The Weekend Special

Pieces are given up to three Boyles (for fiction), Harrimans (for essays), or Parkers (for random picks). As with restaurant stars, even one Boyle, Harriman, or Parker indicates a generally positive review.

🌱 Fiction

“Techniques and Idiosyncrasies” by Yiyun Li. One Boyle. concierge, contact, convulsion. A grim chunk of autofiction in which Li’s standin goes to the doctor and remembers a few things. Really it’s a story about the impact of trauma on interiority – how it crowds things out, takes up the space where empathy for the stories of others might live. When you’re haunted by your own story, it’s hard to find that space. Li doesn’t use that sort of therapized language, though, instead favoring her usual matter-of-fact voice. The coughing hedgehog isn’t doing whatever work she hopes it will, and the doctor’s office device takes up more than its needed share of air. The Noah scene is striking, but feels a bit on-the-nose (which, to be fair, it probably would be in real life – harassment is pretty overt – but this is still fiction, and in the context of the story it hammers the point about paranoia and the intrusiveness of strangers’ stories pretty hard.) I did like the ending, though; it drops like a stone. And Li is an excellent and understated prose stylist, so as bleak as the message may be I’m always glad to spend time in her world.

🌱 Weekend Essay

“Traveling Through India on the Himsagar Express” by Amitava Kumar. One Harriman. class, claustrophobia, cleanliness. Kumar takes a train to try to collect stories but ends up so overwhelmed he mostly has to attend to himself. That’s interesting in theory, but in practice it means that a big chunk of this piece is: Here’s my personal gripe, and here’s what it reveals about Indian society at large. Sort of a David Brooksian approach, although the conclusions Kumar draws are far more apt. They’re pretty scattershot, though; you don’t exactly come away with a sense of Kumar’s ideology, just his take on a few situations. It’s more observational than political, though of course there’s no escaping the fascism that’s enveloped the country. Kumar sometimes presses points that come across just fine the first time (“For the sake of the common man! I decided to adopt this phrase as a credo for everything in my life!”) but Kumar’s exciteableness is somewhat charming, if not the usual style for this magazine. He’s pleasant company. Choo choo!

🌱 Random Pick

“Shaw with Music” by Wolcott Gibbs. (March 24, 1956.) One Parker. gaiety, grandeur, engagement. You probably don’t need Gibbs to tell you that “My Fair Lady” is a smash, but he won’t bore you doing so! It certainly helps that, for once, the original cast and, seemingly, the original spirit made it onto film, so that one can see, right now, the “triumphant little tango” that Gibbs says he “will cherish… as long as I live.” By George!

🌱 Something Extra

Twyla Tharp at City Center was just wonderful, “The Great Privation” (through Mar 23) was charming and clever. The Atelier Dell’errore show at Kaufmann Repetto (through April 5) is a blast, the best thing I’ve seen gallery-hopping in a minute. 

Now that that’s out of the way, I must discuss “Redwood”, which is – and I do keep track, so it’s not hyperbole – the single worst show I’ve seen in New York City. The plot synopsis isn’t promising but isn’t dire – a lady tries to heal from trauma by escaping into the woods and ends up climbing a redwood – but man, in practice it’s an astonishingly embarrassing, profoundly hideous, and wildly misguided piece of work. Ugly projections (and hardly any other set to speak of except a “tree trunk” that calls to mind Animal Kingdom minus budget), bizarrely pitchy singing (Menzel sounded terrible at my performance), alternatively bland and awkward songs, egregiously didactic dialogue, wildly misaligned performances – and somehow all this makes it sound better than it is. Avoid at all costs – unless you have money to burn and/or a deep yen for cringe.

Sunday Song: