Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Works Brilliantly on Stage

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME

Adapted and directed by Simon Stephens

National Theatre Live

* * * *

 When I heard that the National Theatre of London had done a stage adaptation of Mark Haddon’s acclaimed novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, my first thought was “How?” Luckily my second instinct was to check it out. Glad I did—it’s a small masterpiece the likes of which will make North American audiences jealous of the creativity that can be accomplished when government subsidizes the arts.  (Imagine such a thing!) Anyone living within driving distance of a movie theater that broadcasts NT productions should make a beeline for this one.

If you’ve read the novel, you will certainly share my kneejerk skepticism over turning it into a play. Its central character is Christopher, a 15-year-old high functioning autistic student. He’s imaginative, a math savant, capable of intense concentration, and is (literally) incapable of falsehood. He’s also terrified of being touched or having his routines altered, has few social graces, is unable to master most mundane tasks, and is so withdrawn that he makes Mr. Spock seem like Mr. Rogers. We first meet Christopher—played with utter brilliance by Luke Treadway–bending over the body of a pitchforked dog, which he is falsely accused of having killed. And we witness his first emotional meltdown when he assaults the policeman who lays hands on him. That trauma out of the way, we proceed to learn about Christopher, his well-meaning but ineffectual father (Paul Ritter), his missing mother (Nicola Walker), and his special needs teacher, Siobhan (Niamh Cusack). I’ll say no more except to say that when Christopher becomes obsessed with solving the dog’s murder, it takes him and the audience on a journey fraught with peril, revelation, drama, and reconciliation.

Haddon’s novel was told almost entirely from Christopher’s (skewed) point of view, so the first stage hurdle is how to represent a mind whose logic runs on a completely different course than most. How, indeed, does one physically show something as abstract as human thought? Stephens and producer Marianne Elliott accomplish this with a set that’s where minimalism meets high tech. The play takes place in a theater in the round upon a bare stage that’s something akin to a mash between a chalkboard, an electrical grid, and an iPad. It can be drawn upon or projected onto, and subsurface lights and diodes are activated by computers to build what can be described as light-based semiotic signs. Need to show a subway train? Activate two vertical lines and set them in motion.  A neighborhood street? A series of squares connected by lighted corridors along which actors dash will do the trick. When Christopher’s mind overloads, lights flash, and holographic letters tumble randomly from the ceiling like snowy gibberish.

Clever staging will take one only so far, though, and it’s the acting that makes those lights sparkle. Treadway is astonishing, both physically and in his range of emotions. He can go from withdrawn to a semi-psychotic tiger and back with the brush of fingertips. He also strikes the perfect balance between being lovable and exasperating. Kudos also to Ritter, who convincingly portrays a working-class bloke with simple tastes who wants to do well for a son who is equal parts genius and volcano, but hasn’t a clue on how to manage his own emotions, let alone Christopher’s.  Niamh Cusack—the younger sister of Sinéad—is also superb as Siobhan, a teacher with the patience of a saint, but the cleverness to plant ideas in Christopher’s mind in non-threatening ways. All I’ll say is this: stay until the very end, after the credits.

Loved the book and loved they play even more. It reminds us that theater done well, with superb actors and visionary directors, casts magical spells that TV and movies often fail to convey. The tendency of the latter would be to convert Christopher’s story to biography, which isn’t the best frame for a boy who lives in his imagination. Simon Stephens invites us inside Christopher’s chaotic mind and we are richer for the experience. —Rob Weir

Chris Daniels Enjoys Better Days and Shares

CHRIS DANIELS

Better Days

www.chrisdaniels.com

* * * *

Does the name Chris Daniels ring any bells? Not right away? How about Sam Bush? Daniels been in bands with him. Lloyd Maines? Check. Richie Furay? Yep. Béla Fleck? Un huh. He hangs half the bluegrass, folk, and country pantheon, but he generally only headlines with his Colorado-based band, The Kings, and this is only his second solo album since 1983. We can be happy he made it, but he’s even happier; Daniels celebrates his 60^th birthday with this album after almost losing his life to leukemia. And if you think there’s no humor in that, give a listen to “Medical Marijuana,” whose wry witticisms evoke Bill Hicks. We can certainly indulge him in sunny remembrances of favorite places such as “South Carolina” and “El Dorado Canyon.” “Cabin Fever”–a song he penned in 1976–is an honorary New England anthem for all who know it. Better Days is Daniels’ welcome back to health and it strikes a lovely balance between new energy and earned nostalgia. Regarding the latter, the project is actually an album and a half--disc two contains five live tracks from a show he did with New Grass Revival in 1985. It’s also one of the last of the true album CDs, a perfect-bound 60-page booklet printed on heavy stock and filled with lyrics, thoughts, and photos. Here’s wishing Daniels lots of better days.

Check out the Webpage link above for music samples and other information. 

The War on Stupid Products Part Two

Candidates for Dumb Product of 2012.

I admit it. I’m a bit obsessed by stupid consumerism. Indulge me—here’s part two of my private war on stupid products and the people who buy them. First case: panko. Panko is Japanese for “bread crumbs from which the crust has been removed,” maybe with a little seasoning thrown in. Make your own seasoned bread crumbs, folks. The recipe is pretty basic: bread crumbs + as much salt as you want + whatever seasonings you like.

Panko is bad enough, but Kraft actually sells packaged bread crumbs. My first thought is that I should say nothing. Do we really want people who would buy bread crumbs swimming in humanity’s gene pool? Let ‘em go broke from buying dumb products and (hopefully) starve before they can perpetuate their inanity. But that’s a tad uncharitable, don’t you think? So my next thought was to offer a PSA (Public Service Announcement) on how to make bread crumbs. Here it is:

                  Step One: Take some bread

                  Step Two: Crumble it. Household hint: It works best if you lightly toast the bread.

“I can’t crumble it small enough,” you protest? PSA # 2: Use a food processor or blender. Lightly toast (or use stale) bread, look for little button that makes machine go “whirrrrr.” Insert bread, secure top, push button, and wait for crumbs to become small enough. Important: Push button again so machine stops going “whirrrr.” Do not put fingers or any other object into machine when it is making “whirrrr” noise. A Krupps coffee grinder works really well also, and you can buy one for about the price of 5 Kraft crumb packages. Think of the luxury of being able to make bread crumbs whenever you like!

Dumb product number 2: Tide detergent pods—tiny little packets that combine laundry soap and softener. Ummm, why? PSA # 3: All grocery stores are required to engage in a practice known as “unit pricing.” It’s the number on the shelf tag that isn’t how much the item costs. It tells you how you are spending per application or consumption of a product. Check out the number beside the pods. Now look at the same number for bottled or boxed detergent/softener. I’ll save you the trouble. This is what you’ll learn: You could send out your laundry cheaper than using pods.   

Some products are just pure head-scratchers, like WhoNu?  This is an Oreo-wannabe cookie that says if you eat three of them—as if!—you’d consume as much fiber as a bowl of oatmeal, as much calcium as eight-ounces of milk, and as much Vitamin C as a cup of blueberries. Best of all, no corn syrup, and no trans fat. Where to begin? How about with what is not said. How about that it’s identical in almost every way to an actual Oreo? Forget trans fat, each product will deliver 160 calories for every three you inhale. Each also delivers 7 grams of total fat, about 150 milligrams of salt, and a whopping 14 grams of sugar.

WhoNu? is basically an Oreo with a multi-vitamin ground into the cookie mix. Yum, yum. Ever chew your daily vitamin? You don’t even want to know what masking agents go into the cookie to avoid that taste! Look—no one eats a chocolate sandwich cookie under the illusion that one has found that long-sought-after substitute for a cup of blueberries! Please introduce me to anyone you know who thinks WhoNu? is health food; I have a double-secret mission for that person. I can’t say more than this: vault, Mitt, Cayman Islands….

 I’ve saved la piece de dumbdance for last. What prompts a person to buy Egg Beaters or their generic equivalents? Unless you’re one of a very, very small group of people that is allergic to yolks, there is but one reason: weight. You are trying to reduce your cholesterol and calorie intake because there are some social situations in which it’s gauche to wear sweat pants and an oversized hoodie hanging lower than your rump. So what’s the new Egg Beaters product we’ve all been waiting for? Ta da!!! Egg Beaters with three cheeses! Satire is dead; you can’t make this stuff up. A scrambled real egg has 199 calories; Egg Beaters just 30. Until you add cheese, of course. Add 106 for Swiss, 113 for cheddar, and 98 for provolone. Do we even want to do the cholesterol math? Good lord! Egg Beaters with three cheeses makes about as much sense is arsenic for a snake bite. The company must think we’re fools. Alas, it’s probably right.

PSA # 4: How to make your own egg beaters. Take an egg (spherical shelled object extruded from a chicken’s fanny). Crack egg into two halves. Shift egg between two shell halves while allowing clear runny substance to dribble into a bowl. Do this until all you have left is the yolk. Toss yolk. What’s left is an egg beater! And, yes, it’s way cheaper to buy real eggs and toss the yolks than to buy packaged egg whites. 

Riversong: Classic Trash Novel

RIVERSONG (2011)

Tess Hardwick

Booktrope 978193596147

*  

The line between “literature” and mere “fiction” is admittedly subjective, but if you think there is none, I’d suggest a few dozen pages of Riversong. There’s no way anyone would confuse this book with literature—not with its contrived plot, torturous dialogue, paste-up characters, logic gaps, and prose so florid I suspect the first draft was written with a purple Flair.

The book opens in a backcountry Oregon town, where reclusive Lee Tucker, the daughter of a single, alcoholic, and agoraphobic mother, is about to graduate from high school and must endure last indignity: a senior party alongside a river in which she can’t swim and in proximity with the obnoxious local town rich boy who is intent on getting into her cutoffs. Lee flees his advances, goes off to college to study art, changes her major, marries, moves to Seattle, and never looks back. That is, until her husband, a video game developer, commits suicide and saddles Lee with a pregnancy and over a million dollars of debt owed to local organized crime figures. A mob heavy named Von shows up to shake her down. She sells all she owns–about half of what is owed–promises Von the rest in a week, and flees town with the aid of her best friend, a gay guy she met in college.

Got all that? Wait; it gets more absurd. Lee goes back to her hometown determined to renovate her now-deceased mother’s house, earn some money, sell the property, and pay off Von before he finds her first and kills her for lighting out to avoid the 750 grand she still owes. I’ll bet none of you could figure out that Lee will find  that everything for which she was searching was right there in that dusty old river town all along. Sort of. Her old tormentor is still there, but his old man, Mike, is a hard-edged sweetie who can’t wait to bankroll Lee’s plan to revamp the town restaurant. And, of course, what this town of a thousand souls–half of whom seem to be drug dealers and the other half women who have been dumped upon–really wants is an upscale gourmet eatery. And I bet none of you could predict that Lee would find a new love just waiting to take her pregnant body into his arms. Okay, maybe you could, but did I tell you that he’s a Hispanic musician? Or that her gay friend decides to leave Seattle for the better prospects of a redneck country town? There’s also a lesbian character, so let’s give Hardwick props for political correctness. If only she had a Morgan Freeman-like elderly black gent dispensing pearls of wisdom, she’d have all the bases covered. As it is, that role goes to Ellen, her elderly neighbor, former English teacher, and caregiver for Lee’s late mother. I won’t even hint how she’s finally linked to Lee; you wouldn’t believe me.

This is a classic trashy novel, though Hardwick does manage to make the sex scenes read as if they are food reviews, and the food descriptions titillate like soft porn. Most of the book is predictable, the rest improbable. Who knew, for instance, that the Seattle mob underwrote video game programmers? (Why didn’t Lee’s husband just get the money from Rhode Island taxpayers like respectable video game purveyors are supposed to do?) Who knew that the mob’s hired muscle would be so clueless as never to think of searching for someone in the very town from which she hailed? Or that no one could figure out that the grown lads hanging out in a public parking lot might be dealing drugs rather than trading baseball cards? Or that everyone would live happily ever after?

This book is so hackneyed that it leaves a trail of horse manure in its wake.

The NHL’s Disorderly House

The NHL Seeks a Return to its Fishing Channel Recent History 

So here we go again—the fourth NHL labor stoppage in the past twenty years. A causal observer might think that the Lords of the Boards have a death wish. These guys do more than go out of their way to relegate the game to an afterthought in the collective North American sports fan mind–their idea of making a right turn is to head south out of Toronto and keep going.

We hear much about the NHL being in good financial shape–$3.3 billion in surplus revenue is the figure commonly bandied about.  According to Forbes that’s a pretty accurate figure, but it’s also a deceptive one; some teams make money, but in 2011-2012, eighteen did not. I’m always amused by political debates in North America if, for no other reason, some of the most strident free-market guys are the ones that think socialism—e.g. “revenue sharing”—is a good model for professional sports. One of the things that’s terribly wrong with the NHL is that well-run franchises subsidize the hobbies of rich men that want someone else to pay for their broken toys. In order, the rich teams (in terms of value) are: Toronto, the New York Rangers, Montreal, Detroit, Boston, Chicago, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles. But that doesn’t even tell the whole story; even the Pens actually lost a few bucks last year. Revenue is far more than putting fannies in the loge seats or the theoretical resale value of a club. If we parse the numbers further, we find that six Canadian teams—all of them sans Winnipeg, which must pay debt associated with leaving Atlanta—generated one-third of all hockey revenue (TV, radio, merchandise, and residuals). The Edmonton Oilers haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1990, but they sure do generate revenue! More to the point, Edmonton helps pay the tab for sand storms like the Phoenix Coyotes.

The first thing hockey has to do to get its act together is admit that the Southern strategy was a flop with a capital F. Phoenix set the NHL back by a whopping -$24.4 million last year and only Gary Bettman thinks the game is ever going to squeeze money from saguaros. Stop this farce. And while we’re at it, admit that there are Coyotes-in-the-making out there: Nashville, Tampa, Sunrise, and Raleigh. I mean no disrespect to rabid fans in those cities, but the harsh economic fact is that each of these is a second-tier city insofar as the Golden Goose–media revenue–is concerned. There’s a reason these cities are never mentioned when other major league sports speak of moving teams or expanding. Sunrise, its (sort of) proximity to Miami notwithstanding, is an overgrown town of under 85,000; Raleigh has just 416,000 people, and so on. More to the point, name a major media outlet in Nashville, Raleigh, or Sunrise. And haven’t the Rays proved that Tampa isn’t a pro sports city? Without major media penetration, there’s no more reason for these places to have a hockey team than Hartford, Connecticut. (Hey, there were a lot of rabid Whalers’ fans!)

There are several other critical franchises, Columbus topping the list. Ohio State football in Columbus? Sure! Hockey? (See media above). Only the Coyotes lost more money than the Blue Jackets, who have become the Kansas City Royals of hockey—a breeder of talent that skates away to cities that can afford it. The Islanders and Devils are also hemorrhaging money and another reality is that metro New York probably ought to have two hockey teams, not three. Also losing lots of cash are the Ducks, the Sharks, and the Capitals. See a pattern here?

I doubt this will happen, but the first step would be to trim the size of the league. Personally I’d like to see a 24-team league, but that won’t fly with owners or the union. So let’s try 28 by folding the Coyotes and Blue Jackets and holding a player dispersal draft. The next step is to move failing franchises. My new NHL would have four divisions of seven teams each. Division winners get a playoff bye and the next eight teams by point totals play for the right to move on. It would look like this:

Northeast: Boston, Brooklyn (the former New Jersey Devils), Montreal, New York (Rangers), Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Quebec City (the former Islanders).

Central: Chicago, Detroit, Chicago, Toronto (Maple Leafs), Toronto Lightning (from Tampa), Ottawa, St. Louis, and Buffalo. (Toronto is the Holy Land of Hockey. It could probably support four teams.) St. Louis and Buffalo are endangered franchises and should be put on notice that Hamilton and Milwaukee are relocation-ready.

Moutain/Plains: Calgary, Dallas, Denver, Edmonton, Houston (from Carolina), Minnesota, Winnipeg. I don’t know if hockey would go down any better in Houston than in Phoenix, but the AHL teams do well and Houston is a massive media market.

Pacific: Vancouver, Los Angeles, and a whole lot of reshuffling. San Jose isn’t doing well financially, but in contrast to the Deep South, the NHL really does need a team in the Bay area. (San Jose also needs the Sharks to work or baseball may rethink the city as a landing spot for the Oakland A’s.) So keep San Jose and relocate Nashville to Seattle, the Ducks to Portland, and the Panthers to Salt Lake City. The seventh team is, frankly (and appropriately), a gamble—the Capitals to Las Vegas. Leaving D.C. wouldn’t be popular with U.S. politicians, but Washington just isn’t a very good winter sports town. The Caps have been a fine team, but steadily lose money. (Even the NBA’s Wizards lost over $5 million last year; the Caps racked up $7.5 million of red ink.) Las Vegas has no other major league franchise, but it does have minor league hockey and a metro population of nearly 2 million. I’d make this my desert strategy, not Phoenix.

One can (and many will) dispute my realignment ideas. I can anticipate the howls of derision from those in or near cities that stand to lose franchises. I feel your pain, but there isn’t anybody watching hockey during lockouts and future problems are inevitable unless most of the NHL generates revenue, not just a handful of franchises. It took the NHL years to recover from the last lockout; one or two more and it’s back to competing with fishing shows for TV revenue. You can blame whomever or whatever you wish for the labor strife—greedy owners, spoiled players, outmoded rinks, an idiotic commissioner, bruised egos—but it all comes down to money. The NHL needs to get its entire financial house in order. Hockey isn’t a non-profit organization, thus, having a handful of teams that subsidize hopeless dreams and hapless management simply isn’t a viable long-term business plan. 

The Master: A Colossal and Pretentious Flop

THE MASTER  (2012)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Annapurna Pictures, 137 mins. R (for gratuitous nudity and mumbling)

*

The pre-release buzz was that The Master would be a heavyweight Oscar contender; the post-release reality is that moviegoers unfortunate enough to see it will be force-fed a Thanksgiving turkey that arrived two months early. Among the tag lines one might hang on this bloviating, bloated fowl/foul are: “Dianetics is more understandable than Paul Thomas Anderson’s script,” “A film that will make you want to join a cult that doesn’t allow movies,” and “Joaquin Phoenix—the greatest mumbler since Marlon Brando in Superman.” Regarding the latter, don’t look for this film to win any Oscars unless a new category is added: Best Delivery of Unintelligible Utterances,” in which case it’s Phoenix in a walkover. 

The Master is a not-so-thinly veiled slam at Dianetics/Scientology, with Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Lancaster Dodd, an affable clone of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard Sr. All Dodd film family members are stand-ins for the Hubbards, including Jesse Plemons as Val (L. Ron, Junior), the eldest son and heir apparent, who knows the old man is making up nonsense off the top of his head; and Amy Adams as Peggy(Mary Sue), Lancaster’s younger, but domineering third wife who is the real brains behind the scam. The family storyline is so close to that of the Hubbards that one presumes that the only reason names were changed was to deflect the likelihood of a Scientology lawsuit. (For those who don’t know, Scientology is a controversial set of beliefs that appear to be equal doses of science fiction and mystical views adapted from other religions. Past-lives, the immortality of the individual, and the search for one’s true/pure nature are among its least controversial beliefs. It is generally viewed as a cult. The “auditing” ritual by which new members are considered is similar to the “processing” practices seen in The Master. )

What we might have gotten was a penetrating look at the power of charisma, the way cults recruit, and the making of a scoundrel. In other words, we could have gotten Martha Marcy Mae Marlene, a film superior to The Master on every imaginable level. The Master centers on the fiery attract/repulse relationship between Dodd and Freddie Quell (Phoenix). Freddie is one half a child of nature, and one half low-life, moonshine-making, sex-obsessed, alcoholic, nitwit bum. Freddie returns from World War II, where he spent his final days on a Pacific Ocean coral reef masturbating into a sand sculpture of a woman, one complete with a vagina. (I felt like leaving after this scene. I should have followed my pure nature!) When circumstances lead him to Dodd, Freddie is (barely) smart enough to see The Cause/Scientology as his one shot at finding a niche in life, though the cost would be mastery over his thirst, id, and libido.

I suppose we’re supposed to muse over the essential contradiction between Dodd’s insistence upon the need to discover one’s true nature and his inability to accept that the behavior Freddie exhibits is his authentic nature, but by giving such analysis to the film I give the script more credit for thoughtfulness than it exhibits.  It’s hard to know much more about Freddie, as you’ll miss every third word Joaquin Phoenix slurs. Granted he’s playing a character slowly rotting his mind and body with the (literal) poisons he cooks into his home brew. Fine. If that’s what you want to show on the screen, don’t try to use revelatory dialogue to convey it. Nothing in this film makes much sense; it’s a rambling mess in which it’s never clear if we are seeing something that’s really happening, or if it’s a projection emanating from Freddie’s torn-sprocket mind. Ambiguity, or simply bad writing? Go with the second. 

To borrow a concept from Scientology, it’s possible that Anderson was a scriptwriter in another life, but he isn’t in this one. If that’s not direct enough, try this: I haven’t wasted 2 ½ hours this badly since I took the PSATs forty years ago.   Still confused? Try this–The Master is a piece of pretentious garbage. I’m no fan of Scientology, but I’ll give its followers credit—they’ve ignored this film. And so should you.—Rob Weir

Maria Semple Overwrites an Otherwise Total Delight

Don't tell us! 

Where’d You Go, Bernadette? (2012)

Maria Semple

Little, Brown ISBN: 978-0316204279

* * *

Where’d You Go, Bernadette is an unorthodox novel with unforgettable characters and an often-lamentable story arc. At its best it is wickedly funny, snarky, and inventive; at its worst it’s as contrived and implausible as TV sit-com scripts, which happen to be among the things on author Maria Semple’s resumé (“Mad About You,” “Arrested Development”). It’s a breezy, fun read, but one that will leave you feeling that maybe Semple equates her readership with some of the not-so-bright Seattle residents she incisively skewers.

The title character is Bernadette Fox, once the sensation of the architectural world and a former winner of a MacArthur Genius grant. Flash forward through professional disappointment, four miscarriages, and fifteen years, and Bernadette is now an agoraphobic eccentric living in Seattle with her husband, Elgin, a high flyer at Microsoft and a TED/YouTube sensation. They finally had a child, the precocious but heart-damaged Bee. She has all of her parents’ intelligence but more social skills than both of them combined. Bee is about to graduate (8^th grade) from her expensive private school and go to Choate. As her graduation present, Bee requests a family trip to Antarctica.

Choate and Antarctica are both well within the family budget. Semple clobbers Seattle’s nouveau riche. Her Puget Sound is awash in money, unbridled ambition, and bad taste. Neither Elgin nor Bernadette is sufficiently plugged into reality to be social gadflies. He is an absentee workaholic and she such a recluse that she has outsourced daily routines to Marjula Kapoor, a personal assistant living in India, to whom she sends rambling emails and pays 75 cents per hour to order goods from catalogues and make the occasional appointment that prise her from her home. And what a home it is! It’s neither a McMansion nor an architectural project, rather a former girls’ school whose physical deterioration parallels the decline of Bernadette’s psyche. Think the Adams Family mansion-meets-an old school, complete with holes in the ceiling, roots growing through the floor, waterlogged furniture, and a blackberries-gone-wild hiilside.

Bee doesn’t care, Elgin’s never home, and Bernadette hardly notices as she spends much of her time in an Airstream trailer parked in the drive. The neighbors notice, however, and they gossip incessantly about the family. (The open question is whether they’re all nuts, or simply snobs who think they’re too good for everyone else.) This affects Bee as the neighbor children go to the same snooty school as she. The worst buttinski is Audrey Griffin, who lives on the bottom side of the slope. She sees herself as a devout Christian even as she digs her vicious claws into everyone. Her hypocrisy is hysterical (and we soon learn she’s as batty as Bernadette), but school headmaster Ollie is even more delicious–the perfect lampoon of elite wannabes who mouth clichéd Business Speak and have all the depth of spilled milk on a marble countertop. Pompous asses such as he are among the things that Semple disembowels. Seattle doesn’t come off very well either; it’s a city populated in equal parts by the clueless bourgeoisie and drug-addled criminals. Bernadette hates Seattle, its residents, the weather, and the unbearable niceness of nearby Canadians. Seattle, she notes, has only two types of people: those with short gray hair and those with long gray hair.

Semple has a clever hook for telling her tale. It is assembled mostly from emails, letters, memos, and documents that we later learn are being used by Bee to write a book to unravel the mystery of her mother’s disappearances (both mental and physical). This book could have been another Confederacy of Dunces in its portrait of sociopaths, if only Semple had resisted the impulse to impose a TV-like resolution to everything. I won’t spoil the plot–Semple does that on her own–but let’s just say that there comes a profound shift in tone in which the book ceases to be character-driven and devolves into silly capers with as much believability as a live Elvis crooning for Hitler and his henchmen. There is also a natural place to end the book, but Semple plods on. It’s as if she gave it to a TV writers’ group that convinced her to write a happy ending. All of the bitterness dissolves, all of the brilliant satire disappears, and characters experience epiphanies. Bah! The last section of this book tastes like an artificial sweetener recipe gone wrong. You won’t take this advice, but here it is anyhow: stop reading when Bee and Elgin bond on the boat. The book’s title question should have been left unresolved.

--Rob Weir