Wait, Blink an Intellectual and Literary Novel

WAIT, BLINK  (2018)

Gunnhild Øyehaug

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 288 pages.

★★★★

Late in Gunnhild Øyehaug's Wait, Blink, Dante is walking through the icy reaches of hell and encounters the heads of each of the major characters in the novel. Virgil tells him to leave them alone; Dante covers them with snow and moves on. It is an apt metaphor as each individual lives so much in his or her head that they are, in a sense, disembodied. They are certainly cold, isolated, and alienated from all things collective.

 Øyehaug's novel is partly a literary delight and partly a philosophical journey reminiscent in tone (but not content) of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's also an offbeat exploration of postfeminism, a slippery term that generally accentuates lacunae and contradictions within feminist theory. Øyehaug's work—translated from Norwegian—will reward the patient reader and frustrate those who simply want to chow down on a page-turner. This one is definitely not the latter; in fact, there are (literally) sentences in the introductory sections of the book that took up an entire screen of my Kindle.

We meet four women, each in inappropriate relationships with older men, though age probably wouldn't matter to anyone in this novel. As suggested above, for the most part these are people held prisoner by their own inner thoughts, musings, and fears. They are the sort who end relationships because of disagreements over Sofia Coppola films or the deeper meaning of Kill Bill 2—movies certainly open to interpretation, but probably not the kind that would cause most folks to suffer existential crises. But our characters are not most people.

Sigrid is a 23-year-old literature student who lives in dreams and metaphors. She has a picture of literary theorist Paul De Man on her wall, as well as a poster of Van Gogh's painting of sunflowers, though she's a bit embarrassed by the latter as many her circle would find those sunflowers trite and clichéd. Read what you want to in the fact that one of De Man's most heralded works is titled Blindness and Insight. Sigrid is a fragile thing that can never trust herself—each insight generates its doubting opposite. Øyehaug casts her as akin to Dante's Beatrice, a symbol of sublimation. She is obsessed with film images of women wearing oversized men's shirts* and ponders its feminist implications.

Sigrid will eventually drift toward author Kåre Tyvle, twenty years her senior, who is also plagued by self-doubt and is in mourning for his broken relationship with Wanda, a free-spirited bass player. Wanda aches with loss as well, but can either she or Kåre break through the intellectual fissures that drove them apart? Moreover, can Wanda ever live up to the post-breakup pedestal upon which Kåre has placed her?

Twenty-something Linnea poses postfeminist challenges. On the surface she's a self-driven and determined filmmaker. In private she's been involved with 47-year-old Göran, a married literature professor obsessed with his own views on literary theory and his own ego—though given the nature of this novel, he's also weak and crippled by all doubts that go bump in the night. Linnea's drive blinds her to many things, including the unlikelihood things will go anywhere with Göran, or that she has a hangdog suitor in 51-year-old Robert, ostensibly her producer, but one lacking the courage to declare himself or to tell Linnea her film will never be made. 

Our cast rounds out with 28-year-old Trine, an explicit performance artist, but one whose private life doesn't match her image; she's estranged from the father of her child and how can she possibly perform genital-content art when her breasts are so swollen with milk that she's in pain? And then there's Elida, a fishmonger's daughter, who first saw Viggo when she was 9 and he 19, attending his grandmother's funeral, bloodied, and missing a tooth from a bicycle spill. She's pined for him ever since, but Viggo still carries ghosts and terrors. The wild card in the mix is Magnus, the ex of several women in the novel.

If you get the sense that Wait, Blink is a danse mélancolique, you are correct. The title words pop up in various and unusual places and, like most things in the novel, are metaphors for the situations in which the characters find themselves. All of them, by the way, seem to have read Cervantes, Dante, Ibsen, and Kafka—among others. You can draw conclusions from that, just as you can mine the entire book for archetypes, symbolism, and metaphors. What does Øyehaug want us to take away from this? What is her overarching view of modern feminism? I'd be lying were I to say I'm sure of any of that, but if it was her goal to make us put aside assumptions and contemplate such things, she has succeeded in spades. Let me reiterate; you need to put on your thinking hat for this one.

Rob Weir   

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Moira Smiley: May 2018 Album of the Month

Moira Smiley

Unzip the Horizon

I was toying between Don Gallardo's wonderful Still Here and Smiley's Unzip the Horizon for Album of the Month, but Ms. Smiley wins the boldness prize by a landslide. The horizon isn't the only thing she unzips in this innovative solo effort; you won't recognize her if you only know her work with Rising Appalachia, or as lead vocalist for Solas, or even VOCA. She has carved out new terrain for herself far from the constraints of accepted genres. Is this a Moira Goes Maura album? Sort of, though there is just one Maura O'Connell and Smiley has ventured onto turf where O'Connell has never trod.

Unzip the Horizon was inspired by Smiley's conversation with a Ukrainian woman who told her that singing puts her in touch with her ancestors and helps her deal with the future. Smiley enlists assistance from folks such Seamus Egan (Solas), Darrell Scott, trad singers Anna and Elizabeth, and Leah and Chloe Smith (Appalachia Rising), but the project itself borrows vibes from Americana, Celtic, indie, folk, show tunes, and lord knows what else, mixes them with borrowed sounds and hands us a bagful of gems of sparkling hues.

"Bellow" is where West Africa meets indie rock and studio loops. It's unusual, but only partly typical of what else is in store, although there is definitely a Carib-African feel to the pulsing "Refugee," which is bass, percussion, and vocals—also a plea for the plight of the displaced: Bring me shelter/I will not harm you. There is the cacophonic opening to "Mother of Invention that sets the mood for Smiley to make sense of it with a catch in her voice that turns noise into music. "Wiseman" is the most Celtic thing on the album, but it turns Celtic inside out and makes it into a spare arrangement that spotlights her vocals and those of Sam Lee. When Deana El Saffar's fiddle comes in, it's as mood enhancer, not a tempo-raiser. I was staggered by "One Step Dance," which is fragile as glass and as beautiful as a sunset. I unabashedly admit that "Dressed in Yellow" moved me to tears, with its moving confessional of forgiving a distant-sometimes-abusive father through the acknowledgment of the "many things to know" that hitherto were not. Anna and Elizabeth weigh in on segues that are half waulking song and half Greek chorus.

There are so many unexpected things on this record. "Dissatisfaction" spells out the word in a song summed by the lines: Dissatisfaction, you're a strange drug/You don't give me pleasure-you don't give me love. In an odd way it's a rejoinder to Aretha Franklin's "Respect" and a backdoor nod to The Rolling Stones'  "Satisfaction," though it doesn't sound a thing like either of them. Not that Smiley can't get soulful; she does on songs such as the harmony-rich "Sing About It," which she says was inspired by both Kate Bush and Sweet Honey in the Rock. She's soulful also on "Rotary Phone," which opens to banjo notes and then swirls into something that's part jazz and part soul. Jazz also gets a workout in the dark-yet-hopeful "Our Time." And, of course, she also unzips traditional music in her unique arrangements of "Worried Now" and "Leather Britches." This is simply an astonishing piece of work on every level. Shall I add that the Vermont-born Smiley has traveled far from home?

Rob Weir

Houses as Design, Politics, and More at Mead Art Gallery

House: Selections from the Collection of John and Sue Wieland

Mead Art Gallery, Amherst College

Through July 1, 2018

What is a house? It is, of course, a domicile in which we live, but it’s also a refuge, a center of social life, and a place often that walls us off from the outside world. The Mead Art Gallery of Amherst College shows houses—in photographs, models, drawings, and in artistic rendering—in a work that doesn’t ignore politics, social class, or access to capital, but chooses instead to consider the aesthetics of houses. In other words, the house as design.

There are works from such well-known artists as Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, and Ai Weiwei, though you’ll probably be more intrigued by the thoughts of those whose names are less famous.  Here are a few things that struck my fancy.

I liked the colors and sereneness of Ai Weiwei and its idea of a shelter as a place of contemplation. 

The Dujardin captivates my imagination. It is, of course, a fantasy complex—of sorts. Dujardin fashioned it by seamlessly stitching together various photographs.

Politics comes into play in Goldblatt's photo from South Africa. Somehow we doubt this development will ever be built or that this dark-skinned African man will even live in such a place. It is wry commentary on the remnants of apartheid.

Speaking of wry commentary, Simons' assemblage challenges us to think about how homes are made into fetishes that are tied into sexual and domestic life fantasies that (in this case literally) weigh heavy upon women.

Muniz gives us a home covered in dripping chocolate. He's actually more of a chocolatier than an artist, but this one appeals to my inner cocoa-flavored Hansel and Gretel memories. 

Verona Walk is scary because it's a real aerial photograph. The gallery notes go on about subtle differences showing through, but that's rubbish! This is the ultimate nightmare--cookie cutters in the Galdes from where I sit. Or call it the massing of the masses--all decked out in their mortgages with nowhere to go. 

My favorite was the mixed media assemblage from Radcliffe Brown--wood, paint, and tin types he inherited, some of which go back to the Civil War era. It's a powerful reminder that "home" was often makeshift for slaves, to say nothing of being ephemeral and changing.  

Ai Weiwei

Filip Dujardin, D'Ville 2012

David Goldblatt, Johannesburg, 2002

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Laurie Simons, 1989, Walking House

Vik Muniz, 2009 (From his Pictures of Chocolate series)

Edward Barttynsky, Verona Walk, Naples, FL 2012

Radcliffe Brown, Seven Steps East, 1993

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Manchester, New Hampshire Road Trip

Wil Barnet

“Let’s go to Manchester, New Hampshire!” Said no one you know. Ever. It may one of the best-kept secrets in all of New England. Most people see this city of 110,000—if at all—as they zip past on the interstates, the Merrimack River fronting red brick corridors that look like tombstones to bygone factory work. Those are what’s left of the Amoskeag Corporation, a complex of textile mills that once made Manchester the largest manufacturing city in the Western world—even bigger than its English namesake.

Until recently you’d be right to think of Manchester without the Amoskeag as akin to New Bedford without fishing, Holyoke without paper mils, Pittsfield without GE, or Lawrence without woolens. There’s actually more going on than you’d think. Segways are built there, you can find good French-Canadian bakeries, and several colleges keep things lively. The city has a new AA baseball stadium, AHL hockey, a reviving Lumberyard retail/restaurant area, and affordable housing. But the biggest thing that gives it a leg up on other deindustrialized cities is a dynamic cultural heritage anchored by the Currier Museum of Art, which is truly an underappreciated gem.

The Currier often launches creative special exhibitions, but let’s take a look at its permanent collection. First of all, the Currier also administers tours of the nearby Zimmerman House, a Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian home that was supposed to be Wright’s foray into affordable middle-class housing. You’d really have to stretch the definitions of affordable and middle class to take up residency in one of these, but it’s always enlightening to consider Wright’s mercurial vision.

Childe Hassam

The museum proper intrigues by allowing one to sample great art rather than gorging upon it. It holds about 13,000 works altogether and when you consider that Boston’s venerable Museum of Fine Arts holds over 346,000, you can readily imagine that the Currier is less likely to cause sensory overload. (All museums display only a small percentage of their works at a time.) In other words, if you want to see a few Impressionists, there’s a smattering of Monets, Pissarros, and Hassams—not entire wings of the museum.

Sheeler

Feiniger

The Currier opened its doors in 1929, just as Manchester’s industrial might was peaking and about to collapse. In practical terms, it means that the Currier’s strength lies with twentieth-century art—Ash Can painting, precisionism, surrealism, abstract expressionism…. A moody Charles Sheeler of the Amoskeag mils is one of my favorites as it embodies both Manchester’s former might and portents. I also like Lyonel Feiniger’s The Mill in Spring as we can see in it both where painting has been and how new thoughts on line, shape, and space herald new ways of filling a canvas. They light the path to new movements embodied in works such as Will Barnet’s The Aawkening, Michael Mazur’s Painted Edge, or the colors and textured blocks of Mark Rothko.

Rothko

Mazur

Guglielmi

Museums like the Currier slow us down so we can find small treasures. Even when you stumble upon an O’Keeffe, a Hartley, or a Sargent, they are generally not works you’ve seen in art books and on coffee mugs! Among my favorites are works from the underappreciated Arthur Dove, a dreamy Maxfield Parrish, a simple Salvador Dali, and an amusing work from O. Louis Guglielmi titled Sisters of Charity. Look carefully; the only word we can trust in that title is “of.”

Scheier

Guglielmi is not an artist I knew and discovery is the great fun of the Currier. Another new one for me was Edwin Sheirer. His ceramics, textiles, carvings, and paintings were inspired by tribal art, myth, whimsy, and imagination—wells from which Modernists often drew.  

Breathe deeply. You can say it. “Let’s go to Manchester, New Hampshire!” I predict that as you enjoy a cup of coffee in its laidback courtyard you’ll wonder why it took you so long to discover it.

Rob Weir

  

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Brigsby Bear is Either Stupid or Perversely Brilliant

BRIGSBY BEAR (2017)

Directed by Dave McCary

Sony Pictures Classic, 97 minutes, PG-13 (brief sexuality)

★★★

Brigsby Bear is a strange, but charming film that scarcely stretched its costumed paws before being sent back to the den. I get it; it's the kind of movie you either take to immediately, or exclaim, "WTF?" and turn it off before the TV is even warm. What is it, exactly?

That's hard to say. At times it seems as if it’s a movie about teens that was hijacked by them midway through; at others it feels like an afternoon special, or perhaps a really offbeat Disney project. In my mind, it’s the movie equivalent of music by Flight of the Conchords or They Mighty Be Giants: zany, often ridiculous, and yet strangely affecting. I lump it with idiosyncratic films such as Eagle vs. Shark, The Price of Milk, and Lost in Paris. This is to say, Brigsby Bear has its charms, but don’t expect Citizen Kane.  

Here’s the setup: James (SNL’s Kyle Mooney) lives in a desert biodome-like structure that’s half buried in the Utah desert. He has been told by his “parents,” Ted (Mark Hamill) and April (Jane Adams), that Earth’s air has been poisoned, that he should seldom venture outside, and that he can never do so without a gas mask, the likes of which he sees Ted don every time he drives off. James’ contact with the world is largely through VCR cassettes of “Brigsby Bear,” a sort of cut-rate children’s sci-fi educational show whose titular hero is a man dressed in a cartoonish bear costume with a papier-mâché head. There are math and science lessons embedded into the plots, but these mainly involve Brigsby’s adventures with the Smiles twins in thwarting the plans of an animated and personified sun to destroy the world. Never mind that the whole thing is cheesier than Wisconsin and the acting so stiff it makes Season One of Dr. Who look like Shakespeare, insofar as James knows, Brigsby is real and has an audience of millions.

James’ world is blown apart when law enforcement officials raid the compound, shackle Ted and April, and take James away to meet Greg and Louise Pope, the biological parents from whom he was kidnapped as an infant. He even has a sister, the largely disinterested Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins). Here’s the serious part of the film: How do you socialize what is essentially a feral child trapped in a 24-year-old body? After all, he’s only just learned he can breathe the air, so he has little interest in the beach, basketball, board games, and other such ‘family’ pursuits. What he really wants is access to the new cassettes of “Brigsby Bear.” They, of course, don’t exist; it was Ted in the outfit all those years, but through various plot devices I won’t reveal, he gets a VCR and a few back episodes. He also falls in with his sister’s teenaged friends, one of whom digitizes them and, viola! Brigsby is a YouTube sensation. Courtesy of those same age-inappropriate friends, Brigsby Bear: The Movie is on and along the way James has lots to learn: about communications, sex, controlled substances, and what a bad idea it is to research making explosive devices.

Again, this is either all endearing and delightful or puerile and stupid—depending upon your point of view. The film also stars Claire Danes as James’ psychiatrist, and Greg Kinnear as a cop who misses his college thespian ways. Simpkins is engaging as James’ sister, as is Jorge Lendeborg, Jr. as Spencer, the teen who (sort of) gets James. If you’re a film snob and can’t abide sentimentality, goofiness, or scripts with more holes than a fish net, steer clear of Brigsby Bear. As for the rest of you, give it a try. If you like it, you’re welcome; if not and you suspect I have taken leave of my senses, I understand.

Rob Weir

Welcome Back Joyce Luna/Zymeck

 

Joyce Luna, Every Road We Take

http://joycelunamusic.com/

Folks in the Northeast know Joyce Luna under her given name of Joyce Zymeck* and as half of the beloved duo Justina and Joyce. Joyce moved to Tucson a few years back and took a hiatus from music to deal with some serious medical and personal issues. The latter—much of it related to matters of the heart—became fodder for a passel of new songs just out on Joyce's first solo recording. Coproduced with Ryan David Green, Every Road We Take is an honest and soul-baring look at the things that make the soul leap and those that make it weep. The title track sets the mood. It opens with the line I had a love that burned me down completely. So what do you do when a new possibility comes along and you find yourself—in Luna's delicious phrase—stuck on the karma carousel?

Yep—it's that kind of vulnerable album. It's also an unabashed folk music record with Luna singing like a nightingale and the instrumentation—though often woven tightly around the melodies—never competing with the vocals. The flavor of the album, though not the music itself, reminded me of the sort of projects Sally Rogers used to make. Tentative steps are taken again in "We'll See," and Luna is open to any of three possibilities: fling, false hope, or real thing. Psychological healing gets a work out the record. "Choose" closes the gap between the labels others put on you and what you know to be true of yourself, with lines such as To get rid of the bad, we have to give up some good a true reckoning of the cost when we choose a new family. There is also the balm of music, which Luna explores on the rhythmic clap-and-sing "Love, Dance, Sing."

For me the album really catches fire "A Million Years," with its big guitar sound and memorable riffs that enhance the drama of whether or not to open the door to a person who sees you with all your scars and fear and refuses to turn away. Luna follows with a dynamic remake of "Sip of Water," a Justina and Joyce favorite. The new version surpasses the original and is so sexy and hot you may need a cold shower after listening. These two songs set the stage for more diversity in theme and production. The cello accompaniment—from Linda Ronstadt's nephew Michael—to "(Why Do You) Hide Your Heart" and the ever-so-dark piano to "Trust" give each the feel of late-night-café folk. They are followed by the giddy and cheeky coyness of "First Kiss," which is where Motown, early 60s' girl group, and folk collide; then comes "Heaven," a novelty song confession of her love of the Weather Channel," followed by the album's two social justice songs.

It is an ironic tragedy that I am writing this review the day still another school shooter murdered ten in Texas, as Luna's "We Shall Be Seen" is her anthem against gun violence and she is backed on the album by singers from Every Town for Gun Safety/Moms Demand Action for Gun Safety. One wonders what else can be done to address the nation's paralytic inaction on the slaughter of innocents.  I wanted to scream out We say No, No, No! the repeating chant from "Affirmation (The No Song," the album's second remix and its concluding selection."

This is an expertly produced recording and it's a true joy to hear Joyce's voice once again. If you like folk music that doesn't pretend to be something else, this is the record for you. My sole reservation is with the order of the songs. Perhaps that doesn't matter in the age of individual downloads, but I would have counseled to leave more space between relationship songs. (Though such matters are truly the artist's choice.) And, as my mother used to say, if that's the worst you have to complain about….

Here's a collection of samples from the just released album.  These are better recordings than the above YouTube postings.

Rob Weir

*Full disclosure: I have known Joyce for many years and, lately, she has been a great help in helping me negotiate some of the same back pain issues with which she has had to cope. But lest you think this a "puff piece," my standard in reviewing records from friends is that if I don't like them, I politely beg off and pass them to other reviewers. Honestly! 

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What the Blazes is a Knickerbocker?

Knickerbocker: The Myth Behind New York. By Elizabeth L. Bradley. Rutgers University Press, 2009, 151+ pp.

 This academic review appeared in NEPCA Journal but might be of general interest. I was fascinated by it!

In his 1963 breakthrough novel Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. coined the term granfalloon to describe hollow collectives to which one accidentally belongs. For instance, if you live in California you are a “Californian” until the day you move to Vermont and become a “Vermonter.” Such identities are intrinsically meaningless—unless they mutate. Elizabeth Bradley’s fascinating study of the Knickerbocker identity suggests that more is afoot when we look at how such terms are created, recreated, and appropriated over time. Her book was originally published in 2009, but is back in the Rutgers University Press limelight at a time in which the larger “American” identity is weakening and Balkanization is ascendant.

Most regional identity terms follow simple grammar rules as they move from noun to adjective. It doesn’t require much mental effort to associate an Iowan with Iowa or a Mainer with Maine. It’s trickier when the adjectives are endonyms, terms used almost entirely by those within a region. Perhaps you can work it out that a “Toner” resides in Washington State, but you probably need to live in South Carolina to identify with Sandlapper, or follow sports to think of Cornhuskers, Tar Heels, and Hawkeyes in the same breath as Nebraska, North Carolina, and Iowa, as none of those terms are officially recognized collective pronouns. Sometimes insider terms become official—Buckeye (Ohio), Hoosier (Indiana), Nutmegger (Connecticut), or Yankee (New England)—but all such unusual adjectives are called demonyms and, as often as not, their Ur usage is obscure and spawn theories ranging from logical to fanciful.

Knickerbocker is rare in that we know its precise origins. It was the pseudonym used by Washington Irving (1783-1859) to perpetuate a great literary hoax. Irving appropriated the surname of a Rensselaer County Dutch family to invent Diedrich Knickerbocker, a deadbeat historian whose manuscript Irving “discovered” in a New York City hotel room from which Knickerbocker fled before settling his accounts. Irving fashioned a brilliant publicity campaign to go with his literary invention; he took out ads stating his intention to publish Knickerbocker’s manuscript unless he came forth to claim it. Not surprisingly, Kickerbocker was a no-show and, in 1809, the struggling Irving made his early reputation with A History of New York from the Beginnings of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty.

You could learn a lot of this by wasting a few hours on the Internet. What you’d not learn, though, is the social history and contemporary sociology associated with Irving’s ruse. Also in Cat’s Cradle, Vonnegut introduced the karass, an intentional network of people connected in significant ways. Though she does not reference Vonnegut, Bradley shows how the Knickerbocker has been appropriated in identity-forming ways. Direct Dutch control over its New Amsterdam colony officially ended in 1665, but the transfer to English control did not change the fact that the colony’s white population was predominately Dutch. Nor did the American Revolution and the passage of 144 years alter the fact that those of Dutch surnames and ancestry were disproportionately distributed among New York’s wealthy families, politicians, and taste arbiters. Many New Yorkers were amused by Irving’s trickery, but not all got the joke; some saw the Knickerbocker icon as confirmation of their assumed social and cultural superiority. Irving’s purpose, of course, was the opposite; he lampooned Dutch calcification specifically and social airs in general, but Diedrich Knickerbocker unleashed proved an infinitely malleable demonym.

Bradley titles her chapters “The Picture of Knickerbocker,” “Inheriting Knickerbocker,” “Fashioning a Knickerboracy,” and “Knickerbocker in a New Century.” Bradley breezily transforms the Knickerbocker into a synecdoche for two hundred years of New York history, politics, culture, commerce, and identity. In effect, one can draw a straight line from the boastful Diedrick Knickerbocker to the insouciant swagger of today’s New York City dwellers. That is, the Knickerbocker became New York City’s brand. No wonder those in the 19^th century associated it with everything from bread and buses to “nostalgia and nativism” (59). And let’s not forget Santa Claus. Through time, the Knickerbocker lost some of its Dutch ethnicity in the American melting pot, but there were always Roosevelts, Van Rensselaers, and Vanderbilts to drop hints; German and Dutch brewers to lubricate myths; and basketball heroes, place names, and the mystique of the Big Apple to suggest that Gotham speaks a Dutch dialect. Moreover, as Bradley reminds us, no city comes close to New York in capturing imaginings of the essence of the United States. Never mind that little of this looks like the frontispiece from Irving’s 1809 satire; myths have enormous power even when their veracity is in doubt—just as an intentional karass is generally more empowering than an accidental granfalloon.

Rob Weir

University of Massachusetts Amherst