The Word Sanctuary

Father Roger and Water

2012-01-09T02:42:00.000-08:00

The Baptism of Christ was the theme of yesterday's readings in the Episcopal church, and our new rector Father Roger D Allen meditated on "water." From water that cleanses in John's Baptism to water that makes a new creation in the Holy Spirit, which parallels the water over which the Spirit of God moves in Genesis I, Father Roger led us to see church itself as a source of that kind of water.

"What are we doing here?" he asked a full house of parishioners. He ticked off a list of things that church does not do, or does not do primarily: produce anything that could be measured by people on the street, solve problems, connect people to a club of like-minded people, or administer aid the way Red Cross and United Way do.

It reminded me of a core chapter in Ronald Rolheiser's book The Holy Longing, which parishioners of St. James' Marietta discussed in a book group some ten years ago. Glancing again through notes I made in that book, I see some startling correlaries to Father Roger's list of what church is not. It's not a self-help center where individual spiritual growth is the aim, but a merging with God in community (Rolheiser 137). He relates the oil to Hebrew burial rites and observes that "we go to church to help ready each other for death" (134). Rolheiser takes literally the idea that the church is the body of Christ in the world, the Holy Spirit "with skin on." He also observes, incidentally, that our desire to "distinguish ourselves" is a sign of immaturity, holding on to the early stage of "individuation" (136). His emphasis throughout is on commitment, of which Paul is his prime example, when Paul stands up, goes forward, eyes open, seeing nothing (125).

Father Kirk and Father Roger went on to baptize an adult, whose children watched from the front row, and an infant who charmingly went to sleep between the dribbling of water and the consecration by oil. Children of the congregation came up into the choir area to watch, so that all parishioners could watch the children watching the ceremony. It was sweet, and, thanks to the preparation, it was an outward and visible sign of something we had been provoked to think about.

Silence

2012-01-04T05:40:00.000-08:00

(a short homily formiddle school assembly, responding to a reading from I Kings.)

I want you all to listen to something. You probably haven't heard it in a longtime. Someone of your generation maynever have heard it. In fact, I'm afraidthat it may make you feel uncomfortable. It may strike you as awkward. . .

(silence)

Silence. We don'tlike it. I have music or news playing atmy home from the moment I wake up until I'm asleep. I turn on the radio in my car before I fastenmy seat belt. Thanks to my Android, I'mlistening to news or music when I walk in the forest or ride my bike. My students want to plug into their deviceswhen we have silent writing time.

If you are like me, then we don't even have to care aboutwhat we're hearing, much. Thinking aboutthis message on the way to school this morning, I was half-listening to someguy who says he has "mo-oo-oo-ooves like Jagger." How annoying is that?

So it's our own responsibility if we cram our own headsnon-stop with messages from pop stars and politicians and comics and commercialannouncers who are all trying to distract us from what we have to do, and whatwe want to do, and what we ought to do.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Fourcenturies ago, a French mathematician named Pascal observed something new amongthe sophisticated city dwellers of his day: they hated silence. They neededother people to provide some kind of distraction at all times. His theory was that their belief in a God was justsomething they had because they were supposed to. With no real belief in God, he says that amodern man feels alone. Worse, the modern man alone, in silence, feelslike nobody, with no real value or purpose, only to consume what others offer.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophet Elijah, on the run fromthe evil queen Jezebel, hides in a cave on Mt. Horeb. He is drawn out of the cave by the promisethat God will speak to him. Suddenly, agreat wind rips the mountain. But Elijahdoesn't hear God in the wind. Then anearthquake shakes the mountain. ButElijah doesn't hear God in the earthquake. Then a fire sweeps across the face of the mountain. But Elijah doesn't hear God in the roaring ofthe fire. Then all becomes quiet, andthat's when Elijah hears what he calls a "still, small voice" thattells him what to do next in his life.

It's an interesting scene repeated in all the majorreligions. Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammedall began their careers after long periods alone in silence, far away from thedistractions of their hometowns.

(silence)

When we find ourselves anxious to plug in, to seek out noiseand distraction, let's consider the possibility that it might be better for us tolisten to silence.

P. D. James Cracks Open Austen's World

2011-12-31T15:00:00.000-08:00

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice owes at least a portion of its charm to its self-contained world. P. D. James's homage to Austen, Death Comes to Pemberley, owes a great deal to our affecton for Austen's world, and our pain at seeing its end.

In Austen, we see soldiers, but no one mentions war; we hear of the Court, but not of government; concern for steady income underlays the romance, but being forced to economize is not the abject poverty we know from cartoons by Austen's contemporary Hogarth. Death comes no nearer than a bad cold. Characters attend church and suffer the Reverend Collins, but God stands back in the manner of the servants, waiting on the other side of a closed door should He be called.  Reverend Collins is concerned only with cultivating plants and the prestige that comes from having tea with Lady Catherine.

Within that world, Austen focuses us on affairs of the heart.  Major events include a young man's smile, an invitation to dance, and all the things left unsaid during polite conversation. One adolescent girl, having visited Lady Catherine's manor nine times for dinner and twice for tea, exclaims, "How much will I have to tell!" while Elizabeth thinks, "How much will I have to conceal!"

For a few dozen pages, P. D. James sustains us in that world. But she throws down a gauntlet at the end of "Book One" (James 48-49). Napoleonic wars threaten.  And as a frightful wind howls with "malevolent force" as if trying to find a way into the manor house, Elizabeth thinks...

Here we are at the beginning of a new century, citizens of the most civilized country in Europe, surrounded by the splendour of its craftsmanship... while outside there is another world which wealth and education and privilege can keep from us, a world in which men are as violent and destructive as is the animal world. Perhaps even the most fortunate of us will not be able to ignore it and keep it at bay for ever.

That scene and the ones immediately following it are the most vivid and breathtaking in the novel.

A century later, around 1914, another generation would feel the same sense of a world's ending, barbarians at the gates ( a theme I've considered before on this blog).

P. D. James has done a wonderful job of imagining how Austen's crystalline world cracks when that "other world" intrudes, but I rather wish she hadn't.

Conversations with the Dead

2011-12-24T04:55:00.000-08:00

"Conversations with the dead are never satisfactory. The dead are not very interested in what you tell them and usually don't have much to say."

When I first read that passage back around 1986, I was 27, and there were no dead in my life. Shortly thereafter, leukemia took Chris, a fourteen-year-old student of mine; my Grandmother Thelma had just begun to recede from us into a world of ghosts, reaching a day five years later when she didn't recognize me or my mother, but she spoke to my Dad by name about all the others present to her in the empty room -- her late mother, and some little girls.. Twenty years later, one year after Dad's unexpected death, all the grownups of my childhood are gone except for Mom and her brother-in-law, my Uncle Jack.

Back then, I was reading Frederick Buechner's four novels collected as a tetralogy called THE BOOK OF BEBB (Atheneum 1984). It nominally concerns a preacher named Leo Bebb, but really its concern is everything there is. I kid you not. This morning, haunted by a dream of Dad, leafing through just four pages of the novel as I tried to locate this passage, my eyes ran across evocative references to Christmas Eve, aliens, adultery, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and the Wolfman, Native American mythology, cheap motels, Episcopal funeral rites ("Lord, [make it so] that the bones that you have broken may rejoice"), Noel Coward comedies, blacks in the South, the coming of the Kingdom, King Lear, and opera. Oh, yeah: yoga, gin, and mistakes in child-rearing.

So now that I read Buechner with some experience, it's still true. The passage continues,

Death is apparently as much of a rat race as life is, and they've got other things on their minds. I don't picture them sitting around in chairs like the cemetery scene in Our Town or cooling their heels in God's outer office singing Bach. As much as I can picture them at all, I picture them hurrying someplace like the White Rabbit in Alice. They don't even stop when you speak to them, just look back at you over their shoulders maybe. I could dimly picture [my sister] Miriam looking back at me as I spoke. (p. 188)

So, in my dream, Dad takes a seat on a picnic table up the street from our old family house, and he's watching my mother working alone in our old front yard. His eyes meet mine, he knows I can see him, and I know that she cannot. He carries a box of Dunkin' Donuts, and he raises a half-eaten donut to acknowledge my presence, but that's all he does. I tell him she needs him, and he just waves away the comment as superfluous and kind of annoying. He doesn't move or draw her attention, and now I'm the one who's kind of annoyed. I tell her he's there, and she calls out, and she approaches the picnic table, but she can't see him. He doesn't move. So I tell her, "He's always with you, on the inside."

The dream, as Buechner suggests, blurs the boundaries between this world and one that we don't normally perceive. It's all part of continuum, death being only one landmark on the way. Though we can support each other, we all travel alone.

This brings to mind a spectacle in the same novel, one of several examples of what would be called a "set piece" in a play or movie -- kind of like the Cyd Charisse fantasy number that interrupts Singing in the Rain for ten mintues. Here it's the story of what happens to a wizened old wealthy Indian named Herman Redpath when he wakes up from death to find himself young again, and vigorous, but also alone on the edge of a vast plain. Naked, except for items thrown in his coffin at the funeral, Redpath must travel to the horizon. We're told the story in a letter left by Lucille Bebb, who is relaying what her husband Leo told her (pp. 219-227).

No message, here, except that the Book of Bebb should be added on to the Bible after the Book of Revelation. (For my more extensive reflection on Buechner, go to "Comedy, Fairy Tale, Tragedy: My Favorite Fiction")

The Fundamentalist - Sports Complex

2011-12-22T05:44:00.000-08:00

President Eisenhower warned the USA of a "military-industrial complex," Pentagon entangled with lawmakers and corporations that supplied the military its machines.  These parties reinforced each others' beliefs and policy decisions, supported each others' interests, and insulated each other from alternative views.

What I detect today is more widespread, less selfish, yet maybe more corrosive to our Republic.

It starts with confusion between "faith" and "belief." Thomas Aquinas long ago described faith as a way of knowing the world; an instrument, together with sense and reason, for an open mind to interpret both Scripture and experience.

"Belief" is, normally, a tentative intellectual acceptance of a provisional statement. For the fundamentalist, there is nothing tentative or provisional about it. If eternal life depends on "belief" that Jesus was Son of God, then it had better be a "certainty." To allow for some of Scripture to be folk wisdom or poetic imagery is to put the rest of Scripture in doubt. That's how a spokesman for the Southern Baptist convention could insist that belief in historical Adam and Eve is "central" to Christianity, because it's the first link in a chain that leads, in his mind, to Jesus.

When that outlook is applied to policy, we get "belief" in "conservatism." That used to mean agreement on certain principles that could be applied variously to different policy choices, allowing for weighing pros and cons. Thus, Ronald Reagan advocated "amnesty," his own word, for illegal immigrants, because they, in their hard work and selfless sacrifice for their families, exemplified conservative values. But Newt Gingrich's standing among conservatives in South Carolina has fallen since an ad played a clip of Newt's echoing Reagan on immigration, advocating a way for all Americans to afford health care, and acknowledging that human activity has something to do with climate change. That's three wrong answers, and Newt suddenly isn't conservative enough for respondents to polls in South Carolina.

But there's a third element, here, made especially visible by the ascent of Tim Tebow. With "John 3:16" inscribed in his eye-shadow, he draws attention to the fundamentalist fan base for football. Being "for" a team means buying branded merchandise and deploring opponents. Because it's just sports, there's license for vicious expressions in the sports arena.

So Reagan's era of conservative principles and principled compromise has degenerated to an era of fundamentalist politics where denying any kind of victory to the other side is more important than, say, extending jobless benefits that all sides agree should be extended, remunerating doctors who treat Medicare patients in a way that all sides admit to be fair, or finding a way to pay for our wars that may involve taxation.

It's nothing new for American partisans to ridicule compromise as "flip-flopping." Horace Greeley launched his abolitionist newspaper with the printed boast that he would not compromise.   He opposed Lincoln, who eloquently defended compromise, reasoning that rule by a minority is unacceptable, and chaos is not an option, leaving the only just and fair way to go: rule by a majority enjoined by limits to respect the rights of the minority -- i.e., by negotiation and compromise.

The difference that I observe between then and now is only in the superficiality in expressions of this hot "no compromise" feeling.   Think of the big applause we heard in a roomful of Republicans when Governor Perry was asked about his state's record number executions:  Conservatives are "for" capital punishment, so, hooray for capital punishment.

So-callled "conservatives" who claim to be "for" the Constitution and "against" compromise with the other party don't know their Constitution. Built into the Constitution on a number of levels is the idea that truth and justice are arrived at only in the give and take of debate and negotiation. That's the essential principle of the Constitution, expressed in the balance of Representatives and Senators, Congress and President, Federal Government and States, and a federal judiciary.

Daily I hear news clips of politicians who won't allow for compromise on policy or respect for opponents in politics: how scary is that?

Dog in Winter

2011-12-20T07:52:00.000-08:00

l-r: Luis, age 9, and Bo, age 14, following an hour's walk at Kennesaw Mountain's Battlefield Park today.

This may be Bo's last winter. I've thought that before, but now he's deaf, unable to jump up into the back of the wagon, apt to backslide down the stairs, and painstakingly slow to lower his hindquarters when he wants to rest. Sitting must be painful, because he simply dips his head when I command him to "sit" for his supper, though he still looks to me for the command before he digs in.   Besides, he has lumps growing and hardening on his shoulders and flank. A surgeon removed one the size of a golf ball that turned out to be benign, but any one of these could turn out to be the One.

Yet after I lift him into my bed at night, he tosses my pillows with his head, tail wagging. He luxuriates in his morning rub down as if he'd paid for the massage. When I pull on my trousers, he jumps out of bed and wraps a trouser leg around his head, delighted to begin one more day, with all its favorite morning rituals: stepping out front to nose around bushes, drinking water, and digging into his dish. He also enjoys a game that he plays with his younger adopted brother Luis, in which each tries to sneak mouths full of the other's food.

So long as Bo wants things with such eagerness, I'd say there's still life in him... or, better, he's still "in" his life.

I reflect on what's left in my life that I want so acutely.   While Bo lopes from one anticipated pleasure to another, I feel like I just meet deadlines, and what I want mostly is to put the next thing behind me.

There's a religious reflection in here, somewhere. Ecclesiastes resonates.   A meditation in this season's Forward Day by Day suggests that Jesus identified with children because, like them, he was good at living in the moment, spontaneous in his pleasures, unburdened by his past, unworried about his future. Sounds like Bo to me: an old dog, enjoying the start of his fifteenth year as completely as he has enjoyed every other moment of his life.

The American: Henry James Lite

2011-12-20T05:23:00.000-08:00

A scene from Exxon Masterpiece Theatre production in 2000.

(reflection on THE AMERICAN by Henry James, re-read on a Kindle. Page references are meaningless.)

Thirty-two years ago, Henry James's novel THE AMERICAN was about 100 years old, and I devoured it as an appetizer. The main course was to be one of the fictions from Henry James's late period, because I'd been bowled over by the intensity, not to mention the density, of "The Beast in the Jungle" and the novel THE WINGS OF THE DOVE. But Professor Edwin Cady, who directed my independent study, drew up a list of some thirty books to read first. Re-reading early James, I find the same themes and situations that animate the later works, without the same richly layered texture. I have to admit that Henry James Lite has little more to recommend it than skim creme fraiche, or a zero-proof martini.

That's not entirely fair to James. The story is a sturdy one: self-confident and successful Christopher Newman comes to Europe to see the best of everything, women included. He wants a wife. Not two chapters later, he has found a woman not only attractive but worthy of worship, a young widow named Claire de Cintre, nee Bellegarde. The courtship unfolds as comedy of manners, as good-hearted American patiently negotiates European social customs to win her love. More difficult to attain is the approval of her family, the Bellegardes. With the friendship and guidance of Claire's younger brother Valentin, Newman comes close to succeeding. But always, from the very beginning, there are warnings to Newman that he should not trust to appearances.

James' tells the story through the eyes of a friendly narrator who refers to Newman as "our hero" and "our friend," and who occasionally suggests that "our friend" has missed something. The dialogue is always amusing, as we perceive that Newman's interlocutors are usually holding back something. On the other hand, once we grasp that, the reiteration of such dialogue becomes tedious.

Not that the book needs more "action" : When the "action" really starts, involving gunfire, murder most foul, and blackmail, the fun stops. We learn of the Bellegarde's family secret in page after page of narration by Mrs. Bread, every bit as humble and bland as her name suggests. I almost put the book down then.

I'm glad I persevered. Though high comedy ended and melodrama took over, James's real interest lies in Newman's moral choice where all the "action" ends. Here, the resolutely secular James, son of a famous theologian and brother of the philosopher who wrote THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, presents his "Christ - New - Man" as a venerable moral hero. Newman's epiphany occurs in a vast cathedral where, in despair, he rests his arm and head on the back of a chair. (Personal aside: I've had the same experience, same setting!)

Re-reading my notes on a Kindle is an annoying thing, because it's such a pain in the neck to browse, it's impossible to cluster the notes, and it's hard to view the marked passages in larger context. But I did find a reminder that Newman's epiphany is a bookend: He tells early in the book of a sickness that overcame him when he was about to get revenge on a client who cheated him. It was that sickness about his business life that sent him to Europe, and a deeper version of that sends him back home.

Years later, James would write THE AMBASSADORS, which also concerns a self-confident and morally solid American man whose sojourn in Paris shakes his world. In THE AMERICAN, James sets scenes as if we were in a theatre, telling us of the pauses and gestures that accompany scintillating dialogues. In the later works, we perceive the scenes through one actor's uncertain perceptions, and physical objects often melt into metaphor as James's "central consciousness" finds inner significance in them. In those late works, it's almost a law that "always" will be followed lines later by "never," as James consistently undercuts certainty, creating a space in which to explore ambivalent feelings and ambiguous signs. In the AMERICAN, this time, I noticed instances of both techniques. For example, early on, a gossipy American expat named Mrs. Tristram says, "Ugly, my dear sir? It is magnificent." The response? "That is the same thing."

Now, that's the James I love!

Biblical Revenge Fantasies

2011-12-17T09:45:00.000-08:00

(This is a meditation on one of the Scripture passages assigned for today by the Episcopal Church's lectionary. I wrote it for a booklet published by St. James' Episcopal Church, Marietta, GA)

Psalm55. 12-13 It is not an enemy who tauntsme – then I could bear it – but it is you…my familiar friend.

Rememberthat time when everyone stopped talking the moment they saw you? Then youpassed them, and someone murmured behind your back, and everyone laughed?

That’swhen you turned on them, stretched out your hands, and said, “Lord! Show themYour righteous power!” You laughed as invisible fingers choked them, and theone who cracked the joke swelled up like a balloon and floated away.

Maybeyour inner adolescent’s fantasies are less Harry Potter and more Mr.Smith Goes to Washington, so you picture yourself saying righteous thingsthat teach those hypocrites a lesson.

Weall have felt betrayed by friends, and I imagine that I’m not the only one at St.James’ to have fantasies of revenge. In fact, the readings today are full ofsuch fantasies. The psalmist calls for the ground to open up and swallow hisenemy; Matthew tells how Jesus will get even with the bad ones. Revelationcheers first-century Christians with the vision of four horsemen who willtorment their oppressors.

Indulgingsuch self-righteous fantasies is always fun, for a little while, and always amistake. They get my heart rate up and fill me with adrenaline, as much as areal confrontation would do. They increase the resentment and add to theloathing I feel. But Jesus commands us, “Love your enemies,” and he tells usthat to hate is the same as to murder.

Let’sreturn to the scene imagined at the head of this meditation. When everyone’slaughing, the victim can do little to save face. But imagine if someone in thecrowd steps forward, gently chides the others, and starts afriendly conversation with the hurt one.

Ilike to think that we at St. James' bring our own church’s wise,un-self-righteous, moderating spirit to situations like this. I like to think thatwe impress others by how we diffuse cliques and deflect gossip.

Inthis season of office parties and family gatherings, let us go in peace to loveand serve the Lord!

Other readings assigned for the day: Psalm55. . .138,139.1-17(18-23). . .Zech. 8.9-17. . .Rev. 6.1-17. . .Matt. 25.31-46

Church was Made for Waiting

2011-11-30T09:41:00.000-08:00

(Reflection based on Scripture assigned for today in the Episcopal lectionary. Written for a booklet of parishioners' meditations published by St. James' Episcopal Church, Marietta, GA.)

2 Peter3.8 With the Lord one day is as athousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

"You'vebeen waiting a thousand years for the Messiah? Sorry, you just missedhim. He was here last century." A groan went up in a waitingroom crowded with Hebrew converts to the new faith.   Peter'ssecretary hastened to add, "But he says he'll be back any daynow." He forced a little smile. "Of course, for him, aday could be a thousand years, Ha ha. Just be patient."

Patient? Me, a 21^st - century commuter? Sometimes, when it takesa thousand seconds to inch alongMarietta's 120 Loop, I grow angry to feel the minutes of my afternoon slippingaway.   I search the radio for news updates, check the phone formessages, scribble notes on a pad, and try to salvage my wasted time.

Sitting on arise above the sluggish stream of cars, St. James' reminds me how our church'sapproach to time sets us blessedly apart from the American mainstream. Since Ben Franklin, we Americans have equated time with money; every second,like every penny, must be invested in something productive.

But ourEpiscopal church retains a pre-modern sensibility. Our time moves at thestately pace of seasons through a cycle of daily personal devotions and weeklygatherings. We repeat ancient stories, pray quietly, make music, andshare meals. This is the routine developed by the early church tonourish the Body of Christ until the Messiah returned.

Waiting iswhat the Church was formed to do, not by killing time, but filling time withprayer, learning, service, and relationship.

Other readings for today: Psalm119.1-24. . .12, 13, 14 . . . Amos 3,12-4:5  . . . 2 Pet.3.1-10 . . .Matt. 21.23-32

Revelation: Best of Historical Crime Series

2011-10-31T09:43:00.000-07:00

C. J. Sansom's series of detective novels set in Tudor England has reached a milestone: Henry VIII's wife number six. "Crookback" lawyer Matthew Shardlake is the detective again, this time in pursuit of a serial killer inspired by a passage in the Book of Revelation.

Watching Sansom's development of his series, I note that he has improved the plotting of this novel, so that the climactic scene nearly coincides with the final pages. In earlier novels, there were chapters full of tying up loose ends.

Now, he needs to work on character development. In this novel, Shardlake cares for the widow of his best friend, and nurses regret that he didn't express his love for her years before, when he had the chance to marry her. Could her husband's gruesome death be an opportunity? Also, Shardlake's intrepid assistant Barak's marriage to Tamasin seems to be on the rocks, as the husband broods on his disappointment over a stillborn son.

Both of these are potential situations for developing character, but they feel more like padding, used to pace the story. But each time one of the characters reflects on his feelings, they're the same feelings, and it's the same reflection. Then, suddenly, near the end, someone says something, and -- voila! --the tension is resolved.

I hope to see more of Shardlake, with more improvement.

The Dog Who Knew Too Much: Fun with Feeling

2011-10-16T09:01:00.000-07:00

Three novels into a series, Spencer Quinn keeps playing within the limits of his form. I'd say "formula," but that carries disdainful connotations, and I'd rather emphasize how fun the books are and how I admire his fresh story-telling within the framework. Besides, he built the frame.

Image from the cover of THE DOG WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

The frame consists of detective Bernie Little accepting a job from a dubious client, learning quickly that there's more to the job than meets the private eye. What makes the series remarkable -- and, did I mention, fun? -- is its narrator, Bernie's dog Chet.

I've written before how delightful it is to get the story through Chet's eyes, nose, ears, and highly distractable consciousness. A prime example in this book is a moment of gun-slinging action when Chet is primarily interested in a scrap of bacon.

This particular story's core event involves an adolescent boy, and Quinn seems to have struck a rich vein of narrative here, for he seems to know adolescents as well as he knows dogs. Pudgy twelve-year-old boy named Devin is missing from a camping expedition. Maybe because I work with children in that age group every day, I was moved by the scene where Bernie and Chet interview one of the other boys in the tent on the night of the disappearance. Frightened at first, the boy gains confidence in an interview technique that might be described as "good cop, good dog." Afraid of retribution, the boy gets up the courage to tell how he participated in bullying Devin. The boy halts when he remembers suddenly seeing Devin's face in flashlight. He is ashamed to have seen a boy crying "like that." Later, Bernie takes care to ensure that Devin won't remember his ordeal solely in terms of helplessness and fear.

With the introduction of a puppy identical to Chet, conceived on the memorable last page of the series' first story, Quinn hints where this series may be headed some years down the road, when Chet -- I don't want to imagine it -- may be too old to continue. A good series can travel with us through time the way a flesh-and-blood companion does.

Like Haydn, who created the form of the modern symphony and then wrote over a hundred, may Quinn keep delighting us with his variations.

Ah, Paris: The Greater Journey

2011-10-15T05:36:00.000-07:00

Under construction in 1888, the Eiffel Tower was called "too large, too ugly," and too American (405)

(reflections on France generally, and David McCullough's book THE GREATER JOURNEY, published by Simon and Schuster, 2011).

With a national debt that's 120% of its gross domestic product, Greece resents the way other members of the Euro-zone look upon her as Northern Europe's freeloading cousin. "All they do is go on strikes and complain," said one European in a radio report yesterday. This is funny, because Americans have long looked upon all of Europe the same way, making exceptions only for the hard-working and well-organized Germans.

That's the attitude that Americans took with them to Paris in the years between roughly 1830 and 1900, chronicled by David McCullough in THE GREATER JOURNEY. Some come to study art (Samuel Morse, John Singer Sargent), some to study medicine (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Elizabeth Blackwell, Charles Sumner) and some to relax (James Fennimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe). They come with some anticipation that they'll see some interesting sights and learn some interesting things, but also with a sense that American vigor, American know-how, and American enterprise are the future -- and how right they were, for good and for ill, is also a part of this book. They leave, if they leave at all, feeling that they have discovered a new world in the Old World.

It's the story encapsulated in an anecdote about influential editor and novelist William Dean Howells who interrupts a casual conversation with a younger American to grasp him by the shoulders and say,

Live all you can. ...It doesn't matter what you do -- but live. This place makes it all come over me. I see it now. I haven't done so -- and now I'm old. It's too late. It has gone past me -- I've lost it. You have time. You are young. Live! (428)

Novelist Henry James knew both men, and took this anecdote for the germ of his late masterpiece THE AMBASSADORS. But James had already examined the same story from many different angles for many years.

McCullough tells this same story more than twenty times, and it's always interesting. Morse puts all his skill and imagination into capturing on canvas his wonderment at the Louvre, fails to make a living as an artist, and heads home with a vague idea that he can improve upon a system of flags that the French used for telegraphing messages (99).   Sumner is astounded to see a Black student integrated with his medical class (131), and becomes the most prominent abolitionist in Congress. Cecilia Beaux, whose lovely works on display at Atlanta's High Museum were a revelation to me a few years ago, remarked that "Paris itself" was the greatest value of study in Paris (411). Historian Henry Adams attained an epiphany at Chartres that became focus of his vision that modern times are powered by the inhuman force of the dynamo rather than by humane faith in the Virgin Mary (448).

If my notes here seem weighted to the last portion of the book, it's not because I skipped the first part, where the stories are fascinating and amusing.   Having concentrated two years of college on Henry James -- whose WINGS OF THE DOVE and BEAST IN THE JUNGLE were, for me, a kind of Paris -- I consider his crowd to be mine, too.

My own France experience involved a plate of asparagus. At age 24, chaperoning high school students in France, I was the typical American described in 1830 by one of McCullough's subjects: "The French aim to gratify, we to appease appetite -- we demolish dinner, they eat it" (35). But then, in my journal, I devoted a full page to a plate of asparagus in a lemony butter sauce. Not hard to make, it struck me not just for its taste, but also for elegance, and also for the artistry of its presentation, set off from other courses, served on a single small plate. For this drama major, it was a revelation that dinner could be theatre.

I learned in France that "dinner" was something that started with drinks and bread at six and ended sometime after ten or eleven or midnight, with kisses all around.   At a village restaurant, an hour or two into a "dinner" of this sort, I took a hike through the village, where the entire population seemed to be in backyards, neighbors sharing tables, drinking and eating and playing around with their children.

In a flash I understood what my roommate in college had tried to make me understand. Andreas Pozzi, transplanted to Philly from Italy, had told me that Americans had it all wrong. "You guys live to work," he said, "but Italians work only to live." For him, real life was that time with family, after work is done.   I was too full of my Puritan work ethic and Rust Belt background to appreciate a world view formed in a sunny, Catholic country.

Dining was only one art in a spectrum. McCullough's Americans are startled to see that all classes of French people dined at the cafes, attended the concerts, and crowded the galleries. "[T]he conviction of the French that the arts were indispensable to the enjoyment and meaning of life affected the Americans more than anything else about Paris," McCullough tells us (47).

That's something that my students and my fellow countrymen still don't get. Ulysses S. Grant was bewildered by France, commenting after days in Paris that "there's nothing to do" (356).

My Dad was a lot like Grant, who once called himself "not a noun, but an active verb," and Dad derided the French as "Frogs." But, through the agency of his business partner Alfredo Berato, he, too came to appreciate something of this other kind of life represented by the table, the glass, the bottle, the sunset, the time spent with friends.

Seeing that this kind of Mediterranean attitude leads to financial ruin in this world of ours makes me, with Henry Adams and his compatriots, "shudder" for this world of ours.

Sovereign: Roi Noire

2011-10-02T14:45:00.000-07:00

(reflection on SOVEREIGN, third in C. J. Sansom's series of detective stories featuring Matthew Shardlake.)

In Raymond Chandler's noir novels, Marlowe narrates his pursuit of leads across LA, into clubs and bungalows and hotels, where he often meets with violence. He thinks of himself as tough and cynical, but he's never cynical enough to mistrust the right person. By the time I reach the end of a Chandler novel, I've long forgotten what Marlowe was looking for in chapter one, and I don't care: Marlowe's toughness, integrity, and naivety make him a great companion for the journey into darkness. (Read my in-depth study of Chandler http://smootpage.com/books/Chandler.htm)

England in the time of Henry VIII's brief marriage to Catherine Howard provides C. J. Sansom with a background every bit as dark and labyrinthine as 1940s LA, dominated by duplicitous and brutally violent men in authority, with cruel Henry VIII setting the tone and the agenda. Most of the action takes place in York, decorated for the King's entourage during his royal "progress" and seething with resentments and conspiracies.

So Sansom has half of the noir formula right, and I intend to read the rest of the series. Still, on the off-chance that Mr. Sansom might be Google surfing, I'll offer a couple of suggestions. While Shardlake, the "crookback" lawyer, certainly gets into physical scrapes and scary situations, he is a narrator jealous of his own authority, wrapped up in his own back-story -- pun accidental -- and cerebral. Compare him to Marlowe, who never tells us of his past and who never thinks ahead more than one step at a time. Shardlake is a Sherlock Holmes / Marlowe hybrid, and it might be better to see the next story narrated instead by Shardlake's Watson, named Barak. Sansom, through Shardlake, is a bit fussy about details of plot in this third book as in the first one. While I enjoyed the book, I often felt that we were going back over the same territory. A model better than Holmes's Watson might be Nero Wolfe's Archie Goodwin. Rex Stout was able to have his noir and intellectual games, too, having an active, impulsive, hot-tempered agent to mediate a sedentary detective's ratiocinations.

Fable: the Fool's Stolen Donkey

2011-09-05T14:33:00.000-07:00

Sunday's sermon at Saint James' Episcopal Church, Marietta, included this striking fable. The Rev. Camille Hegg told the story. This is my recollection of it.

The fool who lived outside of town had no family or friends, only a donkey. Every day, the fool saddled up his donkey with goods and walked with it into town to sell what he could sell.

One morning, he woke to find that the donkey had been stolen. That day, he trudged into town with nothing but a piece of paper. Everyone knew immediately that his donkey was missing, and they followed to see what he silently posted to the church door.

"To whoever stole my donkey: Return him, and I will give him to you."

When the villagers read what he had written, they shook their heads and called him a fool. "Why would you give the donkey to the person who stole it?"

"Because," he answered, "then I will experience the two great pleasures in life: Finding what had been lost, and sharing what I love."

Dissolution and Disillusion in Tudor Crime Novel

2011-08-22T02:44:00.000-07:00

Reflection on DISSOLUTION by C.J. Sansom (Penguin 2003).

Discovering who decapitated the King’s commissioner in the kitchen of Scarnsea Monastery is truly the least of the pleasures in this novel. The author ties up threads of the plot dutifully over the last few dozen pages; but the pleasure has been in his exploration of the story’s setting.

In England, 1536, King Henry VIII is “reforming” the Church of England away from the Church of Rome. He and his agents are violently tearing England’s population away from one set of religious traditions and doctrines, making Henry head of the church to consolidate his power. To secure his line, Henry has divorced one queen and beheaded another for adultery – his “proof” being a confession tortured out of Mark Smeaton, whose real-life ordeal figures in C. J. Sansom’s fiction. Number three is Jane Seymour, who will die bearing a son.

The “dissolution” of the title refers, first, to the literal “dissolving” of Roman Catholic monasteries and redistributing their lands to Henry’s supporters. But the title also refers to certainties of law, faith, and tradition that also dissolve during this time. Religious zealotry on both sides, Protestant and Catholic, matters less to the unfolding events than vested interest in regimes and property.

In this setting, a good-hearted agent of the King can excuse torture as a means to ensure homeland security. Different parties show “brutal certainty” in their justifications for violence. Religion is the pretext; class interest and corruption are the subtext. Published in 2003, this novel’s resonances with post-9/11 issues may be intentional.

The king’s agent is our narrator, Matthew Shardlake (read, “Sherlock”), a hunch-back and lawyer who rose from poverty and ridicule through these years of reform. He traces his ambition and self-confidence to a religious experience following a mean schoolmaster’s humiliation of him:

[When] I heard a voice inside my head, it came from inside me but was not mine. “You are not alone,” it said and suddenly a great warmth, a sense of love and peace, infused my being… (35)

Gung-ho for law and reform, and canny enough about clues, Shardlake is naïve about those who are nominally on his side. His Watson is Mark Poer, an appealing and ambitious young man whose growing doubts about his master Shardlake cause friction. Shardlake's disillusionment with reform and with his protege are the emotional core of the story.

In many ways, this is the story of the detective’s education. A “Sodomite” monk, gay Gabriel, is viewed at first with disgust, but ultimately with sympathy for a good man who “never chose to be this way.” An Arab doctor, convert from Islam, figures strongly in the story, and Shardlake learns to trust him. He gradually learns to mistrust his King and his employer.

These Medieval times have provided rich backdrops for Ellis Peters’ “Brother Cadfael” series, and Umberto Eco’s blockbuster The Name of the Rose. There are echoes of Eco here, including a passing reference to a classical book that was integral to Rose, but Sansom is more interested in the story than in its texture. In that regard, he lies a bit right of center on a spectrum between Ellis Peters and Eco.

Collage Credit

2011-07-31T15:18:00.000-07:00

Atlanta's High Museum of Art is currently exhibiting water colors by American John Marin, and sculptures by Atlanta resident Radcliffe Bailey. Both use collage in their technique, but for different purposes. One artist creates a collage from images of his own, as a way to capture an experience. The other uses objects and images found to tell personal stories or insights.

I find, once again, that collage is a great technique for making interesting art out of mediocre pieces.


M. Susan Rouse used a Warhol app. on me.

Marin's earliest works on exhibit include some images of scenes in Paris and Venice drawn with meticulous detail for sale to tourists, and they do their job without conjuring atmosphere or any feeling about the objects. More interesting were some experiments with perspective, where skyscrapers or trees seem to be leaning over the path ahead. Maybe it was new with Marin; it was a cliche by the time of Looney Tunes.

Some of Marin's watercolors at the same time, around 1912, play with multiple perspectives, and these are much more interesting. One view of Maine's sea coast (a favorite subject of his) is a mosaic of perspectives, dizzying and disorienting to look at: not a bad thing for a depiction of roiling waves from above. In another watercolor, the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge seem to cut our view of the city into strips, an interesting effect leaning towards collage. He goes too far, or not far enough, with some other pictures in which different angles on a scene are drawn in blocks that jostled each other. These looked crowded, blocky,and, in color, a bit dreary. I wonder what he would have thought of layouts of frames in comic books, which play even more with close ups and angles to create a sense of action?

Bailey's work is exhibited under the title "Memory as Medicine," a neat idea. Some of the pieces were better in the explanation than in the viewing. But Bailey uses a collage technique that he calls "medicine boxes" or "medicine cabinets."    These are rectangular frames several feet wide, inches deep, a window into scenes composed of transparent photographic images, hanging objects (such as little African - style scluptures), and oil-painted scenes.   These suggested a lot, and they were interesting in color and composition, and the collage technique was interesting in itself.

One artist gave us his vision of scenes from several angles in one plane, each view juxtaposed almost as if it were a collage of palm-sized sketches. The other artist framed found objects juxtaposed to make a personal statement that, at least in some cases, remained merely personal. "You had to be there," or you had at least to read in the program about what that hat or those piano keys mean in Bailey's personal mythology. That's okay --- Yeats, Eliot, some greats did the same.

Bailey was at his best when the images carried meaning that didn't have to be footnoted. One striking collage was a painted image of a slave ship on rough sea, its deck crowded with photographs of African sculptures of Africans.

The Queen Off-Script: The Uncommon Reader

2011-07-31T13:59:00.000-07:00

Reflections on THE UNCOMMON READER, a novella by Alan Bennett (Picador 2007).

Queen Elizabeth is an actress, in “the role of a lifetime.” It’s easy to make fun of her simply by imagining her dropping character for a split second, muttering “Damn!” when she spills coffee in her lap, for example. It’s even funnier to imagine her sitting stock-still as scalding coffee burns through her yellow skirt, carrying on in a strained voice: “Milk?”

Alan Bennett, playwright, takes full advantage of comic possibility number two in his novella THE UNCOMMON READER. His Queen has played her role so long, suppressing her own thoughts until she doesn’t have any. Doing all for show, she goes where her handlers direct her, she says just what will make people feel noticed during her visit.

In Bennett’s story, she borrows a book to smooth an awkward encounter with a librarian. Then, to follow through, she reads it.

Thus begins a royal odyssey of the mind, and Elizabeth becomes first, a voracious reader, and then, a discerning reader. The script she has followed all her life loses its interest for her.

The comedy grows as the handlers try to get her back on script. Suddenly, she wants to share what she has discovered. She wants to read a poem about the Titanic for her annual Christmas message, and she asks the Archbishop to let her read a lesson. She wants the President of France to tell her more about Jean Genet (whose name and reputation are unfamiliar to Le President).

While Bennett has fun with this character he has created, he is not unkind to her. His targets are the non-readers among her staff, among political leaders, and among her obtuse subjects. As Bennett imagines it, the prime minister has an Iran policy, but knows nothing of the history of Persia. And so on.

The book seems plausible. Maybe the People and their Leaders need less news, less business, more books, and more poetry. I get what William Carlos Williams means in “Asphodel”:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

But it’s best not to take it any more seriously than Bennett himself does. It’s a lightweight book, easy to read before dinner. He doesn’t really suggest that, say, the late Harold Pinter would have made a good PM, only that lives are enriched by the way that reading takes us into lives outside our own, and certainly all of us, the People and their Leaders, need enrichment.

(See my other reflections on this “Good Art Makes Bad Politics” and “A Moment of Silence for Harold Pinter” )

Georgia Shakespeare's Tempest Unclouded

2011-07-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

Photos by Bill DeLoach. Clockwise from top left: Prospera sends Ariel on a mission; Antonio tempts Sebastian; Miranda falls in love with Ferdinand; Caliban remembers the beautiful sounds of the island.

(reflection on THE TEMPEST, produced by the Georgia Shakespeare Festival, directed by Sharon Ott.)

Clarity and lightness made this TEMPEST what Shakespeare intended: a gradual emergence of warm sunshine after a violent storm. It can make one laugh and cry to see a tangle of recrimination, resentment, loss, envy, revenge, and disappointment melt away to repentance and reconciliation.

Director Sharon Ott and her designers used Native American and South Pacific island motifs – feather headdresses, simple white robes, straw teepees and a vortex of straw to make the mouth of “Prospera’s” cell.

Sorcerer is sorceress in this production, but, as performed by Carolyn Cook, “Prospera” was easy to accept both as powerful Duchess of Milan and affectionate parent to daughter Miranda – played by Caitlin McWethy as a self-confident teenaged girl. Cook showed tears through anger as she dealt with the rebellion of her adopted son Caliban. When Miranda falls in love with exuberant young Ferdinand (Casey Hoekstra), Cook earned laughs alternating quickly between stern chaperone and delighted parent.

Atlanta’s veteran actor Chris Kayser played Ariel – tall, big-voiced, and the oldest actor on stage, he seemed an odd choice to play the original airy fairy. But then he brought out all the rich extremes in Ariel’s lines. There’s rapid-fire imagery of, well, rapid fire. His delight in his own power is suddenly interrupted by moments of resentment and – most tellingly – human sympathy. Ariel utters the line that I would cite as proof the actor Shakespeare and not some upper-class poet really did write these plays: Near play’s end, having been told that he will soon be liberated from service to Prospera, Ariel boasts how fast he will be with a list of rhymed lines that end with a plaintive question, “Dost thou love me? No?” The line doesn't make sense for a reader, but for an actor playing a character who has ADD on a cosmic scale, it makes the moment and defines the relationship between Ariel and Prospera.

As Caliban, Neal A. Ghant seemed to draw on memories of the scents and sounds and feelings that would make up the world for this half-animal character. Bent down and half-crawling throughout the play, Caliban gets a great moment in Ott’s staging: when he comes to understand that he is a man, he straightens up.

For the rest of the cast, we have the arrogant younger brothers, the grieving King Alonso, and the well-intentioned chatterer Gonzalo. Their first big scene together hit all the right notes: Alonso in mourning, Gonzalo trying to cheer the king up and the younger brothers mocking both Gonzalo and King. It builds to the King’s saying, “You cram these words into my ear...!” Accepting that the blame is his for the adventure that has ended in disaster, he adds, “So is the dearest of the loss.”

Caliban's slapstick cohorts Trinculo and Stefano -- think Laurel and Hardy -- rounded out the cast. I think eighth grader Thom McGlathery was funnier in a production I directed at St. Andrew's School in 1983, especially on the line, "I do smell all horse piss, at which my nose is in great indignation."

A cast of “islanders” sing and dance to pleasant incidental music and clear choral text-settings by “Sound Designer” Stephen LeGrand. A high point was the musical presentation of a banquet that has to disappear suddenly. Shakespeare doesn’t tell how that’s to be done, directing that it disappears “by a quaint device.” In Ott’s version, the table appeared, disappeared and reappeared (tilted towards us – a nice, odd, magical touch) – all in seconds, using nothing more than some candelabras, plates, goblets, and a single table cloth. Simple, brilliant.

More than entertainment, this play should be included among the texts revered in the Anglican Communion. Written within decades of the first revised Book of Common Prayer, THE TEMPEST dramatizes theology. Sin is viewed as more than an act or a crime, but as a sickness that poisons relationships and the sinner’s own thinking. The bad guys are called to a banquet which is then taken away until they acknowledge their sins and ask forgiveness. Isn’t that communion? Beautifully, when reconciliation comes at the end, Gonzalo observes that “we have all come back to ourselves” who were “Lost.” And of course, there’s the theology of creation that’s at the heart of Anglican theology. This island is “very good,” and Miranda exclaims that famous line, seeing humans for the first time, “O Brave New World that hath such creatures in it!”

One last note: I loved the way Caitlin McWethy delightedly tapped the lens of Gonzalo’s glasses when she examined the “creatures.”

Hedgehog More Music Than Novel

2011-06-30T06:05:00.000-07:00

(reflections on THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery, translated from French by Alison Anderson. Europa paperback 2010 edition.)

What makes life worth living? Renee Michel, a woman on the declining side of fifty and Paloma Josse, a girl looking ahead to thirteen, both consider this question. They remain largely unaware of each other until mid-way through THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery.

The story is how their two approaches to the question converge. The catalyst for convergence is the arrival of Mr. Kakuro Ozu, director of Japanese art films, who takes a floor in the upscale Paris apartment building where Mme. Michel is concierge and Paloma lives with her family.

Aside from this slender plot, this is less of a story than a series of essays that develop certain themes and motifs like music. The form would be a kind of rondo – ABABAB -- with narrative by Renee in two or three short chapters, followed by Paloma’s "profound thoughts" and journal entries, often begun with haiku.

Like music, there are broad themes, and little motifs. Certainly a broad theme is the deep rooted class system maintained among even the most “lefty” Parisians, Paloma’s own parents. Renee’s whole life is defined by her class. She seeks to remain invisible to the people of her building by keeping quiet and acting churlish, the way they expect her to be. It is Paloma, with help from the Japanese visitor, who realizes that their rebarbative “hedgehog” is actually hiding a secret appetite for art, music, and philosophy (143).

Another broad theme is what Paloma calls “the fishbowl.” The adults in her life – “emotionally anorexic” grandmother, guilty father, pretentious mother and sister, "inept" teacher, fearful psychologist -- swim in circles seeing only reflections of themselves (145). Like Mme. Michel, Paloma hides, eventually learning that the conciergerie is the best place for her to be invisible. No one knows that Paloma has secretly resolved not to live past her thirteenth birthday.

Smaller motifs play off the themes: Japanese culture, both classic and pop; camellias; randy dogs and lethargic but decorative cats; grammar as something to appreciate in the loveliness of language, which should not be “reduced to a long series of technical exercises” (156); and Tolstoy – his art, but also his character who, “feeling the sweat on his back,” learns to appreciate how the lower classes live.

It’s no surprise when these two lonely, questing feameles find the worth of living when they begin to find each other.

Art itself is another reason to live. Paloma grows rapturous when she hears her middle-school choir sing, beautiful in spite of the fact that all the individuals are stupid or bothersome (185). Renee is “knocked out” by a still life painting (203), which, on reflection, she calls a symbol of the “plenitude” of the “suspended moment”(203). She repeats the idea, derived from Japanese movie making, that “art is life, playing to other rhythms" (276).

With rhythm, texture, color, and its interplay of motifs, THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG can be enjoyed page by page without ever involving one as a novel.

Good Actors Make Good COMPANY

2011-06-28T08:03:00.000-07:00

"Who's high?" Neil Patrick Harris as "Robert," Jon Cryer as "David," and Jennifer Laura Thompson as "Jenny" perform at the 2011 New York Philharmonic Orchestra Spring Gala Benefit Performance Of Stephen Sondheim's "Company" at Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center on April 7, 2011 in New York City.

Photo by Dario Cantatore/Getty Images North America

(This is a further reflection on COMPANY. See previous post.)

There’s a subtle moment in the musical COMPANY, after unmarried Robert has introduced friends Jenny and David to recreational drug use. It’s uproar, until Jenny worries that they’ll wake the kids. She leaves for the kitchen. David refuses another reefer, because “Jenny didn’t like it. “ But Robert observes that Jenny got very high and had a great time. David corrects him. “She liked it for me.” He leaves to help in the kitchen. All Robert has to say is, “Wow. Oh, wow.”

How does the actor playing Robert perform a line like that? “Wow. Oh, wow.” What does it mean? I’ve seen productions of COMPANY where the actor said the lines in a tone of generic disbelief. Those productions fell flat.

But in the recently broadcast film of a concert-staging of COMPANY, actor Neil Patrick Harris made clear that “Wow, oh wow” means a combination of “Wow, you can’t do what you want when you’re married,” and, “Wow, Jenny risked herself to please David, and David just sacrificed his preferences to please Jenny.” Harris and his costars also gave us a strong sense that there’s something deep going on that Robert can’t even begin to fathom.

How does a good actor do it? I can explain, having played “David” in COMPANY back at Duke University in 1978. I’d thought I was a good actor: I memorized my lines, figured out where the jokes were, and punched those up the same way in every rehearsal and performance.

Then my “Jenny,” a wise student actress named Wendi Bukowitz, invited me to her apartment for dinner in character as husband and wife. This struck me as a silly, pretentious idea. But then we, as actors, discussed how we, as husband and wife, met each other, how we spend our days, how we know Robert, and even how our apartment is laid out. Then we had dinner in character, talking about our day.

It still seemed like a useless exercise, until rehearsals. Suddenly, there were all kinds of communications going on between us behind Robert’s back, but picked up by the audience. She glanced up to Junior’s room, and I knew what she was silently telling me. I made an innocuous statement, and she picked up the message, “I love you. I’ll do the right thing.”

In our tiny studio theatre, the audience easily picked up on the subtleties of our performance, and the local critic singled out our scene for the ways we communicated feelings under the dialogue – what actors call “subtext.”

In the concert COMPANY, and also in the DVD of John Doyle’s Broadway revival of the show, the actors all do a great job of communicating the subtext.

Perhaps COMPANY is too subtle to be appreciated where audiences can’t see those sidelong glances and locked gazes, where a camera doesn’t focus on the actor who says nothing while the others prattle. That might explain how the conventional wisdom about COMPANY has been so wrong for so long. Even in recent blog postings, it’s a given that COMPANY is a “cynical” show with weak script, clever but heartless songs by Stephen Sondheim, and “the kinds of characters you avoid at cocktail parties.” Conventional wisdom holds that the creators of the show palliated its anti-marriage message by tacking on Robert’s final prayer, “Somebody hold me too close… Somebody make me aware of being alive.”

But the conventional wisdom has been wrong for forty years. “Being Alive” is a breakthrough: Robert is the last one at the party to “get it.” Finally, he reads the subtext.

COMPANY on Film: Review

2011-06-28T07:55:00.000-07:00

(reflection on the filmed presentation of COMPANY, book by George Furth, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, originally directed by Harold Prince. Presented at Avery Fischer Hall by the New York Philharmonic, directed by Lonny Price, conducted by Paul Gemignani.)

I'm pleased to announce, after all these years, that my favorite Sondheim show is, hands down, COMPANY. NIGHT MUSIC has those elegant waltzes, SWEENEY TODD all that glorious heart-pumping music in every scene, FOLLIES those layers of reality, SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE its lovely treatment of the themes of art, family, and mortality.

But today, sitting in a movie theatre to see a broadcast on the big screen of the entire show, I'm ready to commit.

In an interview with Terry Gross about the concert version of COMPANY, Stephen Colbert divulged that he and the other cast members didn't understand until the first rehearsal that this was going to be more than a staged reading of the show. They rehearsed two weeks. So I expected some laughs from George Furth's best zingers, and a glorious sound from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and a miss-matched bunch of TV actors hamming and missing cues.. Instead, I saw an ensemble committed to making their characters distinct and real. The care that went into each moment was moving, all by itself, apart from the script and score.

Director Lonny Price staged this musical with variety and focus, though he had to do the whole show on a narrow horizontal strip between orchestra and front row. The play features five married couples and their single friend Robert, so the set consisted of five 1970s - modern sofas for two stripped in chromium and rolling easily into configurations to make separate living rooms, or a restaurant, or a parade.

TV stars well known to others have been dinged by some on-line critics for giving merely serviceable performances, and I'm surprised. I have more to say about their acting, in another post.

RENT: Quaint

2011-06-14T14:50:00.000-07:00

L-R, front row: John Stewart as "Benny," Michael K. Harry as "Collins," Felicia Boswell as "Mimi," Stanley Allyn Owen as "Roger," and Maxim Gukhman as "Mark." Image from Atlanta Lyric Theatre's Facebook page.

(Reflections on RENT, book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson.)

I've recently seen FOLLIES and RENT. FOLLIES (previous post) was written in 1971 about old people haunted by memories of the 1930s and 1940s. RENT opened in the mid-1990s just after the death of its young creator Jonathan Larson. But RENT is the one that feels more dated.

The production by Atlanta Lyric Theatre at the Earl Smith Strand Theatre in Marietta, Georgia, was energetically performed by a cast of strong singers, all of them earnest actors, dressed in a variety of the uniforms worn by defiant non-conformists under thirty. Enunciation was clear, dancing was energetic and virile in that fist-pumping way that we’ve come to expect from modern performers. Scaffolding climbed the stage’s bricked walls to create the urban milieu of the story. The rock band rocked; the lights directed our attention to the right places.

But the rock music had a quaint feel. It has become the music of men with thinning hair and AARP cards. (I was shocked to hear an eighth grader say, “What’s the music going to be? I hope it’s not rock.”) Worse, the high-strung emotion of the emotional songs, and the attitude of the defiant anthems, complete with middle-finger, all seemed generalized, just what we'd expect from rock anthems of this or that type. We applauded the performers emotional sounds; we didn’t share them.

One character mentions that he’s on AZT, a drug that I haven’t heard mentioned in so long that I’d forgotten about it. It was once the only hope for slowing the once-inevitable progress of the AIDs virus.

The sub-plot of transvestite Angel and his lover Collins got more laughs and more tears than other couples in the story. From their initial attraction through the deepening of their affection, this story seemed real. The principal romance between Roger and Mimi, starting over a candle (a device borrowed from the show’s source, La Boheme), seemed much less substantial. So far as I could tell, Roger liked the shape of her rear end, and she liked cocaine. The ups and downs of their relationship just didn’t mean much.

One character made perfect sense, all the way through: Bad guy "Benny," played with fierce presence and often affable demeanor by John Stewart, was clear in his intentions, his self-justification, and his mixed feelings.

Larson knew his Broadway as well as his rock. The show clarified and perked up whenever the music was driven by character, not the beat. There were those Bernstein / Sondheim places where several groups of characters sang different lyrics and different material in counterpoint. There were pastiches, such as the amusing “Tango: Maureen” and “email” messages from characters’ parents. “I’ll Cover You,” sung by Angel and Collins, was rousing and touching. When Roger and Mimi stopped yelling and whispered, “I should tell you, I should tell you…,” they were at their most interesting.

That’s what they were singing at the inevitable death of Mimi, and I was tearing up. It works in La Boheme, too, as the tenor, realizing that she has died, sings just one word, “Mimi!” and the curtain falls. So, what happened after Roger sang “Mimi” in RENT seemed like a cheap trick from some light comedy.

”Seasons of Love,” which opens the second act, is as good as the show gets, encapsulating the show’s best intentions in one lovely anthem.

Kennedy Center's FOLLIES: Haunting and Haunted

2011-06-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

(reflections on the musical FOLLIES at Kennedy Center June 4. Book by James Goldman, Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, originally directed in 1971 by Harold Prince, co-directed by Michael Bennett.)

Eliot Elisofson's photo of Gloria Swanson in the wreckage of the Roxy Theatre. In the
mid-1960s, this image was an inspiration for James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim's FOLLIES.

FOLLIES is a ghost story. I found the Kennedy Center's production to be haunted by images of earlier productions. To be fair, a show about aging performers of the Thirties and Forties confronting death and lost ideals may never again be quite so poignant as it was in 1971, when it starred aging performers of the Thirties and Forties.

My three companions, who had no such preconceptions, laughed, shuddered, and teared up at all the right moments.

The audience enters KC’s Eisenhower Theatre to find the walls and proscenium shrouded with loose-hanging safety curtains. The jagged wreck of the stage’s apron overhangs the orchestra pit.   We are in the fictional “Weissman Theatre,” once glamorous and soon to be demolished for a parking lot.

Doom-filled chords begin the “Prologue” and the shroud lifts to reveal a statuesque chorine in glittery gray. As the music hushes to an eerie waltz (one of Sondheim’s most evocative pieces), more ghostly chorines appear and join in a delicate ballet.

The ghosts never leave the stage, even during intermission, and aged characters are shadowed by ghosts of their youthful selves. These ghosts re-enact songs and scenes of the past, and play important roles in the drama of two couples who come to a “first and last reunion” at the theatre.

The story is simple: Sally married Buddy, and Phyllis married Ben, but now Sally has come to the reunion to recapture “the time [she] was happy” by recapturing Ben. In this crisis, each character has to confront the realization that, at mid-life, their lives have been “time wasted, merely passing through.”

Reviews of the original 1971 Broadway production often disparaged James Goldman’s book and the “book” songs in Sondheim’s score, saving the most positive comments for Sondheim’s “pastiche” songs, those written in the style of earlier Broadway composers. Viewing this production, my companions and I had the reverse reaction.

James Goldman’s script gives us a dozen characters’ back stories in brief bits of dialogue, peppered with zingers.   Scene by scene, Sally reveals the depth of her delusions.     Ben’s veneer of accomplishment wears away until he reveals that he feels like a phony, and so he has never experienced love (as opposed to affairs and flings).   Only the reconciliations at the end seemed too quick, too neat; two of my friends came to Goldman’s defense, feeling that the characters were returning home with their eyes opened: not a happy ending, but a chastened beginning of the rest of their lives.

In Sondheim’s “book” songs, the characters reveal what they think – or like to think – of themselves.   “The road you didn’t take never comes to mind, does it?” asks Ben. “In Buddy’s eyes, I’m young, I’m beautiful,” sings Sally. “It was always real, and I’ve always loved you this much,” promises Ben to Sally. Buddy sings about how good life is “when you’ve got the right girl,” but then can’t finish the refrain, “And I’ve got….” After kicking chairs in frustration, performer Danny Burstein ended the song in tears.

By the time Phyllis sings to Ben, “Could I leave you? Yes!” the drama has reached an impasse.   A curtain falls, the characters and their ghosts intermingle, all yelling recriminations at each other, and suddenly, that curtain is ripped down to reveal arches of giant red-pink roses spanning the stage.

This production’s principals, choreographer and dancers really nailed those “Follies” numbers that bring the show to a climax. The chorus sang “Loveland” while the two couples wandered, dazed, about the stage. The young couples sang clearly, charmingly, in the double-duet “You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow / Love Will See Us Through.” Bernadette Peters sang “Losing My Mind” with quiet intensity, not moving from her spot stage center; Ron Raines as “Ben” sang and danced “Live, Laugh, Love” with requisite confidence – before the dance falls apart. Standouts of the evening were Danny Burstein in “Buddy’s Blues,” whose clarity, enthusiasm, and inspired athletic antics with two girl dancers made me laugh at this number as if it were new to me. Jan Maxwell, as the femme fatale surrounded by fawning, leaping boys, made “Lucy and Jessie” the showstopper of the evening.

Between episodes in the slow-motion collision of the two couples, FOLLIES gives us old girls singing and dancing their old songs, always shadowed by their younger selves.   These numbers were high-points of the original production; here, they came close to dispelling all the ghostly atmosphere and dramatic tension that director Eric Schaeffer and his cast had been at pains to create.

A few times, the numbers worked as the creators intended.   A delightful pair of elderly performers, “The Whitmans” (played by Susan Watson and Terrence Currier) sang a cute “specialty” tap song – “Listen to the rain on the roof go pit-pitty-pat” -- as if happy to be remembering their days of modest success. Upstage, their youthful “ghosts” performed the dance with grace that the older pair no longer could match.

“One More Kiss” reaches its musical climax on the phrase, “All things beautiful must die,” and the truth of that line is proven in the music, the image, and even in the casting: aged soprano Rosalind Elias, her voice strong but husky, takes the low note in harmony while her “ghost’s” more supple and clear voice reaches much higher.   Throughout her number, even as she sang the words, “Never look back,” Miss Elias was looking back with longing at her younger self. At the end of the song, during the applause, she seemed to be lost in a painful memory, and she wandered off stage, looking a bit lost. (In the Broadway revival of 2001, a young man touched the elderly soprano on the arm, and tugged her gently towards the exit, while she peered back plaintively into the darkness of the house – the most memorable moment of that production.)

The “mirror song” (“Who’s That Woman?”) brings a chorus line of flabby, stiff or haggard women into step with their younger selves. One of my friends teared up to see this; I was struck by the image of spry “Mrs. Whitman” stumbling, disoriented, while her younger self twirled behind her.

But other stars of the show punched holes right through the fourth wall, as if they were trying to win over the audience at a benefit concert. Regine, unsteady on her feet, anchored herself to a spot stage left and delivered "Ah, Paris!" sans enthusiasm (or consonants), and then paused to receive her expected allotment of applause. Linda Lavin, swathed in a tight, shiny gold dress, belted "Broadway Baby" and even raised the pitch an octave for a grand smash. But the song loses a lot of its interest if the aged singer who swears to "stick it till I'm on a bill all over Times Square" appears to be a confident, healthy, glamorous star. The woman for whom it was written, Ethel Shutte, had lived those lines. At seventy-five, she had once been a performer of the real Ziegfeld follies, a has – been, or a never-quite-was. To see that old lady up there in her matronly skirt, finally getting her (last) chance to be in a "great, big, Broadway show" was wonderful, funny, and heart-breaking at the same time.

Diva Elaine Paige's version of “I’m Still Here” likewise suffered in comparison to earlier versions.   In the original, Yvonne De Carlo had lived much of what she was singing about, no one more the “sloe eyed vamp” than she in her 1950s film roles, and no role more “camp” than “Lily Munster” in the then-recent TV sitcom. In the 2001 production, Polly Bergen and her director got it just right: For the first half of the song, the character was regaling laughing guests at the party. She left them laughing with, “I got through Shirley Temple, and I’m here,” and retreated to a spotlight downstage left, close to the audience. There, she sang to us the more rueful verses that begin, “I’ve been through Reno, I’ve been through Beverly Hills….” Paige didn’t seem to get that concept. Worse, to achieve the illusion of spontaneity, she stretched the end phrase every time, an annoying affectation. The introspective part was just a generalized belt-fest, not an expression of character.

Perhaps no production of FOLLIES can be what that first one was. This one probably came as close as possible.

Heads You Lose: The Detective Novel from the Sidelines

2011-05-22T13:47:00.000-07:00

(Reflections on HEADS YOU LOSE by Lisa Lutz and David Heyward)

What happens when you have to suspend your suspension of disbelief?

This novel follows a sister and brother, both twenty-somethings, as they deal with an inconvenient headless corpse that shows up on their property one night, and again after they think they've disposed of it.

At each chapter's end, we cut away from the story to read snarky comments from one collaborator to the other. Lutz has published detective fiction before; Heyward, her ex, has published at least one poem before in 1996, in Harper's, on page 32, as he reminds her. According to her, he loses plot lines in his efforts at character development; according to him, she kills off all the best characters.

The result is all the fun of a detective novel, with some of the fun of creating one. I've plotted one mystery myself, once, in collaboration with seventeen eighth-graders. I know the frustration of characters and plot that don't seem to be going the way you want them to go, and the exhilaration of finding a thread that connects all the random pieces anyway.

The two pleasures dovetail in this novel's denouement, along with the added pleasure of discovering that the title is apt in more ways than one.

Wendell Berry's Detective Novel

2011-03-10T11:32:00.000-08:00

(Reflections on A WORLD LOST by Wendell Berry, (2008))

Image from Counterpoint Press edition

The framework for Wendell Berry's A WORLD LOST is that of a detective novel.

Andy Catlett, fictional chronicler of many of Wendell Berry's fictions of Port William, Kentucky, remembers fondly the uncle Andrew for whom he was named, and the afternoon when he learned that Uncle Andrew had been shot to death. Very young at the time, he accepted the family's line about a disagreement over a job.

The book hardly proceeds in a linear fashion Andy admits that his childhood memories are like the "illuminated capital letters" at the starts of chapters in a children's book -- recalled apart from each other, without supporting detail. As an older man, he searches scraps of memory and artifacts to piece together what really happened.

Now, I read the book a few months ago, and enjoyed it, but I don't remember the answers to Andy's questions. Who killed Uncle Andrew? Had he propositioned a man's underage daughter -- or was that just an excuse, or a rumor? I don't recall. But then, I rarely do recall the solutions to mystery novels.

What I do recall is the character of the uncle, and it's clear that he was trouble waiting to happen. Isn't it Hercule Poirot who says that you find out more about the killing by finding out more about the victim?

Uncle Andrew "overflows" attempts by his well-meaning parents and brother to inhibit him. Andy recalls with a mixture of shock and pleasure how this uncle "infused with glandular intensity" the seven-year-old boy's shy daydream about a girl. The boy is bewildered, and yet "pleased to be carried away on the big stream of his laughter."

His uncle "carries uproar with him wherever he goes." Flirtatious, given to excesses of drink, wildly impulsive, he's dangerous. Once some cocky teenage boys step into the road to force him to stop and offer them a ride, but he simply accelerates, chasing them off the road and then up the bank.

Naturally, a novel that probes death and memory turns into a rumination on mortality. Like mystery novelist Walter Mozley, Berry tells us through Andy that "life does not begin with itself," and it carries on after life ends: Home is not a place, but "also that company of immortals with whom I have lived here day by day...."

Not Who You Are, But What You Serve: Two Novels by Wendell Berry

2011-03-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

(Reflections on NATHAN COULTER (2008) and MEMORY OF OLD JACK (1974 and 1999) by Wendell Berry.)

Just when I was thinking that the people of Wendell Berry's community of Port William were too noble to be true, along comes this fictional memoir by "Nathan" (son of Jarrad, nephew of my favorite character Burley). It's full of people behaving badly, irascibly, cruelly, even dirtily.

The novel begins in a boy's dream of a lion with his Grampa's blue eyes, crouched and roaring outside their family home. By the end of the novel, the boy is in his teens. The story in between contains sordid episodes including a long sequence at an ugly carnival side show. But the action is the way that Uncle Burley and others step up to take care of Nathan when his mother dies and the grief-stricken and angry father Jarrad fall away. The older brother, called "Brother" early on, also withdraws. This is the Tom Coulter who will perish in the Second World War. Nathan, we know, will go on to marry Hannah, and thereby hangs another novel.

In fact, I understand that NATHAN COULTER was Berry's first novel, and that the rest of the Port William world formed around it.

MEMORY OF OLD JACK is more complicated. Like Updike's SEEK MY FACE, and also like a couple of wonderful stories by Berry, this novel moves forward on two tracks. We follow old Jack Beecham in present time, from his waking in a chair at a window, before sunrise, to his return to that chair at darkness. As he walks haltingly from the store to the barber shop and through the town that day, his mind wanders from turning point to turning point in his memory, from early memories of men going off to the Civil War onward to the day that his closest family members convince him to retire at a "hotel" in town. We sometimes see Old Jack through the eyes of characters who love him: Mat Feltner (second oldest man in the community) and Wheeler Catlett.

Among Berry's characters, Jack is oldest and far from wisest. But he comes to learn, by marrying the wrong woman and by mistakes that put him in deep debt, that distinction in life comes "not by what he was or anything that he might become but by what he served." Berry means, the land, but also the community of those who serve the land.

Berry often links Jack's inner world to the natural one. As a young man, Jack reins in a powerful horse...

And Jack feels that same checked and conserved abundance in himself, his shoulders pressing againstthe good broadcloth of his suit. The whole country around him, in fact, is full of it, the abounding of energy and desire...

At church, in the company of girls and young women.

His consciousness hovers and moves now over the congregation, like a bee over a patch of flowers, in search of nectar, alert to what is bright and sweet and open.

Much later, his fury reflects that of a stream in flash flood, and he recklessly drives his team of mules into the raging water -- a scene that one reads breathlessly.

In his marriage to a woman who shares the beliefs of the prevailing culture that all of civilization should be about acquiring the means to rise above hard work, Jack comes to embody the plight of Port William as a last stand against the engulfing commercial world.

We Loves You, Porgy

2011-03-09T11:42:00.000-08:00

(reflections on the March 4 performance of PORGY and BESS by George Gershwin, with libretto by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, produced by the Altanta Opera Company. Also reflection on Pierre Ruhes' review and comments at Arts Critic Atlanta.)

photo from ArtsCriticAtlanta.org

Atlanta Opera Company's recent PORGY AND BESS dispelled the doubts I'd had about the work going into it. I'd always felt that Gershwin and his collaborators overstuffed its two acts with melodies and incidents and lost their focus. This was the line recently taken by Atlanta Critic Pierre Ruhe.

But this production made clear the opera's sharp focus on opposites in the world of Catfish Row, richly underscored by contrasts in Gershwin's music: upright religion versus underworld sensuality, gospel versus jazz, "Doctor Jesus" versus Sportin' Life, women versus men, town versus country, work versus release. In two amusing episodes, there'a also white versus black: whites cynical, bullying, speaking their terse lines; blacks wary, submissive, singing their responses.

Gershwin's music establishes a chiaroscuro design. In just the first couple of minutes, Gershwin opposes the pounding piano of the dance hall against the fond yearnings of hope and religious faith in "Summertime." The mother's dreamy lullabye contrasts minutes later to the father's mocking one. Men roll dice to a quirky, percussive music that pervades the act, and Gershwin eventually layers the strains of "Summertime" over the gambling music as the first scene reaches its climax.

Porgy is the fulcrum of the structure. His music sets him apart. Calls of "here comes Porgy" and a swelling of good feeling with lively music mark the crippled man's entrance on his little pallet with wheels. The stage is crowded with the men who are gambling, and the women who are disapproving, and the merchants selling their wares. Porgy is asking about Bess, consort of the thug Crown, and someone asks if he's "soft on Bess." Porgy replies, "No, no, brudder, Porgy ain't sof' on no woman," and then all action on stage is suspended as Porgy begins this odd and wonderful little piece:

They pass by singin', they pass by cryin', always lookin'.

They look in my do' an' they keep on movin'.
When Gawd make cripple, He mean him to be lonely.

Night time, day time, He got to trabble dat lonesome road.

Night time, day time, He got to trabble dat lonesome road.

It's not a full-fledged song, and it's not recitative. Up to the word "movin'," it's a series of short phrases that rise and fall, interrupted by harsh orchestral echoes of the two-syallable words "singin'" and "cryin'." They sound like alarm bells. Then the line soars from "God" to "lonely," before falling back to the mournful repeated lines.

Then action resumes, a story of how Porgy comes to be Bess's protector, and he grows into full life at last.

Bess teeters between the opposites of this world, rejected by the righteous women, abused by the criminal men. Caring for Porgy and for the orphaned child of Clara, she gains some measure of self-respect and sympathy from the audience. Then a snort of "happy dust" is all it takes for her to abandon all to follow Sportin' Life to New York, where she'll likely be merchandise for Sportin' Life's new line of work.

If we try to see the opera as a love story between Porgy and Bess, we'll be disappointed. Porgy's caring for Bess is just the expression of a faith (not a religion) that matters to the opera's creators.

Porgy -- with Jake and Clara -- marks the sweet spot between the cruel self-righteous religion of the women and the cruel self-absorbed hedonism of Crown and Sportin' Life. His faith is naive in its beliefs, but it is also a source for true courage and goodness.

This production was noted nation-wide for its use of luminous photographic projections on two vast frames. These allowed action to shift in an instant from Catfish Row in the shadows of Charleston's fine old homes, to the shuttered interior of the church, to the lush green Kittiwa Island. Video footage of a hurricane illustrated Gershwin's evocative storm music.

It may have been the uncluttered stage that helped make clear Gershwin's intentions in this production in a way that other productions I've seen have failed to do.

Imagine All the People: Good Art is Bad Politics

2011-01-12T05:14:00.000-08:00

(reflections on Stephen L. Carter's book THE VIOLENCE OF PEACE: AMERICA'S WARS IN THE AGE OF OBAMA excerpted in NEWSWEEK, Wendell Berry's fiction, and a review by James Seaton in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Dec. 20, 2010, of THE SOUTHERN CRITICS: AN ANTHOLOGY edited by Glenn C. Arbery.)

Imagine, John Lennon sings, no possessions, all the people living as one, in peace. Or, with the essayists of the 1930s known as the Southern Agrarians, imagine...

...such things as attachment to place from generation to generation, the traditions and communities that sprang up around such attachments, attunement to the rhythms of nature and its contingencies, strong bonds of kinship, a sense of the sacred, and indifference to an abstract idea of wealth understood in terms of monetary values (Seaton 33).

That entire list of themes is detectable in Wendell Berry's wonderful fictions. Even in a single episode of A PLACE ON EARTH, kinfolk come to help a young mother rebuild after a violent rush of flood water has swept her little daughter away and after the father, having failed to protect her, has left in shame. The mother continues to care for the animals alone while a cousin repairs the flood damage, and the town's lawyer frees her from the clutches of an absentee landlord who cared more about money than about his land or the people on it.

But, realistic as a fiction writer's style may be, attentive to minute details, evoking the most appealing ideals, it's still not reality. We artists are gods to our characters, and we set the parameters for the choices they can make. Our own preferences will shape their worlds.

That's why artists -- including essayists and those performance artists that we call "commentators" -- would be scary in political office. In a book explaining how little difference there is between Obama and Bush on war and security issues, Stephen Carter writes...

The need to pick from among several unappealing ways to defend the nation is what separates presidents from pundits. I believe that much of the virulent hatred directed at president Obama's predecessor, and at Obama himself, arises from a rejection of this proposition. To the hater, the world is simple, not complex. The answers are obvious. "If the president were only as clear-eyed and wise as I am," the protester thinks, "he would see the world as it truly is, and make better decisions." (Carter 35).

The same principle applies to such political questions of the proper balance between individual responsibility and communal responsibility. It's utopian to "imagine no possessions" and sharing among us all; but it's equally utopian to imagine that everyone who works hard can get ahead, or that, by denying help we are somehow preserving American virtues of hard work. Remember how Theodore Roosevelt modified his doctrinaire belief in laissez-faire policies when Jacob Riis took him on a tour through the squalid homes of immigrant families, who labored as hard as anyone and who yet could not catch up, much less get ahead.

Besides, someone else's virtue isn't our business. See how ridiculous it was for the Southern Agrarian Andrew Lytle to exhort all Southerners to give up "motor-cars, picture shows, chain-store dresses... [and] Sears-Roebuck catalogues" (33). A modern day progressive wrote a book asking in the title, What's wrong with Kansas? The perception of such a condescending attitude in Mr. Obama and more in his supporters, more than any policy, is what rankles conservatives.

Seaton, regarding the Southern Agrarians, concludes that

it would be a mistake to take the guidance of literary intellectuals urging either a leap into an (imagined) utopia of the future or a return to a (largely mythical) past.... [They] are often wise when they write about literature and about family and personal relationships, but not so wise when they address large political and social questions (33).

Ironically, just four pages after those words in this conservative news magazine, we find another reviewer, Nathan Harden, approving author Charles Hill's idea that "blindness to literary insight is the Achilles' heel of pure political science" (37). I suppose any kind of blindness is bad in political discourse. Let the political leaders read literature, including the Bible, but let's not take the writers and priests for political leaders.

Grief and Belief: Three Pages from Wendell Berry

2011-01-09T06:15:00.000-08:00

http://forums.catholic.com

(reflections on A PLACE ON EARTH by Wendell Berry, published by Counterpoint.)

This morning I was surprised by grief, a sudden tipping from contentedness to tears. Wendell Berry's compassionate but measured writing was a catalyst that unleashed feelings I've held in since Dad died.

This cold Saturday morning, I opened A PLACE ON EARTH to a dogeared page where I'd left off last weekend, midway through the book. Though it has no plot, this book does have a story: the young men of the town are away at World War II, and Virgil Feltner is missing in action. Now, in a section called "A Comforter," the town's preacher calls on the home of Mat and Margaret Feltner, Bible in hand, to speak the expected words of comfort for a family in mourning. Virgil's wife Hannah is there, too, living with her husband's parents.

It's almost a comedy of manners, because the comforter is the one who needs to be put at ease. We see how his arrival interrupts the family's daily work, as Margaret puts aside the dishes, and Mat has to shed muddy boots and to wash up before he can come join the family. Until all of the family can sit down, talk is of the weather, of the day, of anything but Virgil.

Berry doesn't play it for laughs, though. We see from the preacher's point of view. "The preacher feels himself drawn again, helplessly, into the stream of pastime conversation, which moves by no force of its own but by a determination in all of them against silence." With every new turn of the conversation, he feels his own failure. But when he does announce why he has come, talk stops, and Margaret "touches the tips of her fingers lightly to the side of her face." He speaks at them...

...like a man walking before a strong wind, moved no longer by his intention but by the force of what he is saying. ...But beneath the building edifice of his meaning, he is aware of something failing between them. ...He feels that the force of his voice is turning back toward himself, that he is fleeing into the safe coherence of his own words....(98)

Then focus shifts to the father, Mat. He has kept at bay the knowledge that his son is lost, and the preacher has let it loose. The preacher speaks of heaven, a hope beyond their lives, and that's where the preacher's mind is as he speaks.

But in this hope--this last simplifying rest-giving movement of the mind-- Mat realizes that he is not free, and never has been. He is doomed to hope in the world, in the bonds of his own love. ...His hope of Heaven must be the hope of a man bound to the world that his life is not ultimately futile or ultimately meaningless, a hope more burdening than despair. (99)

That hope can be more burdensome than despair -- that strikes me as true, a theme that ennobles Berry's works.

When this ordeal of social awkwardness is over and the preacher leaves, Mat touches Hannah's shoulder and asks, "All right?" She smiles and says she's all right.

Then she cries, "No! I'm not all right! I'm not!"

That's where I lost it. The dogs were there, comforting and funny in their concern. I've recently been in that same kind of room with the same kind of chit-chat, with the same cast of characters.

I've written about Berry many other times:

Unbroken: Bad Boy Makes Good

2010-12-28T07:12:00.000-08:00

(reflections on UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House, 2010).)

"Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food and oxygen" writes Laura Hillenbrand in Unbroken (183). At that point in the book, her subject Louie Zamperini has fought his way from being the scorned Italian kid with a face "designed by committee" (8), to running the mile for the USA at the Berlin Olympics, to surviving the crash of his B-24 bomber with two crew members followed by forty-seven excruciating days in a raft without provisions, fighting off sharks. He is just beginning two and a half years of deprivation and physical degradation in a series of Japanese prison camps -- each one worse than the one before.

He maintains his dignity with fellow captives by small acts of rebellion. They steal cigarettes and sugar, they teach obscenities to an obtuse guard who thinks that he's learning conversational English, and they try not to stagger and fall when beaten by fists, baseball bats, and the heavy buckle of a belt. Once they even perform a musical version of Cinderella, calling the ugly stepsisters Dia Rere and Gonna Rere (269). POWs sink barges, communicate in silence by codes, and even knock a train off its tracks (242-243). Near the end of their captivity, they plot to assassinate their most furious tormentor Mutsuhiro Watanabe, a.k.a. "the Bird" (231).

But forgiveness -- of others, and of oneself -- is also essential to the feeling of self-worth, and that's a truth that underlies Louie Zamperini's life-long struggle. We see this early in Louie's life when he gives up his "one-boy insurrection" that pains his family so, to devote himself single-mindedly to running the mile. We see it in the shame and physical decline of the survivor who devoured his companions' rations while they slep in their first night at sea. Ultimately, we see how impotent hatred of his former captors eats at Louie from the inside during his first years back from the war. When his wife Cynthia, who has already filed for divorce, drags him to see a gaunt young evangelist named Billy Graham, Louie feels "indignant rage" at the evangelist's assertion that it's false for anyone to imagine himself to be good:

I am a good man, he thought. I am a good man.

Even as he had this thought, he felt the lie in it. He knew what he had become. Somehwere under his anger, there was a lurking, nameless uneasiness, the shudder of sharks rasping their backs along the bottom of theraft. There was a thought he must not think, a memory he must not see. With the urgency of a bolting animal, he wanted to run. (373)

By sustaining this narrative of Louie's spiritual growth, Hillenbrand pulls us through the book, even through stretches where the accumulation of descriptions of physical degradations makes the reading painful.

Pleasures abound in the book, just in her writing. Even knowing how the race will turn out, I was breathless turning the page to read the conclusion of Louie's mile race on a fatally hot afternoon in New York (25). An air battle becomes vivid in her retelling of it (95-96). She implies a metaphor in her description of the last, eeriest, worst prison camp when Louie first sees it on a cold day: two hundred "whisper-thin men" are "gathered in drifts" up against buildings, "silent as snow" (192).

Hillenbrand also searches for the good. Sympathetic Japanese guards show courage when they shield men from abuse (185, 196, 245). Caring for an injured duck named Gaga enlivens the prisoners (203). A Japanese pilot salutes his target rather then firing, and they later become friends (348). In the last months of the war, Louie and his fellow prisoners are struck with sympathy for the Japanese civilians who live near the prison camp, who are also starving, broken, burned, and sick.

There is also a dark side to dignity. Hillenbrand shares an insight from a book of an earlier century, Frederick Douglass's autobiography, where he shows how a good woman, unable to think good of herself so long as she dominates an innocent human being, learns to despise the slave, and she becomes a "demon" of racial hatred (196), angered especially by any signs of the boy's intelligence and spirit. Watanabe, "The Bird," reveals his inner struggle in his actions, and, decades later, in a televised interview.

Along the way in her narrative, Hillenbrand divulges details about that time in American history that we might prefer to forget. The pseudo-science of eugenics that shaped policy in Nazi Germany and Tojo's Japan also shaped policy in the California of Louie's childhood, and he had good reason to fear being sterilized along with other "bad boys" of Italian descent (10). We learn how the tens of thousands of airmen lost in combat over the Pacific is dwarfed six-to-one by the numbers of those lost to mechanical failures and human error (80). We get a tour of the "flying brick" called the B-24 with all its design flaws, and we get a strong sense of how awesome the new B-29 is in its superior speed, altitude, size, and its moral effect on the Japanese: the Japanese phrase for B - 29 "B Niju Ku" contains a double meaning, as "ku" means both "nine" and "pain" (248). A survivor of the Bataan death march reflects on the landscape approaching Hiroshima by train, post A-bomb, a progression from trees to trees without leaves, then without branches, then without trunks, then nothing: "Nothing! It was beautiful. ...I know it's not right to say it was beautiful, because it really wasn't. But I believed the end [to cruel captivity] probably justified the means" (320).

The acknowledgments are worth reading closely, because Hillenbrand describes with gratitude all the eyewitnesses and family members who helped her to write the book, including many who didn't live to see its publication. Louie Zamperini himself lives on, "apparently immortal" (399).

Remembering Dad

2010-11-13T06:57:00.000-08:00

(Remarks for a Celebration of the Life of Thomas W. Smoot at First Presbyterian of Church, Valdosta, GA, November 13, 2010)

For me, Tom Smoot was father.

For him, that meant, first of all, to be a provider.   To support his family, he did work that took him away for long periods of time, to uncharted Canada, to Nevada, to Brazil during a military coup, a couple times to Japan. During those years, his family wanted for nothing, except for him.

When he became his own boss, he could settle down – though he drove himself long hours to grow his business.

More than material things, a father provides guidance. Dad left schooling mostly to the teachers – thankfully, because he was way ahead of our textbooks – and he left discipline to Mom. But he taught us in the way he approached the world.

One lesson begins, “You can be suspicious of everyone.” He told me how a client was probably ripping him off. He said, “You can be suspicious of everyone, but you don’t want to live that way.”

Another time, Dad said, “When someone accuses you, you've got to respond – or you’ll lose respect for yourself.”

There were other lessons I picked up from observation:

Sing.   Sing in the kitchen, in the car, in your factory working with your son very late on a hot summer night. Sing at the top of your voice; with or without a ukulele, guitar, or Simon and Garfunkel. When he joined the choir of this church, he said he wished he hadn’t waited fifty years.

Another lesson: When you get an idea, go with it. For instance, he got the notion that a surprise birthday party with a couple hundred guests at the top of a skyscraper might ease Mom’s transition to her sixties. He sent out invitations right away – even though, at the time, she was only fifty-five.

Another lesson is a phrase that he learned from his close friend and mentor Alfredo Berato, “Bon appetito.” For Dad, it meant that eating nutritiously is good for your body, but sharing food and drink with friends is good for your soul.

Another lesson: When the going gets tough, take along a dog. No one could stay mad when Dad brought Frosty or KC to a meeting. Dad told me once, if there’s such a thing as reincarnation, then he wanted to come back as a Smoot dog.

Stay young by seeking out new places, new ideas, new challenges. And if you’ve already run enough miles to go around the world once, try it again – but go the other way.

His most important lesson was so much a part of his being a father that I never appreciated it until I was grown up and long gone. That’s when Mom told me how she married before she understood what love really means. Dad taught her how to love, and I can see now that what a loving father provides, along with material support and moral encouragement, is room to grow.

Mom didn’t have room to grow when three little children were crowding her life, so Dad made sure to be home on Saturdays, giving Mom time away to do whatever she wanted. He encouraged her to renew her teaching career, and then to get advanced degrees to become an administrator – even though it meant staying up late to write Mom's research papers.

He took interest in anything his children did. Whatever struck our fancies at the moment, he took us to museums or shops or theatres or playing fields to learn more, bought us books about it, and then stepped back to see what happened. He delighted even more in lavishing the same kind of attention on his grandchildren.

So his children have grown to be totally different people. What we do have in common are the shared memories of meals, games and trips – and Dad's driving sense of responsibility for others.

Speaking here, just for myself, I am grateful that he gave me room to grow through my stage of adolescent insolence – which, in my case, outlasted three Presidential administrations.

When I would come back to see how his company had grown, I came to appreciate how Dad saw himself as a provider for the families of the men and women who worked for him. For them, too, it wasn’t just a job that he provided, but career guidance, education, and opportunities to build their careers. Sometimes, he provided bail -- and a second chance in life.

There was one lesson that Dad got from me. Just last Spring, he called with a theological question. Between the Sunday school of his boyhood and his joining this church, he hadn’t thought much about religion. He wanted to know, What exactly is meant by the word “grace?” Is it forgiveness?   Is it Heaven?    To him, it seemed to mean different things in different contexts.

With some theological training behind me, I told him how Scripture implies that the Holy Spirit works in us and through us, long before we believe. It's through the working of the Spirit that we come to know God, and that’s what we call “grace.”   Grace helps us to see how God the Father has provided us care and guidance throughout our lives. Looking back, we can give proper thanks to our Father.

Dad liked that idea.

Thomas W. Smoot, obituary
Homily on names, containing Dad's reason for my name

Sondheim's Book, Finishing the Hat: First Reading

2010-10-31T11:30:00.000-07:00


Photo by T. Charles Erickson

Having sung Stephen Sondheim's songs at the top of my lungs in theatres, showers, kitchens, cars, and parlors for forty years now, I could pass over the meat of this book, his collected lyrics: I've memorized nearly every syllable. Instead, I devoured the side dishes sweet and biting: comments about lyrics, his craft, and what he learned from other practitioners.

My first impression is that Sondheim's heart is in this book, expressed precisely (as usual) by a mind that simply cannot abide dishonesty or inaccuracy. Years ago, when Meryl Secrest published her biography of him, he commented that, of course, he gave her full access to everything about him, and he held nothing back. He wondered, what would be the point of a biography otherwise?

Well, he could try to ensure a flattering story. But not Sondheim. He wants to take precisely the credit he feels he deserves.

His honesty and accuracy show in a remarkable passage cited by reviewer Jeremy Gerard on line. It's about the way commentators have portrayed him as "Repressed Intellectual" since he once sang his song "Anyone Can Whistle" (written for a character who was a repressed intellectual) at a tribute in 1973. Of this, he writes:

Perhaps being tagged with a cliché shouldn’t bother me, but it does, and to my chagrin I realize it means that I care more about how I’m perceived than I wish I did. I’d like to think this concern hasn’t affected my work, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it has.

I'm sure I'll write more, later. But here are links to two of the four reviews I've seen:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/oct/10/finishing-hat-stephen-sondheim-review

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/29/stephen-sondheim-collected-lyrics-review

The second, by Simon Callow, comes closest to saying what I think. Another in the NY Times, by songwriter Paul Simon, shows a great appreciation of Sondheim dating back to Paul Simon's teenage years.

www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/books/review/Simon-t.html

Theologians and Artists: Resident Aliens v. The Unicorn

2010-10-11T09:23:00.000-07:00

(reflection upon two books contained in my Amazon kindle: Resident Aliens by Hauerwas and Willimon, and The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch.)

I was shocked once in my early days in the Episcopal Church, still fresh from being a fundamentalist in college. A gentleman in the choir had laughingly said that he didn't really believe all that theological stuff -- "God is in the music," he said. This was heresy to me then; I've grown to appreciate what he meant.

Case in point: I spent some time recently wading through a book by a pair of theologians. The basic idea is congenial to me, that the Church is, at its best, a sort of colony of "resident aliens" in our culture. That said, the reading turned tedious and even annoying, as the writers reiterated that the Church and its pastors should be telling "the truth" instead of just being polite and helping people. This strikes me as, first, a false choice, and second, as banal. The "truth" turns out to be, so far as I can tell, warmed over Paolo Friere: don't be materialistic, don't support regimes that fight wars.

I moved on with some relief to read an early work of the astoundingly prolific novelist-philosopher Iris Murdoch, an agnostic sort of Christian who delighted in pitting political and religious people against each other in her fictions and confounding all their beliefs. Just in the first few pages of The Unicorn, she gets closer to "the truth" than those theologians in their entire book.

In those first pages, she's setting up a plot that seems to owe more than a little to Henry James's Turn of the Screw: nervous, tightly wound governess reporting for duty to a remote estate peopled by people either morbid and secretive or outwardly charming and unapproachable.

But she is also depicting a starkly beautiful world -- she uses the words "beautiful" and "appalling" almost interchangeably here -- of violent waves, treeless landscape, vast sky. All of the protagonist Marian's previous materialistic concerns fall away from her as she loses herself in this landscape, where she is now the resident alien.

I sense that much of what the theologians have to say is already implied in this novel, and much more besides. In just the last chapter, Marian and her pupil Hannah (first surprise: her pupil is the woman who employs her, not some child), seated as if on a stage illuminated by golden light of the setting sun reflected on the sea, have a sudden dramatic moment. Hannah grasps Marian's hand and asks for forgiveness, for needing so much for someone to love her. She goes on to reflect that even God is said to have created us because He needed love. Hannah believes in God because she loves God, and "you can't love something that isn't there, can you?"

About my Dad: In Memoriam

2010-10-08T14:48:00.000-07:00

Dr. Thomas W. Smoot, 77, of Valdosta, died October 6 of traumatic aorta rupture.

He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, May 11, 1933. He graduated from Walnut Hills High School, a nationally recognized public college preparatory school. He received his undergraduate degrees from Miami University, and his PhD in clay mineralogy from the University of Illinois. He married Frances Lee Maier June 6, 1955.

A scientist and inventor, Tom is named on ten US patents from 1963 to 2010, most recently for a fire-retardant material. For Canada’s Geological Survey, Tom explored unmapped territory in 1957. He was a pioneer in developing ceramics to withstand extreme temperatures in nuclear propulsion engines. His expertise made him a valuable representative for corporations Harbison-Walker in Pittsburgh, Nalco in Chicago, and Glasrock in Atlanta.

An entrepreneur, Tom purchased a chemical manufacturing business in Atlanta in 1972 with no full-time employees. Through hard times and a catastrophic fire in 1982, Tom grew the business, re-naming it Kor-Chem. By 2001, when he sold the company, it employed dozens of workers and had international partners.

In retirement, Tom stayed active. He started a new business relating to his latest patent. He served on boards for his neighborhood in Atlanta and for his high school’s Alumni Foundation, and he ran for Valdosta’s school board. Tom and Frances joined First Presbyterian Church of Valdosta in 2009, and he became deeply involved as Deacon, treasurer of the Men’s Bible Study, member of the Church’s Vestry, and tenor in the choir.

His work with his son Todd’s company Get Active gave him the opportunity to combine his talent for sales with his passion for running. Tom and Frances competed in road races as recently as 2009, and walked daily. From 1973 onward, Tom counted the miles he ran, logging over 38,000 miles by 2010, in cities from Atlanta to Cairo, literally “running around the world” one-and-a-half times.

He is survived by his wife Frances of Valdosta; Kim Ann Carter of Hampton, GA; W. Scott Smoot of Marietta, GA; and Todd Lee Smoot of Valdosta. He is also survived by two grandchildren.

The 4th "R" for Unmotivated Youth: Relationship

2010-09-12T06:18:00.000-07:00

(Reflections on RESIDENT ALIENS by Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, "Why School 'Reform' Fails" by Robert J. Samuelson in NEWSWEEK of Sept. 13, 2010)

Educational reforms since 1970 have produced no rise in scores and an increased percentage of college freshmen who need remedial work in the three r's, and efforts to halt the flow of young adults away from the churches of their youth have failed. Is there a common thread?

Economist Robert J. Samuelson tells how efforts have failed to improve schools. Lower student-teacher ratios, higher teacher pay, and locally successful reforms haven't made a difference across the nation. He blames "shrunken student motivation." He does not automatically blame teachers, pointing out that unmotivated students used to have another option: 40% of 17 year olds dropped out of school in 1950. He adds that "adolescent culture" has eroded the authority of teachers and schools. He has no solution, ridiculing the aim of having "a great teacher in every classroom" as akin to having every football team comprised only of All-Americans.

Hauerwas and Willimon argue that American churches are failing because "we Christians have given atheists less and less in which to disbelieve." I'm only part way through this book, interested because I saw Hauerwas in early August. So far, this statement, and some anecdotes from chapter five are the only things that have struck me. The rest, so far, is stuff familiar to me but presented as if it were some kind of revolutionary revelation emerging from the ashes of everyone else's theology. I reserve judgment.

But H and W do present an anecdote in the most interesting chapter that I've read so far in my jumping around, chapter five. The two tell how one of them belonged to a church that challenged itself to reform its routine for confirming youth. Classroom learning "about" Jesus and "joining the church" were discarded in favor of trying Jesus' own method of discipleship, or, in more modern terms, mentoring. Adults identified by fellow members in confidential surveys were each paired with a teen, expected to meet once every couple of weeks to compare notes on reading a gospel, attending a church funeral, experiencing the same worship, performing some community service.

This idea of mentoring is something I've been trying to achieve with my seventy-odd seventh graders this year. I have in mind the tutoring I did for a stammering, non-writing, test-failing repeat eighth grader named Mike back around 1984. He'd already failed my course; I soon felt it was futile to keep beating the dead horses of the curriculum. We began to make progress the day that I stopped talking at all, and instead took out paper and wrote across the top, "Tell me in writing about your family." He wrote, as usual, a one-line answer about having a mother, father, and grandmother. He handed the paper back. I asked a follow-up: "Tell me more about your grandmother." He wrote that she lived next door. "Anything else?" She had red hair. "When was she born?" He had no idea. "Go home and talk to her." He came back the next day, grabbed the paper, and wrote two pages of closely spaced text.

I don't recall much of what happened after that, except that it was a major break through, my own Helen Keller at the water pump. He went on, not only to succeed at the high school, but to become a self-confident track star and scholar, who went on to gather more than one advanced degree.

I'm thinking that in-class writing for my kids could easily take that form. Could I start class with a question, "What did you learn yesterday in class and in reading that you want to discuss more?" Then, I keep pressing them with follow up questions until they do tell more. I've done this in drama class, letting other students write the follow up questions for me. Some write one sentence and answer a dozen follow up questions; others develop their thoughts fully, the first time. The aim, of course, is to teach the questions that a critical thinker asks himself when reading or developing an idea. It's worth the time, if I can do it.

So, let's keep thinking about a fourth "r," relationship.

Arts in Education: Boxes (2007)

2010-09-06T05:41:00.000-07:00

(Having just recently posted a meditation on Arts in Education, I was reminded of this from a speech I gave about the arts to an audience of students and parents in 2007.)

Students may experience their days as a never-ending series of interruptions to real life. They sit in a box to learn something called a "subject" until a bell signals them to move to another box for another subject, and so on. Maybe they have a scheduled activity after school. Then they may have some time to kill sitting in front of a box that tells them everything they know about our world today while it entertains them. On weekends, some students' families gather in large boxes to think about God for a couple of hours. Then it's back to the routine. Does anything connect all those boxes to each other? Can all these boxes connect to the students' "real life," not only at some future graduation ceremony, but now?

That connection is what Andy Linn (Walker 2006) found in his various arts classes at Walker. Now in a prestigious arts program at Cornell, he had excelled at Walker as both writer and actor in my drama class, and he had built a distinctive portfolio for AP art as a senior. I asked him what I might say to middle schoolers about the importance of the arts in their schedule. He thought only a moment before he said, "Connections." Preparing more than a dozen works of art in different media and styles for his AP credit, he was thinking about his art all day long. Suddenly he found that he enjoyed his classes more, concentrated more, because he was suddenly seeing connections between one subject and another. He said that they all went into his designs.

Now, he didn't have time to explain that part. Did he mean that he drew pictures of Presidents after he studied history? Was he putting equations onto canvasses? I really can't say.

But he reminded me of my senior year, when everything seemed to be coming together. That's when a poem by a soldier brought the First World War home to me in a way that the history book did not. As I was compressing vast amounts of data into a simpler equation, I realized that this was the same thing I was doing writing a poem, simplifying all my thoughts into the shortest possible statement of metaphor, "all this" equals "all that."

And he made me consider how all thinking is a matter of finding a connection between two things that don't appear to be related. And the arts are the one part of our lives where you use words, or designs made out of sound or color, to connect a feeling or a vision to an audience or viewer. It takes awareness of the world outside our little boxes, and skill to use a vocabulary of words, or a vocabulary of musical notation, or a vocabulary of colors and shapes that do more than just "express your feelings." You can do that with text messaging. Good art or music or drama or poetry is never about the self alone, but about enlarging the self to include others. The successful artist doesn't just express a feeling, but gets other people to feel it, too.

So, art isn't one box among others. It is a way of looking at life that sees through the imaginary walls that keep everything in its own little place.

Arts in Education: Got a Moment?

2010-09-04T05:58:00.000-07:00

(Written for the Walker School's 2010-2011 fine arts brochure, to be handed out for performances all year long, by yours truly, as Middle School Fine Arts Chair,)

Before the performance, please take a moment to wonder at the time our students took to prepare for it.

For you, it’ll be over in the next hour or two. For the young artists, each minute took nearly an hour of practice.     Ten minutes or so was enough to memorize a minute of dialogue, more than enough to learn a tune; so what did they do with the remainder of each hour?

For instrumentalists and singers, the notes are just raw material to be shaped.   Learning how to color the tone, to connect notes as a phrase, to move a phrase towards the next turning point in the piece – learning how music does make turns and climaxes – that all takes time, first for discovery, then for practice.   When every musician has done that much, it remains for their teacher to blend their tones and phrasing with everyone else’s.     Thank you, Sonya Peebles, Erik Kofoed, Todd Motter, Samantha Walker, and Chris Johnson!

A play is, to a script, what a visit to the Grand Canyon is to the map of Arizona.   The script prints what characters say, but actors have to make us know what characters think. We drama teachers – Regena Simpson, Patty Mozley, Katie Arjona, and I – won’t settle for imitations and stereotypes. We keep our actors digging into the script and their own life experience until characters look, sound, and respond as real people. Besides all that, there are dozens more hours of work done backstage to create the looks and sounds of an imaginary world, thanks to Bill Schreiner, Matt Eisenman, and Richard Gibson, and the students who help with design and production.

Coming here today, you passed by students’ art work, pieces that took hours to make.   An artist who tries to depict an object, or to use a certain medium in a certain way, has so many questions to answer. Where will I focus the viewer’s gaze? How? What color, shade, texture, position, or angle will convey the feeling I choose? All of our art teachers from Pre-K to A.P. – Kimberly Nasca, Sherry Walker-Taylor, Philippa Anderson, and Laura Stewart -- use their time to help each student discover a distinctive personal approach.

Finally, as I finish this note, I know that it will fit into an elegant publication produced at great expense of time by a group of parents who support young artists and their teachers in all the work I’ve described.    These Patrons of the Arts know that hours deeply engaged in the arts can lead to a moment of clarity and discovery, remembered for a lifetime.

Enjoy such moments of your next hour, and come back again for more!

Summer Reading: Less Than the Sum of its Parts

2010-08-15T03:49:00.000-07:00

(reflections on nonfiction by Malcolm Gladwell, THE TIPPING POINT (2001), and WORLD OF WONDERS (1972), the third novel in the Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies.)

Even at 6 a.m., the heat and humidity are still oppressive. But, I'm up early fretting about homework schedules, so that means summer's long over. Time only to give due consideration to the last two books of the season.

Our faculty read THE TIPPING POINT looking for possible applications to our middle school. Can we engineer a positive trend by appealing to a few charismatic trend-setters, or by paying attention to small details, or by having a memorable message? Yes. Can each of those methods fail? Yes.

THE TIPPING POINT contributed its title to our vocabulary, so that I've heard the phrase countless times in analyses of politics, the economy, and popular trends in the years since it was published. Beyond the cover, Gladwell tells a dozen or so good stories in which a seemingly small adjustment to some behavior spreads like a virus through a whole community. The agents of the virus are "Mavens" who collect knowledge about consumer goods or whatever; "Connectors" who retain names and interests of hundreds of acquaintances; and "Salesmen" who use persuasion and personal charisma to draw others to a product.

From these, he tries to tease out some general rules. These are, one by one, interesting and useful. One salesman, for example, operates by having a ready reply for the would-be customer's every doubt (You can't afford it right now, but can you afford to wait?). The "Broken Windows" change in policemen's policies in New York seems to have worked wonders, turning the city from crime-ridden and sleazy to its present Disney-fied squeaky clean feel.

But each of his general rules works only when some other general rule doesn't apply. A virus won't work if the context isn't right, for instance. That's true for a sexually-transmitted virus that stops spreading when cold weather inhibits bar-hopping. Theology students preparing a sermon on the importance of caring for strangers literally stepped over needy strangers planted in their route to the lecture hall, so long as the context was that the audience was already there waiting for the sermon. It's a good illustration of something we all know from experience. Nothing works, he tells us, if the trend (object, concept) isn't "sticky," and it's "sticky" if it's useful, repetitive, appealing, chemically addictive ... whatever.

Think of it as a manual, and the book is a failure. Think of it as a collection of loosely - related anecdotes that sometimes give ideas to a teacher or any other social engineer, and it's just fine.

Excited to re-read the FIFTH BUSINESS (see an earlier posting, here), I eagerly dusted off my old 1980 paperback editions of the other two novels in the trilogy. In brief, the three novels follow out the lives of the boy who threw a snowball containing a heavy stone at another boy who ducked, and a third boy who popped out of his mother prematurely when that rock hit her in the back of the head. Diminishing returns. THE MANTICORE, I wrote previously, was a fascinating essay to illustrate Jungian ideas of universal myths that have personal meaning to each of us. The evolving relationship between patient and analyst gave that novel a forward drive to carry through its discursive narrative. WORLD OF WONDERS begins as a kind of creepy Huckleberry Finn story of a little boy who escapes home and is set adrift in a nasty carnival side-show called "World of Wonders." The boy, now a master magician and film actor, tells his story to the film crew. Once that story is over, it moves to the young man's apprenticeship with the last of the Romantic actor-managers in England.

We appreciate the details of life in the carnival, life in the old-fashioned theatre, life in the provinces of Canada. But however much Davies strains to create dramatic tension between the tale-teller and his audience, the way he did pretty successulfy in THE MANTICORE, he doesn't achieve it, here. Reading it became a chore, and the final chapters seemed redundant.

I recall feeling that way in the 1980s, and I also recall feeling that his next trilogy, beginning with REBEL ANGELS, was better, and his earliest trilogy, beginning with LEAVEN OF MALICE, was best of all.

Names and James: Homily for St. James' Church

2010-08-01T03:42:00.000-07:00

(Homily delivered at St. James' Episcopal Church, Marietta, at a celebration of St. James' Day, August 31.)

Good evening, and happy St. James’ Day! This is the day when we celebrate the saint who is our namesake.

And my name is Scott Smoot. That’s how I’ve always been introduced to you through the years, whenever I’m your guest pianist, or whenever I’ve brought news from the Vestry or the Rector Search Committee.

But my driver’s license calls me William. So do my insurance card, and my registration with this church. And when I sign my name, it’s W. Scott Smoot.

My dad is to blame for this confusion. Dad chose my first name, and he also chose not to use it.   I’ve always had to explain this to teachers and officials. But the name has had the advantage of tipping me off to telemarketers: If they ask for William Smut, I can hang up.

When I was in my twenties, I finally asked my dad why he gave me a name that he never intended for me to use.   He got a gleam in his eye. “I wanted you to have that initial W.,” he said “like W. Somerset Maugham.”   That was a literary lion in the mid-twentieth century, a playwright, essayist, story – writer and novelist, my Dad’s favorite.

But Dad never had told me that W. Somerset Maugham was my namesake.   Dad never said, “Son, I want you to be a writer.”   So how come I was the ten year old who stayed inside to type stories while the other boys were out playing ball? How come, to this very day, my first thoughts each morning are about a story or a play that I could be writing, or a homily that I should be writing?   Somehow I grew to fit the name.

Living Up to Our Names
I won’t embarrass anyone by making you raise your hand. But nod your head if you feel that your parents in some way influenced the course of your life by the names they gave you.

I’m guessing that some of us have had names to measure up to. I went to high school with a guy named Manley, and you couldn’t help but measure him against his name. Children of celebrities have had trouble living up to their famous family names.

Some of us have had names to live down.   The classic example is in Johnny Cash’s song about the absentee dad who made sure that his boy would grow up able to stand up and fight, by naming him “Sue.”   I once knew an atheist who named her son Darwin. She explained that she was protecting him from what she called “cute little Southern Baptist cheerleaders.” Last time I saw the boy, guess who he was dating?

In the Bible, names are signs of destiny. “I have called you by my name and you are mine,” says the Lord. The angel tells Mary what to call Jesus before she has even conceived him. Then there are the names in the Bible that change to mark a new relation with the Lord: Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah, Jacob becomes Israel, Saul becomes Paul.

In our culture, it’s not easy to choose to change your own name, except for entertainers, and for women who take the husband’s name in marriage.

Our Church's Name
Now, we never chose the name of our church. Our name was chosen for us in 1842 by our founding father, William Root. He led Bible studies for railroad workers in Marietta, but he had attended St. James’ Church in Philadelphia.

This makes me think that we could easily choose a new name for our church. After all, we didn’t choose the name, and we’re not really named for a saint, but for another church. This might be a good time to think of a new name, since we’re in a time of transition, looking for a new rector.

What other saint might be more appropriate? In a homily a couple weeks ago, Tim Raasch pointed out how Saints Mary and Martha represent the contemplative spirituality of one sister, and the active hospitality of the other.   That certainly seems to describe two strengths of our congregation.   But the Episcopal Church of Sts. Mary and Martha in Buford GA could probably sue for brand infringement.

So what other saints might fit the way we are? I’m amazed at the skills of people here who are good at building and making things – so we could adopt the name of Joseph, patron saint of carpenters.    Or we could go with Sir Thomas More, patron saint of lawyers?

We could buck tradition and go for a new-style corporate name, something catchy that would look good on a web site.   I was thinking, maybe, in big friendly letters, Prayers R Us? Or maybe, something with an exclamation –point after it, like, Spiritco! At the risk of rubbing a sore spot, here, I think we might streamline our current name, the way BP streamlined “British Petroleum.” What could be more twenty-first century than SJx!

You all don’t look very excited. Maybe, like me, you have a feeling deep down that St. James fits us somehow. Perhaps, before we take such a radical step, we should look at what we know about St. James and see what it is we’re living up to.

Our Namesake
In today’s gospel (MT 20:20-28), James tags along with his brother behind his family name, “Zebedee.” We’re told in a note that the name means, “Thunder.” When your dad’s name is Thunder, you probably get a lot of teasing from the other kids on the block. The men in the neighborhood always tell you, “Your father was a really great man, very tough.” Then they have to add, “So, when are you going to be more like him?”   Their mom certainly storms in to make sure they get the attention due such a name.    I imagine James is blushing, and saying under his breath, “Aww, Mom, you’re embarrassing me.” But I don’t see that he steps up to stop her, either.   No wonder the rest of the apostles get mad.

But Jesus stays calm. He has a test for James and his brother. “Are you able to drink from the cup that I am about to drink?” The brothers aren’t sure what they’re agreeing to, but they are Sons of Thunder, and they’ve got to live up to that name. They say, “We are able.”   Jesus is referring to that cup mentioned later at the garden of Gethsemane, the one that he wishes could pass from his lips, the bitter cup of martyrdom.   He sees in James a young man who will indeed make a stand and suffer the consequences.

We’ve seen that quality in James before, when he was a fisherman, working all night without catching anything. Jesus called out to him to cast his net on the other side, and the haul was great enough to tip the boat; but when James reached shore, he left the catch behind, and followed Jesus. Son of thunder indeed, he’s impetuous and determined.

But with his mother there, asking for special treatment, the other guys get mad, and Jesus rebukes them, saying those wonderful words at the core of Christian life, about how the greatest must be the servant of all, how the first must be the last.

Tonight’s reading from Acts (11:27-12:3) tells how James, our namesake, lived out those words, drinking the cup that Jesus drank: serving the Lord, he was the first of the apostles to die for Jesus.

Now, there are other traditions and stories about James. We know that he was a missionary who established the church in what we now call Spain, earning the love and gratitude of the natives there.   There’s a story that he resurrected a boy who had been hanged for a crime that he did not commit. It was five weeks after the event, and people rushed to tell the boy’s father the good news. The father, who was eating dinner at the time, bitterly said, “My boy is no more alive than this roasted bird.” According to the story, the bird stood up on the plate, spread its wings, and flew away.

After King Herod put James to death by the sword in 44 AD, legend has it that the saint’s body was airlifted from Jerusalem by angels, and deposited in a rudderless boat off the coast of Spain at Compastela.   Ever since then, Christian pilgrims have made their way to Compastela, to the church of St. James, or, in Spanish, Santiago. They carried with them the symbols of our church: a traveler’s bag to carry necessities and a scallop shell to lift water from streams along the pilgrim’s way.

Is our name a good fit?   Right now, this very month, is a good time to ask that. The Rector Search Committee has put out a survey, and we are looking for your answers to questions about our church as it is now, and as we hope it will be.

James answered the call of Jesus, no questions asked, without regard to cost or risk. I know people at this church who’ve made open-ended commitments of time and resources. Could this be true of us all?

James learned a lesson about becoming great through service to others. Are we servants of the Lord? Do we take turns serving each other? I see on our survey a long list of committees and guilds. Could more of us be involved?

James established a church among the needy in Spain; I see our well-established ministries of Wonderful Days, and Reach Out Mental Health. I know that we sponsor a church in (Ma – JEL – i- ko). Is there more we could do? Could more of us be involved?

James is the patron saint of pilgrims, who leave their fishing, their business, their day to day lives, to worship.
Is worship central to our church in that way? Is it central to our own lives? We have a group here called the Pilgrimage who make their spiritual journeys without leaving the confines of this building – are we all aware of this group? Could more of us join them?

This is a good time for us to ask these questions.   If a name is something that we grow into – well, let’s keep growing into ours.   Happy St. James’ Day!

Jung at Heart

2010-07-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

(reflection upon re-reading Robertson Davies' "Deptford Trilogy," especially the second in the series, THE MANTICORE. I use a paperback edition from Penguin books, 1984, Originally published in 1972.)

Robertson Davies (photographed above) was a sly, witty, humane spinner of tales from his esoteric interests. I've written an appreciation of him elsewhere ( "Reading" at www.smootpage.com ) , and will focus here on THE MANTICORE.

As a novel, it's a great essay. It is flanked by wonderful stories. This one is also fascinating, and it's fun to see how Davies fits its incidents into the larger framework. But it's still a device for showing the reader what Davies liked in Jung's psychology.

The narrator, lawyer David Staunton, speaks to us through journal entries and transcripts of his year in analysis with a Jungian practitioner. He tells his life story to her, and she points out to him the way he is casting the real people of his life as characters in his own personal drama. By the end, he has achieved at least one main goal of analysis:

I am beginning to recognize the objectivity of the world, while knowing also that because I am who and what I am, I both perceive the world in terms of who and what I am and project onto the world a great deal of who and what I am. If I know this, I ought to be able to escape the stupider kinds of illusion. (269)

All of this was fascinating to me when I read it at 25. Double that, now, and it's a timely reminder. Now that I think of it, I have a pretty good idea of who my "persona" is and my "shadow."

The face I try to present to the world at my best, my persona, is mild, competent, detached (and therefore ready to be amused), a fair observer whose talents are sifting and finding connections between things, and appreciating others' perspectives the way an actor does.

The shadow, whom I know uncomfortably well when I feel under attack, is hot tempered and ready to strike back with cutting remarks intended to cause permanent damage to the attacker's self-image and social reputation,

My Gripe With Grimes

2010-07-21T15:00:00.000-07:00

(reflection on Martha Grimes' detective novel THE BLACK CAT.)

Although I expect any detective fiction to be on some level a game (see my "Guilty Pleasure in Crime Fiction" ), I also hope to lose myself in the story.   THE BLACK CAT drew me in quickly with elements of plot, involving expensively dressed corpses of women who work for different "escort services."    Grimes also continues an emotional storyline from an earlier book in the series, as Inspector Richard Jury visits a comatose woman in the hospital, guilty that he feels more relief that the relationship is over than sadness over the certainty that she won't recover. That's plausible. In this novel, there's a likable small town detective with a paraplegic wife. They're appealing.

But I could never believe the story because Grimes keeps interrupting it with whimsical characters and their self-consciously witty dialogue -- perhaps aiming for the effect of Sayers' Lord Peter Whimsey fictions. It's why I put down Grimes after initial excitement with her series a few years ago. The characters seem sometimes to be aware that they are part of an entertainment. There are whole chapters that seem intended to be "cute," here involving a couple of anthropomorphized pets. In other novels, there were cute chapters involving over-the-top small town characters -- an aunt, a lazy aristocrat, a snide butler -- all looking like they'd wandered in from a parody of Agatha Christie.

Granted, it's a fine line to walk between the artifice that we love in detective fiction, and the artificiality that makes it flat.   In Grimes, I think the problem may be in Jury himself, because she seems to play him both ways.   He's sort of like the detective in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? who passes between a real world and a cartoon one.

It Seemed Like A Good Idea at the Time

2010-07-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

(reflections on the news cycle of the past two days.)

I picked up a theme in yesterday's news that points to a universal truth that Democrats and Republicans alike ignore at their peril. Sorry -- our peril.

The theme is nothing surprising: When intelligent people in authority get together and make plans with good intentions for other people, there will be consequences that they did not foresee and would not want.

For example, in a flurry of urgent activity to get a handle on the economic crisis, the Obama administration bought out GM and forced the closing of redundant and poorly performing dealerships. This made perfect sense, to save jobs by saving the company by divesting it of dead weight. News yesterday was analysis that shows net harm and net job loss by killing dealerships that were job creators in their communities. An Obama regulator admitted this today, speaking how they would have done things differently, with benefit of hindsight.

Another example is the 2004 Republican Congress's response to the 9/11 Commission's common - sense recommendation that a new head of intelligence be given the responsibility and authority to "connect the dots" in all the intelligence gathered. As the latest candidate for the post interviews for the job today, analysts have reflected on the failure of the idea, as the position holds responsibility but not authority, and it's supported by a vast new bureaucracy that cannot (yet) do what it's intended to do. Meanwhile, another analyst interviewed yesterday detailed examples of the different agencies' duplications of effort. Of course, we also saw the "failure to connect the dots" at Christmas when a warning from a would-be bomber's father didn't get through channels to the people who would have kept the man off a plane.

Another example is in the gulf spill. Here, it's corporate decision-makers plus political ones plus federal decision makers in the Coast Guard and other departments. Did the dispersants used to break up the oil actually make the situation worse, because the thick oil becomes thinner and more easily absorbed into living tissue? Has the capping of the pipe actually resulted in subterranean ruptures across a much wider area, hopeless to stop?

When we discuss these things and criticize the ones who made the decisions, we're scoring points as if every decision is a win or lose, right or wrong, smart or stupid, fair or unfair. But it's always a matter of balance.

What other policy decisions in the news today will be discussed next year "with the benefit of hindsight?"

John Updike Live, in Cincinnati

2010-06-30T10:54:00.000-07:00

(reflections on UPDIKE IN CINCINNATI, edited by James Schiff.)

photo: John Hughes

"The whole aim of civilized life is to create nonviolent circumstances." John Updike made that observation to explain how he could sympathize with the "prudery" of the NEW YORKER's editor Wallace Shawn.

Sympathy is John Updike's other talent, the first being his facility with our language. Besides these, he also works conscientiously, regularly, productively -- "three pages or three hours a day."

This book preserves the transcripts of Q and A sessions during two days of public appearances that Updike made as guest of the University of Cincinnati in the spring of 2001, and one can learn from Updike how to handle this kind of situation. In every response, he explores the other person's assumptions and opinions as if in sympathy, before he begins to define his difference ...and then typically ends with a deferential comment as if to say, "I could be wrong."

Seeing him do this is a great pleasure of the book. Much of the content is stuff I've read before, and the pages include the entire texts of the stories and essays read to the crowds by Updike and by critics who shared a panel discussion with him. Updike shows at least that he has been able to appreciate the critic's insights before saying, "Well, we all have our approaches and the critics are welcome to theirs. But it seemed to me...." (57).

He bites back twice, at "every writer's friend" critic Kokutani (?) whose hostile reviews of his work I've seen in the NY Times; and at Tom Wolfe. Even here, Updike shows that he knows what Wolfe has said, and why, before he dismisses Wolfe's A MAN IN FULL.

A theme that pops up a lot has to do with "archeology." It's an explicit metaphor in a story discussed a lot here, whose title includes the phrase "Packed Earth." I remember a later story with "Archeology" in the title; and his last book of poems describes how time packs layers of previous selves between the poet and the boy who looks back from the bottom of a well, blue sky behind him.

The editor James Schiff introduces the guest of honor at one event with an anecdote from seeing Updike at another conference. "I became convinced that John Updike was merely the front man for an underground stable of writers who were .... cranking out stories and reviews ...and articles," until the end of the busy day, when Schiff catches sight of Updike at a table in the corner of the lobby, writing (2).

There are photos of Updike at talks and at the art museum, which I visited a not long after with my aunt Blanche. "I seem to have an expression I maintina through most of these authorial appearances," he writes back to the editor, "mouth half open, as if mulling a salient point or recovering from a sharp blow to the back of the head" (xxviii).

Assessing Students' Writing with Rubrics: First, Do No Harm

2010-06-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

NOTE: I wrote this reflection back in 2001, and ran across it in a file this week. My view has not changed.
For non-teachers, a "rubric" is a list of qualities ranging from "strong thesis sentence" to "fewer than three spelling errors." Each quality gets a point value. In theory, students know before they hand a paper in how much credit their paper should earn; teachers can respond simply by checking off items on the rubric and adding up points.

For non-Episcopalians, a "rubric" is an instruction written in red (L. rubra) in the margins of a prayer book to guide priests in the motions and choices they have during any rite.

Here's the reflection:

The worst experiences I had as a teacher assessing writing both came about when I thought I was upholding high standards as prescribed on a rubric.

Ready-made rubrics are available

According to the rubric, Laura's researched essay earned C-. She'd been warned: thesis sentence in the introduction, topic sentences for every paragraph, or else. She'd been warned at two earlier stages of the writing, too. I didn't see past the rubric to the fact that this paper was a huge step forward for her, that it did many other things I'd asked for. I didn't know the immense amount of time she had put into making it the best she knew how. She was crushed, and the entire eighth grade rallied to her support. In a class meeting, they suggested more flexibility in the rubric.... They also told me (not in so many words) to frontload the assessment, to do more directing early on and to de-emphasize the final grade. That is, in fact, how I use rubrics now, as a guide and gatepost early on. My colleague Bonnie Webb (Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project) says it this way: "[Student], you're going to write an A paper, and this is not yet an A paper."

[Laura's mother quipped that we teachers should take the Hippocratic oath: "First, do no harm."]

My second bad experience relates to the flip side of rubrics: when they work, they can still do damage. It was my A++ student Adrian who deflected a compliment from me at the end of the year. He said I was wrong, that he used to be a good writer, but now he was just writing by formula (i.e., the rubric). He's right. I fail to find any articles in New Yorker or even Newsweek that follow those "high standards" involving the five-paragraph formula.

I compare what I did to Laura and Adrian to what Mrs. Spear did for me in seventh grade. What I learned in my research on "world religions" stays with me, and I spent weekends and one long night on it, proud of my grown-up subject and (I thought) grown-up conclusions. But I still didn't "get" what a "paragraph" was, and several of mine in that paper are one sentence long. Few of the paragraphs have topic sentences. By my own rubric, that was a C- or worse. But, bless her, Mrs. Spear encouraged what was good, and saved battles over paragraphing for some other occasion or year. [Result: I was confident as a writer, and therefore interested in learning how to improve.] She graded the paper separately on content, organization, grammar, spelling, and neatness. Got A's and B's except for the C- in neatness.

Escape Clause: Graham Greene's THE HEART OF THE MATTER

2010-06-15T13:01:00.000-07:00

(reflection upon re-reading THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene, in an anthology published by Heineman, 1979.)

"Scobie." Even twenty-seven years after I read THE HEART OF THE MATTER, that name brings to mind a man and his milieu. He's an officer of the law in a British colony on the west coast of Africa, taciturn, so scrupulously honest that he records only facts in his journal. He has stripped his office of all personal effects that would speak of a past now lost to him, and little remains except necessaries for the desk and handcuffs on the wall.

More than once, Greene reminds us of those handcuffs, because the colony itself is a kind of prison, at least for the British stationed there. Beyond the borders of the colony, Nazi Germans lurk. The air itself is oppressive, hot and humid, teeming with mosquitoes. The rainy season begins and the drumming of rain on the tin roofs never ends. Ants, rats, and lizards encroach on their homes. Besides that, the natives, politely subordinate to the British, form a tangle of interconnected families and lies so thick that Scobie long ago gave up trying to judge who was right or wrong in any of their conflicts.
That much I remembered. I'd forgotten how wittily concise Greene is. Greene breaks us into the world of the novel via Wilson, fresh off the boat, surveying the city from a hotel's balcony, pink gin in hand. Like Scobie, Greene doesn't have to pass judgement; we know all when we read of Wilson's pink knees, thin mustache, and concealed books of poetry, one verse concerning betrayal of friendship. Wilson's guide points out Scobie, and Wilson takes an interest in rumors that Scobie may be sleeping with black women and may be taking bribes. What we figure out, long before Scobie does, is that Wilson is secretly investigating corruption in the colony.

Though I'd forgotten the specifics of the plot -- Wilson falls in love with Scobie's wife while Scobie falls in love with a young refugee from a sunken ship -- I remembered how Scobie's world closes in on him. Whatever Scobie does with good intentions, always above board, also gives the appearance of corruption, and draws him deeper into relationships with characters whose interests conflict.

Is there any escape? Greene contrives it so that Scobie has no viable choices, except to hurt either his wife or his lover. He chooses instead to hurt his God, sacrificing his integrity for pity. Early in the novel, discussing a suicide with his ultra-montaine wife, he says "sharply" that even suicide can be forgiven: "We'd forgive most things if we knew the facts" (p.68).

Still, the novel doesn't endorse Scobie's choice. An ironic coda makes Scobie's heroic sacrifices seem foolish. The world is more tangled and deceitful than even Scobie thought.

The real escape from this net of interconnected needs and tangled deceptions is one offered by a bland priest, to take care of one's relationship to God first, and let God handle the rest.

Johnny O'Neal, Jazz Pianist: Leaving them Laughing

2010-06-14T13:17:00.000-07:00

(reflection on a recital by Johnny O'Neal, pianist, at the Southwest Arts Center of Atlanta, June 13. With trio.)

Atlanta jazz lovers know the voice of H. Johnson, host of "Jazz Classics" beginning every Saturday night from 9 p.m. 'til two o'clock, and it was around midnight that I woke up to hear Johnny O'Neal playing and talking jazz with H. A few hours later, I was seeing both of them at a fine community theatre, as H. introduced his old friend.

The affable Mr. O'Neal, looking a bit thinner than his picture here, played for more than two hours with local guys on percussion and bass. He opened with "Put on a Happy Face," setting a theme for the show. Once he had established the tune, he played around with it. One hallmark of his style is his penchant for very suddenly pulling back on the volume, barely touching the keys, often while the room resonates with a chord he has just pounded out. His improv included dozens of notes that seem like a spray of sound, soft and brilliant.

He followed that with "Some of My Best Friends are the Blues," getting laughs with scat.

There was hardly a moment when laughter wasn't a part of the performance. There was slapstick comedy of the Victor Borge variety, but there were also moments when he seemed to surprise himself with an idea and chuckled.

He got serious with a version of Whitney Houston's hit "Savin' All My Love for You," played mostly as a languorous jazz waltz, followed by a Seventies ballad, "With Every Breath I Take," sung with a deep baritone that rose to crying, sighing high notes.

Just when I was thinking that he hadn't done anything in the Gospel vein, he obliged, though his improvisation rather overwhelmed the familiar gospel riffs. He concluded with "I Need A Vacation From the Blues."

While he was vigorous at the keyboard, he looked frail when he walked. He seemed like a wizened kid in his dad's suit, making me wonder if he has gone through some bad times recently.

Still, he left us with a lot of happy faces.

What's Toxic, Sticky, and Spreads?

2010-06-14T08:03:00.000-07:00

American Egret takes flight from an oil-impacted marsh along the Louisiana coast.
June 7, 2010 - AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

At St. James' Episcopal Church, Marietta, GA, parishioners contribute meditations on the daily lectionary for a series of devotional booklets for different seasons. I just wrote my contribution, for Lent 2011. It concerns the first anniversary of a disaster that will surely be a continuing story in the news for years to come.

Here it is:

for Wednesday , April 20, 2011

Jeremiah 17:5-6 Cursed is the man who trusts in man…. He is like a shrub in the desert [and shall dwell in] an uninhabited salt land.

On this day one year ago, a deadly explosion released torrents of oil that flowed unabated for months. It polluted Gulf waters and coated the shore, suffocating life, making fertile land uninhabitable.

We felt anger even more than sorrow. We had trusted “failsafe” technology; in any case, we had trusted agencies to shield the marshland and beaches. We felt betrayed.

But in our interconnected world, there’s a lot of betrayal to go around. I drive, heat and cool my home, shop for low price on gasoline, and invest in funds that include oil stocks. In these ways, I supported the drilling for oil in the Gulf; didn’t we all? While teams of volunteers frantically scrubbed toxic tar from the eyes and mouths of turtles and birds, I cringed with the feeling that those innocent creatures of God were suffering for our Sin.

By “Sin,” I don’t mean air-conditioning, but a pervasive human condition that spreads like oil through the Bible, from the garden of Eden to the garden of Gethsemane. Once Adam and Eve betray the Lord’s trust, the story of humanity becomes the story of Cain against Abel, nation against nation, powerful against powerless. Again and again, God’s beloved people betray His trust, finally delivering His son to the cross.

God’s cleanup begins at Easter, and spreads by disciples from Jerusalem to Rome, from Jews to Gentiles, from generation to generation, all the way to St. James’ Church in Marietta today.

Like teams of engineers, Coast Guard, fishermen, and animal rescuers who rushed to the Gulf last year – plus marine biologists, civic agents and lawyers who will continue dealing with consequences of the oil spill for many years to come – we all have our work to do, and we have to do it together.

Atlanta Lyric Theatre Does Sondheim Musical: It's a Hit!

2010-06-12T23:29:00.000-07:00

(reflections on A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Produced by the Atlanta Lyric Theatre at the Strand Theatre in Marietta, GA. Production directed by Alan Kilpatrick.)

What more is there to say about this exemplar of musical comedy? Since 1962, after a rough period of gestation that required the help of "show doctor" Jerome Robbins, A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM has worked, even when production values were lacking. I know, because production values have always lacked in every production I've seen, until now.

At the Strand, a refurbished old movie theatre on Marietta's refurbished 19th century town square, a peppy and precise band played the delightful Overture. Rotund and cherubic-faced Glenn Rainey took the stage and promised "Comedy Tonight." The audience was charmed right away. When the curtain rose on three distinct Roman houses squashed together on the very narrow but tall stage, the audience applauded. The song got laughs for the antics of the "Proteans" and for the entrance of each character. Every joke and every song landed. Every actor seemed perfectly suited to the part. Of course the characters are stereotypes -- those haven't changed in the 2000 years since the source material for this play premiered in ancient Rome -- but these actors made the characters feel like old friends. I don't recall other actors I've seen in the roles of Hysterium, Senex, Lycus, or Domina, but young Chase Todd, Robert Wayne, Brad Raymond and Ingrid Cole made strong impressions.

Sondheim's music and lyrics were overlooked in 1964. How? Every one of them contains polished gems of verbal playfulness (my companion especially liked, "The situation's fraught, / Fraughter than I thought..." and I've always been partial to "Today I woke, too weak to walk"). The music serves the actors their comic effects on a silver platter, the pauses and punchlines accented by the accompaniment.

Mr. Sondheim, if you happen to Google yourself and see this, you will be gratified to know that a companion, seeing the show for the first time, commented how the tunes were so "hummable," and the nine-year-old girl on our row, also seeing it for the first time, was actually humming along.

Spencer Quinn's Dog Detective Series: A Doggie Treat

2010-06-01T15:52:00.000-07:00

(reflections on DOG ON IT and THEREBY HANGS A TAIL, the first two novels in a series by Spencer Quinn.)

On one page -- 42 in the first edition of THEREBY HANGS A TAIL -- I counted six aspects of this series that have made every page a pleasure to read.

First, when the narrator is a real dog's dog like Chet, the German Shepherd, you get deliciously ironic moments. He thinks that he knows more than he does: "I was in the picture, understood the whole enchilada just like Bernie" (i.e., the P.I. who owns Chet)..

"Enchilada" sends Chet off on a tangent, and we get another delight of the series. It's just like a dog to run off the track after any fleeting thought.

Meanwhile, Bernie is waiting for a small private plane to appear. By now, Chet's ears have been bothered by the buzz of its approach for at least a page. But only now does Chet say, "I think I hear something." Chet's enhanced senses bring us some angles on a story -- sounds and smells -- that we don't usually get.

But it's Chet's attitude that makes these books so delightful. Like any healthy dog I've known, he seems to find pleasure, at least interest, in just about every thing that happens. A limo approaches, "leaving a golden trail of swirling dust" in its wake. Chet comments, "Things were so beautiful sometimes I just wanted to gaze and gaze."

And through all this, it's still a legitimate crime novel, with its cast of interesting human characters, such as Adelina, a woman who causes detective Bernie's jaw to drop on page 42..

So reason number six is that Bernie is a sympathetic guy, and Chet's admiration and devotion to him are boundless. The reverse is also true. It's like reading about young romance (puppy love?), fun and funny and sometimes heart - breaking when one of the pair is in danger and separated from the other.

A seventh reason, as lagniappe: According to Quinn's official bio, his favorite authors include two that I've been reading this past week, novelist Graham Greene and poet Philip Larkin. Anyone who likes those two, and dogs, has got to be good.

Students: Why Visit Savannah?

2010-05-30T05:38:00.000-07:00

(letter to seventh graders, introducing a workbook that will accompany them to Savannah in September.)

Dear Student,

You walk up steps every school day. Do you know how many? Most of us can't answer that question. As Sherlock Holmes said, “People see, but do not observe.” How many of us just pass through the world without observing most of what we see?

When you visit your grandmother, do you observe what her home tells about her past? Have you looked where she keeps her wedding dress, childhood treasures, and letters from her own grandmother? If so, then you pass through time when you walk through her home. Do you ever ask her about her childhood?   She asks you about yours! She wants to tell you about the people and places that made her who she is, if only you’d ask.   She raised someone who raises you, so, deep down, her past is a part of your past, too.

Savannah is our state’s beautiful grandmother, and Savannah will be telling us stories of her early life, a life that’s a part of the past of every Georgian and every American.    She “talks” through guides, but also through what you see. The people of her past tell you stories through their buildings, designs, and artwork.

This booklet will be your source for notes, quotes, and examples when you return to school and write for your teachers about what you learned. The questions here will help you to “hear” what Savannah says. Make notes on what you observe, and make notes on the stories you hear from guides. Make notes, too, about how it all affects you, and about your friends.

Someday, this booklet may be the souvenir of a trip that made a difference in your life, a memory of a fun time when you outgrew a stage of childhood, something for a grandchild to find in your attic.

Joys of Larkin

2010-05-23T16:12:00.000-07:00

(reflections on Philip Larkin by way of an essay published on line in CONTEMPORARY POETRY REVIEW.)

The late writer Rachel Wetzsteon begins her essay "Philip Larkin and Happiness" with a disclaimer: the title isn't one of those jokes, along the lines of a slim volume called "German Humor." For the famous curmudgeon, she writes, happiness was key to his work, even in its absence.

The article cites a poem that took me by surprise a week ago. Called simply, "Coming," the poem conjures the look and feel of sunset outside a row of suburban homes at that time of year when days are getting longer. When a thrush sings, "astonishing the brickworks," Larkin reflects that the feeling is like that of a child "Who comes on a scene / Of adult reconciling." Without understanding why, the child "starts to be happy."

Reading this at a deli as the sun rose on a Saturday, following an exhausting Friday, I felt that happiness unfold in me.

I've written elsewhere on this blog about the joys of Larkin. I recommend Ms.Wetzteon's essay, which focuses on a marvelous poem called "Born Yesterday."

Meaning of LIfe: Detectives' Perspectives

2010-05-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

(reflections on two novels, FACELESS KILLERS by Henning Mankell -- first in the series -- and TEA TIME FOR THE TRADITIONALLY BUILT by Alexander McCall Smith.)

In FACELESS KILLERS, Henning Mankell writes of his detective Kurt Wallander that he rarely gives himself over to philosophy, repose, or introspection. "Life for him was a matter of juggling practical questions that needed resolution" (123).

Same here. My perpetual to-do list is like Wallander's -- answering mail, putting off a phone call, cleaning up the place, making a note to call a repairman -- only "find killer" isn't on it. On Sundays, and whenever I take time to write here on this blog, I wonder if life is being frittered away doing small errands and ticking off deadlines that are met with a flurry of activity and then forgotten. When I have a large swath of time, I miss the errands that give shape and urgency to the activity of the day.

That may be a large part of the appeal of contemporary detective novels: murder gives point and urgency to all the busy-ness of the day. Coffee, showers, bills, car trouble, family crises, unanswered messages and other homely details beset the detectives of Mankell, Cornwall, Grafton, Mosley, Cruz Smith, making their lives more of a piece with our own, They share in our daily stuff, and we share vicariously in the pursuit of truth that's supposed to put our mundane life in perspective.

With McCall Smith, it's the other way around: it's the small problems and perspectives on life that give his books their flavor, and the investigation of crime merely binds the threads of his characters' homely concerns.

In a scene of introspection during TEA TIME FOR THE TRADITIONALLY BUILT, Alexander McCall Smith's detective Precious Ramatswe sits with tea before her family wakes up. She enjoys the moments before she has to juggle practical questions of her own: preparing breakfast, dressing her kids and husband, "a hundred things to do." But for the moment she could be alone, "As the sun came up over the border to the east ... hovering over the horizon like a floating ball of fire" (55). This brings to the mind of Mma Ramatswe something that a priest once told her, when she worried that the sun would someday swallow the earth. "Our concern should be what is happening right now. There is plenty of work for love to do, you know"(56).

I like the sound of that. If convicting a murderer isn't on one's list of things to do, it takes something else to make it all worthwhile. Religion is supposed to provide that, but a creed and assurances of forgiveness don't make sweeping the floor or buying the milk any more meaningful. Let one see those "practical questions that need resolution" as part of the "work for love to do," then that's motivation.

High School Actors Make Summer Brave Real

2010-04-24T15:31:00.000-07:00

(reflections on SUMMER BRAVE by William Inge, directed by Katie Arjona for the Walker School's upper school. Performance April 18, 2010).

In a tiny studio theatre where the audience sits within six paces of the cast, the actors must do more than speak their lines with conviction. The characters flirting in the background are as close to us as the ones with dialogue in the foreground, and we can see in their eyes if they're in character or not. In a production of William Inge's SUMMER BRAVE by students of the Walker School in Marietta, GA, every move was true to the character, even between the lines.

When the play begins, life is balanced and predictable in Flo's home. Daughter Madge (Olivia Breton) is "the pretty one" and engaged to an attentive and upright young man with a bright future, Alan Seymour (Patrick McPherson); the other daughter Millie (Casey Schreiner) resents her sister's prettiness and claims to care about books and art instead of boys. Flo (Kiwi Lanier) is a widow focused on her girls' future marital prospects; her neighbor Mrs. Potts (portrayed by hilarious Claire Golden) is unmarried, flighty, and oblivious. Their border Rosemary (Megan Hilburn) is a teacher maintaining a tense relationship with forty year old Howard (Jordan Perry) vague about his commitment to marry her.

A stranger upsets the balance. Hal Carter (Justin Kasian) appears, unemployed, unattached, and unreserved. He enters in a wife-beater tee, sweating, with an ingratiating grin. Every female on stage seems to be attracted and repelled to some degree. There's to be a picnic that night, and, in no time, Hal has a date with the younger sister Millie, and he's flirting with the older sister Madge. When Howard brings whiskey along for the evening, we know that this community event will be no picnic.

Inge's script is almost schematic in its pattern of contrasts, but the actors didn't settle for black and white. During the sisters' banter, Breton and Schreiner hurled accusations at each other, but we could see that "Millie" needed some reassurance from her older sister, and Breton's eyes registered concern while her annoying sister baited her. McPherson is supposed to be too proper, too passive, making Hal roughness and impulsiveness irresistible to Madge. But when the two men confronted each other, Kasian showed a boyish vulnerability, while McPherson was hardly passive. He let us see Al's mind and heart at odds, knowing that his old friend Hal is not to be trusted, while hoping that he might save Hal with the right mix of generosity and reason.

It's been a week since I saw the show, but I haven't lost complex impressions made by the characters in key moments:

When the widow Flo, comforting Madge, says that a girl can be taken in by the attractiveness of a man who will ruin her life, actress Kiwi Lanier seemed to be looking into her own past, though the script never says outright that she's describing her own marriage.

While inconsequential dialogue went on among other characters, Kasian's "Hal" attempted to dance with Schreiner's "Millie," but she let us see by her awkward steps and downcast eyes how her fear of being inadequate vied with her hopes of being desirable like her sister. Then Hal turned to dance with Madge, and their simple swing step turned quickly into an aggressive display, foreshadowing all that would follow.

One of the most intense moments of the play occurs when the whiskey flows, and schoolmarm Rosemary, having been needled by her "friends" (played by Mohini Chakravorty and Georgie Wilkins), expresses her resentments at men. She delivers her tirade inches from Hal's face and drills into him what a useless excuse for a man he is. Kasian hardly moved while she circled him and attacked, but his devil-may-care look hardened into grim determination. We expected, and got, an explosion.

In just a few moments, McPherson took "Seymour" from forgiveness offered to Madge, to a fistfight with Hal, to pain of loss when she rejects him, through the quick decision to change all of his plans for the future. Yet he suppressed the character's inner turmoil to smile at others' happier endings. He was still smiling a little as he turned for his final exit, swallowing hard, eyes red.

In the final scene, Breton's eyes were haunting, first rimmed in makeup smeared with tears. She started the play as the self-composed town beauty, fascinating and untouchable to the boys in town (played by Josh Zuckerman, Alex Moyer, Matt Lewis and Myles Haslam); but the morning after her fling at the picnic, they return like a wolf pack to a dog in heat, hooting and honking their cars at her. Breton exited stiffly, eyes staring forward, reflecting horror at what she has lost and what her future holds.

I saw the play with a colleague of mine who has also taught young actors for decades, and she was as impressed as I by the layers of character and the quality that all the actors had of being wholly "in the moment."

Kudos to director Katie Arjona, who worked the actors hard to make their face - to - face interactions real.

Jamie Cullum in Concert: Shhhh! This is called "Jazz!"

2010-03-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

(Reflections after seeing the concert by Jamie Cullum and musicians at the Cobb Energy Center north of Atlanta, Friday night, March 13.)

I hear the word "Jazz," and my pulse starts racing immediately. But for a generation or more, "Jazz" has become a word of scorn. Some women I know, older than I am, think of jazz as ugly, formless, annoying; students in my middle school classes use "jazz" the way my generation used "elevator music." So maybe it's good marketing for Jamie Cullum to play down the core of his strength as a performer.

In an interview broadcast on NPR the morning after I saw Jamie Cullum, the young singer / pianist told of playing jazz clubs in London where audiences were sparse and much older than he was, until word of mouth got around about, in his words, "the type of show I do," and he drew in fellow twenty-somethings.

He has since attracted an audience as wide as a continent, and an ocean away from that little jazz club. On the Grand Tier level of the house at his concert in Atlanta Friday night, there were elderly couples, young women who screamed "Whooo!" and "Jamie!" whenever he ripped off an article of clothing, college-aged Asian Indian groupies who posed with their Jamie Cullum posters at intermission, my friend Suzanne who is JC's age, and this fifty-year-old fan of piano jazz and show tunes.

So, does he still have to step up on the piano and jump off? Does he still have to kick the piano stool over and stand pounding chords on the grand? The promotional material extolled his "spontaneity," but some of these "spontaneous" actions seemed to be a requirement. Standing at the top of the piano, his body language and a long pause seemed to ask us, "Do I really have to do this?" I don't fault him for giving his audience what they wanted; I fault the audience for wanting all that when he was offering so much more!

For his show Friday night, he treated us to a wide range of musical styles and textures. He sang ballads alone at the piano, including an original composition "Grand Torino," composed for the movie that strikes me as an instant standard -- moving, thought-provoking, tuneful, well-crafted. He made a point of stepping away from the microphone to rely just on his voice. He sang a new rendition of a song that I've heard him sing on TV and on recording, Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You," this time arranged simply for his voice and an upright bass. He improvised at the key board while other band members played solo trumpet and guitar.

He worked an intense, slightly abstracted version of Stephen Sondheim's "Nothing's Going to Harm You" into the middle of another song.

His real spontaneity is the kind that qualifies him as a jazz musician, and that's what happens when he and his band surprise each other with twists and sparks in the music. He's in his thirties now, and he doesn't have to jump off pianos any more. Unleash the jazz, and let it work on a new generation or two, or three.

Colette Collected and Recollected: Sweet and Sour

2010-03-14T14:01:00.000-07:00

(reflection on COLETTE, a musical entertainment by John Dankworth, original 1980 cast album released by Stagedoor Records, and THE COLLECTED STORIES OF COLETTE. edited by Robert Phelps.)

Singer / Actress Cleo Laine and her husband composer / lyricist John Dankworth opened previews of COLETTE in London the very week that my summer in England ended in 1979, and listening to it brings back that time sweetly. The sweetness is increased because their loving marriage came to an end with Dankworth's death from long illness just a few weeks ago.

I also caught up on reading the works of the eponymous writer, expecting to enhance the experience. But I wish I'd taken the sweet "musical entertainment" without the sourness of the writer.

Mr. Dankworth must have enjoyed writing this musical "entertainment" for his wife. It opens with a waltz set at a reflective tempo, with rich jazzy chords arpeggiated behind Cleo's smokey observations about the changing colors of seasons, and how "You Can Be Sure of Spring." Other numbers are spritely marches, a little girl ditty for little girl Colette, and more waltzes. It's a little jarring when sounds that were hip in 1980 intrude, sounding extremely dated. Dankworth arranges the songs the way he arranged his wife's concerts, saving her high notes for an anthem of self-assertion midway through the score.

The show originated at the summer arts camp that the Dankworths ran together for decades, and there's a little summer camp quality. The lyrics rhyme playfully and frequently without ever saying a whole lot. Dankworth settled for repetition and stereotyped lines ("He was a sight to see!" and lots of lines with "really" and "quite" filling out the meter). The story -- there is no script mentioned in the credits -- is about a country girl who marries an urbane young bounder who uses her talents for his own self-promotion. Later, she creates a line of cosmetics, she acts on stage, and she divorces number one and marries two more.

It's a pleasant relic from a time when Cleo's voice was at its peak of clarity, suppleness, range, and stamina. The show was light, and a way for Cleo to wear lovely costumes, show off in bright songs and in thoughtful ballads. It was a lovingly crafted gift from Dankworth to Cleo.

The real Colette comes across in her stories as a fine craftsman -- if one can judge from translations -- but also as disdainful of the people she describes. "Cheri" focuses on a narcissistic young man through the eyes of the older woman who keeps him. We read about his skin, his hair, his muscles, his pouting, his wearing her pearls, his dancing around the bedroom while she watches. One blogger observes astutely that this is a reversal of the usual point of view, and that's interesting.

In a suite of stories set backstage at a 1920s music hall in Paris, Colette evidently draws on her own experience as a "mime" to show us monstrous behavior, cheapness, drabness, and insecurity back stage. One portrait of "The Quick Change Artist" shows sympathy for the young woman who dances herself into a state of quivering exhaustion, runs backstage to change costume in under a minute, and runs back on stage for another desperate dance in another style.

Some other stories are brief glimpses of criminals: stupid men who have lashed out stupidly at girls we never see except as corpses. We see how these men self-destruct.

I don't have time to think this through right now, but I have observed many times in this blog that certain artists -- Updike, Sondheim, Shakespeare, Buechner, and mystery writer Sue Grafton -- feel a love or at least a sympathy for their characters, and they work hard to get us to appreciate them. Colette's ability to observe is as acute as anyone's, yet I feel from her 0nly disdain, though it sometimes condescends to feel pity for someone.

After reading stories from each of the sections in this collection, I've had to give up. I was getting depressed.

Greece's Tantrum: When Safety Net Becomes a Crib

2010-03-11T11:30:00.000-08:00

(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

(reflections on recent street demonstrations in Greece and health care debate in the US.)

In Greece, we're seeing lots of demonstrations. We're also seeing a demonstration of what happens when the State becomes Daddy for its people. Naturally, those people become like adolescents -- dependent, feeling entitled, petulant, short-sighted -- but without the charms of youth or the adolescent's excuse of a disconnected frontal lobe.

Today, the AP reports up to 30,000 demonstrators including masked "youths" who hurt people and property, while some units of the police, also dependent on government largesse, stood by in silent approval.

Earlier this week on NPR, I heard one of those demonstrators against the Greek government's austerity plans ask, "What will the government ration next? The air we breathe?" She thought she was making a clever rhetorical point about the current government's callousness, but she unwittingly demonstrated how decades of Greek voters' clamoring for more protections, more programs, more subsidies have made those same voters frighteningly dependent on their Daddy.

That image of the "safety net" has long since lost its original meaning. The acrobat who falls into a safety net is supposed to jump right out and get back up on the trapeze. But now, when liberals speak of "safety net," they're thinking of a floor beyond which no one can drop by reason of old age, disability, illness, location, temporary unemployment, chronic unemployment, unemployability... regardless.

Greece demonstrates that the safety net can become a crib, infantilizing its people. Where's security when a large chunk of the population is dependent upon the state for salary, health care, transportation, retirement income, utilities, and an ever-growing list of services promised to attract votes from an ever-larger chunk of the population?

A Greek union official, quoted on NPR, called the government "hypocrites" for making "the people" pay for the mismanagement of the previous government. Again, he's revealing something scary: In the birthplace of democracy, where voters chose the previous government on the basis of its promises of benefits, who's to blame for the mismanagement?

I've heard further analysis about the government's failure to collect taxes, because some 80% of the population is involved in some form of "black market," bypassing taxes. The Greek economist scolded his own people: "Corruption causes poverty, not the other way around."

While Greece is tangled up in its erstwhile "safety net," the US Congress is considering a federal mandate to purchase health insurance in order to spread risk for companies.

It's hard for me to see this as quite the threat that Republicans' rhetoric makes it out to be. Nor can I see the government takeover of GM and purchase of stock in AIG as creeping European Social Democracy. My very conservative Republican state of Georgia has long mandated that everyone purchase auto insurance for exactly the same purpose as the proposed health insurance mandate; and Ronald Reagan oversaw the buying up of Savings and Loans and the bailout of Chrysler -- temporary measures to stabilize the markets.

But it's easy to see how temporary "safety net" provisions have become permanent parts of everyone's plans for their own futures, Republicans' as well as Democrats'. That's how, thread by thread, the safety net becomes a different kind of net, a snare.

Theology of Crosswords: A Shortz Sermon

2010-03-09T03:52:00.000-08:00

(reflections on the New York Times Sunday Crossword Omnibus, a series edited by Will Shortz.)

Photo by: Donald Christensen

Will Shortz, editor and NPR's "Puzzle Master," whose games have been a highlight of my Sundays since the Reagan administration.

When you begin a new puzzle, it's creation all over again: a paradise of potential.

Inspiration comes amid the perspiration: You suddenly know that "_ _ _ _ _ R I N" must be MANDARIN, and out roll the words "muMs," "basAl," "eleNa,""larDs," and, fittingly, "ahA!"

Like the cornerstone that the builders rejected, a three-letter word can be the key to solving one-fourth of a puzzle

Little sins have consequences that spread wide: so many words "across" went awry because I misspelled "Omar Kaayyam!"

Sins can be erased, once you recognize that none of the "across" words make sense until you've changed one bad answer "down"

How wonderful to perceive a pattern! ("Whoa! Birds are concealed in miCROWave and T. E. LaWRENce!")

Often words mean more than they seem to mean: "English channel" can be the BBC.

Reincarnation makes sense. How else could I know instantly that a "leafy vegetable" is chard?

Trust that the creator has a plan, even though you can't see it (and you won't peek in the back!)

Z: When you fit the final letter in place, it's time for renewal: Next page!

(Another of Will Shortz's puzzle collections inspired somewhat more serious reflections, detailed in a blog entry in 2007: http://smootpage.blogspot.com/2007/01/cartoon-puzzles-real-intelligent-design.html )

Learning to Love Verdi: Transcending his Time

2010-03-06T13:09:00.000-08:00

(reflections on recently seeing productions of AIDA and SIMON BOCCANEGRA via HD broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, and AIDA last night performed by the Atlanta Opera. Also have heard STIFFELIO and ATTILA on the Metropolitan Opera's live radio broadcast.)

When I think of art, fiction, theatre and opera of the early - to - mid nineteenth century, I think of overripe scenery, plots contrived to force characters into sacrificing themselves for romance, and militaristically grand music that chugs along with "oom-pa" accompaniment overlaid with strings. Women are portrayed as collateral damage in conflicts between martial men. Verdi worked within the conventions of his time, but I'm struck by how he transcends them.

In the hands of good musicians, Verdi's music is "transparent" and "modern." So said conductor Ricardo Muti, in an interview broadcast with ATTILA this afternoon. The "oom - pa" accompaniment doesn't have to be hokey.

Last night at the Atlanta Opera, I was thinking "modern" -- specifically, Bartok, "Music for Strings, Celesta, and Percussion" -- when the strings began their quiet statement of Aida's personal theme, immediately layering in occasionally dissonant counterpoint. The opening of the third act has a Phillip Glass-y ostinato that suggests to me, at least, the flowing of the Nile mentioned in the libretto. Other times, there were lovely stretches when accompaniment dropped down to just one instrument (a flute, a clarinet) or dropped out all together. These quiet orchestral moments were, for me, even more thrilling than the rousing martial music. There was more contrast of color and texture than I would expect from music of this time -- which may be Verdi, or it may give the lie to my conception of mid-19th century music.

While Verdi does choose stories that place women in the middles of conflicts of soldiers and men in authority, he chooses to emphasize the qualities of mercy. SIMON BOCCANEGRA and STIFFELIO both end with men of authority who choose forgiveness and mercy. Even Attila the Hun comes across as a man of action who has qualities of integrity and faithfulness; he is almost naive in his trust for the woman who seeks to kill him.

Last night's production of AIDA, unlike the Met's and an earlier Atlanta production that I've seen, left me thinking more for the regrets of jealous princess Amneres. The light lingered on her, after it faded on the tomb beneath her where her friend Aida and her fiance Radames have perished.

I've seen other Verdi operas on the Met HD series, and some at the Atlanta Opera. I've liked them all, but without being swept away. One reason is that I always feel like the story takes love for granted. Radames sings how "celestial" Aida is with great high notes, and that's fine, but, so far as we know, they hardly have had any contact with each other. My friend Mike leaned over to whisper to me after the duet last night, "All this trouble, just for hormones." Contrast that to the inchoate but affecting relationship of Peter Grimes to the school teacher.

I've heard often how Verdi had to persist to get his operas past government censorship, how he encouraged the unification of Italy during his lifetime, and how he declined offers of political power and authority.

I've also heard that his operas are unremittingly grim, except for a forgettable first comedy, and his final opera, FALSTAFF. I saw that in Atlanta, and remember little, except that I much preferred his version to Shakespeare's MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, and that it ended with a full - cast hymn to forgiveness and the pleasure of life that choked me up.

He's an artist whose work I should get to know more.

The Vulnerable Detective: Sweden's "Wallander" Series

2010-02-28T11:37:00.000-08:00

photo of author Henning Mankell from Swedenabroad.com, site of the Swedish consulate

(reflections on two novels by Henning Mankell: THE MAN WHO SMILED (1994), trans. from Swedish by Laurie Thompson, and FIREWALL (2002), trans. by Ebba Segerberg. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard editions.)

In FIREWALL, the most recent of the novels by Henning Mankell that I've read, the title is ironic: In Mankell's world, which includes Sweden, Africa, and the USA, there is no firewall against the predators who use the internet, or international corporations to feed their appetites for domination.

Even being off the I.T. grid is no protection for detective Kurt Wallander. He can't open his own email, but his adversaries are watching him via internet, phone taps, and turncoats in his own police office.

Beneath all this, Wallander is insecure in himself. He is stalked in all these novels by age and its attendant infirmities, father's disapproval echoing even after death, loneliness, bleak prospects for retirement income, and the suspicion near - certainty that he is pursuing the wrong leads in his latest investigation.

There really is very little mystery in any of these novels. As with ONE STEP BEHIND (reviewed in June 2009), we have a pretty clear idea early on of what's up and who's doing it. Our sympathy is with Wallander as we root for him to figure out what we already know.

MUSIC MAN: Musical Comedy Tears Me to Pieces

2010-02-07T18:00:00.000-08:00

(pictured, l-r: Alex Hawk, Ryan Selvaggio, Phil Feiner, Patrick McPherson, Colin Shirley, Max Vanderlip, Steven Touchton)
See video

(reflections on THE MUSIC MAN, with book, music and lyrics by Meredith Willson, based on a story by Willson and Franklin Lacey. Performed by students where I teach, at the Walker School, Marietta GA. Directed by my colleague Katie Arjona.)

Settling in my seat to see this high school production of a familiar show, I expected charm and chuckles; but I didn't expect to get choked up with emotion. How did that happen?

Full disclosure: At least some of my reaction must have come from having taught many of these kids when they were in Middle School. Like the proud parents depicted in the show itself, I spent the whole evening thinking, "That's my Steven! That's my Megan! That's my (fill in the blank)!" But I've been watching my alumni in other people's shows for decades, and haven't choked up at happy musical comedies before.

Megan Hilburn, Steven Touchton, and Kiwi Lanier

The moment that softened me up was when Steven Touchton, as "Professor" Harold Hill, examined a paper that Marian the Librarian (Megan Hilburn) handed to him. He realizes that she has seen through his false persona from the start, and that she has possessed the information to have him thrown out of town -- and yet, she didn't use it.

Why didn't she? When Marian asks the townspeople to remember what the town was like before he arrived, we know what she means: Snooty Mrs. Shin (played with abandon by Kiwi Lanier) and her gossips have broadened their minds; the squabbling school board men have become the picture of good-natured harmony as a barber shop quartet (Ryan Selvaggio, Chris Branham, Ryan Brush, and Kyle Kimrey).

But what strikes closer to home are a couple of cases where "Professor" Harold Hill has done what every parent and teacher and coach hopes to do. He rescues the rascally Tommy Djilas (Patrick McPherson) from arrest, and nourishes the boy's natural talents for handiwork and leadership. He also hands the Mayor's daughter to the boy along with some pocket change, so that he can escort her home by way of the candy shop. Later, when the boy is humiliated by the Mayor (played with imperious fastidiousness by Jordan Perry), Harold Hill predicts that the Mayor will one day stand first in line to shake Tommy's hand.

The other case is the boy Winthrop (George Litchfield), afflicted with a lisp, who is afraid to speak when we first see him. Encouraged by Hill's attention and by the dream of being a musician, Winthrop grows self-confident.

These stories all dovetail in the arc of the main plot: con artist Boy meets upstanding Girl, and Girl rejects Boy -- until she observes the effect that he has on her little brother Winthrop, on Tommy, and, not least of all, on Marian herself. "There were bells on the hill, but I never heard them ringing... 'til there was you," she sings, in the show's best - known love song.

When she hands Hill that paper, she effects a change in him. His affable confidant Marcellus (payed by big voiced Schuyler Richardson) urges him to escape with his ill-gotten money, but Hill won't. He admits, "For the first time in my life, I've got my foot caught in the door."

The creators of the play make little Winthrop the one to confront Hill with his lies. Stricken by the boy's disillusionment, Hill swears to tell Winthrop the truth from now on, and does: Yes, I've lied to you. But, yes, I do truly believe in you.

When a certain traveling anvil salesman (Phil Feiner) exposes the scam, and Hill stands in hand cuffs beside Constable Locke (played sternly by Max Vanderlip), it's Tommy Djilas who leads Winthrop and the band to his rescue. True to Hill's prediction, the Mayor grasps Tommy's hand at the show's very end.

So, seeing the story of a "Professor" who teaches the townspeople to disregard limits imposed on them by others' opinions, any parent, coach or teacher has to feel inspired. That's where the emotion came from.

Had the show been less than thoroughly imagined and produced, those deficits would have distracted from the story.

But the set itself inspired confidence. The backdrop that spanned the proscenium, bearing a meticulously rendered small town street in gentle pastel colors, would've sufficed for a set. But designer Bill Schreiner stretched the stage with a hundred platforms that extended nearly to the dimensions of a basketball court. The two - story home of "Marian the librarian" occupied the upstage left corner, with practical door. It split open at the corner to reveal her parlor, complete with actual piano. Portable lampposts with red, white and blue bunting helped to define spaces. The crowning piece of whimsical stagecraft was the somewhat distended gazebo built to house the straw-hatted, bow-tied band.

See video

That band, conducted by instructor Todd Motter in Sousa regalia, gave a full sound, with Willson's counter-melodies rising up clearly through the mix to support the familiar tunes. The big tunes were impressive enough, but the band also played more subtle accompaniment for the rhythmic patter that sets this score apart. Especially notable was the way that senior percussionist Bas de Vuyst kept the train scene chugging on its track, and also the off-beat chords and fills from the band that punctuate Willson's masterpiece of double-talking flim-flam, "Ya Got Trouble."

"Trouble" displayed the charm and musicality of leading man Steven Touchton. He missed not a beat as he built this proto-rap song gradually from its innocuous start to "mass 'steria" at the end.

As director and choreographer, Katie Arjona staged "Trouble" to blur the lines between acting and dancing. It was a wonder to see the people strolling by, going about their business, coalescing into a congregation in a giant gospel number. In "Marian the Librarian," Ms. Arjona used the books, the benches, the rolling carts, and even the date stamper to draw all the teens in town into an energetic dance with high kicks and even a hand stand -- always pausing instantly whenever the librarian turns around. Meanwhile, the band plays an insinuating little figure in the bass, and Touchton keeps his pitch and his cool as he sustains the first syllable of the name of the librarian "Marian."

Megan Hilburn played Marian with wry humor and a soaring soprano voice. Claire Golden was a warm and jovial presence as Marian's mother, and young George Litchfield made believable Winthrop's metamorphosis from timid to exuberant.

The chorus of singers and dancers were remarkable in many ways. First, they sang in tune and danced mostly in sync throughout. Then, every one of them was in character at every point of the show. Seated at the far end of the auditorium, I was one of the few who could see the faces of Patrick McPherson and Caroline Connell at their stage right table during the Library number, and they seemed wholly absorbed in each other, in the moment.

Finally, I have to remember what this school was like just ten years ago. Students from middle school on up expressed open scorn for musicals. Few girls and no boys sang music of any sort: music was just something they bought. I feared for awhile that everything I've ever loved in music and musical theatre was doomed. So if I choke up, it's partly because I've witnessed a rebirth of something I love.

Athletics, Aesthetics in Music: Rite and a Doo Wop Marathon

2010-02-01T15:44:00.000-08:00

(reflections on two performances at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta during the past week: "Avenue X" with book and lyrics by John Jiler and Music by Ray Leslee, performed by the Alliance Theater, and "The Rite of Spring" by Igor Stravinsky, performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Spano.)

Photo by Greg Mooney | Pasquale (Nick Spangler), Milton (J.D. Goldblatt) and Rosco (Lawrence Clayton) in the a cappella musical Avenue X, Jan. 13 – Feb. 7, 2010 on the Alliance Stage.

For two hours, eight actors perform a cappella music with hardly any dialogue to speak of. We watch and listen in a state of wonder and excitement in the moment. What voices! What mastery! What stamina! Athletics added to the aesthetics.

The plot is Romeo and Juliet, more or less, only it's a talent show and not marriage that joins the star-crossed buddies. One's of Italian descent, and his ilk see their Bronx neighborhood and their kind of music in decline; the other is black, his family having just moved up from Harlem. Each escapes the oppressive realities of his neighborhood into the comforting echoes of the sewer under the street, and they harmonize before they meet. It's clear from the way that "Milton" embroiders his soulful melismas over "Pasquale's" tenor lines that the two are destined to be friends.

But it's the musical numbers that sustain our interest. Besides doo - wop, the story gives us occasions to hear other kinds of a cappella singing. There's a pastiche of schmaltzy Italian pop songs of the early 1900s, accompanied by a band of vocals. There's Roman Catholic chanting, with the word "Gloria" tipping on the edge of the old doo - wop song of the same name. There's soul train singing.

Next door, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra played a program of luminous and dreamy works by Vaughan Williams (Fantasia on Tallis) and Golijov (film music from YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH). But after intermission, it was time for Stravinsky's biggest hit, which I've often heard and never seen live. We see the conductor's irregular beats with the right hand, sudden accents cued with the left. We see the string players growing red, lunging forward to turn pages, trembling their bows, beating the strings, plucking and, at odd moments, sawing their instruments with savageness. I couldn't see the woodwinds and brass, but I know that they were playing at the outer edges of their instruments' ranges. The drummers at the back were pounding furiously, as hard as they could.
Maidens cut down in the full bloom of ancient Russian springtime? Teenage boys longing to get out of the Bronx? Sure, sure, whatever. Heard live, the focused energy and virtuosity of the performers added pleasure to what the composers had conceived; and it strikes me that the composers probably knew what they would be forcing their performers to do.

Rosenkavalier Stops Time

2010-01-10T04:04:00.000-08:00

(Reflection on DER ROSENKAVALIER by Richard Strauss and Hugo van Hofmannsthal, after seeing the HD LIVE performance from the Metropolitan Opera, starring Renee Fleming, Susan Graham, and Kristin Sigmundsson.)

All music and all drama are concerned with time. Composers mark time with musical events that develop through repetition, expansion, contraction. Playwrights most often must find a way to compress a lifetime of story into a two or three act stretch of time. But time is a theme in the words and an structural element in the music of DER ROSENKAVALIER in a way that never struck me before I saw the Met's HD Live production yesterday.

That's not entirely true, because I re-opened a recording made by Bernstein with Christa Ludwig back in 1971, and there in the liner notes is an essay, "Der Rosenkavalier: World without Time" by Robert Jacobson. He points to the anachronism of late-nineteenth-century waltzes in music for a comedy set a century earlier. Writing just as Modernism was beginning to look dated, he also suggests that, even to stage ROSENKAVALIER is anachronistic -- a view pretty laughable today.

The overall design of Act One plays with time. Young lover Octavian complains that morning has come, and he wants to extend the night by closing the drapes. The long twining lines of "his" duet with the Marschallin extend that mere moment of waking to some fifteen minutes. But day intrudes with the arrival of Baron Ochs and then a crowd of "riffraff," a scene of chaos meant to last the morning, tightly controlled by Strauss to last around ten minutes, a time marked by two attempts of "An Italian Singer" to finish the same verse of a love song about "love at a glance" over the chatter of gossips, orphans, hangers-on, and Ochs's bartering for his bride. The Marschallin listens to the song, is annoyed at Ochs's rudeness, all while watching the mirror as her hairdresser makes her up -- and she observes that he has made an old woman of her. Her patience at an end, she sends everyone out. Time stops again, while her sympathy for the young girl who'll have to endure marriage to Baron Ochs makes her think of time's passage in her own life:

I remember so well a young girl, straight out of a convent, who was ordered to marry. (Takes the mirror.) Where is she now? ... But how did it happen that I was the little Resi and suddenly I am the old woman! ... How does the Good Lord do it? I'm still the same, after all. And if he has to do it this way, why does He let me see it all happen with such a clear head? Why doesn't He hide it from me?

She concludes that God put us here to bear time, and how we do it makes all the difference. Just then, Octavian returns, and he tries repeatedly to embrace her, and she tells him with certainty that he cannot hold on to her, because he cannot hold on to time: "Sooner or later," she says to the boy, "[you] will leave me." He thinks she's rejecting him, and she explains:

When we [are young], time means nothing. But, then, suddenly, all we feel is time. It's around us -- it's inside us. Time shows in our faces ... and throbs in my temples. And between you and me time flows again.... Sometimes I can actually hear the time flowing....

Here, Strauss scores the chiming of a clock.

Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and stop every clock. Still -- one shouldn't be afraid of time. Even time is the work of God, the Creator of us all.

No wonder Octavian observes a moment later that "you sound like a Priest today." In Act Three, when the Marschallin again enters after an absence of nearly two hours from the action (and another hour more, if you count two intermissions), the young girl Sophie whom Octavian rescues from Baron Ochs comments that she feels like she's "in church" while the Marschallin preaches about time and the necessity of letting go.

Of course, the iconic moment of the opera, the one pictured in nine out of ten images at Google, is the presentation of the rose, when all time stops. Sophie sings a prayer quietly while her father's household fills with bustles and hustlers, anticipating the arrival of the young man who will bear the symbolic silver rose. All settles to tremulous strings and those crystalline chords, as Octavian and Sophie exchange formal dialogue, and the music expands the moment when their eyes meet for the first time.

The most familiar phrase of music is a song that Ochs sings in Act Two, and every other chance he gets, and it plays at Act Three's tavern, too. Its bawdy lyric is about time, ending, "With me, night will never end."

Act Three is all good Shakespearean / Falstaffian shenanigans. I enjoyed the busy-ness of the music accompanying the pantomime of setting up Act Three's Tavern to be a trap for Ochs (Susan Graham called it "a sting operation" in a backstage interview).

Once Ochs leaves the stage, however, time stops again, as the Marschallin helps Octavian to convince Sophie that he is for her, and, off to the side, she pronounces her benediction on the young lovers, "May they have happiness, or what men believe to be happiness. God bless them."

So this opera that begins with two actresses in bed, two characters in adultery, a lecherous baron crudely boasting of his exploits among the lower classes, venal double-dealing gossips and a father blinded by his social - climbing, turns out to be religious in the broadest sense of the word, a meditation on time, and letting go, and responsibility for each other. It's beautiful on many levels.

Comedy, Fairy Tale, Tragedy: My Favorite Fiction

2010-01-09T06:54:00.000-08:00

(Reflection on THE BOOK OF BEBB, omnibus of four novels by Frederick Buechner. I wrote this in 2006.)

Reading the last words of The Book of Bebb, I immediately turned back 530 pages to start over. I didn't want to leave the world of that book, its places, its characters, and its author's way of looking at the world I live in. That was around 1987. I've reread the book two or three times since. What a pleasure it's been to revisit it again to write about it here.

I've scanned some blogs and discovered that I'm not the only one who feels this way. Bloggers swear that Bebb is a novel unlike any other, and a favorite. Here's a sample:

The Bebb books are hard to categorize. I always find myself describing them as hilarious and then go on to recount a plot that inevitably sounds terribly sad. So let me just avoid the whole thing this time and say that these are wonderful books and you'll live a much happier and richer life if you read them! (Ian Eastman, "I.E." at Blogspot, May 16, 2004)

The Story of the Story of Bebb

Like any great book, it tells a good story. All four novels developed from a single news item that Buechner spotted about a con man who sold phony credentials to make "clergy" of anyone who wanted to declare tax exempt status. Buechner imagined this scoundrel, called him Leo Bebb, and created a rootless free-lance writer named Antonio Parr to track him down intending to write an exposé. As Buechner describes in his foreword to the 1984 edition, the characters ran away with the novel. He had intended Bebb to be a villain, but the reality of that character became much more complex. And Antonio, like Raymond Chandler's detective Marlowe, becomes the perfect vehicle to take us into Bebb's territory.

The more Buechner wrote, the more he wanted to see what would happen next, and each novel carries the seeds of the next. LION COUNTRY begins as Antonio's investigation of Bebb, and ends with him absorbed into the family by marriage to Bebb's daughter. OPEN HEART follows Bebb out west to a new ministry among a very wealthy Indian tribe, and enlarges Antonio's family by the adoption of two sons (nephews of his late sister Miriam). In LOVE FEAST, crisis hits Antonio's marriage while Bebb enjoys his greatest success as a cause célebre taking the lead of a student protest movement at Princeton. TREASURE HUNT opens with a recorded message from Bebb, who has died. But by now the cast of characters, familiar to us as Dorothy, Scarecrow, et. al., load up a car and head to find Bebb's roots in North Carolina, guided by an elderly believer in reincarnation who hopes find Bebb newborn as an infant.

Everyone likes a good story, but fiction can offer so much more. A great novel presents distinctive characters and makes us care about them. The writing conjures places we've never been, or makes familiar places new to us. The author expresses insights that we've never heard expressed, but they strike us immediately as true. There's also a texture to the best writing -- layers that tell us what's going on under the surface of the action, tying to other things in the novel, and tying the action also to the world outside the novel (history, myths, science, art), so that we're not just watching the action, we're immersed in it -- and, even better, our daily lives get worked into that texture during the days that we're reading in the book. Finally, there's a tone to the best writing that expresses its author's joy in its creation, and respect, if not love, for even the least of the characters.

On all these counts, Frederick Buechner's Book of Bebb gets five stars.

Cast of Voices

Leo Bebb reconciles elements of Norman Vincent Peale, used car salesman, Martin Luther. He describes everything that happens in his life as part of God's universal plan, and even when he's down, he's orating.

Lucille, in sunglasses, sundress, with a Vodka Tropicana clutched at the end of a scrawny bare arm, makes her observations short and bitter, and endears herself to us. (A highlight: Her written testimony and a letter to Jesus.)

Miriam, near death when we meet her early in the first book, is the twin sister who haunts Antonio throughout the four novels. Her two sons come in a complementary set, one smooth, pink, small, the other rough, dark, and a brute -- reminiscent of Jacob and Esau. Unable to move, with no future to plan, she says only penetrating things about the way things are now.

Sharon, Bebb's daughter, develops from outspoken young woman to independent responsible adult, through marriage and motherhood. Easy, breezy way of speaking, foul-mouthed, slangy -- and honest.

Golden - an alien, maybe, shaped like a round wafer, and a relief every time we see him.

Brownie, frail, in his sweat-stained Hawaiian shirts, and gargling with aftershave, he's relentlessly sad in demeanor, and relentlessly sunny in statements.

Gertrude Conover, the elderly "theosophist" spends her fortune to realize Bebb's craziest dream.

Herman Redpath, irascible Indian patriarch, and his "joking cousin" John Turtle.

Just writing their names conjures scenes and feelings.

New Places, Places New

Bebb says, "In just a single life there's so many worlds that a man's days stretch out like the Milky Way" (207). In notes I made on the book flaps, I'm reminded that some characters take a European tour. A trip to Paris might be a highlight in some fiction. But it isn't really glamorous or exciting "places" that make a difference in a book, but the worlds that the author creates for us.

So, years later, I carry with me impressions of sordid and ugly places in which Buechner found vitality, if not a kind of beauty. There's ticky-tacky Armadillo, Florida and a certain broken-down Edwardian home there. There's a grimy Manhattan coffee shop next to the entrance down to a subway where the stairs reek of urine. Under that, we learn later, there is "elevator territory," a netherworld that Buechner makes plausible. We visit the arid Red Path Ranch in Texas, and it somehow becomes a retreat for refreshment during the course of the four novels. There's a memorable scene in the over-the-top banquet hall at "Revonoc," home of loopy and generous Gertrude Conover. Finally, Buechner takes us off-road near Spartanburg, SC, to "the UFOrium," one of those unattractive tourist attractions.

Places like these are everywhere I go in Cobb County, Georgia, so I'm often reminded not to presume to think I know a place by its appearance.

Insights

When I contacted blogger Ian Eastman for permission to quote him here, he emailed this response: "My favorite thing about reading is the moment when I come across that One Perfect Line, full of meaning and written so beautifully that I have to read it over again solely for the sheer enjoyment of language. Frederick Buechner has the gift of writing those kinds of lines over and over again throughout a whole book. That's what keeps me coming back for more!"

Buechner has written collections of insights, such as his Alphabet of Grace and Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. But this is a novel, and the insights are worked into particular situations. For example, during a lull in the mounting crisis of his marriage, Antonio lets his wife drive while he rests in contented silence. He comments to the reader, "I have a feeling it's the in-between times, the times that narratives like this leave out and that the memory in general loses track of, which are the times when souls are saved or lost" (181). He dreams of his late sister Miriam and observes something about our dreams of the dead that has since proven to be true in my own experience: "They don't even stop when you speak to them, just look back at you..." (189). Here are a few isolated pearls, notated during my reading of an especially dramatic scene out of the four novels:

I sometimes think that all the major dramas of my life have taken place in kitchens, and maybe that's because in kitchens there's always something else to fall back on if the going gets tough, like cooking or eating or doing the dishes. And maybe that's the real drama after all -- just keeping yourself alive day after day and cleaning up afterwards (363).
More even than to keep the weather out, the purpose of a house is to keep emptiness out (376).
Keeping too sharp an eye on your own life can precipitate you prematurely into that geriatric state where life itself becomes a kind of spectator sport in which there is nothing much left either to win or to lose that greatly matters (377).

But more often Buechner's insights are like punchlines of jokes, and you can't "get them" unless you've "been there." I've made an index of such insights, and provide this sampling (with page numbers from the 1984 edition):

228, 298, 332, 336, 353, 361 Variations and explorations of the line from the Hebrew, "we are all strangers and pilgrims on this earth" and on 306, there's Bebb's sermon on homesickness

507 - There's no path that doesn't lead to Heaven

499 We don't know the past any better than we know the future

268 The point "that all authors make," that events have shape, and its opposite, that Antonio's A-shaped free-form sculpture from scrap metal and wood develops meanings without pre-conceived intention (142)

8 Preparing to die is compared to preparing to give birth

147 Bebb's parable of sin as the unharvested peaches fallen in the orchards of Spartanburg that grow so sweet that they makes you sick. He concludes, "Sin is life wasted."

143 "Antonio," Bebb said. "I believe everything. . . [and it's hard]."

353 "You can't stay mad when you start thinking things like that. Once you commence noticing the lines a man's got round his eyes and mouth and think about the hopeful way his folks gave a special name to him when he was first born into this world, you might as well give up."

At the climax of the sharpest scene in the book (the only one that might qualify as a plot twist -- because Antonio certainly doesn't see it coming -- so I'll be circumspect about who, what, when, and where), when a character wants to know how to atone so that it will be as if he'd never hurt Antonio, Antonio wisely says, without thinking, that the offender can't do that -- but Antonio can.

Bebb, scoundrel as he is, gives whole sermons that catch the attention, always reversing what you think you know. The most elaborate of these is based on a word the "preachers aren't even supposed to know," s***, and he improvises this sermon in response to a bitter atheist historian named Virgil Roebuck [that's the man of the "hopeful" name in the last quote above, Virgil -- Dante's guide to the underworld, the wise unbeliever] who develops his own anti-sermon about the damage done to humanity by religion and religious people (351), calling religion "s***." Bebb turns it around on Roebuck, saying that he's touched on only a millionth of what's been bad in the world by sticking just to the "religious s***." It's that in us that makes us all brothers, and it's mere waste unless it's used to help seeds to grow -- and that's where you're going to find God working, right in the center of it.

Layers on Layers

Buechner recycles the same images or motifs, never quite the same way twice, until events from one part of the story become analogies for appreciating other parts. For example:

We keep re-imagining one moment in Bebb's life for which he was jailed, and that moment grows from being a repulsive image to being pathetic, to becoming a sign of something good expressed in the wrong way.
We visit "Lion Country" park once in the first novel, where tourists watch wild animals from the safety of motor vehicles, but that idea of being spectators who shut themselves away from real life keeps popping up in the four books. (Naturally, Bebb gets out of the car!)
Space aliens are part of the texture of this book -- literally living in a layer under our world, attainable by elevator, helping us like angels, if we can believe Bebb. His wife Lucille says often, "Sometimes I think he's a space alien himself."
There's a motif of significant infants.
Many times, we read about some kind of descent to the land of the dead, in dreams, in literature, in an imagined opera.
There's the motif of the shape "A." Like Antonio's A-shaped artwork, it suggests meaning without necessarily being intended in one way. I wonder if it's also the image of Alpha, in a book full of new beginnings. Of course, "Alpha" always goes with "Omega," and we certainly see as we read that ends of things grow from their beginnings -- in ways that Buechner himself hadn't planned.

Besides these, Buechner works outside references into the texture of his story. For those like Antonio who've studied literature, there are developments related to the Apocrypha, King Lear, Alice in Wonderland, The Scarlet Letter, Proust, Cocteau, the gospel parable of the wedding banquet, Donne, The Song of Solomon. From pop culture, Antonio refers to an old detective series from radio dramas, comic strips, and a song I don't know, "Chantilly Lace," by the late-Fifties singer known as the Big Bopper.

Most remarkable, there are some extravagant stories-within-stories that become a sort of private mythology in the novels, changing the way we see characters, and maybe changing the way we see the world.

Antonio imagines Jesus in the underworld as a grand opera.

Antonio relays Lucille's account of Bebb's story of what happens when the Indian patriarch Herman Redpath goes to the Indian afterlife -- all in response to a bizarre event at the funeral, when the tribe's "joking cousin" (a designated trickster that all tribes have, if Buechner didn't just make it up -- don't quote me) urinates in his grandfather's open coffin.

A long detour during which Antonio's high school seniors work their way through a scene in King Lear.

The story of the death and resurrection of Brownie (Bebb's gentle, ridiculous, pathetic assistant who gargles with cologne -- appropriate for a preacher whose glosses on scripture turn Jesus's hard sayings into comforting bromides).

Bebb's exposition of the theory of Silvers and Goldens, aliens who inhabit our world, and his own visit to Mr. Golden's layer beneath the subways.

Gertrude Conover's elaborate memories of her ancient previous life when she was Pharoah's daughter and had an affair with Bebb when he was a priest of the Pharoah, who turns out to be none other than Calloway, her sweet old black yardman.

As narrator, Antonio sometimes plays the game, "What if?" and carries his musings to chapter-long stories of what might have happened if he had chosen differently -- and even those potential stories exert influence on later events.

Feast, Heart, and Treasure

As Mr. Eastman pointed out, it's a joy and a lot of laughs to read these books, but a summary sounds like tragedy. By the end, we've read about adultery, guilt, infanticide, suicide, lives wasted in envy or regret, violent death, death by painful terminal illness, the debilitation of old age. Buechner himself developed in one book a theory of how Scripture can be read as Fairy Tale, Comedy, and Tragedy. It's natural that his own novel would mix comedy, tragedy, and the fairy tale elements of aliens and Indian spirits.

In its abundance of images, both elaborate and incidental, and its abundance of memorable and distinctive characters, this book is a feast. In Buechner's own loving portrayal of these characters, I grow attached to them. Even the sedentary and taciturn Lucille Bebb, always sipping her vodka tropicanas and never moving, becomes someone I missed when she suddenly disappears. When I've encountered people who've shared the experience of reading these books, just swapping names was a satisfying form of communication.

- 8 April 2006

Forty-eight Hours, a Life

2010-01-08T11:42:00.000-08:00

(reflection on Wendell Berry's ANDY CATLETT: Early Travels, a novel. Published in paperback by Counterpoint, 2006.)

Is it familiarity that makes each succeeding book by Wendell Berry seem better than the one before? This one, ANDY CATLETT: Early Travels, is much shorter than the others, and much more highly compressed in time. Yet it's told from the perspective of a much older man who has outlived every other character in the story, so the longview is here, too. The rich texture of the story makes up for the plainness of the plot.

The plot is this simple: ten year old Andy Catlett packs some clothes, a book, and a toothbrush, and travels ten miles by bus to visit his two sets of grandparents in the tiny Kentucky town of Port William. Over the course of forty-eight hours, he does what a grandson always does: He hangs around the old folks, eats, and sleeps. That's it.

But it's late December 1943, the Great Depression lingering, and the Good Guys still unable to make headway against the Axis. Andy's uncle won't survive the year at war, widowing Andy's beloved young aunt Hannah. War time rationing, which preferred large businesses, has already begun to make people dependent on processed foods. Taxation and debt are making formerly independent farmers dependent on loans.

Sometimes, Berry isolates a moment that takes him backwards and forwards in time simultaneously, as when he watches his grandmother cutting the crust for a pie in winter, conflating that with a pie she made the following summer, tears streaming, when news of her son's death reached the farm (35).

There's explicit reference to PARADISE LOST, and it's clear that Port William, especially in this tenth year of Andy Catlett's perceptions of it, is a paradise on the verge. Andy lives in two worlds: Hargrave, a medium - sized town with ambitions to be a bigger part of the wider World, and Port William, content to be concerned only with itself and its own. One will "consume" the other (17) in the years after the war.

The sadness of this doesn't intrude, but endows homely sights with a numinous glow of gratitude: "The great question for the old and the dying, I think, is not if they have loved and been loved enough, but if they have been grateful enough for love received and given...(p. 120)."

Dogs are Poetry

2010-01-04T16:27:00.000-08:00

(reflections on A BIG LITTLE LIFE by Dean Koontz, and on writings published by the Monks of New Skete, whose ministry involves training dogs. Photos are my own dogs: Luis, born in 2000, and Bo, born in 1998.)

The main difference between poetry and prose is compression: A good poem compresses a great deal of content into a succinct form. In its brevity is its power to affect us.

A good dog shows us the elements of good life, simplified and all too brief. In this is part of the joy and pain of loving a dog, and, as the country song says, the two feelings are intertwined like the bramble and the rose.

Dad has joked that, if he's to be reincarnated, he wants to come back as a Smoot dog. Certainly the dogs I've adopted in my adulthood have been blessed by me, but not so much as I have been blessed by them.

That same sentiment is echoed in two books I've read recently. One is by Monks in "New Skete," a community in upstate New York (http://www.newsketemonks.com/) where the monks train German Shepherds. Their books of photos and theological reflections on dogs include these thoughts:

"Nothing so captures the uninhibited, spontaneous nature of a dog as when it rolls on its back and becomes one with whatever scent has struck its fancy.... Dogs have no trouble seeing the best parts of ourselves; what would it be like if we actually believed them?"

Dean Koontz, famous for supernatural thrillers, memorialized Trixie, a Golden adopted as daughter by Koontz and his wife Gerda, who have had no other children. His memoir of the dog begins with a unique moment in his life with Trixie, when he said aloud, "I know your secret. You're not a dog; you're an angel." He tells how she became uneasy and left his company in a hurry -- as if, he thought, Trixie had been found out.

Among the best anecdotes in the book are ones that show a dog's character. Trixie, always friendly, responded with uncharacteristic hostility to an acquaintance of Koontz who, shortly, revealed himself to be some kind of psychopath / stalker. There's also the story of how Trixie called a Rottweiler's bluff and silenced the bully by facing him down.

Koontz, like the monks, also observes that dogs can bring out the best in us: Their greatest gift is the tenderness they evoke in us, he writes.

These comments by others bring to mind repeating but fleeting moments with Bo and Luis:

When I begin even the first syllable of the phrase, "Do you want to go for a walk?" they caper and jump and head for the exit; yet they're all seriousness and concentration when we walk, as if they were on patrol. I can't help but laugh when I see their rears sway in tandem, and their two noses often converge on the same shrub. Then Luis sprays, and Bo waits. Then he fusses to find the exact correct angle. He's an artist, I suppose, but Luis is already tugging to move on to the next shrub.
Bo scarfs down his meals in a hurry, and rushes in to grab his toy, a black tire with a rope protruding. He tosses it up, catches it, and then prances towards me, chest out, tail high, chin up, tire encircling his snout. We tug of war, and growl, and sometimes I let him win. Then I throw it, he chases. We do this three or four times, until I throw, and he suddenly seems unsure what's supposed to happen next. Luis, who hangs in the background while his bigger companion plays rough, immediately moves in for affection.
If I say, "Squirrel," Luis and Bo both jump up, wherever they are, and tear down to the patio, barking, giving the squirrels fair warning. Luis even does a victory lap around the sofa before heading out to the deck, and the squirrels usually wait until he arrives, just to tease him.
Bo warms my spot on the bed, and moves only at the last second ... guarding that spot from Luis.
When the two dogs are feeling affectionate, Bo always turns his rear to me, and looks forlornly over his back, hoping for a rub. Luis aims for my face: he wants to look in my eyes, and he licks my most ticklish spots, under the jawline and in the corner of my mouth, just every so often, whenever his tummy rub abates.

I could go on. I'm motivated by the same impulse that Koontz has, to preserve these personalities in their uniqueness. Inevitably, his book ends with a struggle to keep a dog alive, and a painful decision that most dog owners I know have had to make.

Those monks deal with that, too, in a moving and wise observation:

Dogs possess an indomitable spirit for life that teaches right up to their last day.
It is as if they stubbornly refuse to concede that life can be anything other than a gift to which they must respond. The wagging tail gives it away: Even an illness as serious as cancer has no effect on them when a favorite ball is involved…at least for a while.

Crime Fiction by James and Grafton: Night and Day

2009-12-27T16:26:00.000-08:00

(Reflections on two detective novels: THE PRIVATE PATIENT by P. D. James (Vintage Paperback 2008), and U IS FOR UNDERTOW by Sue Grafton (Putnam, 2009))

Whodunnit is almost beside the point by the time we get to the ends of these novels, and good thing, too. We love an intriguing situation, we love atmospherics, we love characters that we can despise whole-heartedly, and we love to anticipate a confrontation. Best of all, investigation provides urgency for the exercise of unearthing the past. While both novels have these characteristics, they are night and day: James is grim, autumnal, dark. Grafton's tale of crime has its share of ugly behavior, deception and death, but its outlook is sunny.

In THE PRIVATE PATIENT, it’s victim number one whose past pulls us in. A notoriously ruthless investigative reporter, single and successful, Rhoda Gradwyn carries a deep scar across her face from an incident of parental brutality. She tells her high society plastic surgeon that she “no longer needs” her scar. We know from the novel’s first sentence that this decision will cost her her life, and we even know the date of her murder. As we learn more about her past, and as she begins to anticipate change, it’s a little as if we were to be told that Ebenezer Scrooge will die on Christmas morning on the cusp of a new life.

James has said often that her process of writing a novel begins with a place. Here, it’s an ancient manor house in the country, where druids’ stones mark the boundary, where the surgeon has set up shop for his more private and wealthy clients. For some characters, it’s a place to hide; for others, its past is an obsession; of course, there’s money and inheritance involved, too. James soaks the place in atmosphere, as several characters hear the shriek of some meadow creature being found by some night time predator, and others tell of the supposed witch who was executed on those druids’ stones. She builds suspense very well in a chapter where two women search a building for some sign of a young man who’s missing, as they, no less than we, gradually come to realize that they’re liable to find a corpse. They do, in a memorably horrific context.

Sue Grafton said in an interview recently that she begins at least some of her novels with a social problem in mind. "T" began with the notion of elder abuse. For "U," she started with the phenomenon of grownups who claim to have just remembered sexual abuse from childhood. A boy who once cried “wolf” gets detective Kinsey Millhone into an investigation of the past, and her ambivalence about him keeps this novel rich in possibilities and ambiguities.

Grafton is using elements recently used in others of her series. “S is for Silence” also alternated chapters in the present (ca. 1987) with chapters decades before. “T is for Trespass” gave us chapters from the bad guy’s perspective. And Grafton took us into the time of extreme social flux, 1967-1968, in “Q is for Quarry.”

Grafton once again mines that Summer of Love and strikes gold. We get the social milieu of suburban parents, imbibing martinis at the yacht club. We get their incredulity when their clean – cut college drop out son arrives with an appalling hippy girl friend and her two children, parking their ratty school bus in the back yard to freeload. It’s those two children who become most vivid to me. Their story is ancillary to the main narrative, but I found myself most interested in their progress. I was rooting for the grandparents to save those children from their clueless, self-indulgent parents – who call themselves “Creed” and “Destiny,” their daughter “Rain.” After a day with his grandmother, the boy “Shawn Dancer” has his eyes opened to what he’s been missing. It’s also very real of Grafton to show us how the boy also never lets go the lie that his mother loves him.

Aside from the story itself, I enjoyed once more how Grafton weaves a texture with parallel plotlines and shared themes. A guilty man feels the “undertow” of his past, and literal undertow took one of the past characters out to her death. A climactic scene takes place on a promontory formed by undertow. A continuing subplot in the series involves Kinsey’s own abandonment by family in her childhood, here made to parallel the virtual abandonment of the little girl “Rain.”

I devoured this one in a single weekend, half of it late on a Saturday night.

Night Music and South Pacific: Revelatory Revivals

2009-12-23T08:57:00.000-08:00

(Reflections on the revivals of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, directed by Trevor Nunn, currently playing at the Walter Kerr Theatre in New York, and of SOUTH PACIFIC, directed by Bartlet Sher, playing at the Lincoln Center's Vivien Beaumont Theatre.)

Angela Lansbury, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Keaton Whittaker in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. Joan Marcus, photo

At fifteen, I turned down a chance to see A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC when it was on Broadway the first time. I've regretted it ever since. Around the same age, seeing SOUTH PACIFIC at a dinner theatre, I judged it harshly for alternating cute numbers with tediously earnest ones. This past weekend I saw the first Broadway revivals of both shows, and I'm ready to right some old wrongs.

A LITTLER NIGHT MUSIC
Stephen Sondheim's score for NIGHT MUSIC intricately weaves horizontal elements of melody and story with vertical elements of rhyme and character in ways that inspire awe, not to mention laughter and satisfaction. Most astonishing is the intersection of three distinct musical numbers, "Now," "Soon," and "Later" early in the show.

Sondheim's work fits in neatly to the work of his original collaborators Harold Prince and Hugh Wheeler. Together, they chose the waltz itself as a metaphor for the show, and everything happens in threes, not just the meters of the songs. Besides that suite of three numbers to introduce the Egerman family, there is the opening waltz that gives us a visual preview of the story, as couples flirt with third parties and change partners. Two characters sing of a third (Fredrika and Mme. Armfeldt comment on the "Glamorous LIfe" of Desiree, who duets with Fredrik about his wife; Carl-Magnus sings of his mistress Desiree and his wife Charlotte; Charlotte sings to Anne about Carl-Magnus; Fredrik and Carl-Magnus sing of Desiree). Soloists sing of three lovers ("Liaisons" and "The Miller's Son"). The summer night smiles three times, for three sets of characters - the young, the fools, and the old.

The standout song, "Send in the Clowns," is the exception, being the only song in NIGHT MUSIC for one character to address another directly: "Just when I'd stopped / Opening doors / Finally knowing the one that I wanted / Was yours...."

How director Trevor Nunn handled that number shows how he achieves fine effects through elegant simplicity. He and his designer David Farley presented all the action within a demi-lune of cream - colored panels, mostly covered with smokey mirrors. Panels could open outward to suggest walls, or they could slide to reveal countryside. Only once, a panel opened to reveal an ante room beyond the one that we could see, and it's for the climactic scene when Fredrik knocks at the door to Desiree's bedroom, intending to tell her that he will leave her. Before the final verse, he rises, turns his back on Desiree, and exits, closing that door behind him.

Nunn also re-imagined the opening sequence of numbers, downplaying the comic operetta elements to highlight the mood of Sondheim's haunting "Night Waltz." Henrik in dark shadow sustains the first pitch on cello at stage center, and the voices of the quintet float in from offstage before we see the singers. As other characters enter in shadow, the Quintet sings, "Remember." It merges into the aforementioned "Night Waltz," before the lights come up full for the first time on the words "Bring up the curtain, la - la - la," for a rousing finish.

In the compressed space of this setting, the vocal Quintet doubles as scenery. They are the acting company with suitcases and trunks, riding with Desiree on trains and arriving at stages in "The Glamorous Life." They are servants standing by in Madame Armfeldt's chateau. At the first word of the song "Remember," the baritone and the mezzo stand behind Fredrik and Desiree, identifying their reminiscences with Fredrik's and Desiree's. In fact, the quintet is dressed and groomed to resemble the lead characters whom they shadow at various times.

Musically, the cast possesses fine voices that seem to handle all the demands of their parts effortlessly, and listening to them is pure pleasure. A salon ensemble of eight covers all the layers of the score so well that I did not miss having a full orchestra.

Dramatically, the actors don't blend so well as their voices do. Leigh Ann Larkin as "Petra" literally sounded some jarring notes in "The Miller's Son," when she purposefully distorted ends of phrases in some kind of exaggerrated mockery of the higher classes. Ramona Mallory would seem to have been born to play "Anne," being the daughter of the original cast's "Anne" and "Henrik," but she, too, seemed to exaggerrate the extremes of her character without giving us the center.

She could take lessons from Aaron Lazar, who plays another character who bounces comically between extremes. But Count Carl - Magnus doesn't seem cartoonish, as Lazar always made clear the character's thoughts and feelings, even in the transition between, "I'll kill him! / Why should I bother? / The woman's mine!"

Angela Lansbury earns the star on her dressing room door in the role of Madame Armfeldt. She gets double the laughs on some Wildesque epigrams by suggesting punchlines before she even completes the sentences. Pause for laugh; complete the joke; pause for bigger laugh. But she seemed truly affectionate for her granddaughter "Fredrika," played believably by young Keaton Whittaker, and sincerely tender reminiscing about the duke "who was prematurely deaf, but a dear." In an interview, Lansbury comments that Mme. Armfeldt is shaken when she sees her daughter in love, an experience that the elder woman never has had. Over the course of the drama, Lansbury conveys increasing frailty, confusion, and awareness of her profound loneliness.

On the spectrum between those actors whose characters seem real, and those who seem to be auditioning for their parts, the leads Catherine Zeta - Jones as "Desiree" and Alexander Hanson as "Fredrik" are close to the real end, best when they're joking with each other. Best of all is the moment that provokes "Send in the Clowns," when, mid-smile, Desiree realizes that Fredrik is rejecting her.

At the very end of the show, a reprise of the Night Waltz, each character is with his or her true romantic partner -- and Nunn adds little Fredrika to Fredrik and Desiree to complete a family. It's fitting, it's warm, and isn't it rich!

ISLANDS OF SOUTH PACIFIC

Photo: Sara Krulwich, NY Times

In Bartlet Sher's production of Rodgers' and Hammerstein's SOUTH PACIFIC, songs I've known and even sung since adolescence suddenly connected to each other in that same vertical - and - horizontal way that I've admired in NIGHT MUSIC. If the waltz is a central metaphor for ALNM, the isolation of "islands" is the metaphor for all of SOUTH PACIFIC.

The set is a vast sandy beach rising to a dune upstage. Beyond that is the image of blue water, blue sky, and, sometimes visible through a mist, the island of Bali Hai. The characters Nelly and Emile sing of each other in parallel verses, isolated. The signature songs "Some Enchanted Evening" and "Bali Hai" are about crossing a distance, water or "a crowded room" to connect with a special someone, a special island. Even the children's ditty "Dites - Moi" echoes the same theme. Nelly sings of her "faith in romance" despite what everyone else says, and Cable sings "My Girl Back Home" about his alienation from his old life. Far from being cute, the song "Happy Talk" is painful to watch, as Bloody Mary is desperate for Sgt. Cable to commit himself to her trusting daughter Liat. He expresses his anger at the social forces that would make misery out of her life with him in America -- and anger at himself for not bucking those forces -- in the song "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught." It links musically and thematically to the next song, Emile's "This Nearly Was Mine." Both songs are in three-quarter time, each sung in turn by a man who has missed an opportunity to connect to "his special island." By the end of the two songs, they are two guys with nothing left to lose, and they are motivated to risk their lives on their mission to the island.

Like all the classic musicals, this one has its older couple (Nellie and Emile), its young couple (Liat and Cable), and its comic Luther Billis. All their stories converge on a distant island where the US armed forces can spy on Japanese movements to turn the failing war effort around.

Famously, there's also the theme of artificial barriers to connecting. That's not only the divide between "white" and "colored" on which the stories hinge, but also the class tension between the enlisted men and the officers. In the larger context, the second act's show - within - a - show, featuring the 20s pastiche number "Honey Bun," becomes not a mere comic relief, but an emotional moment when such barriers drop.

While I enjoyed the entire show, it was the very first scene that captivated me. The setting was simple, an inner and outer wall of slatted blinds between the viewer and the shore, and some furniture. For a stretch of fifteen minutes or more, the setting doesn't change, but the story moves forward and moves deep, too. The children's "Dites-Moi" leads to the entrance of Nellie and Emile. Actress Kelli O'Hara, whom I saw in this same theatre in THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA, shows Nellie's enthusiasm, humility, sensuality, reticence all at the same time, different emotions shimmering like an opal in her face, her eyes, her hands, and her voice. As "Emile," Paulo Szot was more steady, and clearly focused on winning Nellie. "Cockeyed Optimist" blends into "Twin Soliloquies" which lead naturally to "Some Enchanted Evening." I'd have been happy enough if the show had ended right there.

Bonus photo: The marquee of the Walter Kerr Theatre as the "Blizzard of 2009" began. Photo by my friend Suzanne Swann.

RED ORCHESTRA Plays; No One Listens

2009-12-14T18:27:00.000-08:00

(reflection on RED ORCHESTRA: The Story of The Berlin Underground and The Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler, by Anne Nelson, Random House, 2009.)

This chronicle of heroic risks taken to undermine Hitler's regime by a group of artsy - lefty friends and acquaintances, tragic as it is, verges chapter by chapter on black comedy.

The Red Orchestra, a term for a very loose group of Communists who opposed Hitler, fought him with mimeographed sheets of information, plus radio broadcasts of useful information about troop preparations on the Russian border. Gullible Stalin swallows Hitler's assurances that reports of his gathering troop strength on the Russian border for attack (including intelligence from members of the Red Orchestra) were all "foolish rumors" (178). When Stalin's faithful Communists send him intelligence via radio, their equipment is faulty, and no information gets out.

Through it all, there are men and women who disappear, who die in torture, officially suicides in custody or victims of accidents. When the loose circle of friends is finally caught, it's through bungling of Soviet "professionals" (262).

Trying as early as 1933, Ambassador William Dodd couldn't alarm an American journalist who wanted an interview with Hitler because "the facts of perfect order and absence of crime in Germany" made some "well - to - do Americans" eager to try having "a sort of Hitler" in the states (108). Dodd abhorred the Nazis, but he saw favorable press for them in the US, including a favorable view of the Hitler Youth. The "America First" movement made the Roosevelt administration leery of strong anti - Nazi rhetoric or action (124). 22,000 American Nazis rallied at Madison Square Garden in February 1939.

Most foolish of all are the dictators Hitler and Stalin. A German officer writes to Hitler in horror at "atrocities and abuses" in Poland, receiving Hitler's response that "You can't wage war with salvation Army methods" (180). Hitler is shown to be stupid in most things, but right often enough, with an early "string of victories" (240) to appear prescient. He's anything but. Hitler interrupts his invasion of the Soviet Union, postponing it to winter -- obviously a stupid choice -- in order to punish Yogoslavia for its disrespect of Hitler's representatives (193).

I confess that, reading this book over several months, half a chapter here and there, I lost track of who was who. The bravery and futility of it all, along with stupidity at the highest levels -- these are what I take away from the book.

JAYBER CROW, part II: Deep Rivers

2009-12-05T04:25:00.000-08:00

Illustration is a detail from the front cover of the book as displayed on Amazon.com

(more reflections on JAYBER CROW by Wendell Berry, following a post earlier this week. Page numbers refer to the Counterpoint Paperback edition.)

Even before the first page of JAYBER CROW, Berry pays homage to Mark Twain. In a "NOTICE" that parodies Twain's warning at the top of Huckleberry Finn, Berry exiles to a desert island anyone who attempts to "deconstruct or otherwise 'understand'" his novel. Cognizant of the risk, I proceed with my second reflection on it.

That warning isn't the only nod to Twain, here. Like Huck, Jayber is witness to and sometime participant in slapstick pranks and incidents involving a plumber's plunger, a drunk’s confrontation with a truck, a ferry boat on ice, and the opportunistic dog of a blind man. Jayber comments that knowledge of a town -- including that of "unauthorized" familial relationships -- comes to a barber the way stray cats come to a barn (94).

The river runs through Berry's novel, as the Mississippi runs through Twain's, becoming something more than a backdrop. Like Huck, Jayber lives his earliest years at a landing on the river. During his travels as a young man, he glimpses a whole house floating in the flooded river, reminiscent of Huck’s encounter with the "house of death.” Unlike Huck, who heads West in the end, Jayber follows the river back to his point of origin, to stay.

Jayber reflects often on the river itself. Is the "river" the water? the ditch in the earth etched by the water? the landscape that the river creates? Doesn’t a river embody time and memory (24)? Finally, Jayber decides that Port William is "a little port for the departure and arrival of souls" (301). The river’s beauty, unaffected by the trashiness of speedboating tourists who are "in an emergency to relax" (331), is that the river "keeps to its way" (310).

There's a theology implicit, here, as in all of Berry's works that I've read. Unlike those other works, there's some explicit theology, too, thanks to Jayber Crow's stint at a preachers’ college, which he leaves when he loses his feeling of being called. "I assumed that since I didn't have the religion of Pigeonville College,” Crow tells us , “I didn't have any religion at all" (68). But a new theology grows on the foundation of the old one, beginning where the Bible does, in a chaos of deep waters and darkness. While the river floods, he feels the longing to return home “rising" in him like the water.

Working his part-time position as sexton to Port William’s little church, Jayber keeps to himself a theology that turns that of the preachers on its head: “They [have] a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works.” He doubts that any of the hearers of those sermons believed what they heard.

The people who heard those sermons loved good crops, good gardens, good livestock and work animals and dogs; they loved flowers and the shade of trees, and laughter and music; some of them could make you a fair speech on the pleasures of a good drink of water or a patch of wild raspberries. While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children.

The preachers themselves, he observes, would be invited to dinner after their world-condemning sermons, and they would eat good food with “unconsecrated relish” (161). (I should add that Jayber’s theology strikes me as perfectly Episcopalian.)

Jayber’s world has its saints and its devils, too. A central figure in this novel, a sort of Beatrice to Jayber’s Dante, is the girl Mattie Keith, glimpsed through the barber’s window as she walks home from school, often in the company of her popular classmate Troy Chatham. Not just because of jealousy, Troy comes to embody for Jayber everything wrong with the world we live in, everything that pulls Port William apart. Former high school basketball star, Troy “was all show, and he had the conviction, as such people do, that show is the same as substance. He didn’t think he was fooling other people; he had fooled himself” (177). Mattie’s father Athey Keith is set up as his son in law’s opposite: “There was never much room between what he said and what he thought,” and he operates his farm on the principle, “Wherever I look.. I want to see more than I need, and have more than I use.” Troy, enamored of expensive new machinery and agri- business says instead, “Never let a quarter’s worth of equity stand idle. Use it or borrow against it.” Troy exhausts his credit while he exhausts his father – in – law’s land (179) all in a futile effort to “make something of himself.”

Near the end of his story, Jayber Crow admires the Branch family: “The Branches seemed uninterested in getting somewhere and making something of themselves. What they liked was making something of nearly nothing.”

That strikes me as Jayber’s ideal, and Wendell Berry’s, too. The author has made a world out of nearly nothing, and he has not seen the need to go anywhere else to find stories worth telling.

Wendell Berry's JAYBER CROW: More Fun in Port William, KY

2009-12-03T18:00:00.001-08:00

(reflections on the novel JAYBER CROW by Wendell Berry.)

Stories by Berry, and a novel of his that I've commented on here at this blog, have been beautiful, funny, thought-provoking, occasionally annoying when Berry turns his characters into mouth pieces for his political views. But JAYBER CROW is the first book that struck me as "fun."

Small town barber Jayber Crow is a kind of priest. In the town of Port William, KY, invented by Wendell Berry to be core of his stories and novels, others are the creators and shakers and prodigals; bad boy Burley Coulter is a prophet, and Mat Feltner is a kind of judge. But Crow, handling the heads and locks of the male population for decades, noticing some "unauthorized" family relationships among boys and men of different families, is a kind of father confessor and, as part - time grave digger, he even administers some last rites.

His story, contrived to make him both an orphan and a boy dedicated to the Church, takes him through orphanage and educational institutions, through flood and voyage, to Port William, where Burley Coulter is the first person he sees.

From then on, he's witness to and party to the horse play and bad behavior of the male half of the population of small town Port William, KY.

As observer and ex-religious, Jayber Crow is an enthusiastic convert to Burley Coulter's idea of "The Membership," a tight bond of personal responsibility for each other that characterizes the best people in Port William.

I made enough notes about themes in this book, and techniques in this book, to have two or three more commentaries.

Meta-Savannah

2009-11-25T14:23:00.000-08:00

(reflections on John Berendt's MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL.)

When you visit a city that you've seen in a movie, there's this effect that the sights are somehow more real for having been on the screen. The same holds true with cities you've seen in your mind's eye through reading. I read that idea in Walker Percy's novel THE MOVIEGOER, set in New Orleans, and my first visit to that city was enriched by the meta-New Orleans of Percy's telling that I carried around with me to each location. I say "enriched," but it also probably falsified the experience, too. Was I walking around like Dorothy in Frank Baum's original book, seeing Oz through emerald-colored lenses?

The same effect obtains in Savannah GA, now that I've seen it in some movie clips, and I've read about it in John Berendt's MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL.

Nothing in Berendt's work of creative non-fiction tops the author's evocation of Savannah as he first glimpsed it around the year 1980 (a year when I visited it, myself, as a college student). He's listening to the radio, driving the highway south from S.C., when...

Abruptly, the trees gave way to an open panorama of marsh grass the color of wheat. Straight ahead, a tall bridge rose steeply out of the plain. From the top of the bridge, I looked down on the Savannah River and, on the far side, a row of old brick buildings fronted by a narrow esplanade. Behind the buildings a mass of trees extended into the distance, punctuated by steeples, cornices, rooftops, and cupolas. As I descended from the bridge, I found myself plunging into a luxuriant green garden. (28)

Deftly, he introduces us to characters who introduce us to the city, and that city is itself the main character. "We have a saying," one character tells him.

If you go to Atlanta, the first question people ask you is, "What's your business?" In Macon they ask, "Where do you go to church?" In Augusta they ask your grandmother's maiden name. But in Savannah the first question people ask you is, "What would you like to drink?" (31)

We learn the history of the place, how it was once a place of importance to the world, site of the first steam ship to launch into the Atlantic back in 1819, site of America's first golf course in 1796, and a key location in the Civil War. But the boll weavil and industrialization stripped Savannah of its main source of wealth and its labor force. Hard to reach by train or plane, the town is "gloriously isolated" (29) but also insular.

While living in Savannah, author Berendt stumbled into a salacious criminal trial: Jim Williams, leading figure in restoring Savannah to tourism-worthy architectural glory, is on trial for killing the young hustler who sometimes lives with him. Berendt uses this story as his scaffolding to show behind - the - scenes rivalries, sniping, back-stabbing, corruption, and flamboyant behavior of Savannah's eccentrics.

In the end, I'm afraid that the goodwill generated in the first half of the book is all but depleted by the end, though Berendt tries to liven the proceedings with some scenes of voodoo in Bonaventure Cemetery, that eponymous garden.

Happily, I finished reading the book while I was actually in Savannah, enjoying its sights, imbibing its almost Mediterranean sense that real life is what happens after work, when you're with your friends at some table, drinking and dining. But that may have been my colored glasses.

Wendell Berry's HANNAH COULTER: Love as a Place

2009-09-06T17:18:00.000-07:00

(reflections on HANNAH COULTER, a novel by Wendell Berry (Shoemaker Hoard, 2004).)

Having enjoyed Wendell Berry’s collection of stories THAT DISTANT LAND, I grabbed the first novel of his that I could find. The story of Hannah Coulter intertwines with those of families and places familiar to me from the stories: Burley Coulter and his brother Jarrat, the Feltners – for whom I feel the greatest affection – and good old Wheeler Catlett, whom I remember as a young man. That’s how it feels when all the fiction of the author is cross-referenced.

Good thing, too, because I doubt that the novel could have much meaning or interest for someone not already immersed in Berry’s fictional world of Port William, Kentucky. The aged widow Hannah Coulter looks back on her life, and remembers with gratitude or at least with forgiveness the adults who raised her, the two men she married and lost, the friends, the children and the grandchildren. There are incidents and incidental pleasures in the book.

One scene is memorable as a staged event, and meaningful as a metaphor that extends throughout the book. Hannah’s first husband Virgil Feltner, home on leave before being shipped out to the battle that will kill him in 1944, takes Hannah to a spot where they imagine the home that he’ll come back to make for them. He sets stones at the corners, lights a fire, and cooks dinner. “We lived the dearest moments of our marriage in that dream house, in the real firelight, under the real stars” (48).

Throughout the novel, Berry develops the metaphor of love as a place. Walls, gardens, fields, fences are part of it. One grows within such a place. One is comforted there: the Feltners are her “refuge” when their son leaves her a widow; her second marriage to Nathan Coulter is a long process of turning a ruined farm into a beautiful place. There’s pain when children and grandchildren leave, and satisfaction when one returns.

Berry overlays another idea on the metaphor, that of “the membership.” Bad boy Burley Coulter, a grinning joker when we first see him in THAT DISTANT LAND, now is a kind of grinning, singing prophet, even delivering a mock sermon on “the membership” (133). It’s community with memory and responsibility, to be contrasted sharply with “organization” or employment.

The home that Hannah and Nathan make for themselves and their family is one focus; others surround that place in concentric circles; and many leave. Death doesn’t take one away, but the false promise of “a better place” through education, “development” and travel strips Port William of its characters and its special character. By the end of the novel, there’s little left that the interstate highway hasn’t turned into “the same ugly splatter of motels, filling stations, fastfood places, liquor stores, and shopping centers that you will find everywhere else” (175), sights I passed in a car myself just yesterday, with this book sitting on the back seat of my rental car.

Berry makes the experience of World War II a part of his metaphor. Hannah loses one husband in that war; she discovers only after Nathan dies just what he must have kept inside all those years after he fought at Okinawa. Berry’s gruesome account of an ordinary soldier’s experience has its effect, but it makes its strongest statement when he describes Okinawa, pre – war, as an island of small farming communities where people were “peaceable and courteous, hospitable and kind” in “a land of song and dance”: Port William in the Pacific. They hadn’t caused or invited war, the battle was an accident, and the armies of “ignorant boys killing each other” passed “like a wind-driven fire over the quiet land and kind people. I knew then what Nathan knew all his life: It can happen anywhere” (172).

As I read, I thought a little of Faulkner, who also dwelt in an imaginary place over decades’ time, and achieved a similar depth. It’s been three decades since I read any Faulkner, during which I lived in his home state. I suspect that his attitude towards his people is less generous and admiring than Berry; Faulkner might say that Berry has idealized his people.

I also thought of D. H. Lawrence, in those passages of his books in which he was most annoying. He created real – seeming characters, working class, involved in the real world, and kept imposing on these stories long passages of high – sounding abstract statements about life, love, passion, a man and a woman, the future, and fate, and who knows what – all else. Berry has a tendency to do that, too.

I am very pleased to have read a portrait of Berry by poet Donald Hall that compares him to D. H. Lawrence, because I sensed a connection between Berry and Hall. Seeing that Berry acknowledges “Don Hall” for reading draft, I’ve discovered on – line that the two have known each other since 1963, and have been close friends and readers of each others’ works – in – progress since 1975. The poem by Donald Hall that I love above all his others is a very Berry-like anecdote in verse, telling how a farmer’s cows got loose during a televised football game at night, how folks in the New Hampshire neighborhood gather to round them up in the dark, and how Hall’s memories of them stretch back decades. In it, Hall notes that a farmer and his grown teenage son, walking home together, un- self-consciously hold hands. The poem encapsulates themes of Berry’s, the “membership” and its rarity now, and an all-encompassing love in a place.

Follow a link to the article by Donald Hall, “The Best Noise in the World” (referring to Wendell Berry’s laughter) in WENDELL BERRY: THE LIFE AND WORK, by Jason Peters, here.

Linda Pastan's LAST UNCLE and My Last Aunt

2009-09-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

(reflections on poetry by Linda Pastan, collected in THE LAST UNCLE.)

Blanche Frisch Maier, my aunt Blanche

I packed Linda Pastan’s collection THE LAST UNCLE for the trip north for my aunt’s memorial. A couple of years ago, Aunt Ginny died, and Aunt Harriet died in February, so Blanche is my last aunt. I’d read Pastan’s book a couple of times, so maybe my fingers knew where to look, but it seemed that every page I turned to was analog to what I was seeing and thinking.

“After a Long Absence, I Return to a Site of Former Happiness” (p.61) is an apt description of any visit I’ve ever made to the home of Aunt Blanche and Uncle Jack. For others, it’s a grand old house; for me, it’s a personal Garden of Eden. It's where she and Uncle Jack raised eight children, their six cousins, and occasionally three cousins visiting from far away (my brother, sister, and me); and where she hosted thousands for a perpetual open - house "Monday night dinner" throughout her adult life. I sat last night in Blanche’s garden for the first time without Blanche, and thought, with the poet, “This is what the world will be / without me,” and would have to agree that this knowledge does not make me want to write a “poem of affirmation” without “a shadow of self-pity.”

On the road, I saw “the same green road signs / the numbered highways / of home” while “the radio blares familiar music” (“Wherever We Travel” p. 54). With Tennessee mountains in front of me, I opened to this line:

I always take a book along
raising it between my eyes and
whatever landscape I've come
so far to see -- blue mountains...
(58)

For Pastan, the last uncle has “pushed off” as on a boat, and “locked the doors behind him / on a whole generation” leaving “us the elders now / with our torn scraps of history” without a map "on the shore" of the new century (29). In another poem, Pastan remembers her mother’s long illness, like Aunt Blanche's, and “wanting her to flee that ravished flesh / but willing her to stay” (28).

Spoke to my Dad about memories going back to his teen years, when Blanche was like an older sister to him and Mom. On the thirtieth anniversary of her father’s death, “March 5,” Pastan regrets not having asked her father more. Looking at her own grown children, aging as I and my cousins have done (all of us within one to ten years of sixty, older than my grandmother was when I was born), Pastan writes, “Ask me, I want / to tell them. Ask me now” (23).

Pastan’s collection CARNIVAL EVENING includes another one that came to mind: “Cousins,” which begins

We meet at funerals
every few years – another star
in the constellation of our family
put out – and even in that failing
light, we look completely
different, completely the same.
(CARNIVAL EVENING 246)

Hemingway's Hemingway in Paris

2009-08-23T17:39:00.001-07:00

(Reflections on A MOVEABLE FEAST by Ernest Hemingway, Scribner, 1992.)

For Hemingway’s memoir of Paris in the 1920s, he casts himself as straight man in a cast of eccentrics, holy fools, and parasites. A man’s man, honest, lean, tough, discerning, loyal beyond the call of reasonable duty: “Hem” doesn’t go a page without bolstering this image of himself. Ironically, what I take away from this memoir savors of the experience of listening to the gossip of catty Southern women. They affect regret and sympathy while they recount embarrassing details with prurient delight, just for the sake of honesty, you understand, and they tack “well, bless his heart” at the end to make it all right.

The egregious example is the portrait of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Alcoholic, hypochondriac, self-deluded, hen-pecked, sissy, pampered, affected, and rude to waiters and mechanics, Fitzgerald gets two chapters of ridicule from patient, long-suffering Ernest – with one chapter building to FSF’s insecurity about his masculine “measurements” -- and all of two sentences about the excellence of THE GREAT GATSBY.

Along the way, Hemingway also dismisses a character by saying that her idea of a great writer was Henry James – the artist whose works I spent two years plumbing. He tells us how Ford Maddox Ford smelled, how Gertrude Stein debased herself in such a way that he couldn’t bring himself to listen to her – but he could bring himself to write about it in a book for generations to read. He does have praise for a prolific writer I’ve enjoyed, whose name seems to have dropped off the list of must-reads, Georges Simenon ( 27).

About himself, Hemingway modestly mentions very little about his own writing and successes, and he shows three weaknesses three times: Gambling on horse races, allowing loyalty to friends to distract him from work, and having an affair with one of the rich people he disdains in the final chapter.

Accept his self-serving self-portrait, however, and the book is a pleasure to read and may even be worth re-reading in its new “restored” edition. It opens with Paris at its worst: cold, rainy, smelly, dirty, crowded. But Hemingway soon finds a good café where he can work, and we begin to get the picture of Paris that I’ve always cherished, a place where affairs of the heart , pursuit of art, and appreciation for good food and drink comprise the whole of life.

I was intrigued by his writer’s advice to avoid adjectives, to write until one knows what’s coming next, and by his reference to something he learned about writing from Cezanne’s paintings, something he couldn’t put in words. But he learns from Cezanne at least this, that “true sentences” are not enough (13).

Beyond this, there’s the appeal of nostalgia, as Christopher Hitchens so accurately describes it in his ATLANTIC MONTHLY review:

Most of all, though, I believe that A Moveable Feast serves the purpose of a double nostalgia: our own as we contemplate a Left Bank that has since become a banal tourist enclave … and Hemingway’s at the end of his distraught days, as he saw again the “City of Light” with his remaining life still ahead of him rather than so far behind.

That Distant Land by Wendell Berry: Our Town, Now

2009-08-09T14:02:00.000-07:00

(Reflections on THAT DISTANT LAND: The Collected Stories of Wendell Berry. Counterpoint Press, 2004.) Photo Shared via AddThis

Having read this collection of stories, I now possess the collective memory of (fictional) Port William, Kentucky. I could walk you from the house above the main street, where, in 1888, very young Mat Feltner watched his mother care for a man beaten up in a drunken brawl in town. We could make our way down past the other twelve buildings or so to the spot where the grown up Mat learned that his father had just been shot dead (1912), and on to the Coulter place, home of his father’s killer, where Mat as an old man will take a tour of the boundaries of the farm and relive his life – before collapsing into his final illness (1965).

There’s humor and joy to remember, too. Go east on that same road and you’ll see the old school house where 8th grader Burley Coulter improvises some poetry at the open house, and where much – beloved Ptolemy Proudfoot, “large, physically exuberant” bids very high on the cake baked by the tiny school mistress, a woman so high above him in his own estimation that he couldn’t communicate his admiration for her any other way. There’s the school mistress’s first swallow of whiskey. And her second, third, fourth, and at least a fifth, too. There’s the trip that Tol and his wife took in their car with young Elton Penn the driver, having only a vague idea of where they were going.

I can’t think of any event in the stories that happens inside the church, but there are many that parallel the stories and parables of the Bible. The story “Watch With Me” alludes to Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, but it’s the tale of the lost sheep – a daft neighbor with a gun – and how all the men in the vicinity leave their work to track him at a respectful distance for over twenty – four hours to prevent him from doing harm to himself or to others. A more subtle version of the same story is “Thicker than Liquor,” in which newlywed lawyer Wheeler Catlett foregoes an evening at home to rescue yet again his useless Uncle Peach from the throes of another binge drinking episode in town in 1930. There are several versions of the Good Samaritan. There’s the prodigal son, returning from World War II on foot (“Making It Home”).

I can tell you something of the rhythm of work in this agricultural community. There’s the daily cycle of milking and feeding and pasturing and bringing in, and the yearly cycle of building up stores of grain and dried meat for the winter months to feed all the lives that depend on the farm family. There’s the intense working of rows of tobacco when the plants ripen. There’s hauling to market. The unpredictable but never – ending round of repairs on fences, rooves, pens. There’s the hunting that interrupts the farming, ‘cause, when your dog has treed something, you don't want to disappoint him.

What comes through most strongly in these stories is built into the organization of the book: connectedness. It’s a small town, and it’s a tight community. People take responsibility for others. They remember each others’ pasts. They check up on each other in time of flood, in time of illness.

Until the last phase of the book brings us to the 1970s and 80s, “the city” is a place to visit, associated in these stories with hurried, thoughtless people, contemptuous and contemptible. It’s a place of vomiting, confusion, and double-dealing. Only in that last phase of the book, Port William seems to have passed away, and the outside city world has intruded. In those last stories, the few who remember the town as we now remember it, band together in a futile effort to keep the City’s and the Government’s hands off. There’s a remarkable story in which the family and friends of Burley Coulter band together to fend off the agents of the State so that he can die in familiar surroundings. A couple of these pieces start as stories but disappoint when the elements of story turn out to be pretense, window-dressing for tedious diatribes against American consumer culture and government intrusion in private life.

Was the typical small town in west Kentucky peopled by such strong, loving, gentle, hard – working, hard – fighting, amazingly forgiving, people? Wasn’t TOBACCO ROAD about just this sort of place? That was written by a disdainful man. Wendell Berry looks lovingly, admiringly, at a kind of life long gone. It’s not just nostalgia: these qualities of work, integrity, respect for others’ privacy, and communal responsibility aren’t dependent on a place and time.

Leadership in a Church: Message for bulletin

2009-08-05T13:26:00.000-07:00

(I wrote this as part of a promotion for our church's upcoming "Ministry Fair" when adults sign up for groups and classes.)

Do you know anyone at St. James who should be a leader?

You probably know someone who leads without being “in charge.”

That’s the kind of leader that God intends for every member of the Church to be. God’s intention shows as early as Exodus, when He promises to make a kingdom of priests. Jesus says leaders are those serve others, and calls all of us to be leaders in that way: Whoever would be first must be last . . . ; You also are to wash one another’s feet…; Do you love me? Feed my sheep… . Paul develops a metaphor from Jesus, that the Church is Christ’s body, and he tells how every member of that body has different functions and gifts – of service, teaching, mercy, and giving aid. [New associate rector Wallace Marsh] preached his first sermon on living into our baptism from the text, There is one body and one Spirit, one faith, one hope, one baptism [but] each part, working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. Early this summer, Karen compared faith to a dance – something we each could do in private, but, she reflected, it loses something without other dancers, musicians, and spectators.

I know such leaders in our Church. What moved them out of the pews and into active involvement with the church? They’ve answered at retreat and on our Facebook discussion page. For many, it was a personal invitation as simple as, “You should join us as an usher.” For others, it grew out of involvement in a study group. All tell how the Church became more important to them as they became more important to the ministry of the Church. I spoke to cooks, money raisers, “fun” organizers, altar guild, lectors, chalicists, finance experts, a librarian, a teacher, volunteer gardeners, prayer group participants. Many serve on the Vestry.

Do you know anyone at St. James who should be a leader?
How about YOU?

Ice Glen: A Play about Poetry

2009-07-13T14:23:00.000-07:00

(reflections on the play ICE GLEN by Joan Ackermann, directed by Ellen McQueen for the Essential Theatre Play Festival at Actor's Express Theatre, Atlanta.)

By the end of act two, I was glad that I'd stayed. Characters from the play have stayed with me, too, in the days since I saw the show.

The synopsis tells us that the story concerns a reclusive poet who refuses to let an intrusive publisher print three of her poems in his magazine. Already, we're thinking of reclusive Emily Dickinson and Henry James of THE ASPERN PAPERS. I'm afraid that, by the end of act one, the story did not seem to have developed far beyond its original premise. We do meet other characters, because the recluse lives in a large New England home with a charming widow, whose late husband was evidently very generous about adopting guests. There's Denby, a "slow" but endearing boy - man of indeterminate age. There are two servants, wise and wise - cracking in a way that's familiar to us from old plays and ARTHUR. It was all well done.

But it all seemed as if the characters were just filling the time that passed between confrontations of poet and publisher, and those all rehashed the same material: You can't have my poems, you arrogant man. To tell the truth, I was annoyed at the poet, who asserted a lot without using her supposed gifts to express what the poems mean, or what words mean, or what publication would mean.

Act Two benefits from the choices made by the widow, whose desire to be desired by the visiting publisher provided comic moments of social misunderstandings in act one. A confrontation between her and the publisher is the prize scene of the play, and earned applause when I saw the show. The poet gets to let loose in a sort of fantasy game played with Denby. By the end of that act, the audience was feeling warmly towards the characters, and satisfied with the movement in the script -- the melting of the emotional ice that encased act one.

The playwright has thoughtfully strung images together as motifs that relate to the all - important poems that we never hear. There's the shadowy bear whose claw marks we see on the poet's face at the start of the play, but whose existence may be imagined or metaphorical. He's tied in with the shadowy late master of the house. Many references to coldness and ice that lasts even in summer (in the ice glen) relate to the publisher's icy insensitivity.

The production that I saw was peopled by very personable actors who made their characters appealing -- though it was hard to like the poet and publisher until late in the second act. Overhearing conversation in the parking lot, I found that I wasn't the only person to wonder at at accents. Denby seems East European in his look and accent; Mrs. Roswell the maid is Scottish or Irish; Mrs. Bainbridge speaks cultivated New England; Grayson the Butler sounds British. The poet Sarah Harding sounded American with a little bit of drawl.

Then there were anachronisms. The clothing seemed Edwardian, but the dialogue refers reverently to Wallace Stevens and T. S. Eliot, and their high reputations date from the mid-20s at the earliest. By that same time, Emily Dickinson's poetry had at last been discovered after some thirty years in print. So why isn't the obvious connection made?

Summer at Church: Message from the Senior Warden

2009-07-09T13:57:00.000-07:00

(I am currently Senior Warden at St. James' Episcopal Church, Marietta, GA. This is reprinted from our newsletter.)

Picture: a logo that I designed tying the summer sun to the scallop shell, traditional symbol of St. James.

There are blessings in summer church at St. James. Nine o’clockers are bumping up against the eleven fifteen crowd, and we like it. We share one bread, one cup. Then Bay hosts us at coffee hour in the Parish Hall, where we catch up with people we’d lost track of. No hurry: we still have an hour of mild summer morning awaiting us when we leave. Hallelujah!

In other seasons, we pass each other coming and going at the church all times of day, all days of the week. We study, discuss, pray, sew, sing, cook, eat, plan, account, volunteer in the office, visit shut ins, arrange flowers, garden, rehearse, meditate, exercise. Oh, yes, and we worship, choosing a service from Wednesday, Saturday, and three times on Sundays. With 400 regular communicants, we are the size for what the Alban Institute calls a “multi – celled church,” where lay leaders do what the priest in any clergy – centered church can only dream of achieving. Then summer comes, and the pace at St. James slows.

What Jesus said about summer vacation isn’t recorded, but he did say that you can’t grow grapes if you lop the branch off the Vine. “I am the Vine,” he explained, “and you [plural] are the branches.” Did he mean that we branches can connect to the Vine staying home Sundays, praying alone, reading books by C. S. Lewis? That’s what “being the church” means for many who say they “don’t like organized religion.” But as our Rector recently reminded us, life in the Spirit is like dancing: you can do it in private, without partners or witnesses – but then, what’s the point?

Summer also begins with the season of Pentecost, when we especially remember the church’s mission to be Christ on earth. He rose and left us behind to complete his work. Now, it’s up to us with the Holy Spirit to be Jesus in the flesh to each other and to the world. Away from the funny, fractious, needy, giving, old and young people at our church, we permit Jesus little opportunity to work on us in any unexpected way, and we have little opportunity to be Jesus to someone else.

So let’s make St. James a part of our own personal summer renewal. Let’s make that “small church” experience something we look forward to. Let’s make it a part of our summer routine to catch up with people during breakfast at St. James, partake in summer discussion groups, worship (join our summer choir!), and stay for coffee hour on the shady loggia. Out of town, we can read our clergy’s daily devotions and “This Week at St. James” (subscribe to both via our web site, if you don’t already get them by email). We can keep up with the daily lectionary and prayer. We can make St. James’ Day July 25 - 26 a great homecoming.

All summer long, let’s build up the spiritual energy to do Christ’s work through St. James during the rest of the year.

Church Stewardship Campaign, circa 1600

2009-07-07T13:35:00.000-07:00

(Reflections on REVOLUTION IN GENEROSITY: Transforming Stewards to Be Rich Toward God, Wesley K. Willmer, editor. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2008; and THE WISDOM OF RICHARD HOOKER, selected and edited by Philip B. Secor, and Lee W. Gibbs, Bloomington IN: Authorhouse, 2005.)

The editor of REVOLUTION IN GENEROSITY asks rhetorically, “Is it possible that our checkbooks are a better measure of our spiritual condition than the underlining in our Bibles?” The chapters take different approaches to hammering the idea that what we do with our money shapes us. I found that same idea, without the hammering, in a book of writings by an Anglican rector, circa 1600.

In REVOLUTION, Craig Blomberg writes in chapter two that wealth is commended in the Bible, but that it is also seductive. He dismisses the often-used guideline of ten percent, on the grounds that the tithe was a relic of the Kingdom of Israel, where it was a tax by a theocratic state – not a willing donation at all. He mentions that he has personally devoted fifty per cent of his annual income to the church without diminution of living standard. Does he imply that anyone giving ten per cent is therefore seduced, and anyone giving less than fifty per cent is therefore not quite as mature in their spiritual journey as he? He wouldn’t say so.

Another chapter by Walter Russell tells of signs along the “road to generosity,” and concludes with four “road blocks.” One of these is of particular interest to me, as I’ve been looking for connections between my own church and Generation X. Russell hears the excuse, especially from Gen X-ers, that they don’t want to give money to the church because of “disillusionment” with the institution. Russell counters well, with Jesus’s approval for “the widow’s mite” given to the temple that he himself condemned for corruption.

The “revolution” referred to in the title comes down to turning a “transactional” view of giving money to the church into a “transformational” one. Transactional givers attach strings, want their names on things, want to dictate how the money is spent, want to remake the beneficiaries of their largesse as Andrew Carnegie proposed making the world better in his Gospel of Wealth – described early in the book as a Darwinian alternative to Christian stewardship. But a transformational giver hands money over because of the change it makes in him.

Richard Hayne recommends that those of us charged with soliciting donations should be purposefully vague about specifics, which would be “transactional” by giving a quid pro quo. Instead, we should focus on the “vision” of the church and the opportunity presented for the giver’s own spiritual development.

Every writer cautions against using “non-Biblical” slogans to promote a giving campaign; against using fear (“give or these programs of the church will suffer”); and against promising God’s reward to any individual giver.

The more I read, the more I had a sense of déjà vu. If you don’t give enough, you’re not mature; you’re seduced by your money; you’re (by implication) not “really” saved. It’s an echo of the Puritan fear of not being “elect,” and it’s a whole line of discussion rejected by Richard Hooker, intellectual father of the Episcopal Church in the time of the first Elizabeth. There’s also, in this book, the implication that giving is a way to buy spiritual growth, “transforming” the giver. Of course -- of course! -- the authors wouldn’t agree, and that’s why they say it so many different ways, because they’re convincing themselves. Hooker, in his time, had to answer that kind of thinking, too, which his contemporaries condemned in the Roman Church.

I lay Willmer’s book aside and instead studied a biography of Richard Hooker by Philip Secor, and leafed through the alphabetical compendium of Hooker’s writings that Secor published with Lee W. Gibbs.

Here’s what Hooker writes about stewardship:

“We know that God Himself has no need of worldly goods. He takes them because it is good for us that He do so.”

And

“[Whatever we give] we should remember that our gift is not only a testimony of our affection for God but also a means to maintain our religion, which cannot endure without the help of such temporal support.”

I’d say, between Hooker’s two statements, we have Willmer’s book minus the implications of guilt. That second statement also cuts through all talk of programs, “vision,” mission statements, and what the church is doing with the giver’s money. The church’s worth is inherent, and its need is evident.

Episcopalians have been ridiculed for their “middle way,” but in the writings of Richard Hooker who defined that “via media,” we have clear common sense and generosity of spirit, focused on the central fact that God loves us and wants us to grow.