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

“New Shoes” by Hisham Matar. One KAT. I greatly enjoyed Matar’s novel My Friends, told by a Libyan who feels stuck in London. This short story has many of the same themes – pretty much all the same themes, really – but Matar’s writing here feels looser and more direct, even to the point of didacticism. (“Home — what a strange word to use about a city that isn’t your own. And yet, some days a terror rises within me that I may never leave it.”) The short story format necessitates a faster rate of development, but I think this messes with the alchemy of Matar’s writing, in which stagnation and circling is an essential ingredient. If the story misses that magic, it still basically works; in some sense, it’s written toward its last line, and it’s a good enough line to deserve a story.

🏀 Weekend Essay

“The Bayeux Tapestry’s Long Journey Home” by John Phipps. No Anunobys. The bare minimum here is providing a description of the elaborate transportation method of the tapestry that I can actually understand. No luck. This is representative: “When a dry run took place in February, it became undeniable that the device was actually amplifying the tapestry’s vibration, which far exceeded the limit.” After we dispense with those logistics, there really isn’t much piece left; Phipps describes the tapestry, but, if you aren’t in England, you can do better scrolling through it on Wikipedia. The last section, covering a Swedish artist’s replica of the tapestry, is a more interesting idea; make that a bit longer and it could be a decent Talk of the Town.

🏀 Random Pick

“Standing Still” (Dancing) by Arlene Croce. (January 7, 1974). One Brunson. A fascinatingly nasty teardown of Alvin Ailey; you sure won’t find this on the wall of the Whitney. Croce had guts to write like this in her first year as a critic. She finds Ailey’s project hollow, full of folk-song cliché; she also says she thinks Black choreographers held onto an “expressionistic style… for the same reason many white choreographers were relinquishing it — because it was respectable”, then suggests that Ailey is doing something similar, finding “tacky sincerity” where the music has “simple majesty”. Elsewhere: “Some of the blackface stereotypes Ailey deals in would be jeered at if they came from a white choreographer.” It is probably a net good that white critics generally don’t have the gall to say shit like that about Black artists anymore, perhaps in part because of Croce, but the esoteric taboo will always appeal in criticism – see also Pauline Kael. Also in need of self-censorship are Croce’s physical descriptions of dancers; she compares John Parks to a “praying mantis” and a “dancing lobster” whose “impact is weak”, and says the women were “pretty dears who didn’t seem to know what they were doing.” This is definitely a period piece, and a reminder of the complex lineage of provocation¹, which has not always been so closely associated with anti-intellectualism. I’m not giving it a Brunson because I think it’s okay, I’m giving it a Brunson because I think it’s fascinating.

🏀 Something Extra

Saw a few little shows; all were mediocre and thus will not be appearing in this section. I also finally saw the live Lion King for the first time with some relatives in town; it is an unfathomably freighted text so the Taymor staging managing even a handful of still-bright flashes of wonder – the grass-people, the crying lions – is a testament to its worthiness. But also the Timon puppet is fucking terrifying. They should put that thing in Paranormal Activity, if you ask me.

Sunday Song: