Archives for October 2, 2007

• “Whereas its city counterparts at New York magazine have taken aggressively to the Web with blogs and videos — and skyrocketing traffic (27 million page views in June vs. 3.5 million in June 2006) — the New Yorker, it seems, moves at the pace of a New Yorker story: slowly, methodically, uniquely their own .” (Via the OUPblog.)
• While the New Yorker eases into YouTube like an old man getting into a tub, others have less timid in plumbing its deep and marvelous waters. There be no dragons, but there be Eartha Kitt.
(I know: Clumsy segue, transparent ploy. But really, that clip will delight and invigorate your afternoon, I promise! Also, I need help figuring out what exactly the male dancer is doing around the 2:04 mark.)

This week we’re having a “craft session” in writing class. This means no manuscript critiques; instead, discussion and one or two in-class writing exercises. In preparation we’re to read the first 50 pages of Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder’s profile of the crusading Dr. Paul Farmer, and the short story “Magda Mandela” by Hari Kunzru.
As we read Kidder’s nonfiction work, our instructor has asked us to “think of fiction that has a similar narrative structure. The obvious one, for me, is The Great Gatsby, with Tracy Kidder as Nick Carraway and Dr. Farmer as Jay Gatsby. Also think about the difficulty in writing abut a person who is larger than life, whether real or fictional, with ‘Magda Mandela’ in mind.”
It’s a pleasing assignment. For the first part, I’ve got Cakes and Ale, Prayer for Owen Meany, and, even though it figures a quartet, not a duo, A Dance to the Music of Time. Pale Fire might also qualify, although that parallel would have Kidder twisted out of all recognition: cracked, from Zembla, and suffering mad halitosis.
Thinking about larger-than-life characters my mind keeps flashing on how in Gothic novels the male lead (terrible, mysterious) is sometimes introduced as a potent presence thumping around another part of the manor — sensed but unseen — an eminence for the narrator to wonder about from afar, sometimes for days before a first meeting. (Incidentally, this is how Melville introduces Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, just replace the crumbling manor with a ship.) It reminds me a little of the first of the Vera Pavlova poems I linked to the other day, where the “he” of the poem grows from the size of a speck to glacier-like immensity. But I’d guess we’re supposed to be thinking more concretely, e.g., CHARACTERS WHO SPEAK IN CAPS LOCK: VIABLE OVER THE LONG HAUL?, etc.

• Imaginary trip: Bomarzo, a park of monsters and harpies located near Viterbo, a couple hours’ drive from Rome.
• Read some of Henry James’ writings on Rome or download Edith Wharton’s Italian Villas and Their Gardens.
• ALN vault: Terry shares his favorite Henry James anecdote, Wharton’s account of getting lost with James in Windsor.

I received an e-mail the other day from Theresa Squire, who designed the costumes for the Keen Company’s revival of A.R. Gurney’s The Living Room, which I praised in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal. My review contained the following paragraph:

The Keen Company specializes in performing “sincere” plays: “We believe that theater is at its most powerful when texts and productions are generous in spirit and provoke identification.” As a mission statement, that strikes me as a bit po-faced, but there is nothing stiff or staid about this production, directed and designed with discreet skill by Jonathan Silverstein and Dana Moran Williams….It is a lovely piece of work, and I wholeheartedly commend it to your attention.

Squire pointed out that in giving Dana Moran Williams, the set designer, sole credit for the design of The Living Room, I was overlooking the work of several other professionals, herself among them, who had contributed significantly to the show’s total effect. She was, of course, dead right, and when I looked her up on the Web, I was embarrassed to learn that she’d also designed the costumes for a number of other shows that I’d reviewed favorably in the Journal (including Orson’s Shadow, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, and The Bald Soprano) without ever mentioning her name in print.
Needless to say, a critic can’t mention everybody, and my Journal reviews are often too short for me to cite by name more than two or three people in a given show. To do otherwise would be to turn the review into a laundry list, thus making it unreadable. In addition, I find that good costume and lighting design tend to be self-effacing in a way that set design is not. When the characters in a naturalistically designed play are wearing appropriate clothing, you perceive it as a manifestation of their personalities, not as an independent entity.
That said, I’ll admit that I don’t write nearly often enough about costume design, no doubt because I don’t understand it as well as I should. I know quite a bit more about lighting and sound design, and so am more likely to mention them in a review, just as I’m one of the few critics in New York who not infrequently makes a point of mentioning the playing of the pit orchestras that accompany the musicals I review. Would that I could be all things to all people!
One more thing: the next time I go to a show and find Theresa Squire’s name listed in the program, I’ll know that I’m about to see well-designed costumes that will enhance the credibility of the actors who are wearing them. And I’ll try to remember to say so in the Journal, too.

Stay near me. Speak my name. Oh, do not wander

By a thought’s span, heart’s impulse, from the light

We kindle here. You are my sole defender

(As I am yours) in this precipitous night,

Which over earth, till common landmarks alter,

Is falling, without stars, and bitter cold.

We two have but our burning selves for shelter.

Huddle against me. Give me your hand to hold.

So might two climbers lost in mountain weather

On a high slope and taken by the storm,

Desperate in the darkness, cling together

Under one cloak and breathe each other warm.

Stay near me. Spirit, perishable as bone,

In no such winter can survive alone.

Phyllis McGinley, “Midcentury Love Letter”