But guess what?  He ultimately has the last laugh on his predator -- a man who views himself as on a considerably higher plane.

An unexpected development -- the subject of the dream -- serves to give the story a twist, but it could have been used to much better advantage.  

There is an early signal that trouble looms ahead in the form of a discussion among the three characters about a mugging. The bore insists that a victim has every right to retaliate. That's about the only topic we encounter that might provide clues as to what McGuane's characters think about, together or separately. They are, shall we say, rather uninteresting.

In particular, just what the women might have to offer, other than sex, is a complete mystery. She's depicted as a woman characterized by "her contempt for everyone who was not interested in her looks."

Hmm.  Isn't that what intelligent woman complain about?  That they are objectified by the male (or even another female) gaze? In this story, the unnamed woman is apparently distressed if she is not.

Well, character development, in this story at any rate, is not McGuane's strong point and in the afore-mentioned author interview, he actually seems proud of it. Ok, for some readers that may be a plus.
 

An Example of What I Would Consider a Literary Clanger

 A "clanger" is defined as a conspicuous blunder, and what follows is an example of what I would consider, perhaps unfairly, a literary clanger -- a sentence or phrase that just seems wrong.

The April 27, 2021 email from Literary Hub offered, among other things, an excerpt from a recent novel called Nives by Sacha Naspini. It was translated from Italian by Clarissa Botsford and perhaps that is part of the problem.

In a nutshell, based on the excerpt, it appears to be the story of a farmer's wife who becomes a widow when her husband dies unexpectedly in rather disgusting circumstances. She doesn't get along well with her daughter's family and declines an offer to be taken in, insisting on remaining on the farm despite feeling overwhelmed by it's requisites. 

So far, so good, but then came the clanger.

"She soon realized that solitude changed everything about life in the countryside. Each hour passed like a slow-motion smack in the teeth with a shovel; her usual chores took an abnormal turn."

Each hour passed like a slow-motion smack in the teeth with a shovel?  That sentence jumped out at me as so improbable an image that it was all I was left thinking about when I finished the excerpt.

It surely doesn't work as a metaphor -- far too extreme (someone being hit in the teeth with a shovel once an hour -- and continuing on?  I don't think so.).  But I suppose it could be viewed not as that familiar device, but rather as hyperbole -- excessive exaggeration to make a point.

If so, it's unnecessary. Naspini's depiction of the woman's life in the wake of her husband's death doesn't leave any room for doubt. This is a troubled existence. There is no need to ram the notion home with overkill.

So ... that sentence didn't work for me. Perhaps you feel differently.

The Incorporation of Ideas in Fiction

 The latest email from Literary Hub offers an excerpt from Fiona Mozley's novel "Hot Stew," which is described as all about wealth, inheritance, gender and power.  Well, except for gender, that sounds a bit like "The Forsyte Saga," by John Galsworthy, published in 1922. 

But what interested me about the excerpt was Ms Mozley's decision to include a couple of provocative ideas in the middle of an episode of tangled personal relationships.

The first is sociopolitical in nature: whether private charity is good for society or simply serves to preserve for a longer time than might otherwise be the case income inequalities.

In the except, a man named Bastian asks a woman named Glenda how a woman named Laura was doing:

“She’s well. She hates her job though.” “Where does she work?”

“At some kind of charity. They treat her like shit but are constantly going on about how grateful she should be for working in such a friendly environment, and how they’re doing a really good thing by paying her a salary rather than getting her to give her time for free. She wants to leave as soon as she can.”

“What does she want to do?”

“I don’t think she’s fussy. I think in an ideal world she’d be working for some great political campaign with someone amazing she really believes in. But how on earth is she going to find one of those? And, you know, how many people actually get to do a job they like?”

“But isn’t working for a charity a bit like that? I mean, isn’t she already working for a good cause.”

Glenda looked at him as if he’d just vomited.

“Not really,” she explained quietly, as if so embarrassed by what he had just said she didn’t want anyone at the neighboring tables to hear her set him right. “Charity is inherently reactionary, isn’t it? It puts the onus on individuals rather than the collective. It relies on certain individuals having large amounts of disposable income. I think Laura would rather pursue political solutions to the world’s problems rather than charitable ones.”

“Oh right,” Bastian replied.

So there's an idea readers can stop and think about if they wish, or possibly just dismiss Glenda as perhaps an old student lefty who never got over the utopian ideology that tends to go with it.

The second idea is related to the growing acceptance, in some corners of society at any rate, of something along the lines of gender fluidity -- the notion that people naturally have aspects of masculinity and femininity and can slip back and forth between them -- and/or to the notion that stereotyping by outward display is out of date,

Here, the character identified as Bastian, is watching his current live-in partner, a woman named Rebecca, get dressed:

Bastian thinks that tights are strange and he tells Rebecca as much. Then he says, “Isn’t it weird that men and women wear different clothes.”

“Weird how?”

“Just strange. Like, it’s one of those things that you become so used to, you don’t ever think to question it, but then sometimes, for instance, just now watching you put on those tights, you realize it’s kind of bizarre.”

“You could say that about anything,” Rebecca replies. It is sometimes difficult to read her expression and tell whether she finds something humorous or exasperating. On this occasion, he suspects both. “Would you like to wear women’s clothes, Bastian?”

“Not especially. They seem kind of uncomfortable. Especially tights. It’s just that it’s strange that I’m not allowed to. Or, rather, I am allowed to, but it would be perceived as a dramatic statement about my identity when actually, when you think about it, why should anyone care?”

“How radical of you.” This time, she is making fun of him, but he thinks it’s in a friendly way. She goes back to the kitchen and Bastian hears her pour some coffee from the cafetière into her thermos flask and screw on the lid.

Well, there was a story in a local paper the other day about seven-year-old triplets wanting to petition Costco, the warehouse store, not to separate girls and boys clothes.

Women, have, of course, long appropriated menswear. Fashion designers have tried on many occasions to push men the other way -- without success. But perhaps such notions will become more acceptable than in the past.