Swashbuckling Swill and a Song

A swashbuckling adventure story with a limp and noodly protagonist whose unintentional irony and understatement form the greatest (and yet not so great) part of the tale.

All the Tea in China proceeds with action over character development, but even the action is envenerating. Little drives the plot forward except the feeling our dear protagonist has gotten himself into quite a muddle. And so he muddles forward. To lack suspense as it does, it needs to be more humorous (the 17^th century dialogue was forced rather than funny).

That said, you could give it to the 13-year-old boy of your Christmas list, assuming he's already had the pleasure of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped (which I remember being quite scary) and is permitted a few X-rated scenes.

This novel, besides being mildly historical, is hardly a typical choice of mine. The inside flap tricked me; it gave the the author Kyril Bonfiglioli kudos as a "groundbreaking satarist" in this "maritime romp." So for that reason, and because the title reminded me of a song by The Magnetic Fields, I picked it up.

Clearly if I know the expression "all the tea in China," I should also know "don't judge a book by its cover" by now. For your listening pleasure, here is the better of the two, still with an ironic twinge but with a bit more heart:

Gagosian: A Mistaken Identity

Who is this man?

This is Gagosian, the infamous Larry Gagosian of Gagosian galleries around the world...and how I've disdained him in the past with reverse snobbery. 'Oh ho ho, Mr. Gagosian, must be easy to be a behemoth when you have everything. From one successful gallery to another, hop skipping and jumping across the art world, making stars of artists as you go. The gall with which he opened another gallery in Rome despite the downfall of the art market. Hah! Not for me, not after you tricked me with your multiple Manhattan galleries so that I missed the Cy Twombly exhibition in 2007. For me, let there be street art and collectives in dingy Brooklyn warehouses and such. Let creativity run rampant in bohemian poverty!'

And yet, Larry is apparently really Lawrence Gilbert. An Armenian-American born in Los Angeles in 1945, and his past is not what I thought. He hates press, and a recent article for Intelligent Life describes the difficulty of getting those who know him to talk about him. An entrepreneurial and clever businessman, Gagosian has made his fortune through good judgement, salesmanship, and showmanship. Gagosian got his start in the 'art world' by selling posters near UCLA's campus. According to Wikipedia,

"In the early 1980s he developed his business rapidly by exploiting the possibilities of reselling works of art by blue-chip modern and contemporary artists, earning the nickname "Go-Go" in the process. Working in concert with collectors including Douglas Cramer, Eli Broad and Keith Barish he developed a reputation for knowing how to push prices upwards as well as for staging museum quality exhibitions."

After establishing a New York gallery in the mid-1980s Gagosian began to work with a stable of super collectors and expand his gallery empire. Now he has three locations in New York City (on Madison Avenue, West 24th St. and 21st St.), two locations in London (on Britannia and Davies Streets), one location in Los Angeles (in Beverly Hills) and his latest in Rome.He represents the best and biggest names. When art and business come together, there you find Gagosian.

Art for arts sake, on the other hand? Doesn't have a place in his world. So with additional respect for the man, I'll keep my reservations and ideal of unfettered garret life.

ADDITION: For added spice on Larry, see this article describing a recent letter to staff telling them, in these tough economic times, to sell art or get out.

Coco Chanel and Edith Piaf: French Icons with Panache

Beware the women of Paris. They will chew you like a baguette, and down you with a sip of wine.




Formed by a hard childhood in poverty and wartime France, these two self-made women Coco Chanel, legendary house founder of Chanel, and Edith Piaf, "the little songbird" (at 4 feet 10 inches) exercised a severe dedication to their arts that led to international success and renown. Despite personal problems and society's moral approbation, the designer and the singer fashioned themselves into the top people in their profession, in a style that was wholly their own.

I watched La Vie En Rose last night, a 2007 movie telling the tempestuous life of French singer Edith Piaf starring the excellent Marion Cotillard. The movie switches poetically between scenes of her childhood and her early death from liver cancer at 48 years of age, and I recommend seeing it. Born in 1915 to a mother who sang on the streets and later deserted her and a circus performer father who left her in a brothel where prostitutes cared for her until he took her to sing on the streets at 14, Edith had small prospects and no education. A club owner recognized the talent in the starving street urchin at age 20, and her fortunes begin to change. Along with success came tragic love affairs and morphine and alcohol addiction. The movie paints her as the 'artiste' throwing temper tantrums, and she retains a coarseness throughout her life. Edith was not always a pleasant person, but then neither was Coco when something blocked her shrewd plans (albeit Coco exhibited great self-control).

Perhaps this temperamental street brat doesn't seem similar to Coco Chanel, educated in a convent and now the epitome of elegance? Yet the two aren't linked merely by coming into the height of their power around the WWII, worldwide success and a close identification with that French je ne sais quoi.

As women, they overcame the social stigma of their origins, had affairs with rich and successful men and were left brokenhearted, and surpassed who they were as individuals by creating something bigger than themselves, seen today in their fascinating legends. In an age where women weren't praised for grit or business acumen or unfailing dedication to art over home and family, these were women to be reckoned with. They weathered changing fortune not with happiness so much as triumph.

WWII found Paris overrun with Nazis. Coco had closed her shops in 1939 and took up residence in the Hôtel Ritz Paris, where she stayed through the Nazi occupation of Paris. During that time she was criticized for having an affair with a German officer/Nazi spy who arranged for her to remain in the hotel. The French despised her after that liaison. What did she do? Come out with a collection after the war the was a sensational hit in America.

Edith was a frequent performer at German Forces social gatherings in occupied France, and many people considered her a traitor. Following the war she claimed to have been working for the French resistance, but then she, and Coco, often lied about themselves. Despite the negative stigma, she remained a national and international favorite.

Small women of bad family and little education, they became enigmatic French icons. They became such with panache. It makes me want to stroll the banks of the Seine in Chanel humming Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien and nursing heartbreak with cigarettes and wine.

Thanksgiving Ideals

Is this your family thanksgiving? It might be a bit off the mark with mine.

The clean shining faces around the table evoke a contented family peace. Norman Rockwell created this image entitled Freedom From Want for the Saturday Evening Post in 1954. He feared when he made it that he might convey overabundance with the theme of freedom from want, which he felt America offered. His idealized Americana scenes might not exactly evoke screaming children or burnt turkeys as in some households (who shall remain nameless) but the feeling is right. At the end of the second or third helping, one can at least feel that with enough food and hopefully a good red wine, any Thanksgiving can be one of thanks giving.

At the very least, give thanks if your November 24 skips on the uncanny faces and massive uncooked turkey flesh and doesn't resemble American painter John Currin's Thanksgiving;

Alone In NYC? Nah...

New York Magazine has an article on why the city isn't the lonely place it seems. But really, does this seem lonely to you?

Of course this is one crowded little island, but if you can struggle across a Grand Central subway platform at rush hour, or cross 5th avenue during the holiday season, or-God help you-go to Macy's, the feeling you develop isn't so much loneliness as misanthropy.

But then one day you might be surprised to find you feel a kinship with those around you, sitting singly or in pairs. After a while you develop a camaraderie of one who has survived the crowds, and still elected to eat your lunch on the grass at Bryant Park with a book as a companion. Who knows? You might even get a hug on these mean streets.

Greater women in Kate Christensen’s The Great Man

Terrible title, but I picked it up because there was a paint brush on the cover. I didn't know about Kate Christensen's other novels or that this one had won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Instead of the light trash I imagined, I'm in the midst of the lives of some intriguing women as they sort themselves out as the great (dead) man's biographers stir up their static lives. On knowing this, the title becomes amusing, especially because the book is about the not-so-great, great man's many women.

The dead artist, Oscar Feldman, binds his wife Abigail, his sister Maxine, and his mistress Teddy together, and not always in ways they enjoy. These very different and complex women are complex and passionate. Oh, they happen to be old. That's by no means a focus of the story, but I find it interesting to see old women as active characters. The fact the Oscar was a selfish womanizer who got everything he wanted makes their stories a bit more poignant.


The male biographers who come to interview these women think of Oscar as a great painter, a great man. As the women see it, Oscar was a good painter rather than a great man, and a closely guarded secret bears them out. The Great Man theory, according to Wikipedia, is a theory that aims to explain history by the impact of "Great men", or heroes; that is, highly influential individuals who, due to either their personal charisma, intelligence and wisdom or Machiavellianism, used power in a way that had a decisive historical impact. Examples would be Stalin or Napoleon, my image left, or Oscar Feldman. Except the novel snips away at the Great Man theory with curt comment after snide remark. A purely feminist approach to this novel would be limiting, but it is satisfying to see the women come into their own in the wake of Oscar's death. It certainly beats cats and knitting.

Christensen captures the competitiveness of the art world and its strikingly different personalities with tongue-in-cheek humor. The character Maxine provides a stringent perspective on all art (besides her own), like

the dinner party where she criticizes the artist across the table and her dealer in a sweep of faux pauxs. Oscar's paintings get ripped apart women by women to the starry-eyed biographers dismay. A question of authenticity arises about some important paintings, and the art world buzz is so strong the book hums a bit in the reader's hands.

Vibrant women and art transforms this book on the great man into a delightful dialogue that would be a home Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Chicago, who created the art installtion of a triangular table with 39 places for iconic women, stated that its purpose was to "end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record." Appropriately enough, The Great Man is the story of women writing themselves into history.

I'm 2/3rds of the way through, which is the perfect time to review a book: I can't give away the ending, but I know quite well what I think. The characters are delightful, and the plot well-constructed. I got more swept up in it than I expected, despite having reservations about the writing itself. Obviously it's well-written enough to convey characters that are sweeping me along, yet the language itself is predictable and non-distinct. Don't let my nit-picks or this sketchy plot outline dissuade you though; Christensen is onto something quite delightful.

'Tis the Season Already?: Murakami's Overt Commercialism

Walking to work on 57th St. in Manhattan, I cross 5th Avenue and with it, a slew of the gorgeous shop windows remind me that the holiday season is upon is. (It's useless to protest that its not even Thanksgiving yet.) Tiffany's glistens in a classically elegant way, while Loius Vuitton exuberantly flashes.

If you want to combine art and fashion in your luxury gift giving this year, why not get that special someone a Murakami Loius Vuitton purse. As a purse, I find it beyond tacky, but the artist behind the new and exclusive print is a marketing genius, and his flat pop art tackles Japanimation and kitsch with a flatly sardonic flair.

To the left is Murakami posing in front of some of his flower images. I first became aware of his work during his summer show at the Brooklyn Musuem of Art, where in a unusual gesture a Loius Vuitton botique was installed in the midst of the gallery space. He's often called Japan's Andy Warhol, and his flat and colorful images loose some of their big-eyed innocence once once you throw in nuclear disaster and a creepier side to anime figures, like the one below.

If any of you yearn for the old-fashioned days of sweaters and fruitcake, instead of neon-lit luxury goods featuring creepy anime beings, well, you're not alone.

Pal Joey Bewitches, Yet Again

Soap operas would have me hooked, if they had all the showbiz oomph
of this musical revival of Pal Joey, a 1940 Broadway show (and a 1957 movie with Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth, and Stockard Channing ). The glitzy, fun essentials are there. That's about it, but that's all you would need for a great night out, dreaming of old Manhattan and the days when show business was showbiz! and hoofers got by on wits and charm.


The plot is similar to one of those cheerful Italian operas, all melodramatic revelations are lustily or tragically belted out. Set in Chicago in the late 1930s, Pal Joey is the story of Joey Evans (Christian Hoff of Jersey Boys fame), a plotting song and dance man with dreams of owning his own nightclub. Joey breaks the heart of the wholesome Linda English, to seduce a rich, married older woman, Vera Simpson (Stockard Channing). It works, and Joey begins building up his own nightclub. One of the performers, Gladys Bumps (Martha Plimpton) has a grudge against Joey that she pays back in a twist even Joey can't worm his way out of. The showbiz, song and dance routine of the entertainment industry turned inside out is fun to watch even now when it has changed, from the backstage flirtations to frou-frou burlesque costumes.

(Blurry Iphone photos of Pal Joey)

The production delivers just what it should from such a musical: pure entertainment. Honestly, I was jealous of the performers, it looks like so much fun to perform. I thought one of the numbers, "Zip", was awkwardly introduced, so that the audience didn't get the full joke of the song (in which a stripper recalls the intellectual musings in her head while she unzips.) Channing's delivery of the infamous "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" can't compete with Ella Fitzgerald, bu then who can? This tried-and-true crowd pleaser doesn't bring anything new to stage, indeed it seems dated rather than shocking (as the conniving predator Joey was originally considered). No matter; some swinging old fashioned nostalgia ought to go down well over the holidays.

Rita Hayworth's "Zip" gratis, so you understand what its all about.

---

Directed by Todd Haimes in association with Marc Platt. Musical score by Rogers and Hart. With: Stockard Channing (Vera Simpson), Christian Hoff (Joey Evans) , Martha Plimpton (Gladys Bumps) and Jenny Fellner (Linda English). At the Roundabout Theater's Studio 54 on 254 W. 54^th St. through February 15, 2009.

---

In Which I Die

Egads and achoo,
Oh what should I do?
Alas and achoo,
I'm dying of flu.

Yes, gentle reader, tis true. Tis a pity its true, and tis true its a pity. However, I sense, as do those poor souls within germ-range of my snivels, that I am dying. I was going to tell you of other early deaths of literary luminaries, such as Emily Bronte who produced Wuthering Heights and promptly died of tuberculosis at the age of 30. And then poor, imaginative John Keats, whose lyric poetry suffered an onset of tuberculosis. However, startling and terrible research from the trusty google search must take precedence.

A study entitled The Cost of the Muse: Poets Die Young (from this article in The Guardian) says just that. Associate Professor James C Kaufman of California State University researched 1,987 deceased writers from four different cultures. Kaufman writes that:

"the image of the writer as a doomed and sometimes tragic figure, bound to die young, can be backed up by research. Writers die young. This research finding has been consistently replicated in a variety of studies."

You see? I'm doomed. And it gets worse....the article writes that "a poet's life, on average, is about a year shorter than that of a playwright, four years shorter than a novelist's life, and five-and-six-tenths years less than that of a non-fiction specialist."

Here, I am, on my death bed, penning away. Just like Bronte over Wuthering Heights, if one considers it metaphorically, and then extends the metaphor to include a whiny blogger. On the other hand, I might not need to worry about a poet's shorter life span, judging from the poetry above.

Ah, onward Thursday! Heigh ho!

Of Russians: Returning to Babel's Verve

My Russian kick (first Chekhov, then Vladimir Sorokin) has led me back to Isaac Babel, and the rogue is finally starting to get interesting. As I mentioned in a previous post, I ambitiously took out Babel's collected short stories from the library, then found one story might have been enough for me. On a second perusal, I find his lively verve thrilling and terseness masterful.

Babel's folksy tales are rollicking in a way Sorokin's The Queue was not. (To The Queue's credit, it ended with a hilarious dialogue of sex sounds.) Babel writes the Jewish experience in Odessa in the 1920s and 30s, so he isn't dealing with Communism as Sorokin is. Yet he critiques society in a way that suggests he must poke fun at life because he must somehow bear the status quo. These Russians attempt humor through criticism, or criticism through humor, but I'm not sure to what effect, as I haven't laughed out loud as of yet.

I flipped through Babel's collection again, hopping from Odessa stories to Red Calvary stories to autobiographical stories. There's always a joke on someone by the end, and with a modicum of detail he suggest a world of characterizations. His people don't always have great depth, but they fit in their role in society that grows increasingly complex as we read his cycles of stories. His portrait is one of Russia rather than an individual. Humble lives are transformed into red-blooded exercises in existence. What I'm trying to say is, Babel is a great storyteller.

Babel, photographed upon his arrest

Babel's life is a story unto itself: he survived the 1905 pogrom that killed his grandfather. He became a journalist and fiction writer, only after fighting in wars and studying finance for lack of other options. He become silent under Stalin's tightening control. Accused of being an aesthete, Babel would pay for his artistic licence (see Wikipedia article here):

After the suspicious death of Gorky in 1936, Babel noted: "Now they will come for me." ...In May 1939 he was arrested at his dacha in Peredelkino, and eventually interrogated under torture at the Lubyanka....After a forced confession, Babel was tried before an NKVD troika and convicted of simultaneously spying for the French, Austrians, and Leon Trotsky, as well as "membership in a terrorist organization." On January 27, 1940, he was shot in Butyrka prison.

Reportedly, while Babel confessed under torture, "once he realised he was doomed, he recanted" but "it made no difference." His last recorded words were,

"I am innocent. I have never been a spy. I never allowed any action against the Soviet Union. I accused myself falsely. I was forced to make false accusations against myself and others... I am asking for only one thing -- let me finish my work."

The Language of Trees, teetering between the homefront and the warzone

To see, or not to see this new play? That is the question, and this reviewer is unsure. The Roundabout theater's production of a young playwright's off-Broadway debut has magical moments, but does it fulfill its potential in this short and intimate production?

The Language of Trees follows Loretta and her young son Eben at home while the husband Denton goes to Iraq as a translator and is captured. The focus on the mother and son shows us a prosaic world of dishes and cleaning and one pesky neighbor, who befriends and bothers them. As they deal with life after loss at home, Denton finds more than he bargained for as a translator when he is captured and held hostage.

These topical and all-too real issues are imbued with a degree of magic that is charming to watch. Here, Denton converses with Bill Clinton in his cell, providing some of the most enjoyable and also pathos-ridden moments of the play. Denton rambles about his love for his family until he realizes that Clinton is imaginary. The clever Clinton scene was matched by Eben speaking to his father through a tree and by an ending in which Loretta takes on Denton's words, walk over to him in his cell and kisses him goodbye--and this scene held more emotional realism than all the dull cleaning scenes combined.

The Roundabout Theater keeps a small basement black box theater for the encouragement of young playwrights, such as The Language of Tree's Steven Levenson. A pleasure to see a new playwright, but Levenson certainly seemed naive as he focused on Loretta and Eben at home while Denton fights in Iraq. The New York Times noted the play was the first to focus on the home front rather than war zone.

As that article also noted, the plight of the father in Iraq makes the life of the mother and son seem relatively trivial. As they talk about school or pizza, the characters fail to display the depth of talking around things nor do they have breakdowns where one is transported into their agony. This could be due to Ms. Gold's thin performance as well as the script. The structure of the play itself was flawed. It contained extraneous scenes, and dwelling on dishes seemed to retard meaningful relationships rather than illuminate them. The father, on the other hand, shown kneeling with a black hood over his head, can hardly fail to resonate with an American audience today.

The play tackles serious issues, and ones deeply felt by millions of Americans. I was one of the few theatergoers not crying at the end. However, it was more moving in that it reminds one of reality than because it explores human drama and loss in a specific context. It reminds you of anybody you know in the military, it reminds you of the news...but in the characters Loretta and Eben you only find suggestions of what such people could be like.

Skip this play, but watch for playwright Steven Levenson in the future. There was a candor and ambition in his work that could develop quite magically.

---

By Steven Levenson; directed by Alex Timbers. With: Maggie Burke (Kay Danley), Natalie Gold (Loretta Trumble-Pinkerstone), Michael Hayden (Denton Pinkerstone), Gio Perez (Eben Trumble-Pinkerstone) and Michael Warner (Bill Clinton). At the Roundabout’s Black Box Theater, at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater, 111 West 46th Street, Manhattan through December 14.

---

Soho Poetry Reading and its After-effects

Standing on a stool with papers in hand, the young poet declaims visions. The crowded back room of the Soho bar softly stirs fruit around sangria glasses, as he heaps polysyllabic words on their ears. The warmth and the crowd dull the senses a bit.

This was my night last nigh; a quick bike ride in the suddenly descended chill, and then crammed into a small barrel of a room to be shot at by local wordsmiths.

I didn't catch much. With all three of the readings I heard, the imagery obscured the train of thought, as if they ambitiously wished to express everything, rather than one thing. 'Poetry reading' sounds stuffy. On the contrary, it was familiar and relaxed, even if the deluge of verbal images stirred the heart without reaching the intellect. The energy of the live performance was a treat that somehow left me tracing the words of other poets around the inside of my head.

Is this the best way to experience poetry? Poetry takes one another life when it is read aloud and its musical quality predominates. Yet one--or I, at least--can't understand it as well as I can by sitting in silence with a poem and reading it again and again.

Yet I was reminded of a favorite poet of mine, who I've not read in many months, Edna St. Vincent Millay. The tone of her structured, explosive sonnets number her among my favorites (if I could do such a thing as pick favorites). Please allow me to present, for your reading pleasure, Ms. Millays' sonnet XLI in Sonnets From an Ungrafted Tree (1923), and allow me to fantasize she is reading it aloud at a Greenwich village speakeasy:

I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn wtih pity, - let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

Maddening Queues of Soviet Russia

Imagine you've been waiting in line to buy a pair of shoes. Imagine you've waited all day and all night with hundreds of people. Can you imagine how dull that is?

This is the subject of the book I'm reading, The Queue by Vladimir Sorokin. If you went to school in the U.S., you probably came across the book 1984 by George Orwell. Well, I'm halfway through a Russian novel written in 1983 the follows much the same line of poking fun at the communist system. The Queue was the debut of this popular contemporary Russian author, and in it he tackles form with an absolute appropriateness to the subject that exploits every angle, or rather the straightness, of the line.

How does the subject of waiting in line influence the structure? Brilliantly, that's how. The narrative is actually nameless dialogue of innumerable people in line, making conversations and noises as they stand there. One comes to recognize certain voices, like a little boy and his mother and a young man hitting on a girl named Lena. Even so, it feels like overhearing the hum of the crowd, as people complain about the sun or their feet in short, colloquial snippets. The chain of dialogue moves as the line moves. For example, a segment of the line twists itself to a courtyard with benches where they nap. After settling in, the reader finds page after blank page while they sleep. The text on the pages even looks like a line.

Yet as the reader finds, this farcical line in the Soviet Union is anything but straight. The humor of the book comes from the deadpan depiction of people moving backwards instead of forwards in the queue. Humor, immediately recognizable as it is, is difficult to pin down. The Queue rests on a recognition that waiting in line in a perhaps futile attempt to purchase anything, of the difficulties of merely waiting to do so, such as the Georgians cutting in front and pushing the whole crowd back, is not reasonable, and is incongruous with the society that Communism purported to establish. The absence of the author's voice keeps the novel from taking on a didactic or even very dark aspect. The Queue is a comedy, but a rather dull one, as waiting in line has little to recommend itself.

Despite the cleverness of the structure, it's also difficult to become involved in fiction without engaging characters. The struggle of the line seems the struggle of faceless individuals, but not of people despite hearing their voices speak throughout. It's also because the characters do not act--they wait and wait in line. Following orders is not the inspiring stuff of novels, though it is perhaps truer to life. Only halfway through, and here I am critiquing the novel. This is less unfair that you might think. A disappointment of the novel is the extended stasis of the plot, and leaves me thinking the line will continue forever, without them ever buying the shoes of rumored American-make and brown leather.

Ah, Russians on the joys of communism..The novel really is interesting in itself, but believe me when I say it fully explores its chosen topic. No one, no where need ever write about queue in Soviet Russia ever again. Sorokin has filled that niche.

Attempted review of a most excellent Chekhov's The Seagull

A new production of Chekhov's play The Seagull has-

{So why is it called The Seagull?}
{Excuse me! Who are you?! And what are you doing in my theater review?}
{Just trying to help you get to the point. I hate those wordy, loud-mouthed reviewers.}
{I hadn't even started yet!}
{And already prevaricating and going on about yourself...}
{Hrrumph. Apparently there are seagulls on the lakes in Russia,-}
{Ooooh, who knew?}
{-where the play is set , and Nina is compared to a seagull by Constantin and Tragorin, and the play ends with a stuffed seagull being placed on stage. Now may I begin?}
{You may. Start with the characters; Chekhov's people always remind me of my neighbors.}

Irina Arkadina, a famous but aging actress, brings her lover, the successful writer Trigorin, to the country estate where her retired brother and her son live. Her son, Constantin, wants to be writer, and has a tempestuous relationship with his difficult, attention-seeking mother. Constantin loves the naive Nina, who wants to be a famous actress. The rest of the characters circle around the story of these four in this family comic-tragedy. Let's just say things begin to unwind in a downward spiral when Nina runs off to Moscow and becomes Trigorin's lover rather than an actress, and this light family comedy takes on tragic tones that have to be avoided in drawing room conversation.

{Little social-climbling slut!}
{Not really, more naive than anything. Now if you'll please keep quiet!}

The Seagull is the first of Chekhov's 4 major plays prior to his death from tuberculosis in 1904. When it was first staged in 1896, the audience booed so loudly that the actress playing Nina lost her voice from fear. It had the typical Chekhovian cast of fully-developed, ordinary characters who keep most of the action offstage, and interact trivially while talking around more serious matters. For instance, a certain writer blows his brains out offstage and we hear no formal discussion, just a whisper to get Irina away. Subtext of this type was an innovation, and helped bring theatrical convention away from melodrama and into the realms of realism.

The version being played at the Walter Kerr theater in New York city, through December 21st, was written by Christopher Hampton, who says "Chekhov used to be thought of as a lyrical, melancholy kind of writer, and he isn't. He's a very muscular, energetic, clear, lucid writer" in this interview with NPR. The strength of the dialogue really comes out in the exchanges, often heated, between Irina (Kristin Scott Thomas of Four Weddings and a Funeral and The English Patient fame) and Constantin (Mackenzie Crook, who is in the BBC version of The Office). Their relationship mirrors that of Hamlet and his mother, as Constantin hates his mother's lover and vies for her respect and attention. This production actually took 9 of the original cast from the British Royal Court's production, although Kristin Scott Thomas was a new and welcome addition.

{Yes, yes, that is all very well, but how was it? what did you think of the performance?}
{Oh, you mean this performance? the Ian Rickson production that I just saw?}
{Oh, go on then. That one, yes of course!}

I really enjoyed it.

{That's it??? You got to say more than that.}

This highly-enjoyable production held my attention from the moment it subtly started, with a character walking out before the lights went down and the audience hushing itself. The different love-longings and sadness and disappointments of the characters was interspersed with laughter throughout, and kept this tragedy in content light in context. It was perfectly staged, with great sound and lighting. The actors were on the top of their game. Kristin Scott Thomas might have been over that top, but then the character Irina is meant to be over the top to some degree and it worked within the play. I really felt drawn into a different world, and was genuinely troubled by the appearance of Nina in the last act.

I think it was an excellent production of an excellent play. A perfect play, really, as it felt like a perfectly harmonious whole and the end was satisfying even while tragic. The characters were true to life throughout, and distinctive as people you live next to and see every day. I thought it was moving in the way life often is, with significance understood rather than outspoken. The New York Times also praised the production, in case you're interested. It was beautiful to watch, especially as things went from light to dark in the end.

{Well, I'll go see it then.}
{Please do, and go away...bothersome old thing!}
{What was that last bit?}
{Nothing!}

Annoying Annotations of a Besotted Byronite

My recent homage to 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know' Lord Byron made clear that not only was Byron idolized as a celebrity in his time, but that I adore him myself, making him a patron saint of this blog for example. I was inspired to write that post partly by the old biography of him I found at the library. Well, this staid biography by Longford contains a discovery of a most upsetting nature! Of a nature so vile, I have been tempted to put the book down unfinished.

Some creature, of repellent handwriting and distinct ammorality, has annotated this book! Scrawled in No.2 pencil all over its margins!

"Lord Byron then went to Venice..." becomes annotated by some childish scribble such as "As he should! Pisa was far too provincial for him" (the excess of exclamation points is distinctly annoying.) This person, no doubt some susceptible very young or very old female, defends Byron against any negative charges brought against him by his peers, defends his incestuous love for his sister, defends his leaving his sick 4-year-old daughter in a nunnery to die of typhoid fever, and calls Shelley a 'tiresome bore'! She quite obviously shows her jealously of his many mistresses, and roots for Byron to leave them all and break their hearts. She keeps saying things like, "But Byron was never a class-traitor or atheist, thank god!" Yes, thank god he was a selfish, incestuous poet who was 'revolutionary' but title-proud...?

So look you, o noble notater, come forward. I challenge you to a duel. Something must be done to stop your forever marking up books to turn dialogues into trialogues, and if death is the answer, so be it. I demand the satisfaction.

And you readers, if you happen to come across a female of inexplicable and strong feelings towards the sundry elements of Lord Byron's life who is an amoral, elitist with strongly round handwriting, probably defensive of some petty title she inherited, and likely a dumpy figure and big red nose, please tell her my challenge.

Factious Fiction: Alan Bennet's The Uncommon Reader

Perhaps you know the term 'factious'? No? A blank slate are we? Then memorize the second italized definition, for that is the one that will be useful in this book review.

fac·tious (fak′s̸həs): adjective. 1. producing or tending to
produce faction; causing dissension 2. adding facts to fictious
stories or things, characterized by the misplacement of
fact

Alan Bennet's new novella, The Uncommon Reader, is a light read about a dutiful Queen, a most pratical and attentive Queen, who takes to reading, of all things. Her servants put it down to dottiness, as at a ripe old age she begins thinking, noticing people, and reconsidering her duties and life.

The term factious is handy here, because Alan Bennet seems to be writing an imaginary fable about the joys of reading and self-discovery, except its about the real Queen of England with oodles of corgis and Diana's death thrown in. A peculiar mix of fact and fiction, that is to say, factious. The dramatization of living people with stories that have nothing to do with them strikes me as a little odd, as if the Queen was a bird that wanted stuffing, if I may be so factious as to say so.

The Queen's tone determines the whole novella, as it should since its her point-of-view, but it's a pity her tone happens to be plain, uninsightful, and purely functional. Only at the end does the Queen take on some elegance and humor in her speech, and one gleans its a function of her reading. Novella-sized is the perfect length for its easily digestable but not inspiring tale. Amid teas and prime ministers and rain, it lacked only one British thing: that wicked sense of humor.

However, this homage to the written word did have its fun plot elements, such as the gay kitchen boy, and a neat ending, and its a pleasure to find something a little bit different on the shelves of Barnes & Noble. One also found the use of the impersonal royal tone never failed to please. Alan Bennet is a succesful author, whose most recent play is the The History Boys currently on Broadway. No doubt this little red book will find its way into many stockings come Christmas.

Celebrity Lives as Art: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know

What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little. Lord Byron

I would rather heap scorn on some actor-besotted rag like US Weekly than read it, and am not in the habit of sending fan mail in the hopes that some rock or soap star will come and deflower me. Even Andy Warhol, to my mind, get too much credit for being a star maker just because he churned out some movies in the Factory. If anything, Warhol began the decline of the celebrity, as he heaped attention on people with no talent or accomplishments. Fatuous, small-minded uninteresting little twerps fill the pages of the modern rag and reality TV show.

Perhaps you are wondering you could live up to my high standards of charm, uniqueness, intelligence, attractiveness and expertise. You are? Well then, allow me to present the man who started it all, the first man to have women throwing themselves at him sight unseen, the only to be talked about in London in 1816:

Byron, painted after his death fighting for Greek independence, crowned with laurels.

Lord Byron, famously named by a lover as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." His lyric poetry, combined with luscious dark curls, brought him fame at a young age. His sensual appeal appears in his work throughout his life; indeed, it becomes a part of it. Even after becoming too 'bad' for the London scene to tolerate, when his divorce from his wife brought up questions of sodomy and incest and his debts from his exorbitant drinking and gambling chased him to the continent.

Difficult in person, but in theory a dream of a man, he kept his readers, especially the female of the species, enthralled with his tales of dark heroes who were all reminiscent of him. In his rollicking epic Don Juan, in which he, as narrator, begins to write events of his own life into the poem, and between the bawdy lies and bawdier truth one is utterly charmed. He and his work are engrossing, whether your taste is for the Gothic, the lyric, or the romance, you'll find a witty and sexy bad boy reflected within. Take a look at a biography, like the one by Elizabeth Longford that I'm reading now, and you find a string of romances and writings, and a poor biographer struggling to defend Byron from a thousand accusations, even now the individual fighting against the world.

Celebrity culture, created by Byron, who put his life into his writing, was furthered by Oscar Wilde, another British dandy at the opposite end of the 19th century, who declared his life was art. Wilde dressed and acted the part throughout, and slyly led respectable Victorians to the precipice of free-thinking anti-prudery. Outrageous and flamboyant as a drag queen in his velvets and green carnations, Wilde scandalized the public with his unique morality of aesthetics even as they laughed at themselves when he tore high society to shreds in the theatre. Tried 'for posing as a Sodomite,' Wilde could no longer not speak 'the truth that dared not speak its name' and the media frenzy was bigger than OJ Simpson and Britney Spears combined when he was sentenced to prison.

Depicting Wilde's reception in America on his book tour. He started a sunflower craze.

Byron and Wilde, the patron saints of this blog, whose contributions to aesthetics are as notable for they way they lived as what they wrote. Interesting and with eventful, active lives, the talented and dangerous duo also happened to be damned good writers who brought glamour to the arts. Blame them for celebrity culture if you will, I just wish that there were more celebrities like them.

City Aesthetics: New York

My window looks onto a grey stuccoed plane rising until out of sight, punctuated by windows with air conditioning units. I can't see the sun. The sun, when I'm on the street, if often curtained off by the buildings rising on either side of me. Grey is prominent in the city, mostly because of the grime and asphalt. Light comes down in shafts, as if even the sun had been mastered by the skyscrapers.

Apartments with exposed brick walls are cool because they have the unfinished look of factories. Lofts, the epitome of cool, are bare, industrial spaces. The Domino sugar factory, whose eponymous sign has lighted the way across the Williamsburg bridge for decades, is being transformed into luxury condos.

My colleague was showing me pictures of my street from 1910, and the view of the Manhattan bridge hasn't changed all that much. Neither had the exteriors of the buildings, or, in the case of my building, the interior. But the gaps have all been filled in, and streets paved, highways built, and horses replaced with cabs. And people, more people, everywhere.

Divided by tall buildings, you keep your gaze on street level, where you find people and cars coming at you from all angles. You pick your way around litter. Food cart smells, advertisements and lights everywhere, and general hustles as city-dwellers attempt to get where they're going with the least amount of fuss. A walk in midtown during rush hour is a journey. And visitors wonder why New Yorkers look mean: they have to focus. Even on quieter streets of brownstones, you know you are in a city by the honking an avenue away and the hobo on the corner.

Sometimes my sense are overwhelmed and my heart starts beating faster and I realize that I hate Manhattan.

But other times, like last night when I was biking over to the New Museum, it seemed like I was the king of the playground, and I felt empowered by the lights of the Empire State building rising ahead, and the cars at my side, and the people crossing the street. Those people and I were all the living parts of Manhattan who make our lives here. Instead of feeling acutely aware of my sense, I subsumed the city into my consciousness and become one with it.

The great thing about making your life in this complex and huge hive of activity is that there's always a new corner to turn down, a street you've somehow never noticed, and the same goes for the people, so many of whom you'll never meet, and the possible experiences, so many of which you'll never have. But you could. Manhattan is a world of visible possibilities.

Everything you've always dreamed of, from glamorous dining to gorgeous apartments to some gorgeous other person, is here on the streets of Manhattan. Shop windows twinkle with more than you ever dreamed of having. Ambition and the city go hand in hand. The best of the best flock here. And then you're here too. You look at the streets, and find a direct challenge to succeed.