Diary of Heretic Reviews & Memes

"The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore"

“The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore,” by Paul Burman (Paperbooks Publishing, 2008) is that rare novel that goes deep into the inner life of its characters, yet moves right along with the brisk pace of a page-turner.  Beautifully written, richly atmospheric and movingly told, it leaves you with the true sense that your world has expanded.

When we first meet him, the title character is almost literally living in two worlds at once: a comfortable married life with children in Australia, and a past life in England, where he has substantial unfinished emotional business. Called to England by his mother’s illness, he makes a pilgrimage through his past, ultimately finding the closure that he so desperately needs.

Author Paul Burman jumps seamlessly between Thomas Passmore’s past and present. The story alternates between dreamlike, almost hallucinogenic scenes in Thomas’s head and stark descriptions of place that are so vivid that, without ever having traveled there, I felt as if I knew them, from the unblemished Australian beach to bleak locales in the UK that most outsiders never see.

Yet what marks “The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore” as a true work of art is the startling transformation of the characters: Thomas is a man in the midst of a metamorphosis; Kate, his first love, is a haunting muse who herself changes dramatically over the course of the book.  The cast of supporting characters from Thomas’s past and present provide a solid grounding for the spiritual and emotional climax of the story. In the end, you will find yourself transformed as well.

The View From Here

The View from Here, a rockin’ online literary magazine debuted Friday, April 18, 2008. The main man setting up this magazine is Mike French, the UK author of The Dandelion Tree, a novel of love, faith, and reconciliation, which his site presents in lively excerpts and artwork. He’s also one of the ten international founders of the inspirational community blog, Go Smell the Flowers, which presents posts and offers threads for contemplation, inspiration, and journeys of all kinds.

In taking The View from Here live, Mike has signed up four writers, including himself; Paul Burman an Australian novelist whose The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore will be published by PaperBooks [UK] in 2008); Stella Carter, a U.S. fiction and screenplay writer whose blog offers fiction, book discussion, two haikus a week, and writing tips. And me.  Each of us has agreed to post once a week.

Since my few attempts blogging non-fiction have always embarrassed me, Mike has generously agreed to let me try my hand at short stand-alone fiction posts. As a driven serial storyteller, short stand-alone fiction looms like yet another daredevil experiment. Of course, that's all I do. Even when I burn and crash, I’m happier than when I must struggle with facts, which mutate into an unforeseen perspective before I can stop them.

As for author interviews? I don’t personally know any known authors, and have never attempted to interview a writer. Should that opportunity develop, I’d never turn it down, with the caveat that I tend to honor literary endeavors beyond reason and regard serious failures as noble acts.

My new, still unfamiliar, colleague, Paul Burman, wrote that despite his crushing writing obligations, he saw The View From Here as too good an opportunity to let pass. He referred to Alice in Wonderland with its many doors into adventure, risk, reward, and danger. When he stood upon the View’s threshold, he saw mostly adventure and reward--lucky for us. 

Paul has already posted his first essay on The View from Here about a recent, personal epiphany. Take a look. I promise it’s worth the minutes.

Comic Suicide: Chekov’s “The Seagull”

For our anniversary, Manny and I saw the Classic Stage Company’s production of Chekov’s “The Seagull.” Like any time-honored masterpiece, the play overwhelmed me to the point where I hesitate to comment, since whatever I write will naturally be trite, silly, or as the characters often complain, “boring.” 

That’s a major joke in the play, of course: writers worrying over their precious and ceaseless words and whether those words are “great art,” or strange, ridiculous, and pathetic. 

The character central to the story is an amateur writer (like me) and his artistic limitations compared to his aspirations torment and infuriate him, which sometimes amuses his family and other times worries them, seeing as he’s so unbalanced and perpetually miserable. Add to the mix his failure in love and eventual, off-stage suicide and oh boy, what fun! But it was.

The play shows us a successful writer, too, who is a slavish lover to the bad writer’s famous actress mother. (Famous actress mother and failed writer son quote Hamlet to each other before the son stages his very bad debut play for the family’s entertainment.)

“The Seagull” offers the audience two actresses and two writers—men. The mother and her lover are famous. The son and the aspiring actress with a sad fate (whom the son loves throughout) overreach. They share an ambition for fame (writers were more famous then—that’s my guess) and an ability to create transcendence, which they associate with fame. Or at least the young actress does. The poor bedeviled son is less sanguine. He’s desperate and distraught and hilarious.

All the characters are hilarious and sophisticated in that they love laughing at themselves and their pretensions—it’s all such a game. Except they love playing the game and are so adept at it because it mirrors them so well. They see that. They love looking at themselves and laughing at life, because, really, what else is there to do? Cry?

A marvelous and witty commentary on the privileged (i.e., not serfs), “The Seagull,” as directed by Viacheslav Dolgachev, who is the Artistic Director of the Moscow New Drama Theatre, resonated with the audience. The gestures, the language, and its inflection felt familiar, I think, to the NYC audience, spring 2008. For example, when the uncle is dying in Act Four and the bon vivant doctor chides him for fearing death, he says only those who believe in an after-life fear death and that’s only if they fear punishment for their sins.

“—what sins have you committed? You’ve worked in a government office for twenty-five years.”

The characters wink here, because certainly no one in government has any occasion to sin.

In Act Three, the failed writer son and famous actress mother argue, initially about the successful writer (the mother’s lover), who is now pursuing the young actress, whom the son loves. At first the mother and son accuse each other and apologize, rant and then try to connect. Diane Wiest playing Irína looks up at one point, saying “Such a bad mother!” I couldn’t find the line in the old paperback of Chekov’s plays but the timing and Wiest’s beautiful, wry delivery were memorable enough so that I felt compelled to look it up.

In the same scene, the same argument quickly turns into a shouting match.

Irína: Miserable decadent!

Treplév (her son): Run along to your precious theatre and act in your rotten feeble plays!

Irína: I’ve never acted in such plays. Leave me alone! You couldn’t write a tenth-rate farce. Provincial shopkeeper! Scrounger!

Treplév: Miser!

Irína: Symbolist!

Diane Wiest hurled that last accusation, so suited to the play’s attitude toward symbolism (the seagull’s cry is haunting but the carcass hauled on stage is ridiculous) so fiercely, I looked it up, too.

My copy has Irína’s final insult as: Tramp!

Maybe the differences are in translation. But if the production took liberties here, they were stand-out choices. Chekov’s “The Seagull” is a masterly, classic comedy and could even fit Aristotle’s proclamations regarding comedy. If you interpret Treplév as better off dead (not inarguable, really), his fortune has risen. If you can’t countenance suicide as a rise in fortune (an equally valid argument), you might consider Irína the play’s most sympathetic character. Chekov may well have sympathized with her since in general his most egocentric and callous character alone finds fulfillment. You might say vain, selfish Irína’s fortune has risen now that she’s no longer weighted down by a soul-sick and mentally ill son. Her reaction and everyone else’s to the suicide is oddly diffuse: everyone disperses with an air of confusion, and some of them softly but not sadly hum.

The original production in Petersburg 1896 was a disaster and according to one essay, its failure sent Chekov into an enduring funk. It’s easy to imagine an amateur—or no, let’s say—clumsy production coming across as ponderous, not funny. And while I personally side with the overreaching failures, Chekov reportedly viewed the rich and famous as rightfully worthy. Even so, Irína can only be admired as an actress. Diane Wiest was right—such a terrible mother!

Like “Hamlet,” I well understand how people might devote a scholarly life to Chekov’s writing. And I’ve no doubt written past my limitations here. But the cast requires attention. The actors and actresses were extraordinary.

So, in order of appearance:

Medvendénko, a schoolteacher:  GREG KELLER
Másha, daughter of Shamráyev:  MARJAN NESHAT
Pyótr, Irína’s beloved older brother: JOHN CHRISTOPHER JONES
Tréplev, Irína’s son: RYAN O’NAN
Yákov, a hired man: RYAN HOMCHICK
Nina, daughter of a wealthy neighbor, aspiring actress: KELLI GARNER
Paulína, wife of Shamráyev: ANNETTE O’TOOLE
Dorn, the local doctor: DAVID RASCHE
Shamráyev, retired army Lt., who manages Pyótr’s farm: BILL CHRIST
Irína: an actress: DIANE WIEST
Trigórin, a novelist: ALAN CUMMING

Also posted at newcritics.

Henry IV, Part One

It’s still winter and I’m still reading the Shakespearean plays I named on 12/07/007 for Inksplasher's  “Winter Reading Challenge.” The first play I chose, Hamlet, I read in a few days and reread with such relish I stayed up all night to do it. Henry IV proved an entirely different experience.

In fact, if I hadn’t committed to the historical plays for Karlene's challenge, I might have dropped Henry IV, Part One about half-way through to pick up Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks. (Cloudsplitter is a 750-page novel about Owen Brown, the abolitionist John Brown. I read it years ago, too quickly, and am eager to give the book its due.)

Likewise, I read Henry IV, Part One, long ago, too, when I was in college. So I remembered Falstaff and Hal and the story of a Prince renouncing his youthful folly and mentor in mischief, Falstaff, to claim his royal legacy. Other than that all I recalled Shakespeare’s magnificent language washing over me.

This time I discovered I lack much interest in ancient battles for land and dynastic succession. Further, I tired of Prince Hal and his disreputable pals taunting Falstaff with a torrent of bad names and indulging in bad-boy pranks.

Sir John Falstaff, one of literature’s greatest wits, wore me out with his puns and paradoxes that invited joshing abuse from the Prince. Halfway through the play, I was moaning, enough with the jack and sack and fat guts.

But having posted my reading list, I felt determined to stick with it. No novels allowed until I finished Henry IV. I slipped only to read New Yorker articles and the The New York Times. Still, it took me six weeks to finish this play. 

Typical of the bantering and one-upmanship,

             Falstaff:  “…I’ll fear thee as I fear thy father? Nay, an I do, I pray God my girdle breaks.”                     
             Prince: O, if it should, how would thy guts fall to thy knees…” [III, iii.]

Because I disliked the play, I read it carefully to find out why. Now I know. Prince Hal, who’s followed and loved Falstaff isn’t merely taunting him. He’s disowning him. Where previously he loved Falstaff, the Prince now hates him. Behind the continual fat jokes burns real fury.

      Prince: “Henceceforth, ne’er look on me. Thou art violently carried away from  grace, there is a   devil haunts thee in likeness likeness of an old fat man, a tun of man…”

      Falstaff:  “I would your Grace take me with you…”

      Prince:  “That villainous abominable misleader of youth, Falstaff,  the old white-bearded Satan.”

      Falstaff:  “My lord, the man I know.”

      Prince:  “I knowst thou dost.” [II,iv.]

In the play’s second to last scene, Falstaff’s soliloquy finally and fully captured my imagination.

So rich in word-play, logic, and beauty, it convinced me that Falstaff exists just as the critic Harold Blooms argues: Sir John is a vital personality transcending time, place, and scene.

Near the end, Prince Hal kills his rival Hotspur, aka Henry Percy. Douglas from the same army attacks Falstaff, who falls down and plays dead. Seeing Falstaff lying close to the Hotspur, Prince Hal says:

     “Embowelled’ will I see thee by and by;
                                                               Till then in blood by noble Percy lie.”

After the Prince exits, Falstaff stands:

            “Embowelled! If thou embowel me today,
              I’ll give you leave to powder and eat me too to-morrow.
             ’Sblood, ‘twas time to counterfeit….
              Conterfeit? I lie, I am no counterfeit: to die, is to be a counterfeit;               
              for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man:
              but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is
              life indeed. The better part of valour is discretion; in the
              which I have saved my life. …” [V, iv.]

After finishing the play, I reread exclusively for Falstaff, finding a brilliance I had missed. Thus, I now start Henry IV, Part Two, after which I’ve decided to interrupt Shakespeare for now.

The Rest Is Silence

Those are Hamlet’s last words before he dies. They seem especially appropriate as I attempt to write a review of a play, which strikes me as more than worthy of a scholar’s, actor’s, and/or director’s entire career.

After reading Claudia Roth Pierpoint’s thought-provoking article in The New Yorker about the rivalry between Laurence Olivier and Orson Welles in making movies of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Henry IV,  Henry V and Richard III, I decided to read them all, starting with Hamlet.

As a school girl, I read the historical plays and saw Orson Welles play Falstaff in Henry IV, and Othello in his movie where he famously couldn’t afford costumes for one scene and so filmed it in a bath-house. During more or less the same phase, I read Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Othello. In high school, and perhaps even earlier, I read The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet. The poetry washed over me, as it often did back then, and I experienced mostly its sheer beauty. I swam in the music of the words, which then (and now) affected me powerfully enough to bring tears to my eyes. But somehow I never read Hamlet, until now.

So, who am I to revview what may be Shakespeare's greatest work? No one. I finished reading the play late last night (that’s how astonishing it is--it kept me awake) and imagined the death march as attendants carried away the bodies in the final scene.

Dead are: King Claudius; Queen Gertrude (who as Hamlet’s mother still puzzles me no end); Laertes, son to Lord Polonius, whom Hamlet killed by accident; and brother to Ophelia, who drowned in love-addled madness. And of course Hamlet, who has been lured into a duel with Laertes, craftily arranged by the King.

It’s a classic tragedy based on an old Danish legend. But Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in my unschooled opinion, stands among the most profound and resonant works of art we know.

Early in the action, Hamlet’s recently deceased father appears as a Ghost, first to sentinels and then to Hamlet. The Ghost tells Hamlet that King Claudius poisoned him in his sleep and encourages him to slay the monster. The Ghost adds that Hamlet shouldn’t blame his mother; apparently her weakness for passion explains how quickly she has married her brother-in-law.

Taking this much to heart, Hamlet treats Gertrude gently, although her obvious rapture in the King’s arms prompts the famous, and famously misapplied, quotation:

--Frailty thy name is woman!...I, i

Famous and often misapplied quotations stud this play. Among the most familiar:

To be or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer ...III, i

O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into dew...I, ii*

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seems to me all the uses of this world!...I, ii

What a piece of work is man!...II, ii

If this be madness, yet there is method in it...II, ii.

...to die, to sleep;
To sleep; perhaps to dream...III, i

Get thee to a nunnery. Why, wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?...III, i. 

Good night, sweet prince...V, ii

What strikes me most, however, aren’t these well known lines, but rather practically all the others, which resonate equally as powerfully in my mind. I question, too, why I hadn’t read this earlier--the Shakespearean plays I read in school made up part of a curriculum. Why not this, which seems so superior to, say, The Merchant of Venice? And although Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, why isn’t it produced more often?

Is it because extravagant emotions exasperate people, or worse? How many times have I heard, “Spare me the drama!” And, “Such a drama queen!” Or,“Let me live without drama, please!”

How nice if Hamlet didn’t play anymore because we had evolved beyond jealousy and vengeance. But it remains as timely as ever. Jealousy and vengeance slither along quite well, unless I’m wrong.

* Rather than “sullied,” I’ve heard the quote using “solid,” but that might derive from my mother resolving to diet.

Your Brain on Music

This review is cross-posted at newcritics.com

Until recently, I could find little tolerance for anyone’s “love me, love my favorite rock band” attitude. It harked back to when I was a teenager and a serial girlfriend to guitar-playing boys. The guys talked about their favorite music for hours. If I disagreed out loud, I would leave the scene an ex-girlfriend. Their argument—that I didn’t know what I was talking about because I didn’t sing or play guitar or drums--never persuaded me to keep silent.  I knew what music I loved and what I hated just as well as they did, even if I couldn’t say why it affected me so powerfully.

Now I can, thanks to “This Is Your Brain on Music” (suggested to me by newcritics’ music editor Jason Chervokas). The book by Daniel J. Levitin makes the case that while no one understands entirely why certain music becomes an obsession to some people, neuroscience can show what music does to our brain: it lights up every known region of our gray matter, whether we like the tune or not. Further, finding someone who shares our love for certain music may cue like-minds toward a resounding serendipity. Finding a full arena of ecstatic, kindred souls (an experience unknown to me—fear of crowds) must leave an indelible and even sacred imprint.

Daniel J. Levitin’s book offers “a neuropsychological perspective on how music affects our brains, our minds, our thoughts, and our spirit.” A sound engineer, producer, musician, and cognitive scientist, Levitin conjectures about our minds, thoughts, and spirits, which, like the musical term “pitch,” are not physically apparent.

Levitin’s roaming philosophical, clinical, historical, and personal insights offer fascinating examples that include classical music and jazz, but focus mostly on rock and roll. One of his chapter subtitles, What We Expect from Liszt (and Ludicris), only suggests the book’s range. Indicative of his style, page 143 includes references to Wittgenstein and Led Zepplin. Yet his presentation is playful, not forced.

For an expert listener like me, who’s nonetheless ignorant of music theory, he lays out a concise primer on: pitch; rhythm; tempo; contour; timbre (rhymes with tamber); loudness; reverberation; meter; key; and harmony. The circularity of pitch perception compares to the color wheel. The octave provides the musical base for every known culture.

In case you suspected I was a bit quick to claim my listening expertise, Levitin holds up two standards for what makes an expert. Most five-year olds recognize an off-key note. They may prefer simple music over complex but they can tell when it doesn’t make sense. We’re all experts when it comes to musical taste. Past that, Levitin cites numerous studies that set the expert point at ten-thousand hours. Scientists, the author explains, routinely find this nice round number popping up in their studies. “Ten-thousand hours is roughly equivalent to three hours a day, twenty hours a week, of practice over ten years.”

The number holds up in studies of master composers, basketball players, ice skaters, and even fiction writers. But a truly notable artist will also possess talent by genetic predispositions, as well as a passion to play. 

Generally, we learn to love music most during adolescence because teenage brains make new connections at an explosive rate. Myelin, which speeds up synaptic transmission, develops mostly between ages fourteen and twenty. We can learn music, mathematics, and languages best during these years, and while the window can vary somewhat depending on the person, after one’s mid-twenties, acquiring complicated new mental schema will always require work. No matter how proficient you get, it probably won’t feel natural.

Of course, during adolescence many of us are especially influenced by the time and place that belong to us and our friends. Beyond this, Levitin attributes musical taste to personality. The musical balance between safety and adventure, simplicity and complexity will differ for everyone. But as John Hardford said in “Tryin’ to Do Something to Get Your Attention” and as one of my favorite pop stars concurs, “There is Joy in Repetition.” (Prince) There’s joy, too, in the backbeat and in surprising our expectations: Beauty rises from the notes between the notes.

“This Is Your Brain on Music” bursts with intelligence, instruction, science, and soul. If I were looking for a complaint it would be that for a book about meticulous organization, reading it makes you run all over the place. It’s rich with lore and lists. Did you know the end of “A Day in the Life” on the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s CD has a few seconds of sound at 15 KHz—usually inaudible to those over 40?

When asked to bring over six songs that would explain rock and roll to an eighty-year old lecturer on psychoacoustics (excluding Elvis, because the man had heard him), Levitin brought:
1.    “Long Tall Sally,” Little Richard
2.    “Roll Over Beethoven,” the Beatles
3.    “All Along the Watchtower,” Jimi Hendrix
4.    “Wonderful Tonight,” Eric Clapton
5.    “Little Red Corvette,” Prince
6.    “Anarchy in the U.K.” the Sex Pistols                                  

To this day, the author would like to make adjustments.