The Sheila Variations

Orson Welles

A montage of enormous photos. Awesome photos. I left them as huge as I found them because they just look so damn cool.

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The opening of Citizen Kane (the delayed opening) at the Palace in NYC, owned by RKO - the studio who had produced the picture. It opened in the middle of the shitstorming blacklist from all sides - Hearst, the FBI, Louis Mayer, the theatre chains who feared being punished by Hearst, etc. The only reason it could play here was because RKO had bought it. It was theirs. But it never got wide distribution. Ever.

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He's 24 years old here, getting into makeup for Citizen Kane. Extraordinary.

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Orson broke his ankle while filming a scene in Citizen Kane - the one where he runs down the stairs after "Boss" Jim Gettys.

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This is from his Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar - which is still generally considered to be the greatest Shakespeare production ever on an American stage. Where the FUCK is my time machine.

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Couldn't resist

Walked by the Booth on my way to meet the Trinidadian, and took a picture of one of the photos in the marquee.

The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion

The New York Times review by Ben Brantley. Of course I'm going but I just wanted to point out a couple of things in this review that reiterates my love for Ben Brantley - despite his flaws, etc. I've written about him before. He's very perceptive - and not too snobby - although I want my theatre critic to be a little bit snobby, thankyouverymuch. But one of the main reasons why I love him is that he has not forgotten how to be an audience member - if something works for him, he doesn't over-think it (for example - his glowing review of Mamma Mia - which opened in the wake of September 11 - still has the power to bring me to tears today. You can read my thoughts about that here) What I have always liked about Ben Brantley is his ability to hone in on why something works - and to pull out specific moments to illustrate his point. That's harder to do than you might think.

For example - I reference his review of Christine Ebersole in Grey Gardens here - and the excerpts I post show what I'm talking about. When I eventually saw Grey Gardens - it's not that I wouldn't have noticed Ebersole's genius without Brantley pointing it out - but it's that he did what a critic should do. He provided context. He enlarged the conversation. By that I mean, his message was: Make no mistake. Generations to come will be referencing this performance - so just know that - and see it while you still can. I appreciate that. Especially when I agree with it. He wasn't 100% rah-rah - he didn't like the first act (I didn't either), he wasn't wacky about the younger lead (neither was I) ... but to throw out the baby with the bathwater and not give Ebersole the props she deserves - would be ignorant. Too many critics do that.

So here is Brantley's review of Year of Magical Thinking - the adaptation of Joan Didion's stunning book of the same name. It's starring Vanessa Redgrave. As most everybody knows, Didion's husband John Gregory Dunne (brother to Dominick Dunne) died suddenly in 2003. Didion's book is about her immediate response to grief - the unreality of it, the inability to throw away his clothes ... the 'magical thinking' that death is not really real. Now no matter what I say here cannot convey the power of that tiny little book. I had to endure it and force myself to finish it it was so painful, and searing. She's one of my favorite writers anyway - and there's always been something spare and chill about her prose - it's what appeals to me. It's stripped down. It's like you can feel the hot desert sun of her home state beating down on her head, burning away all that is unnecessary. She has been known to spend weeks editing one of her own paragraphs - she's that specific with what she wants. Omit needless words, omit needless words, omit needless words ....

And Year of Magical Thinking is the opposite of what one would expect in our Quick-Fix culture. It's not self-help. It's not a "how to" book, eg: how to deal with your husband's sudden death. No. Anyone who fears being widowed, anyone who fears losing a loved one will find no comfort in this book. It's a woman's impressions from within the maelstrom of her grief. Things are not logical in immediate aftermaths like that. Your thoughts don't go to healing the wound. Your thoughts go (sometimes) to searing regret (thank you for the phrase, Richard Ford), or turning back the clock, or obsessively going over the last moment you spoke to the now-dead person ... trying to reverse time ... It's a horror. Didion does not write with retrospect - that is the main key to the book's power. She writes from the middle of it. It's relentless, comfortless. Open-eyed horror at what has been lost.

Didion's daughter Quintana - who is around my age - got mysteriously ill right before her father passed and was lying in the hospital in a coma when the death occurred. Imagine waking up from a coma to find you have lost your father. And then - even more horrifying - Quintana - who had this mysterious fever and heart condition which came over her quite suddenly - passed away as the book was going to print. Apparently And Didion decided not to include it. But my God. Quintana - not even 40 years old yet - engaged to be married - passed away. Joan and John had no other children.

So Didion's old age now ... will be alone. No daughter to keep her company, no grandchildren. That's it.

Didion's sentences are cold and clear, horrifying in their brutal spareness. Tough book to read.

And now she has adapted it as a one-woman show for Broadway. Here is a photo of Joan and Vanessa Redgrave - who is playing Joan in the production.

Anyway, Brantley's analysis of what works in book-form and what doesn't quite work in theatre-form is quite perceptive - but my main interest here is his discussion of Vanessa Redgrave's acting, which makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Listen. Listen to the details of his observation:

As Ms. Redgrave continues to slide through the narrator’s past and present — from the gray world of hospitals and funeral arrangements to a sunny shared familial past — she gives sharp life to a variety of moods: fury at medical incompetence and evasiveness, passionate maternal solicitude, conspiratorial feyness as she speaks of her belief that her dead husband will come back to her if only she performs the right actions.

Some moments — yes, silent ones — are remarkable. I have not, for example, been able to erase from my mind Ms. Redgrave’s face from an early scene. It’s after she, as Ms. Didion, has spoken of seeing her husband silent and slumped in a chair in their apartment at the end of a trying day. “I thought he was making a joke,” she says. “Slumping over. Pretending to be dead.”

Ms. Redgrave’s expression conveys two levels of consciousness: She is in the moment she has just described, irritated with what she perceives to be an ill-timed joke. And she is in the present tense — still angry with herself and the grotesque cosmic prank she has participated in — because her husband wasn’t joking at all.

In that small second or two Ms. Redgrave’s magnificent face, wry and wounded, is the reproachful emblem of the guilt and exasperation that the living so often feel toward the dying and the dead. There is also reflected that disorientation that comes from a death’s abrupt way of changing the rules by which you have always lived your life.

And then an observation like this:

Watch, for example, the attention she gives to a bracelet on her arm, and how she develops it. It will break your heart.

Will do, Ben. I'm seeing it in April.

Vanessa Redgrave as Joan Didion

Full review here.

Happy birthday - to Sean O'Casey!

Irish playwright Sean O'Casey was born on this day, in 1880. He was the first major Irish playwright to deal with slum life, the reality of the Dublin poor. I have a wonderful anecdote right here about O'Casey - this from his colleague Gabriel Fallon - who wrote a book about Sean O'Casey. Here is his goose-bump-inducing description of the rehearsal process (at first rather confusing) for Juno and the Paycock. O'Casey was not famous yet, not an Irish household name. This was the breakthrough. His association with the Abbey (and Yeats and Lady Gregory) would be quite fruitful - and I think one of his plays had been done by them before ... but Juno was different, and everyone could feel it. Now I'll let Gabriel take over:

We could make nothing of the reading of Juno and the Paycock as it was called. It seemed to be a strange baffling mixture of comedy and tragedy; and none of us could say, with any certainty, whether or not it would stand up on the stage.

The dress rehearsal would be held at 5 p.m. on March 2, Sunday. I arrived at the theatre at 4:30 p.m., and found the author there before me looking rather glum and wondering if a rehearsal would take place ... Gradually the players filed in and went to their dressing-rooms. Lennox Robinson arrived shortly before 5 o'clock and was followed by Yeats and Lady Gregory. The curtain rose about 5:36 p.m. so far as I could see and hear while waiting for my cue in the wings the rehearsal seemed to be proceeding smoothly. As soon as I had finished my part of Bentham at the end of the second act I went down into the stalls and sat two seats behind the author. Here for the first time I had an opportunity of seeing something of the play from an objective point of view. I was stunned by the tragic quality of the third act which the magnificent playing of Sara Allgood made almost unbearable. But it was the blistering irony of the final scene which convinced me that this man sitting two seats in front of me was a dramatist of genius, one destined to be spoken of far beyond the confines of the Abbey Theatre ...

We watched the act move on, the furniture removers come and go, the ominous entry of the IRA men, the dragging of Johnny to summary execution, the stilted scene between Jerry Devine and Mary Boyle, and then as with the ensnaring slow impetus of a ninth great wave Allgood's tragic genius rose to an unforgettable climax and drowned the stage in sorrow. How surely was the very butt and sea-mark of tragedy! But suddenly the curtain rises again: are Fitzgerald and McCormick fooling, letting off steam after the strain of rehearsal? Nothing of the kind; for we in the stalls are suddenly made to freeze in our seats as a note beyond tragedy, a blistering flannel-mouthed irony sears its maudlin way across the stage and slowly drops an exhausted curtain on a world disintegrating in 'chassis'.

I sat there stunned. So, indeed, as far as I could see, did Robinson, Yeats, and Lady Gregory. Then Yeats ventured an opinion. He said that the play, particularly in the final scene, reminded him of a Dostoevsky novel. Lady Gregory turned to him and said, "You know, Willie, you never read a novel by Dostoevsky." And she promised to amend this deficiency by sending him a copy of The Idiot. I turned to O'Casey and found I could only say to him, "Magnificent, Sean, magnificent."

I love that story.

Excerpted from Gabriel Fallon's memoir: Sean O'Casey, The Man I Knew

The Books: "A Tangled Web" (L.M. Montgomery)

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series ...

Almost done with Lucy Maud! I'm skipping the rest of the short stories ... well, for now, anyway. Thank you, Melissa, for encouraging me in this direction. Ha!

But I couldn't skip A Tangled Web. Like Blue Castle [excerpt here] - this book kind of stands alone, in the canon of Lucy Maud. It's an adult comedy - rather soap opera-ish - and in my opinion Lucy Maud is in full command of all of her powers in this book. It's chock-full of characters - this book doesn't have a "lead" - which is one of the reasons why it stands alone. The "leads" of the book are two sprawling intermarried families - with a cast of a hundred characters - all of whom we get to know. Some better than others - but still, there isn't one journey that dominates. The story of this book is: ancient Aunt Becky Dark (nee Penhallow) is dying. She's a bazillion years old and she knows she's dying. Everyone is terrified of Aunt Becky - not because she's cruel (although her comments sometimes are) - but because she always says exactly what is on her mind. She is the terrifying "matriarch" of a tangled clan - and every single person is afraid of her, because she will not hesitate to tell the truth, right to their face. Big truths - like "I know you are not in love with your husband" or little truths, like "You wear too much makeup". Anyway, Becky has, in her possession, a family heirloom: this old heinous JUG - and this is the catalyst for the entire book. The jug has been in the family for generations. Stories are told about it. It has crossed the Atlantic. It has been in glass display cases. It has also been in pantries filled with blackberry jame. It is a jug. Becky knows she is going to die and so she gathers the entire clan in her sick-room ... they are all there, crowded inside, and spilling out onto the porch ... all of them with their private griefs and hopes and hatreds ... Lucy Maud is at her best in this kind of situation - You can't believe how many balls she keeps in the air here. There are so many characters! And Becky reads out her will to the group, knowing it is going to cause ruptions and fractures and feuds ... and she cackles with glee at the thought of it, the old trouble-maker. But the big thing is the jug. Everybody wants to know: who is going to get the jug? It's basically like - the LEADERship of the family will be passed on through this jug ... and so they all sit there, in that crowded room, and we get to know each one, as they sit there ... and everybody wants it for different reasons, and everybody feels that they, personally, are the ONLY true heir of the jug ...

What ends up happening is fantastic. It's a great premise for a book. Basically, Becky announces at this meeting that the recipient of the jug will not be announced until exactly a year from that date. And she has a list of stipulations of the type of person it will NOT be given to. No drinking, no swearing, no whatever ... the list goes on and on. Naturally the vices cover pretty much everybody in the room. So over the next year, desperate to be good enough to get the jug, everyone begins to change their behavior, subtly, in order to be worthy to get the jug. Drunkards stop drinking. Etc. etc. And of course, with a clan like this one - a "tangled web" - any tiny change will have resounding implications. So shit starts to hit the fan, left and right.

It's a wonderful book - I love it.

Here's the section at the beginning of the book where Becky reads out her will. I am just amazed at how many characters she can keep going, and how - with one or 2 lines apiece, we know everything we need to know about everybody. I love, too, Lucy Maud's sense of humor. I just respond to it.

Excerpt from A Tangled Web. by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Aunt Becky unfolded her will, and settled her owlish, shell-ringed glasses on her beaky nose.

"I've left my little bit of money to Camilla for her life," she said. "After her death its to go to the hospital in Charlottetown."

Aunt Becky looked sharply over the throng. But she did not see any particular disappointment. To do the Darks and Penhallows justice, they were not money-grubbers. No one grudged Camilla Jackson her legacy. Money was a thing one could and should earn for oneself; but old family heirlooms, crusted with the sentiment of dead and gone hopes and fears for generations, were different matters. Suppose Aunt Becky left the jug to some rank outsider? Or a museum? She was quite capable of it. If she did, William Y. Penhallow mentally registered a vow that he would see his lawyer about it.

"Any debts are to be paid," continued Aunt Becky, "and my grave is to be heaped up - not left flat. I insist on that. Make a note of it, Artemas."

Artemas Dark nodded uncomfortable. He was caretaker of the Rose River graveyard, and he knew he would have trouble with the cemetery committee about that. Besides, it made it so confoundedly difficult to mow. Aunt Becky probaby read his thoughts, for she said,

"I won't have a lawn-mower running over me. You can clip my grave nicely with the shears. I've left directions for my tombstone, too. I want one as big as anybody else's. And I want my lace shawl draped around me in my coffin. It's the only thing I mean to take with me. Theodore gave it to me when Ronald was born. There were times when Theodore could do as graceful a thing as anybody. It's as good as new. I've always kept it wrapped in silver paper at the bottom of my thrid bureau drawer. Remember, Camilla."

Camilla nodded. The first sign of disappointment appeared on Mrs. Clifford Penhallow's face. She had set her heart on getting the lace shawl, for she feared she had very little chance of getting the jug. The shawl was siad to have cost Theodore Dark two hundred dollars. To think of burying two hundred dollars!

Mrs. Toynbee Dark, who had been waiting all the afternoon for an opportunity to cry, thought she saw it at the mention of Aunt Becky's baby son who had been dead for sixty years, and got out her handkerchief. But Aunt Becky headed her off.

"Don't start crying yet, Alicia. By the way, while I think of it, will you tell me something? I've always wanted to know and I'll never have another chance. Which of your three husbands did you like best - Morton Dark, Edgar Penhallow, or Toynbee Dark? Come now, make a clean breast of it."

Mrs. Toynbee put her handkerchief back in her bag and shut the latter with a vicious snap.

"I had a deep affection for all my partners," she said.

Aunt Becky wagged her head.

"Why didn't you say 'deceased' parters? You were thinking it, you know. You have that type of mind. Also, tell me honestly, don't you think you ought to have been more economical with husbands? Three! And poor Mercy and Margaret there haven't been able even to get one."

Mercy reflected bitterly that if she had employed the methods Alicia Dark had, she might have had husbands and to spare, too. Margaret coloured softly and looked piteous. Why, oh why, must cruel old Aunt Becky hold her up to public ridicule like this?

"I've divided all my belongings among you," said Aunt Becky. "I hate the thought of dying and leaving all my nice things. But since it must be, I'm not going to have any quarreling over them before I'm cold in my grave. Everything's down here in black and white. I've just left the things according to my own whims. I'll read the list. And let me say that the fact that any one of you gets something doesn't mean that you've no chance for the jug as well. I'm coming to that later."

Aunt Becky took off her spectacles, polished them, put them back on again, and took a drink of water. Drowned John nearly groaned with impatience. Heaven only knew how long it would be before she would get to the jug. He had no interest in her other paltry knick-knacks.

"Mrs. Denzil Penhallow is to have my pink china candlesticks," announced Aunt Becky. "I know you'll be delighted at this, Martha dear. You've given me so many hints about candlesticks."

Mrs. Denzil had wanted Aunt Becky's beautiful silver Georgian candlesticks. And now she was saddled with a pair of unspeakable china horrors, in colour a deep magenta pink with what looked like black worms wriggling all over them. But she tried to look pleased, because if she didn't it might spoil her chances for the jug. Denzil scowled, jug or no jug, and Aunt Becky saw it. Pompous old Denzil. She would get even with him.

"I remember when Denzil was about five years old he came down to my place with his mother, one day, and our old turkey gobbler took after him. I suppose the poor bird thought no one else had a right to be strutting around there. 'Member, Denzil? Lord, how you ran and blubbered! You certainly thought Old Nick was after you. Do you know, Denzil, I've never seen you parading up the church aisle since but I've thought of that."

Well, it had to be endured. Denzil cleared his throat and endured it.

"I haven't much jewellry," Aunt Becky was saying. "Two rings. One is an opal. I'm giving that to Virginia Powell. They say it brings bad luck, but you're too modern to believe that old superstition, Virginia. Though I never had any luck after I got it."

Virginia tried to look happy, though she had wanted the Chinese screen. As for luck or no luck, how could that matter? Life was over for her. Nobody grudged her the opal, but when Aunt Becky mentioned rings many ears were pricked up. Who would get her diamond ring? It was a fine one and worth several hundreds of dollars.

"Ambrosine Wentworth is to have my diamond ring," said Aunt becky.

Half those present could not repress a gasp of disapproval and the collective effect was quite pronounced. This, thought the gaspers, was absurd. Ambrosine Wentworth had no right whatever to that ring. And what good would it do her - an old broken-down servant? Really, Aunt Becky's brain must be softening.

"Here it is, Ambrosine," said Aunt Becky, taking it from her bony finger and handing it to the trembling Ambrosine. "I'll give it to you now, so there'll be no mistake. Put it on."

Ambrosine obeyed. Her old wrinkled face was aglow with the joy of a long-cherished dream suddenly and unexpectedly realized. Ambrosine Winkworth, through a drab life spent in other people's kitchens, had hankered all through that life for a diamond ring. She had never hoped to have it, and now here it was on her hand, a great starry wonderful thing, glittering in the June sunshine that fell through the window. Everything came true for Ambrosine in that moment. She asked no more of fate.

Perhaps Aunt Becky had divined that wistful dream of the old woman. Or perhaps she had just given Ambrosine the ring to annoy the clan. If the latter, she had certainly succeeded. Nan Penhallow was especially furious. She should have the diamond ring. Thekla Penhallow felt the same way. Joscelyn, who once had had a diamond ring, Donna, who still had one, and Gay, who expected she soon would have one, looked amused and indifferent. Chuckling to herself Aunt Becky picked up her will and gave Mrs. Clifford Penhallow her Chinese screen.

"As if I wanted her old Chinese screen," thought Mrs. Clifford, almost on the point of tears.

Margaret Penhallow was the only one whom nobody envied. She got Aunt Becky's Pilgrim's Progress, a very old, battered book. The covers had been sewed on, the leaves were yellow with age. One was afraid to touch it lest it might fall to pieces. It was a most disreputable old volume which Theodore Dark, for some unknown reason, had prized when alive. Since his death, Aunt Becky had kept it in an old box in the garret, where it had got musty and dusty. But Margaret was not disappointed. She had expected nothing.

"My green pickle leaf is to go to Rachel Penhallow," said Aunt Becky.

Rachel's long face grew longer. She had wanted the Apostle spoons. But Gay Penhallow got the Apostle spoons to her surprise and delight. They were quaint and lovely and would accord charmingly with a certain little house of dreams that was faintly taking place in her imagination. Aunt Becky looked at Gay's sparkling face with less grimness than she usually showed and proceeded to give her dinner set to Mrs. Howard Penhallow, who wanted the Chippendale sideboard.

"It was my wedding-set," said Aunt Becky. "There's only one piece broken. Theodore brought his fist down on the cover of one of the tureens one day when he got excited in an argument at dinner. I won out in the argument, though - at leats I got my own way, tureen or no tureen. Emily, you're to have the bed."

Mrs. Emily Frost, nee Dark, a gentle, faded little person, who also had yearned for the Apostle spoons, tried to look grateful for a bed that was too big for any of her tiny rooms. And Mrs. Alpheus Penhallow, who wanted the bed, had to put up with the Chippendale sideboard. Donna Dark got an old egg dish in the guise of a gaily coloure china hen sitting on a yellow china nest, and was glad because she had liked the old thing when she was a child. Joscelyn Dark got the claw-footed mahogany talbe Mrs. Palmer Dark had hope for, and Roger Dark got the Georgian candlesticks and Mrs. Denzil's eternal hatred. The beautiful old Queen Anne bookcase went to Murray Dark, who never read books, and Hugh Dark got the old hour-glass - early eighteenth century - and wondered bitterly what use it would be to a man for whom time had stopped ten years ago. He knew, none better, how long an hour can be and what devastating things can happen in it.

"Crosby, you're to have my old cut-glass whiskey decanter," Aunt Becky was saying. "There hasn't been any whiskey in it for many a year, more's the pity. It'll hold the water you're always drinking in the night. I heard you admire it once."

Old Crosby Penhallow, who had been nodding, wakened up and looked pleased. He really hadn't expected anything. It was kind of Becky to remember him. They had been young togehter.

Aunt Becky looked at him - at his smooth, shining bald head, his sunken blue eyes, his toothless mouth. Old Crosby would never have false teeth. Yet in spite of the bald head and faded eyes and shrunken mouth, Crosby Dark was not an ill-looking old man - quite the reverse.

"I have a mind to tell you something, Crosby," said Aunt Becky. "You never knew it - nobody ever knew it - but you were the only man I ever loved."

The announcement made a sensation. Everybody - so ridiculous is outworn passion - wanted to laugh but dared not. Crosby blushed painfully all over his wrinkled face. Hang it all, was old Becky making fun of him? And whether or no, how dared she make a show of him like this before everybody?

"I was quite mad about you," said Aunt Becky musingly. "Why? I don't know. You were handsomer sixty years ago than any man has a right to be, but you had no brains. Yet you were the man for me. And you never looked at me. You married Annette Dark - and I married Theodore. Nobody knows how much I hated him when I married him. But I got quite fond of him after a while. That's life, you know - though those three romantic young geese there - Gay and Donna and Virginia, think I'm telling rank heresy. I got over caring for you in time, even though for years after I did, my heart used to beat like mad everey time I saw you walk up the church aisle with your meek little Annette trotting behind you. I got a lot of thrills out of loving you, Crosby - many more I don't doubt than if I'd married you. And Theodore was really a much better husband for me than you'd have been - he had a sense of humour. And it doesnt' matter now whether he was or wasn't. I don't even wish now that you had loved me, though I wished it for so many years. Lord, the nights I couldn't sleep for thinking of you - and Theordore snoring beside me. But there it is. Somehow, I've always wanted you to know it and at last I've had the courage to tell you."

Old Crosby wiped his brow with his handkerchief. Erasmus would never let him hear the last of this - never. And suppose it got into the papers! If he had dreamed anything like this was going to happen, he would never have come to the levee. He glowered at the jug. It was to blame, durn it.

"I wonder how many of us will get out of this alive," whispered Stanton Grundy to Uncle Pippin.

But Aunt Becky had switched over to Penny Dark and was giving him her bottle of Jordan water.

"What the deuce do I care for Jordan water," thought Penny. Perhaps his face was too expressive, for Aunt Becky suddenly grinned dangerously.

"Mind the time, Penny, you moved a vote of thanks to Rob Dufferin on the death of his wife?"

There was a chorus of laughter of varying timbre, among which Drowned John's boomed like an earthquake. Penny's thoughts were as profane as the others' had been. That a little mistake betweent hanks and condolence, made in the nervousness of public speaking, should be everlastingly coming up against a man like this. From old Aunt Becky, too, who had just confessed that most of her life she had loved a man who wasn't her husband, the scandalous old body.

Mercy Penhallow sighed. She would have liked the Jordan water. Rachel Penhallow had one and Mercy had always envied her for it. There must be a blessing in any household that had a bottle of Jordan water. ASunt Becky heard the sigh and looked at Mercy.

"Mercy," she said apropos of nothing, "do you remember that forgotten pie you brought out after everybody had finished eating at the Stanley Penhallow's silver-wedding dinner?"

But Mercy was not afraid of Aunt Becky. She had a spirit of her own.

"Yes, I do. And do you remember, Aunt Becky, that the first time you killed and roasted a chicken after you were married, you brought it to the table with the insides still in it?"

Nobody dared to laugh but everybody was glad Mercy had the spunk. Aunt Becky nodded unperturbed.

"Yes, and I remember how it smelled! We had company, too. I don't think Theodore ever fully forgave me. I thoguht that had forgotten years ago. Is anything ever forgotten? Can people ever live anything down? The honours are to you, Mercy, but I must get square with somebody. Junius Penhallow, do you remember - since Mercy has started digging up the past - how drunk you were at your wedding?"

Junius Penhallow turned a violent crimson but couldn't deny it. Of what use was it, with Mrs. Junius at his elbow, to plead that he had been in such a blue funk on his wedding-morning that he'd never had had the courage to go throughwith it if he hadn't got drunk? He had never been drunk since, and it was hard to have it raked up now, when he was an elder in the church and noted for his avowed temperance principles.

"I'm not the only one who ever got drunk in this clan," he dared to mutter, despite the jug.

"No, to be sure. There's Artemas over there. Do you remember, Artemas, the evening you waled up the church aisle in your nightshirt?"

Artemas, a tall, raw-boned, red-haired fellow, had been too drunk on that occasion to remember it, but he always roared when reminded of it. He thought it the best joke ever.

"You should have all been thankful I had that much on myeslf," he said with a chuckle.

Mrs. Artemas wished she were dead. What was a joke to Artemas was a tragedy to her. She had never forgotten - could never forget - the humiliation of that unspeakable evening. She had forgiven Artemas certain violations of her marriage vow of which every one was aware. But she had never forgiven - could never forgive - the episode of the nightshirt. If it had been pajamas, it would not have been quite so terrible. But in those days pajamas were unknown.

Aunt Becky was at Mrs. Conrad Dark.

"I'm giving you my silver saltcellars. Alec Dark's mother gave them to me for a wedding-present. Do you remember the time your and Mrs. Clifford there quarreled over Alec Dark and she slapped your face? And neither of you got Alec after all. There, there, don't crack the spectrum. It's all dead and vanished, just like my affair with Crosby."

("As if there was ever any affair," thought Crosby piteously.)

"Pippin's to have my grandfather clock. Mrs. Digby Dark thinks she should have that because her father gave it to me. But no. Do you remember, Fanny, that you once put a tract in a book you leant me? Do you know what I did with it? I used it for curl papers. I've never forgive you for the insult. Tracts, indeed. Did I need tracts?"

"You -- weren't a member of the church," said Mrs. Digby, on the point of tears.

"No - nor am yet. Theodore and I could never agree which church to join. I wanted Rose River and he wanted Bay Silver. And after he died it seemed sort of disrespectful to his memory to join Rose River. Besides, I was so old than it would have seemed funny. Marrying and church-joining should be done in youth. But I was as good a Christian as any one. Naomi Dark."

Naomi, who had been fanning Lawson, looked up with a start as Aunt Becky hurled her name at her.

"You're to get my Wedgwood teapot. It's a pretty thing. Cauliflower pattern, as it's called, picked out with gold lustre. It's the only thing it really hurts me to give up. Letty gave it to me - she bought it at a sale in town with some of her first quarter's salary. Have you all forgotten Letty? It's forty years since she died. She would have been sixty if she were living now - as old as you, Fanny. Oh, I know you don't own to more than fifty, but you and Letty were born within three weeks of each other. IT seems funny to think of Letty being sixty - she was always so young - she was the youngest thing I ever knew. I used to wonder how Theodore and I ever produced her. She couldn't have been sixty ever - that's why she had to die. After all, it was better. It hurt me to have her die - but I think it would have hurt me more to see her sixty - wrinkled - faded - grey-haired - my pretty Letty, like a rose tossing in a breeze. Have you all forgotten that golden hair of hers - such living hair. Be good to her teapot, Naomi."

"The Terrorist"

Powerful film. Surprisingly so. I say surprising because I went into it with preconceived notions - many of which were incorrect. Until the last second I didn't know how this movie would end. I won't spoil it here. The acting is uniformly good, and to my taste each and every frame of this movie is a mini work of art. I highly recommend this movie - it's very important. The conflict is unnamed, although you can guess which war it is, due to the ethnicity of the characters. Malli, a 19 year old guerrilla soldier, is chosen to be a suicide bomber for a very important mission. It will "inspire generations to come". Again, the mission itself is not spelled out specifically but we get the idea: She is going to be blowing up some head of state. This is a targeted attack on a high-level politician. Malli has grown up in war, her father was a revolutionary, and her brother was also a "martyr" - so inflexibility and focused mania for the cause run in her blood. The film is very interesting because (and Ebert pointed this out in his review, and I agree with him) - unlike other films where, even though the main character is a murderer - or has done heinous things - you start to root for him (uhm, see every James Cagney movie ever made!) ... this is not the case here. Throughout the entire movie, you sit there and you keep hoping that somehow it will be called off, that she will NOT succeed. Her mission is futile, you just know this ... she is filmed like a lamb going for the slaughter. She is right in her mind, though - that's the thing. She has chosen this. She wants this. But, as with all good movies, the reality is a little bit more complex, once you start going into it, once you start getting to know her. Ebert writes too that you identify with her without identifying with her goal. Now that is a tricky thing, a very difficult thing - but this movie completely succeeds. And like I said, up until the very last frame of the film I did not know which way it would go. The last 20 minutes are terrible. Terribly stressful, I mean. There is this blazing-eyed martyrdom that is being yearned for ... and surrounding all of that is a sense of complete inevitability. There is no free will. You cannot stop the suicide bomber train once you get on it. That's a one-way ticket. Ayesha Dharkur who plays Malli is riveting, in every single second. She's got a face that the camera LOVES. Feelings ripple across it, breaking to the surface only occasionally. She's gorgeous, but in a way that seems totally non-actress-y.

A chilling film. The absolutes of Malli's world are chilling. There's something I get there, something I do understand ... but it is a world where one cannot really afford to have personal relationships. There is only room for the cause. Of course, this becomes the main conflict in the film.

I've posted some screenshots below. You'll see what I mean about their beauty. The fact that this is such a gorgeously shot film is interesting, and I've been thinking a lot about it. The surroundings are lush, almost cartoon jungle, huge green leaves dripping with rain water, rushing rivers, gentle rainfall ... The countryside looks so lush, so fecund and welcoming ... Yet the reality is carnage. I'm sure that that dichotomy is deliberate.

This is the little boy named Lotus. He is an orphan of the war, and he leads people through the jungle from spot to spot because he is an expert on land mines, and how to avoid them. God, you love this little boy. He is wonderful - he has some very difficult things to do in this movie, and your heart just shatters in a million pieces. Somehow, even with the horrors, his innocence has remain untouched. Except at night, when he has nightmares. Wonderful character, I will not forget him.

Lotus leads Malli through the jungle for her to catch the ferry to go off to her appointment with martyrdom. They sleep in Lotus' burned down village - he is the only one left alive.

Crossing into enemy territory.

Lotus again. Look at that precious face.

Uhm. I grabbed the following screen shot basically because that guerrilla dude is a BABE. Total eye candy.

And here Malli is ... the one in white ... being rowed to her date with destiny.

Shackleton ...

One more yummy book image ....

SHACKLETON, E. H. The Heart Of The Antarctic. Being The Story Of The British Antarctic Expedition 1907-1909. London , William Heinemann, 1909. With An Introduction By Hugh Robert Mill, D. Sc. An Account Of The First Journey To The South Magnetic Pole By Professor T.W. Edgeworth David F.R.S. Octavo, original blue cloth, titles to spines in silver, titles and pictorial silver design to front covers, top edges gilt. Two volumes. Illustrated throughout. $1700.

First trade edition. 2 volumes, 8vo. Original blue cloth, titles to spines in silver, titles and pictorial decoration to front covers in silver, top edges gilt. Illustrated throughout. Volume I spine faded, volume II entirely unfaded. (These volumes are usually rebound or seen with significant fading and wear due to their large size.) Overall a very good set that has endured admirably.

Isn't that gorgeous??

Shackleton reminds me of the early-morning conversation I had with Cashel 3 years ago.

Manhattan Rare Book Company

I'm having a field day clicking through here. Looking at the pictures of rare books make my fingers itch. Click around - some amazing things in there! I am particularly entranced by this one. Like this beautiful close-up of one of the images. Oh, and the books in the whole "Americana/Civil War" section are gorgeous ... I feel like a caveman. ME WANT. ME WANT.

But naturally, the following one makes me DROOL:

Joyce, James. Ulysses. Paris: Shakespeare and Co., 1922. Quarto, original blue-green wrappers. Custom half-leather box. $60,000.

First edition, one of 750 printed on handmade paper (out of a total edition of 1000). A superb, unrestored copy in original wrappers. Very light soiling to wrappers, slight wear to spine, faint crease on front cover. A spectacular copy, most rare in this condition.

Busby Berkely at work

And I missed a birthday: Bad friend, bad friend!!

Betsy and I have been friends since 5th grade. I do not remember how the friendship blossomed (Bets - do you?) - but it must have been a pretty instantaneous connection.

The main thrust of the start of our friendship was our shared love (should we say OBSESSION) for the musical of "Oliver". We went into a world of our own with this obsession. We would sit on top of the jungle gym at recess and sing through the entire score, song by song, with a crowd of children listening to us. We were a Rhode Island version of Maria Von Trapp, apparently.

Betsy and I wrote a book together. It was called "What Lies Below the Well". I wish I still had that manuscript. It was a mixture of Lion, Witch and Wardrobe, and Oliver Twist.

At one point, one character peers down the well and says, "I see something down there!"

Another character says, "What do you see?"

First character replies, "A long thin winding staircase without any bannister!"

See, I STILL think that's funny.

Imagine how thrilled we were when, in 6th grade, the school musical was announced, and it was going to be "Oliver".

Betsy (11 years old) was cast as Nancy, the whore with a heart of gold.

I was cast as the Artful Dodger, the mischievous pickpocket who acts as Oliver's guide. "Consider yourself - AT home - Consider yourself - one of the family..." I even did a Cockney accent. And our other friend J. was cast as Fagan. She was the wild card. She hadn't expected to get a big part - I still remember her huge glimmering eyes when the cast list was read out.

Betsy and J. and I leapt up and down in the hallways at school, when we heard the news, and cried, and hugged. We were out of our minds!

Other jokes through the years:

-- We always spoke in English accents. We thought people would be impressed. Why I have no idea.

-- We would walk from her house to the gym on the University campus after school and go swimming for an hour. Chattering the entire time to one another in English accents. For some reason, we liked to pretend that we had to walk 20 miles to get to the gym. That was part of our game. One or the other of us would sigh, in a British accent, "10 more miles!"

-- We used to sit in her room after school and tape ourselves doing skits which we thought were supremely hilarious. Betsy would play her autoharp and I would sing. Now THAT is a funny image. The autoharp!!

-- Betsy's father, an Episcopal priest, ran a camp in the north of Rhode Island - a work camp. It was a tree farm, and kids would flock to the camp every summer to work the tree farm. A work camp where you would have Bible study classes, and go out and cut trees down all day. I know, it sounds so fun, right? I went every summer. Even though I am Catholic. It was so freakin' FUN. There was one week called "Music Camp", which was hilariously fun. The whole camp took music workshops, acting workshops, put on a musical ... All while living in little cabins in the woods, and working on the tree farm as well. We would wake up at 7 in the morning and all run to go to church, which was held in a huge drafty barn. I guess you could say I had some of my first intense spiritual experiences at camp. God seemed realler there. And now - in a beautiful "all is right with the world" kind of way: Betsy runs Music Camp.

-- There have been times when I laughed so hard with Betsy I thought I might perish off the face of the earth.

-- One day, in high school, during "spirit week" (did you all ever have spirit week? School spirit week - where one day would be Hawaiian Day, one day would be Pajama Day - and you would come to school in costumes?) Anyway, Betsy and Mere, another great friend, were hanging out in the school library in their pajamas, during study hall. They were in a slapstick mood. Wearing your pajamas as you ride a school bus will do that to you. They had waterguns, and they began to chase each other through the stacks, ambushing each other in true Charlie's Angels style. Mrs. Wood, the rather imperious librarian, came around the corner and said, sternly, "Girls. Do I need to send you down to the principal's office, or do you need a babysitter?" Bad move - to give the girls a choice. Betsy and Mere glanced at each other, then looked back at Mrs. Wood and said, in unison: "I think we need a babysitter."

-- Betsy made her own dress for the senior prom. A lace extravaganza the exact style of which, unfortunately, ended up on a Leeza Gibbons show many years later, entitled: "Embarrassing Fashions from the 80s." It's okay, Bets. You looked great.

-- Betsy is one of the most loving supportive and friendly women I know. She is "good people", you know what I mean? She understands struggle - she is one of those people that you can go to with your problems, or when you're panicking about something stupid - because she will understand.

-- She never really says what you might expect her to say. Her wisdom is her own.

You're the best, dear Betsy. Happy birthday.

Happy birthday, Ann Marie!!

I wrote this huge post last year about how she and I "met before we met" - It was a mythic night, especially in retrospect - because I met her - before I really met her. I met M. - before I really met him. And I met Phil ... who took me on a date to see Pat McCurdy and this had long-term repercussions which still have reverb today. I went on one date with Phil and he took me to see Pat?? I mean, what? THANK you, Phil ... you have NO idea! And then months later I meet Ann Marie again ... at Pat? What are the odds?? Anyway, you can read the whole thing up there - it still makes me shiver a bit to think of what my life would be like if I HADN'T gone out on that shivery February night.

And so in honor of my dear friend's birthday, I am going to post an old Diary Friday which describes my best birthday party ever - a party that was engineered entirely by Ann Marie.

Thank you, dear friend ... and happy birthday!

November

I remember events by my outfits. That night, at Pat, was a blue denim and black mini-skirt kind of night. I had a feeling re: M.; by this point I totally believed he would be there. I sat for the first set with Ann and she came back after going to the bathroom ("doing a sweep" for M.) and said, "Let your heart SING!"

I went back to sit with him. I felt like I was shooting out light from beneath my skin. I was so happy!

Pat had me sing with him. The intro to that song pulls my heart up and out of my body. He makes me feel like I could fly. If only I could run fast enough.

After the show, everyone was heading to the Emerald Queen, all of us exiting together. Pat was leaving too. I made M do the velociraptor for Pat.

(Ed: A quick note: M did "imitations" of dinosaurs. So funny that I would nearly asphyxiate from laughter when he would suddenly become a brontosaurus or whatever. He had been developing his velociraptor imitation for some time. I would be sitting at the bar, doing my thing, and glance over and see a velociraptor at the jukebox, picking out songs. Or he would suddenly become a pterodactyl as he took a sip of beer. He would chase me through his apartment AS a velociraptor - much to the chagrin of his poor roommate who was trying to get an early night. He became known, in my group of Lounge Ax friends who had a habit of giving everybody nicknames: "Dinosaur Boy.")

M. did NOT want to do his velociraptor for Pat, and I made him. Afterwards, M. was just wincing about it. "Pat McCurdy was having none of my velociraptor."

We all had this HYSTERICAL walk over to the Emerald Queen. M and I, our arms around each other, were lurching across Lincoln Avenue. It was 1:30 in the morning, and a huge crowd of us had been set loose. Gus Kapinsky was leapfrogging over parking meters, one after the other after the other. We made M. watch him do this.

Still stuck on Pat's clear animosity towards him, and Pat's indifference to his velociraptor, M. stood on the curb and pretended he was about to leap off and commit suicide. "I'm gonna jump!" he screamed.

No cars in sight. Long empty black street. Street lights changing from green to yellow to red with no cars there.

Suddenly M. announced bluntly, "A velociraptor can go 75-80 miles an hour" and he took off. Other Lounge Ax people heading to the Emerald Queen, some in 2s, others in larger groups, saw him gallop by, and started laughing, pointing. "Look! It's Dinosaur Boy!"

Voices echoing. Cold.

M. was a velociraptor. He peered hungrily into the windows of a car pulling out of a lot.

I was laughing so hard I thought I might need medical attention.

M. said to me after, "When I move my body … people laugh."

Thinking of the velociraptor, the spontaneous jazz dances, the circus horses, the ostrich running through my apartment, I had to agree.

At one point, at the Emerald Queen, some Sinatra song came on and M. suddenly leapt up and made a spectacle of himself with an impromptu jazz dance. A crowd surrounded him, roaring with laughter. Ann and I were mopping off tears. There were actual people watching, but M. was performing for an imaginary crowd, which was my favorite part. Also, he and I had literally been in the middle of a conversation, there hadn't even been a lull, and he responded, mid-sentence, to the call of the music.

M. turned to me suddenly, later, and said, "You wanna see my circus horse?"

You really have to ask?

The place was packed with people and suddenly M. pranced through the crowd, and all I can say is he WAS a circus horse down to the expression in his damn eyeballs.

I heard people murmuring, "What's going on" as M. high-stepped around me. He became himself for a second to explain to me what he did physically to become a horse (he had a theory about it) and then he became a horse again.

Ann turned around in the middle of all this and saw him high-stepping by. She watched him for a moment and then slowly looked to me for an explanation. Her expression was priceless.

I said quietly, "He's a circus horse."

She nodded, accepting this. "Oh."

M. said to me, word for word, "You and me … we laugh. We hang out with each other and we laugh. Know what I mean? It makes me happy. I like laughing with you. For too long I've lived my life like that Pat song about being artistic. I don't want to do that anymore. I like being happy."

And then – 2 weeks later – came my birthday extravaganza, held during a Pat show at Lounge Ax.

Ann Marie basically decorated the bar. She is so incredible. There was a huge bunch of balloons ("Here. Arrange these in a festive manner," she ordered Lady Elaine).

(Ed: This is so hostile but there was another Pat fan who she and I did not like, who was a bit crazy, and obsessed with McCurdy in a kind of stalkerish way - not in the ultra COOL and sophisticated way that ANN and I were obsessed with Pat McCurdy (sarcasm) – and basically this stalker-fan's nose and his chin almost touched – so Ann Marie and I called him "Lady Elaine" after the puppet on Mr. Rogers, because we felt there was a resemblance. We did not call him "Lady Elaine" to his face, but we would blatantly refer to him as such, "Wow, look at how Lady Elaine is hovering around Pat…" "Loved Lady Elaine's crazy air guitar during 'Knock Things Over'"…So the image of Ann Marie ordering "Lady Elaine" to arrange balloons in a "festive manner" … I just … It's just freakin' funny, that's all.)

Ann Marie baked cupcakes, brought candy. It was a total extravaganza. Everyone knew it was my birthday. I wore my mermaid dress and a black choker. (Ed: How embarrassing – but I warned you up front! Every diary entry during the "magic time" is accompanied by a description of my clothes…)

I went to find M. and he was sitting at the bar, so cute, waiting for me. I was so happy to see him I was high on him. We were a happy couple. We are a happy couple.

I pointed to all the balloons, arranged by Lady Elaine. "Those are for me."

He asked me how my actual birthday was and I told him pretty bad and that I had cried on the train. He was hurt by this news. "You cried on your birthday?"

Then he said, "I thought about you on your birthday. I thought about calling you, but …" and he stopped himself with this very inward-look on his face. He had no word of excuse, he looked confused at his own behavior. "I don't know why I didn't."

I said, "You should have! Of course, at the first sound of your voice I would have dissolved into tears."

We laughed at that.

I asked him how his Thanksgiving was and he said, "It was all right," but with such an evident edgy look of misery and anxiety in his eyes. He cannot mask his emotions. I responded to the look on his face, not his words. "Not good, huh."

He shrugged and then said, "Well … clearly I have issues."

I couldn't help myself. I burst into laughter right in his face. He has assimilated me! Me, always talking about "issues". He looked truly confused, like, "What did I just say?" – and I kept laughing, and then he began YELLING at me, "No! No! I don't have issues. I have PROBLEMS. I don't have issues. I have PROBLEMS."

Ann Marie wrote me a fairy story for my birthday. I was living in such a euphoric state. Everything was perfect. Ann also gave me flannel sheets! Bless you, Ann!! I love them. She went totally nuts for my birthday. She is an incredible party planner.

I had raved to M. about how I wanted flannel sheets, and he told me I had to get some. So I showed them to him, all excited. "Look, M.! Flannel sheets!" He was cute – kind of withdrawn, but smiling, shy, kind. "Hey! You just told me you wanted some!"

Half of our conversations are about objects and their faults or virtues: bureaus, incense, coffee makers, coffee tables, banana pickers jackets, new blue jeans, veal parmesan sandwiches, his special mattress he had as a teenager, etc.

I loved it that M. would get all puffed up like a peacock because he was "the guy with Sheila". He would pretend there was an imaginary crowd around him and he'd say in a very over-it casual tone, "Yeah … I'm with her. It's no big deal. I'm just with her."

M. told me his mother said his haircut made him look like a "jackass".

We left the bar with a huge fanfare because of all my gifts and balloons.

Pat had had me sing, and had also led the entire place in singing happy birthday to me.

M. helped me carry some of my stuff out. Ann said he was behaving "very husbandly" which is so true. He was loaded down with all my gifts, and I was keeping him waiting as I said good-bye to everyone five times. He was grumbling about it, and impatient.

"I have to say good-bye to Ann Marie!"

"Didn't you already do that?"

"Yeah, but not for the last time!"

He sat in the car, exhaling frustration as I flew around hugging everyone and saying goodbye to Ann Marie 10 times.

We released all of my balloons into the air outside of Lounge Ax. They floated up over the Biograph and disappeared into the black.

I climbed into the car with M., this person I have known for almost 2 years now, and we peeled away from the curb.

Let's do the time warp again

It's just a jump to the left ...

It is so interesting to have a great conversation with the child of a high school friend ... who is now the age when I first met my high school friend ... and to chat on the phone with her - oh, how's it going, what are you up to in high school right now, what are you working on right now ... oh you're working on a project about the Middle Ages? Oh, that's cool ... "Actually no, it's kind of stupid" she said ... "Oh, is it stupid? Yeah, I remember stupid projects I had to do, too" ... and to have, alongside of that, the image of myself at 14... and my high school friend, now this young woman's mother .... pressing our hot red Irish faces up against the gym wall during a dance, because we had just danced so hard to Rock Lobster that our heads had become raging hot tomatoes. That hot-red tomato-head now has a daughter. The age that we were back then. And the daughter and I chatted, and laughed, and connected ... and I guess it just never ceases to amaze and delight me. You're my friend's daughter!!!

I like this

Neat post, Mitch. Glad things are going well.

Harses, harses, harses ...

(First of all: please name the movie that quote comes from! My sister Jean will know since we quote it all the time: "Harses, harses, harses, harses ...")

Anyway. Speaking of harses: Breathtaking!! Look at those wild things! Beauty!

Cards for any situation

I accidently drank all your liquor when I house-sat for you and then I filled the empty bottles with Fresca and Mountain Dew. Sorry.

Haha - City Wendy has more.

This reminds me of something my friend Brooke did a couple years ago and I thought it was an awesome idea. Basically, she took photographs of her yelling at her two children by the Christmas tree - and sent those out as the family Christmas card. I can't remember what she called the campaign - something like Honest Moments. And she had her family pose in all kinds of circumstances, fighting, scuffling children, scowling silent dinner tables - and sent THOSE out to her mailing list on special occasions. I remember opening her Christmas card and instead of seeing the normal family-posed-smiling-on-the-stairwell-like-the-Von-Trapps ... there was a kind of blurry black and white photograph, a family in pajamas, sleepy-head hair, Christmas morning, tree lights lit up, presents everywhere, the two kids fighting over something, and Brooke looking on and yelling at them to stop. An action shot, if you will. Best Christmas Card ever - I'm still laughing about it.

Today in History: March 28, 1941

TO: LEONARD WOOLF
Rodmell,
Sussex
Tuesday (18? March 1941)

Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.

I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

V.

March 28, 1941. After writing that note to her husband, Virginia Woolf put rocks in her pockets and drowned herself in the River Ouse.

Netflix ....

Netflix has changed how I look for movies. The majority of the movies on my queue are ones I have never seen before - or are movies I saw when I was 12 and never saw again for this or that reason. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. You know how when you rent movies at a local video store - you are limited by their selection - and most of the movies at, say, a Blockbuster are either movies I have no interest in seeing - or they have a bazillion copies of Spiderman 2 and no Charlie Chaplin. Not that there's anything wrong with Spiderman 2 - it's just that variety is the spice of life, and it's so awesome now to be able to expand my viewing into movies you can't find at Blockbuster. Some of them are famous movies, with great performances - like The Bad and the Beautiful ... others are more obscure, but with great international reputations. And I lose track of what is on my queue and I purposefully don't look at it too much so that when movies arrive they are a bit of a surprise. It's so much fun!! I went to certain sites like AFI and the great Film Site and looked at lists of "100 Greatest Movies Ever Made" - and put on the queue ones I hadn't seen. Some of my choices are just old favorites that for whatever reason Blockbuster and Hollywood Video don't carry. Like War Games. Oh, and Marisa inspired me recently to put Some Kind of Wonderful on the queue - a movie I've seen, but not since I was a teenager.

The two movies coming my way as we speak are 2 I have not seen yet: The Terrorist - a movie about a female Sri Lankan suicide bomber - which I really feel I need to see. It sounds fantastic, and terrifying. And also The Fall of the House of Usher - I am extremely excited to see that one. Never seen it!! Ebert has it on his "Great Movies" list - and I love how he opens his review:

The great hall in Jean Epstein's "The Fall of the House of Usher" is one of the most haunting spaces in the movies. Its floor is a vast marble expanse, interrupted here and there by an item of furniture that seems dwarfed by the surrounding emptiness. An odd staircase rises from one distant corner. It is not impossible that this vision, in one of the best-known French surrealist films, inspired the designers of the great hall of Xanadu in "Citizen Kane." In both films, shadows are made to substitute for details that are not really there, and a man and a woman, their lives ruled by his obsession with her, move like wraiths through the haunted space.

The hall is not simply cold, enormous and forbidding, but has surrealistic details. "Leaves blow ominously across the floor," writes the critic Gary Morris, and the long white curtains "flutter menacingly, as if the house is under constant, quiet, insidious siege by a vengeful nature." This is not a room for human habitation, but a set for a surrealist opera.

Can't wait!

Ten Books I couldn't live without

Okay, so I got this dreadfully difficult question from Heather . But it originated here at Kaliana's - and the real fun is to click through and see what books show up on people's lists.

And just for ease's sake ... I am NOT going to include plays in this list.

This is HARD. But here goes.

1. Possession - by A.S. Byatt. Like Heather I have read this book probably 4 or 5 times - I just finished it yet again, and every time I come to it - I see different things, I relate to different aspects. As my life changes, as I grow older ... the book appears to take on deeper meanings - I fluctuate between sympathy for Roland, for Christabel, for Val, for poor Ellen Ash, for Maud ... depending on my mood, or where I am at in my life. Also, and this is a deeper comment: This is a book about intellectuals having love affairs. The cerebral mixed with the primal. This is something that strikes a very intense chord in me ... a problem that has come up in my life repeatedly, because of who I am, and because of my emotional makeup - a fiery mix of brains and passion. Tough for anybody to handle. How will it work? How will I find my way, find peace? My intellectual side is rigid, hard-working, and can be very inflexible. I will not "tone it down" to make others feel comfortable around me. I've been asked (outright, and also subliminally) to "tone it down" and the price (for me) is too great. It's too much of a betrayal. And yet I do not lack feelings, I am not cold ... Maud's struggle in the book with "letting her hair down", her resistance to love, her fear of having her boundaries melded with somebody else's, is my eternal struggle. I have never ever read a better prolonged study of the issues a woman like myself has when she falls in love. It's very specific. There isn't anything generic about a love affair - and yet most books do not tackle it from Byatt's angle. Not only did I love the story, but I felt validated and vindicated by it. It's something I go to again and again, sometimes searchingly, sometimes just with the knowledge that I will be able to lose myself in it ... and sometimes with trepidation. The truths revealed in this book are only live-able to me when I am in a good head-space, and dealing with myself openly. If I'm trying to "hide" (in the same way that Maud hides) - then the book rebukes me. I can't think of too many other books that maintain such a vibrant presence in my life. It cannot be replaced.

2. Ring of Endless Light - by Madeleine L'Engle I love all of her books but for some reason - if I had to choose? If I HAD to? This is the one I feel I would "need". That's the word that comes up. I need this book. I needed it from the first moment I read it - years ago. It has been there for me in really dark times. I have looked to it still, for inspiration, strength. I first read it when I was 19, 20 ... And it's funny ... but I still feel the same way about it. Extraordinary.

3. Lives of the Saints - by Nancy Lemann Who can say why some books get into our psyche and others do not? This is a slim novel, a first novel ... it is about nothing except an aimless post-college girl living in her home town of New Orleans, having wacky adventures, and loving a man who is gin-soaked and hilarious and tragic. I must get going with my 'daily book excerpt' thing again so that I can get into my adult fiction, which will be a lot of fun - damn that Lucy Maud for writing so much! Since I first read Lives of the Saints (and I remember picking it out, at random) - I have read her other books (and there aren't many) - and while I adore Sportsman's Paradise and Fiery Pantheon (not too wacky about Malaise) ... my heart belongs to Lives of the Saints. Why do I love it? God, let me see. First of all, it is laugh out loud funny. For a good summer after I read Lives of the Saints I found myself writing like her, imitating her. I love her style. It is eccentric, witty ... i remember reading it out loud to my boyfriend at the time and he would just GUFFAW. But then it turns around and stabs you in the heart, with sentimentality, sudden pain, loss so intense it takes your breath away. A true Southern novel - with that air of eccentricity and hilarity. GREAT characters, so so funny. Claude Collier - the main guy in the book - was the context through which I saw M., that first crazy summer I met him. M. was just as nuts as Claude, just as hard to pin down ... I could see a more conventionally minded girl being driven out of her cotton-pickin' mind by M. - and somehow ... Claude, and the spectacle of Claude, helped me deal with M. But all of this is just words. I love the books of Nancy Lemann and this one is one I go back to over and over and over. I love her sensibility. And more importantly: she is the type of writer who inspires me to keep writing. Here's an excerpt.

4. Moby Dick - by Herman Melville I wrote a little bit about what it was like to re-read Moby Dick on my own - as opposed to being forced to read it in high school - here. This book makes my heart pound faster. Every damn word is good. It's an overwhelming experience ... it's gluttonous ... because Melville is so spectacular, sentence after sentence after sentence ... You want him to take a break and be MEDIOCRE for just a page or two so that you, the reader, can not feel so inadequate. I read the book in high school but I didn't really READ it until 2001 - and my experience of reading that book was excitement. And also: growth. The chapter about "The Blanket" touched me on such a profound level that I can honestly say my mind-set slightly shifted after reading it. How would I approach life, how would I protect myself and yet also remain open and alive ... these were questions I was truly grappling with in the early months of 2001, a generally terrible time for me. And I read that chapter - and it landed within me so hard that I felt like I plummeted through the floor with the impact. A book that can do that is a book I want to have around.

5. The Dead - by James Joyce. Now this was a really tough choice. But if I look deep in my heart, I realize that the thought of never being able to read the short story "The Dead" again actually causes me pain.

6. Hopeful Monsters - by Nicholas Mosley Crap, I keep saying I'm going to write about this book but it feels too huge. This book, when I read it, explained me to myself. It felt like my own system of beliefs - which are erratic, and yet make perfect sense to me - had been written down. It's an intellectual feast, a 20th century romp through politics and science ... I honestly don't know how to write about this book coherently. If my soul could take the form of a book - it would be Hopeful Monsters - which is really funny because "soul" sounds like such a mushy rainbow-y girlie word - and this book is stringently intellectual, full of piercing questions with no answers - pondering contemplative intellectual hypotheses, cameos by Heisenberg and Einstein and others ... so it's a funny book to attach the word "soul" to. But that's part of Mosley's point. One of my favorite books ever written. Can't live without it.

7. Catch 22 - by Joseph Heller One of the greatest books ever. Talk about having every sentence be brilliant and funny ... seriously, how can one author sustain a ba-dum-ching energy through that long of a book? I came to it late, despite the insistence of pretty much my entire family - all of whom are Catch-22 FREAKS OF NATURE. And within the first 2 pages I was hooked. This book is like crack. Not that I do crack. But if I did, I bet it would feel a little bit like reading Catch 22. I mean, come on. Chief White Halfoat? Is there a funnier character? Major Major Major Major? I love them all. Crack.

8. The Pigman - by Paul Zindel. I'm not sure, and don't quote me on this - but this might be my favorite book ever written. It's certainly in the eternal top 5 ... in the same way that Empire Strikes Back is, on my movie list. It might not always be number 1 - but it NEVER falls far from it. I first read this book at age 13. I still read it about once a year today. It's strangely connected, in my mind, now, with Sept. 11 - in a way that moves me profoundly. Strange what one remembers, the connections one makes. It's in my life - always. I babble about this book here.

9. Mating - by Norman Rush. Like Possession, like Goldbug variations, like Hopeful Monsters - this is a book that takes as its topic the intellectual component of falling in love. This is something that resonates with me ... and also is something that is rarely discussed, or talked about in books. Mating is all about that. I can't really add to my feelings about the book. I love it fiercely. And the section about Victoria Falls is something I refer to, over and over and over again. I never EVER get tired of it. I remember when I first read that section, thinking: "Okay. I'm hooked. I love this book now." Put a fork in Sheila. She's done. I've actually started to re-read it again. Every time I read it, I see something new, I get something new out of it. This, to me, is the mark of a true classic. I can re-visit it and it seems like the BOOK has changed - only no, it's just me.

10. Emily Climbs - by L.M. Montgomery I know, strange ... it's the second book in the series - but there's just something about it. Every part of it - the journal entries, the different episodes that have become almost mythic to me: Emily being trapped in the church, Ruth Dutton, Emily and Ilse sleeping in the haystack, Emily's second sight, Emily walking home to New Moon in a rage ... I think Lucy Maud is truly at her best in this book. I just lose myself in it every time I pick it up. Like I said at the beginning of this post, it is HARD to choose ... How can I leave off Tangled Web? Or Anne of the Island?? But for now - right in this moment - I feel that I cannot bear to be parted from Emily Climbs.

Life

Tribute ...

A New York shocker

I know it will be hard to believe, but a certain venue in Times Square has closed its doors. I had gone out searching for it again only to find ... it was gone.

I took 2 pretty damn funny pictures of what is there now. I've listed them below.

So here is the monolith that now confronts you ... if you go seeking out that old venue.

Wow. Okay. I GOT it. You guys CLOSED and there is now a RETAIL OPPORTUNITY.

Blue curtains line the glass front doors, obscuring what is within ... I wondered what remained of the mania I had once experienced. I went to peek between a gap in the blue curtains to see if there were any remnants of the former tenant .... And I took a photo thru the glass door of what I saw on the wall behind that curtain. This may be the funniest photo I have ever taken.

Must-read of the day:

The John Hughes School of Life.

Great work, Marisa. Loved it. We've covered a bit of this here before ... the whole Jake Ryan problem ... but I really liked how you organized this, how well-thought out your post was. I really agree with you.

Happy birthday- to Tennessee Williams

"You're always having to compete with yourself. They always say, 'It's not as good as Streetcar or Cat'. Of course it's not. At 69, you don't write the kind of play you write at 30. You haven't got the kind of energy you used to have."

-- Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams said the following about Streetcar, and his main point of that entire play:

There are no 'good' or 'bad' people. Some are a little better or a little worse but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice. A blindness to what is going on in each other's hearts. Stanley sees Blanche not as a desperate, driven creature backed into a last corner to make a last desperate stand - but as a calculating bitch with 'round heels'.... Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see each other in life.

Tennessee Williams wrote the following elegiac essay about Laurette Taylor (who created the role of Amanda so memorably in Glass Menagerie and made him star) for The New York Times after news of her death in 1949:

I do not altogether trust the emotionalism that is commonly indulged in over the death of an artist, not because it is necessarily lacking in sincerity but because it may come too easily. In what I say now about Laurette Taylor I restrict myself to those things which I have felt continually about her as apart from any which this unhappy occasion produces.

Of course the first is that I consider her the greatest artist of her profession that I have known. The second is that I loved her as a person. In a way the second is more remarkable. I have seldom encountered any argument about her preeminent stature as an actress. But for me to love her was remarkable because I have always been so awkward and diffident around actors that it has made a barrier between us almost all but insuperable.

In the case of Laurette Taylor, I cannot say that I ever got over the awkwardness and the awe which originally were present, but she would not allow it to stand between us. The great warmth of her heart burned through and we became close friends.

I am afraid it is the only close friendship I have ever had with a player...

It is our immeasurable loss that Laurette Taylor's performances were not preserved on the modern screen. The same is true of Duse and Bernhardt, with whom her name belongs. Their glory survives in the testimony and inspiration of those who saw them. Too many people have been too deeply moved by the gift of Laurette Taylor for that to disappear from us.

In this unfathomable experience of ours there are sometimes hints of something that lies outside the flesh and its mortality. I suppose these intuitions come to many people in their religious vocations, but I have sensed them more clearly in the work of artists and most clearly of all in the art of Laurette Taylor. There was a radiance about her art which I can compare only to the greatest lines of poetry, and which gave me the same shock of revelation as if the air about us had been momentarily broken through by light from some clear space beyond us.

The last word that I received from her was a telegram which reached me early this fall. It was immediately after the road company of our play had opened in Pittsburgh. The notices spoke warmly of Pauline Lord's performance in the part of Amanda. "I have just read the Pittsburgh notices," Laurette wired me. "What did I tell you, my boy? You don't need me."

I feel now - as I have always felt - that a whole career of writing for the theatre is rewarded enough by having created one good part for a great actress.

Having created a part for Laurette Taylor is a reward I find sufficient for all the effort that went before and any that may come after.

It was a two-sided deal there. Her performance launched him into stardom. And his creation of Amanda revitalized her career just in time for her to capitalize on it. She would be dead in a couple of years. She had had a great career early in her life, and went on a 10 year binge following the death of her husband. Laurette Taylor was "washed up". Until ...

And now, she's a legend, her performance in Glass Menagerie is legendary. "What did I tell you, my boy, you don't need me..." Ha. That's what you think, Laurette! But in a way, she was completely right. The play is better than any one performance. The play didn't depend on Laurette Taylor's genius, although thank God she found the vehicle. The star of the play is actually the play itself, and Laurette Taylor knew that. The star of the play was this new voice of Tennessee Williams. And so no, Tennessee didn't "need" her. And about Tennessee saying: "I consider her the greatest artist of her profession that I have known." Anyone who knows anything about theatre would be hard-pressed to disagree. I haven't even SEEN the woman act, obviously, but I don't need to. I will take the hundreds and hundreds of eyewitness' word for it. In the same way that I know, in my heart, that Eleanora Duse was one of the "greatest artists of her profession" as well. I don't need to have seen her live.

Here's a treat for all you Tennessee and Laurette fans. Here is one of the original reviews of Glass Menagerie, after its premiere on an icy winter night in Chicago. This review focuses on the miracle that was Laurette Taylor's performance.

January 14, 1945

MEMO FROM CHICAGO By Lloyd Lewis

CHICAGO - As this is written there exists doubt as to whether Eddie Dowling has anything more satisfying than an artistic success in his new production, "The Glass Menagerie", at the Civic Theatre, but there is no doubt whatsoever that he has brought back Laurette Taylor as a great character actress.

Not since she did "Peg o'My Heart," exactly thirty years ago, has she been so talked and written about.

In "The Glass Menagerie," which is a tenuous and moody tragedy from the pen of Tennessee Williams, she plays a decaying Delta belle overfond of haranguing her two children, one a warehouse worker (Mr. Dowling) and the other a morbidly bashful maiden (Julie Haydon), upon their duty to rise above the drabness of life in a St. Louis alley flat. Fumbling around the dolorous precincts of her home in a slipshod Mother Hubbard, she is forever reciting the plantation glories of her youth, how seventeen young gentlemen callers were forever complimenting her among the magnolias, and how she could have had this or that grandson instead of the captivating plebeian drunk who took her only to desert her and leave her to current St. Louis blues.

When Miss Taylor mumbles in magnificent realism she is still enough of a vocal wizard to be intelligible to her audiences, and when she pouts, nags or struts in pathetic bursts of romantic memory she is superb as a pantomime. Her descents into hysteria are masterpieces of understatement, dramatic in that they force her audience to do the acting for her.

She accomplishes her tour de force of acting without a single gesture which could be charged with showmanship. Some of her most telling lines are fumbling mutterings delivered over her shoulder. And in a scene wherein she prods her son into bringing home somebody, anybody, who might possibly marry his psychopathic sister before he himself wanders off, as his mother knows he will, into the big, blue and tipsy yonder, she gives a performance that could fit into the best of the Abbey Theatre's Irish plays.

One moment she is a ridiculous pretender and the next only a poor old woman dreading so soon to be dead because her helpless daughter will then be alone. When a 'caller' is eventually dragooned and brought to the house for dinner, Miss Taylor's appearance in an ancient taffety and high-toned manners is a delicate feat in the creation of that narrow line between the absurd and the sad.

Oh. Oh. For a time machine.

Here's a picture of Tennessee Williams out on his beloved Key West in 1980:

Make voyages. Attempt them. That's all there is.

-- Tennessee Williams, "Camino Real"

I realized things about myself - and my life - through working on Miss Alma in Summer and Smoke - that pretty much forever changed me. My journal entries from that time are fascinating for me to look back on. I actually grew as a human being, while working on that play. I went into it a little bit here. Sheila and Alma had merged. It's one of the only times that's ever happened. Funny: I love to post my Diary Friday excerpts from high school days, because haw haw haw we can all sort of chuckle at the exuberance and silliness of youth. But I would very much hesitate to post those Sheila/Alma entries - which were, first of all, much more recent - but also - I don't know if I would ever want to expose that side of myself here. That is the real Artist Sheila. I couldn't bear to have anyone roll their eyes or chuckle at HER. NOBODY can tell me that Alma is "just" a character in a play. She LIVES, she breathes. I certainly felt possessed by her.

When people who knew him talk about Tennessee Williams, they always mention his laugh. Apparently, he had this wild high-pitched out-of-control Mozartian giggle, completely infectious to anyone near him. His plays may have had tragic elements, but that was how he worked out his own tragic upbringing, his sister's lobotomy, etc. He himself was not an openly tragic or introverted figure. He put all of his grief and sadness into his plays. The man was deeply sensitive - like all of his female characters. But if this seems like he was a bleak or depressive personality, that's incorrect. He always balked, too, when reviewers would characterize all of his female characters as "desperate". He didn't agree with that assessment at all. He saw each and every one of them as survivors - women trying to break through and live a happy and meaningful life. Other people assigned the meaning "desperate" to them, but Tennessee always hated that. Here's part of an essay he wrote for The New York Times in 1948 where he addresses this whole "desperate character" thing - In this essay he uses Miss Alma in "Summer and Smoke" as the jumping-off point:

All at once, I found myself hammed in by three women in basic black who had been to the Saturday matinee and had apparently thought of nothing since except the problems of Alma Winemiller, the heroine of "Summer and Smoke". When you are eating, a great deal can be accomplished by having a mouth full of food and by making gutteral noises instead of speech when confronted with questions such as, What is the theme of your play? What happens to the characters after the play is over? What is your next play about and how do you happen to know so much about women? On that last one you can spit the food out if it really begins to choke you.

For a writer who is not intentionally obscure, and never, in his opinion, obscure at all, I do get asked a hell of a lot of questions which I can't answer. I have never been able to say what was the theme of my play and I don't think I have ever been conscious of writing with a theme in mind. I am always surprised when, after a play has opened, I read in the papers what the play is about, that it was about a decayed Southern belle trying to get a man for her crippled daughter, or that it was about a boozie floozie on the skids, or that a backwoods sheik in a losing battle with three village vamps.

Don't misunderstand me. I am thankful for these highly condensed and stimulating analyses, but it would never have occurred to me that that was the story I was trying to tell. Usually when asked about a theme I look vague and say, "It is a play about life." What could be simpler, and yet more pretentious? You can easily extend that a little and say it is a tragedy of incomprehension. That also means life. Or you can say it is a tragedy of Puritanism. That is life in America. Or you can say that it is a play that considers the "problem of evil". But why not just say "life"?

To return to the women in the alcove. On this particular occasion the question that floored me was, "Why do you always write about frustrated women?"

To say that floored me is to put it mildly, because I would say that frustrated is almost exactly what the women I write about are not. What was frustrated about Amanda Wingfield? Circumstances, yes! But spirit? See Helen Hayes in London's "Glass Menagerie" if you still think Amanda was a frustrated spirit! No, there is nothing interesting about frustration, per se. I could not write a line about it for the simple reason that I can't write a line about anything that bores me.

Was Blance of "A Streetcar Named Desire" frustrated? About as frustrated as a beast of the jungle! And Alma Winemiller? What is frustrated about loving with such white hot intensity that it alters the whole direction of your life, and removes you from the parlor of the Episcopal rectory to a secret room above Moon Lake Casino?

I came across this essay when I was working on Alma Winemiller - and I can't tell you how much of an "A-ha!" moment it gave me. If I felt drawn towards portraying her as sexually FRUSTRATED, or emotionally FRUSTRATED ... I remembered Tennessee's words. I remembered the truth of them. Do not play the frustration. How boring. Play the OBJECTIVE, play the DESIRE, play what you WANT with all your heart ... Let the CIRCUMSTANCES of the play frustrate you ... but never ever take your eye off your objective. And THAT is where the tragedy lies.

Brilliant. So so helpful to any actress who works on ANY of his great parts to keep in mind.

I love that drive in him - the drive to pour all of the darkness and fear from his background into his work - he was a man driven to do so - it was therapeutic for him, yes, but never just therapy. Art that is just therapy is usually bad art. Or - perhaps not bad - but it will not stand the test of time. Tennessee worked on his craft, and always cared more about the PLAY than about the personal demons exorcised by said play. Read his letters, his journals, his instructions to directors ... the level of detail there is astonishing. Really inspiring to me. To be such a great artist, but to also have such an understanding of craft, and structure.

"Nothing's more determined than a cat on a tin roof - is there? Is there, baby?"

-- from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

The lead of a play I did a year or so ago was the lead in Tennessee Williams' last play - Something Cloudy Something Clear - done here in NYC at Cocteau Rep. Williams died soon after the play went up. The play is a highly personal kind of dream-space, and reading it it is as though you can feel Williams getting ready to go into the dying of the light. It is the play of an old old man. A man getting ready. Craig shared with me his memories of working with Tennessee.

Everyone talks about his "laugh". Actors and actresses who were in his plays talk about hearing his laugh from out in the audience. It was a generous laugh, a laugh full of joy. If an actor or actress was doing well, he had no problem with letting them know, with enjoying their performances openly. (Other playwrights are not so kind. It seems as though other playwrights have this thought process: "No actor could EVER live up to the perfection that resides in my mind. My play is perfect as is ... it's the ACTORS who are messing it up!!" Playwrights like that, usually, are big bores, and don't have a lot of talent. Like: okay, you want perfection? Build a feckin' statue, and don't hire live actors. Mkay? That way your precious words will be safe from contamination. Ahem. I have a ton of stories.) But Tennessee, while kind of intimidated by actors, he never knew what to say to them ... LOVED them when they were wonderful. He did not consciously withhold approval - like so many do. If someone sucked, he had no problem with sending a note to the director saying: "Please have her realize that she needs to be light and funny on that one line - she is dragging down the entire scene with her dismal line readings..." hahaha He would never say such a thing to the actor's face - he let the director do his job - but if he was pleased? He would sit out in the audience, and just HOWL with laughter. He loved being an audience member. So many people in the theatre, because the theatre is their job and livelihood - forget how to just be an audience member.

Here, to me, is a quintessential Tennessee Williams statement.

An interviewer asked him: "What is your definition of happiness?"

He replied, "Insensitivity, I guess."

His experience of "happiness" as being, in its essence, "insensitive" came from his background. Those who were "sensitive" were crushed and shattered by cruelty, by life itself. His sister Rose was institutionalized and lobotomized. This was something Tennessee never really recovered from. (But he didn't really HAVE to recover from it, I guess. All of his feelings about it went into his work. If he had "recovered", or "worked it out" in his mind, then he might not have written Glass Menagerie, Summer and Smoke, et al.) He was a perpetual outsider. He was on the run from his past. He was able to "get out" of the past ... his sister Rose was not. The guilt of that never left him. The guilt of being "the one" who was able to live in the real world dogged him at every turn. If one was "happy", if one was able to manuever thru a world that lobotomized some of its most sensitive members, then "happiness" required some kind of a hard outer shell - a shell that Tennessee himself lacked, that other "sensitives" (his word) lacked. He did not begrudge people their happiness ... he just didn't understand it. He couldn't get "in there", ever. Again, this is kind of a blessing, at least as far as we are concerned - merely because that sort of baffled response to how on earth to LIVE in this world ... is the emotional place from which he wrote all of his plays.

He WAS Blanche. He WAS Tom in Glass Menagerie. He WAS Alma. He WAS Maggie. All of these people, these "sensitives", trying to make their way through, trying to bear up under disappointments and cruelty ... trying to SURVIVE.

Again and again, Williams reiterated that he never wrote about victims. He didn't see any of these people as victims. He saw them as survivors. Beautiful triumphant survivors.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you - gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.

-- Tennessee Williams

The Blache DuBois', the Laura Wingfields, the Miss Almas ... these are sensitive people, deeply wounded people, on the edge of shattering - just like his sister Rose did. Of course blatant casual "happiness" would be seen as insensitive through their eyes.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

-- Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams is one of my own personal heroes, for more reasons than one, and I am aware (on a pretty much daily basis) of how grateful I am to him for his plays. In the same way that I am pretty much always conscious of being grateful that there was a Shakespeare, and that we have his works with us today. I still read Tennessee Williams plays now, over and over, reading them countless times, never ever getting tired of them, never ever feeling like all my questions are answered.

Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself.

-- Tennessee Williams

And I'll leave you with another really telling and beautiful anecdote, this one from Elia Kazan. I LOVE this, because it says to me, in no uncertain terms, why Tennessee Williams is a god among playwrights - and why he is so unusual. Nobody else can touch him, really. I love Arthur Miller's plays, but there's always a social conscience in them which can get preachy and tiresome if it's not controlled. Death of a Salesman has a perfect balance, but his later plays have the feeling of pamphlets.

Tennessee Williams has none of that. There is no "social conscience" in his plays. There is no deeper social criticism going on. Perhaps the only "criticism" that Tennessee consistently levels at "society" is the way it treats the "sensitives".

I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.

-- Tennessee Williams

Here's the setup for the excerpt I want to post (which has to do with the rehearsals and also the opening of Streetcar Named Desire):

Jessica Tandy, who originated Blanche on Broadway, was already a celebrated actress. Marlon Brando was practically unknown. Kazan noticed which way the wind was blowing during rehearsals, and it concerned him on many levels.

Basically what was happening was that Marlon Brando was acting Jessica Tandy off the stage. Without breaking a sweat, Brando stole the show right out from under her. Jessica Tandy fought to keep her ground (which, actually, is perfect for the theme of the show and for the character of Blanche Dubois), but Kazan's main concern was that Blanche would turn into a laughable character and lose the sympathy of the audience. Kazan was worried that the audience, because of Brando's undeniable stage presence, and the electricity of his acting, would completely side with Stanley, and not have any sympathy for Blanche at all. This, Kazan felt, would be a disaster. Stanley rapes Blanche. This event must be seen as horrifyingly wrong, not as Blanche getting what she deserves. But Brando's power took over the play, it was a runaway train, it wasn't a matter of him playing Stanley as sympathetic - he wasn't. It was just that he was a force to be reckoned with, a powerhouse - you couldn't take your eyes off him. Jessica Tandy barely registered, when she was beside him.

Here's a photo from that production: Brando, Kim Hunter, and Tandy:

And so Kazan feared, as rehearsals went on, that the balance of the play was off.

Here's what Kazan wrote about all of this in his marvelous autobiography.

It is Tennessee Williams' "advice" to Kazan at the end that really packs a punch:

But what had been intimated in our final rehearsals in New York was happening. The audiences adored Brando. When he derided Blanche, they responded with approving laughter. Was the play becoming the Marlon Brando Show? I didn't bring up the problem, because I didn't know the solution. I especially didn't want the actors to know that I was concerned. What could I say to Brando? Be less good? Or to Jessie? Get better? ...

Louis B. Mayer sought me out to congratulate me and assure me that we'd all make a fortune ... He urged me to make the author do one critically important bit of rewriting to make sure that once that "awful woman" who'd come to break up that "fine young couple's happy home" was packed off to an institution, the audience would believe that the young couple would live happily ever after. It never occurred to him that Tennessee's primary sympathy was with Blanche, nor did I enlighten him ... His misguided reaction added to my concern. I had to ask myself: Was I satisfied to have the performance belong to Marlon Brando? Was that what I'd intended? What did I intend? I looked to the author. He seemed satisfied. Only I -- and perhaps Hume [Cronyn, Tandy's husband] -- knew that something was going wrong ...

What astonished me was that the author wasn't concerned about the audience's favoring Marlon. That puzzled me because Tennessee was my final authority, the person I had to please. I still hadn't brought up the problem, I was waiting for him to do it. I got my answer ... because of something that happened in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, across the hall from my suite, where Tennessee and Pancho were staying. [Pancho was Tennessee's boyfriend - or maybe it was more of a f*** buddy situation. Pancho was a huge presence in Tennessee's life. They had a really volatile relationship.] One night I heard a fearsome commotion from across the hall, curses in Spanish, threats to kill, the sound of breaking china ... and a crash ... As I rushed out into the corridor, Tennessee burst through his door, looking terrified, and dashed into my room. Pancho followed, but when I blocked my door, he turned to the elevator still cursing, and was gone. Tennessee slept on the twin bed in my room that night. The next morning, Pancho had not returned.

I noticed that Wiilliams wasn't angry at Pancho, not even disapproving -- in fact, when he spoke about the incident, he admired Pancho for his outburst. At breakfast, I brought up my worry about Jessie and Marlon. "She'll get better," Tennessee said, and then we had our only discussion about the direction of his play. "Blanche is not an angel without a flaw," he said, "and Stanley's not evil. I know you're used to clearly stated themes, but this play should not be loaded one way or the other. Don't try to simplify things." Then he added, "I was making fun of Pancho, and he blew up." He laughed. I remembered the letter he'd written me before we started rehearsals, remembered how, in that letter, he'd cautioned me against tipping the moral scales against Stanley, that in the interests of fidelity I must not present Stanley as a "black-dyed villain". "What should I do?" I asked. "Nothing," he said. "Don't take sides or try to present a moral. When you begin to arrange the action to make a thematic point, the fidelity to life will suffer. Go on working as you are. Marlon is a genius, but she's a worker and she will get better. And better."

So extraordinary. It brings tears to my eyes, and it's wonderful advice, advice that any artist would do well to follow. "Don't take sides ..." "fidelity to life ..."

Here is the review of the premiere of Streetcar Named Desire, in New York City, December 3, 1947.

December 4, 1947

FIRST NIGHT AT THE THEATRE by Brooks Atkinson

Tennessee Williams has brought us a superb drama, "A Streetcar Named Desire," which was acted at the Ethel Barrymore last evening. And Jessica Tandy gives a superb performance as a rueful heroine whose misery Mr. Williams is tenderly recording. This must be one of the most perfect marriages of acting and playwriting. For the acting and playwriting are perfectly blended in a limpid performance, and it is impossible to tell where Miss Tandy begins to give form and warmth to the mood Mr. Williams has created.

Like "The Glass Menagerie," the new play is a quietly woven study of intangibles. But to this observer it shows deeper insight and represents a great step forward toward clarity. And it reveals Mr. Williams as a genuinely poetic playwright whose knowledge of people is honest and thorough and whose sympathy is profoundly human.

"A Streetcar Named Desire" is history of a gently reared Mississippi young woman who invents an artificial world to mask the hideousness of the world she has to inhabit. She comes to live with her sister, who is married to a rough-and-ready mechanic and inhabits two dreary rooms in a squalid neighborhood. Blanche - for that is her name - has delusions of grandeur, talks like an intellectual snob, buoys herself up with gaudy dreams, spends most of her time primping, covers things that are dingy with things that are bright and flees reality.

To her brother-in-law she is an unforgiveable liar. But it is soon apparent to the theatregoer that in Mr. Williams' eyes she is one of the dispossessed whose experience has unfitted her for reality; and although his attitude toward her is merciful, he does not spare