The Weekend Special

Pieces are given up to three KATs (for fiction), Anunobys (for essays), or Brunsons (for random picks). As with restaurant stars, even one KAT, Anunoby, or Brunson indicates a generally positive review.

🏀 Fiction

“Narrow Escape” by Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn. One KAT. A tiny sliver from an upcoming unfinished novel written in prison, this makes for a creditable if minor short story; its plot could fit in a single line, and the prose absolutely feels translated; still, the blunt portrait of early political authoritarianism, where the most patriotic Soviets are the least able to quickly adapt to its viciousness, is fairly potent. Having recently finished Benjamin Nathan’s excellent Pulitzer winner on the Soviet dissident movement, it was interesting to consider the ways in which that movement’s early focus on obsessive legal literalism mirror Gleb’s more sincere belief in the system’s justice. Sometimes the bravest thing is to insist to the liar that the truth will out.

🏀 Weekend Essay

“A Night Living in Penn Station” by Anand Giridharadas. One Anunoby. Excerpted from Giridharadas’ new book about the Jordan Neely killing, though the excerpt doesn’t mention Neely, instead focusing on the nonprofits who manage homelessness at Penn Station. Any broad-scope context provided in the longer book is excised, too, turning this into an observational narrative where the stakes are mostly provided by the workers, whose aim is to get the unhoused into formal shelters of one sort or another. There’s nothing here that will surprise a reader with even a cursory understanding of urban social work. Lojo, the protagonist, gets only two sentences of backstory; she’s largely subsumed into her job, so the piece feels a bit like documentary competence porn, all good intentions and difficult situations managed with care. Politics have mostly gone missing, which inevitably makes a reader wonder where they’re hiding.

🏀 Random Pick

“Elmore’s Legs” (Life and Letters) by Alec Wilkinson. (September 30, 1996.) Two Brunsons. Classic stuff; Wilkinson tails Gregg Sutter, the man who does research for Elmore Leonard (of both library and boots-on-the-ground varieties), and writes him up in a mode which, by ‘96, must have been partly a self-conscious imitation of the magazine’s historic style. That means long block quotes, an esoteric subject and a disinterest in proving its relevance to the reader, and a good deal of self-insertion. Representative: “I asked Sutter if I might come and see him and maybe visit some of the places he had been to with Leonard and meet some of the people who had figured in his research, and he said sure.” There is also a hint of Leonard pastiche, but Wilkinson doesn’t let it curdle into parody. Mostly, we’re just hearing Sutter talk shop; the hit rate on his anecdotes isn’t perfect, and the lengthy secondhand Colombian-businessman story is especially pointless, but mostly his tales stick the landing. Wouldn’t you know it, he writes a newsletter about Leonard to this day. I’m seeing double Dutch!

🏀 Something Extra

I loved the idea of Target Margin’s Nonsense Lab, three short runs and two one-night-only events around a theme. Too bad the only show to deeply engage with nonsense was Theresa Buchheister’s bugged-out and moving ensemble performance Uh Oh Manifest(o)ing, which used the trappings of left-field absurdism to point toward a very sincere vision of community help. A night of music was more zany than nonsensical; Kathleen Tobin’s The Charnel House was a sincere and charming wisp that toed the line between handcrafted and amateurish; Let Me Be an Animal was well-performed but pretty standard contemporary dance, with too-literal costumes; We’ll Jump Off That Bridge When We Come To It was an infuriatingly trite compendium of atrocities and banalities. Still, Target Margin is such a wonderful little venue I had a good time seeing the last three across one long Saturday afternoon.

Degenerates at Playwrights had the same issue as the Went duo’s previous offering, Initiative; namely, they don’t know how to land the plane. The first two acts here are an emotionally intense (but perhaps more well-researched than deeply felt) dive into the incel internet; the third act is so deflating and emotionally confusing that the show ends up too frustrating to recommend. As every critic has noted, the performances are obviously top-notch. But just being a risky, complex show shouldn’t automatically earn raves, and I wonder if there’s some shyness around basic understanding keeping the takes surface-level. Certainly, I heard more than a few uncomfortable laughs and exclamations at my audience. The season ticket holders maybe don’t know what they’re watching, which isn’t the show’s fault, exactly, but speaks to a gap the Wents don’t seem sure how to approach. Nussbaum reviews this in the just-dropped issue (haven’t read it yet) and I’m sure I’ll discuss further in my meta-commentary.

Oscar, a misbegotten bio-ballet which substitutes extremely goofy movement for Wilde’s wit, earned my second intermission walkout ever.

Sunday Song: