Art Smarts for May 2020

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There are days in which I think that art, music, literature, theatre, and film are the only human endeavors that offer hope. Most museums are closed right now, but several recent shows offer things to consider, and the Internet allows us to experience part of what made them special.

Barley Hendricks

Even if you didn’t make it to the Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) to see Black Refractions, you can explore the Studio Museum of Harlem (SMH), the lending institution for the SCMA show. The SMH isn’t a large museum. It was only founded in 1968, and it contains just 2,500 objects. To put that in perspective, the SCMA holds more than 10 times as much. But sometimes it’s not big you are, it’s the size of your vision that’s important.

In the early 20^th century, Harlem was the single most vibrant cultural oasis in the nation. Brush up on the phenomenon called the Harlem Renaissance if you don’t know what I mean. Alas, the Great Depression, World War II hit, Harlem declined, and postwar racism made black culture an afterthought. The SMH came along at a time in which the civil rights movement rekindled a sense of Black Pride. Fifty years after the SMH opened its doors, we can appreciate the prescient vision of its founders.

Kehinde Wiley

Isaac Julien. Yes this is a sculpture!

Elizabeth Catlett

The SMH spotlights artistic mastery in media ranging from painting and sculpture to fabric arts and video production. All of its holdings come from artists associated with the black diaspora. So, no Van Gogh, but Jacob Lawrence; no Rembrandt, but portraits from Kehinde Wiley. No Judy Chicago, but quilts from Faith Ringgold; no Rodin, but Isaac Julien’s hyper-realistic forms; no Mary Cassatt sentimentality, but the sensuality of Elizabeth Catlett’s mother and child. 

Faith Ringgold

 When we refract art through a black lens, one of the most poignant lessons is that racism impoverishes both victims and their oppressors, the latter of whom deny themselves access to remarkably creative individuals. In 1903, W. E. B. DuBois published Souls of Black Folk. His book mattered because of his powerful insistence that people of color had souls at a time in which many whites denied it. Black art matters. It is incontrovertible proof that DuBois was right.

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Last summer I visited the Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and saw a show devoted to Warner Brothers cartoons.  This winter I went to the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, MA to see The Art of Warner Bros. Cartoons. It wasn’t as extensive or polished as the Eastman House exhibit, but it too reminds us that cartoons are more than just kid stuff.

In an age before CAD, cartoons were the equivalent of Claymation in that even the smallest movement took a lot of work. It entailed drawing numerous cels that overlapped to make drawn figures “move” when the film stock flickered through the projector at 24 frames a second. Some of that was a clever trick. Watch some vintage cartoons and you might notice the art behind the illusion. Often, part of a figure is static; if the cels are done well, your eye follows the movement and you “see” only the movement, not the parts that don’t move. Snobs may turn up their noses, but the magic that went into Warner Brothers cartoons is indeed art.

Warner Brothers ‘toons were not just children’s fare in other ways. Cartoon crews trusted that kids were smart enough to know that dropping an anvil on Wile E. Coyote’s head, handing Elmer Fudd a bomb, or flattening Sylvester the Cat with a steam roller was make-believe. Maybe we have done children an injustice by getting rid of imaginative cartoons that engage the imagination, when we should have worried about the realism of America’s Funniest Home Videos where real danger is hidden behind a laugh track.

Warner Brothers didn’t infantilize. It dared show Bugs Bunny singing opera, made puns worthy of Groucho Marx, and did animated send-ups of contemporary and historical figures. When you didn’t “get” the joke, you learned to ask and the discovery process began. There were also sexual innuendos in the old cartoons. All of the adult stuff meant that many grown-ups were also tuned in and laughing. They decided which things to explain or not.

There’s a reason why Warner Brothers studio personnel are so highly regarded. If you can’t appreciate the artistry, come up with an idea for a 22-minute cartoon. Write a story, draw all the characters, and direct them. Add a soundtrack. You have one week, then you must start anew. Rinse and repeat for 33 years. You can cheat and use your computer.

You can’t go see The Art of Warner Bros. Cartoons right now, but you can see some original drawings and cels on Pinterest sites. Better yet, go to YouTube and watch available Warner Brothers ‘toons. If you grew up in the age of saccharine cartoons or none at all, you might find Bugs Bunny to be (if I might) a hare-raising experience!

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Wilson Bigaud

Are you up for an art challenge? Ever notice how often food is depicted in art? Yeah, me neither until I saw Embodied Taste at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. It’s billed as “a conversation on food, culture, art, and power,” which is a bit grandiose unless you were enrolled in the classes that supported those concepts. The basic idea, though, is to look at how social issues are embedded in depictions of food in art.

Marion Post Wolcott

 Who plants food? Who harvests it? Who prepares it? How is it distributed it and how is it parceled out? In a very basic sense, these are questions of who works and who eats. The Mead Show used graphics, photos, paintings, and objects to provoke thought. Of course, unless things change dramatically between now and July 26 when the show comes down, only those of us who have already seen it will be able to do so.

So, let me suggest a little treasure hunt in the spirit of the exhibit. Google some images from your favorite artists and look for those that have food in them. Don’t flip through them; pause and muse upon the images. What back stories relating to food, labor, consumption, and social class are inferred? In other words, does your favorite artist have hidden agendas?

Add caption

Let me show you what I mean though one of the offerings in the Mead Show: Frans Snyder’s 1640 painting Larder with a Servant. We see a table that’s almost literally a groaning board. A larder usually means a place to store food, but that’s not the case here. There is an obscene amount of food present: fowls, a stag, a boar, crustaceans, fruits…. If you’re wondering why there’s a dead peacock prominently displayed, peacock tongue was a delicacy, but only among the upper crust. Imagine how many birds had to be slain to sate the appetites of well-heeled guests. This painting comes from Belgium’s golden age of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, when money flowed into Antwerp banks, wine poured into Flemish ports, and merchants thrived in an unbalanced system that engorged their purses, but not those of workers who produced export goods or unloaded booty coming into the country.

Back to the table. For the most part you are looking at perishable goods. It is reasonable to infer that the servant girl’s role is to help ready a feast for a rich family and well-to-do guests. Her dress suggests she is a maid, not kitchen staff. She will probably take this food from the table to the kitchen and clean the room once the table is bare. Perhaps she’ll help serve it, a role in which she is expected to be efficient and anonymous. It’s unlikely she will taste more than the leavings of the feast. Depending upon her master, she might have to share even that with the hungry dog in the foreground.

Not all food in art is this politically charged. Some of it is a painted version of the cellphone “food porn” that we gleefully post on social media sites. Scores of other lessons emerge, so give it a whirl. Investigate the artist, the time period, and the place depicted. I’d love it if you shared what you find.

Rob Weir     

  

Wild Nights with Emily a Disservice to LGBTQ Rights

Wild Nights with Emily (2018; DVD 2020)

Directed by Madeline Olnek

Greenwood Entertainment, 84 minutes, PG-13 (implied sexuality)

½ star

I will not mince words. Wild Nights with Emily is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. It’s not just that it’s boring, though it is, or idiotic (ditto), it trivializes what might be an overlooked aspect of poet Emily Dickinson’s life. Scholars discovered altered letters that contradict the traditional view that Dickinson was a sociophobic recluse who died unloved. Actually, she may have had a deep love: Susan Gilbert, later the wife of Dickinson’s brother Austin. Evidence remains open to interpretation, but it’s probable that Emily Dickinson was a lesbian. She might also have had a brief affair with Kate Scott Turner.

Alas, director Madeline Olnek was unsuccessful in bringing to the screen this important revelation about Dickinson. We do hear Dickinson’s voice in letters and poems clearly aimed at her dear “Sue,” but any sort of nuance escapes Ms. Olnek. I suppose that is to expected from a director who gave us such deathless classics as Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seek Same. (Yes, that’s a real movie title.)

In the film, Susan Gilbert (Sasha Forova/Susan Ziegler) marries Austin Dickinson (Kevin Seal) in part so she could be near Emily (Dana Melanie/Molly Shannon). Austin did his expected duty of producing a few family heirs, then leaves Susan to her devices and immersed himself in an affair with (the married) Mabel Loomis Todd (Amy Seimetz), who became the editor of Dickinson’s poems after her death. Sue, in turn, beds Emily and helps her try to get her poems published. Todd never actually met Dickinson, but scholars suspect that it was she who altered some of Dickinson’s original words to make them more acceptable for mass market consumption and, not coincidentally advance her own reputation as a Dickinson expert.

You will notice that I have made qualified remarks about Emily, Sue, and Mabel. Olnek takes an Emily/Sue erotic relationship as a given. I have no issue with that; film directors often take liberties with biographical details. I do, however, take umbrage with Olnek’s attempt to make, in her words, a “dramatic comedy” that mixes humor and seriousness in seemingly random ways. The problem is simple: Wild Nights with Emily is neither funny nor convincing when it seeks to be informative. We see Sue and Emily steal a kiss in an upstairs bedroom, then grope each other, and tumble behind a bed like two teenagers in the backseat of a Fiat. Which was this, I wonder, the serious or the humorous part? I’d say the latter, but the comedy is so broad that it would take a TV laugh track to queue viewers.

Shannon portrays adult Emily as a cenerous worricrow. It’s as if she’s has stolen Rachel Dratch’s character of Debbie Downer, dressed her in crinoline, and given her a girlfriend. Ziegler is better as Susan Gilbert Dickinson, but she too falls prey to an insipid script that has her dispatching her children ‘round the clock to deliver mash notes to Emily. The only redeeming quality is that both Shannon and Ziegler are way better than Melanie and Frolova, who are so wooden as young Emily and Susan that one could get splinters from watching them. It might be not their fault; Olnek is fishing for laughs in scenes such as their rehearsal for a Shakespeare play, but comes away with an empty creel.

Empty pretty much describes most of the film. The scene involving a doddering Judge Lords mangling the title and details of Wuthering Heights is pretty funny, but I wish Austin’s wig had flown off–as it seemed on the verge of doing in numerous segments–as that would have been much funnier than flat insider jokes about Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joseph Lyman, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. The real crunch comes in the last quarter of the film, when Olnek abruptly changes tone. Most successful dramatic comedies mix those elements throughout, but Olnek gives us two separate films that do not mesh. That is, after painting with (allegedly comic) broad strokes, she shifts to a didactic look at Dickinson’s altered letters and poems. She somehow got permission to film the actual documents and I can only conclude that no one from the Emily Dickinson House laid eyes on either Olnek’s theatre production that preceded the film or her screenplay.

Wild Nights with Emily is simply a bad movie. Though it’s a mere 84 minutes, it feels as long as Lawrence of Arabia. Even worse, it doesn’t even work as camp. If this one is on your Netflix queue, delete it.

Rob Weir

Ratings on Places You Can't Visit

Overrated or Not:

Travel Sites, Truth and Nonsense

It’s hard to imagine traveling these days, but that doesn’t stop travel sites from doling out advice. Lately they’ve been engaged in a slash-and-burn campaign of telling us of places and sites they think are overrated. Maybe that’s so we won’t lament that we can’t go there anyhow. So, I checked out Escape Here and Far and Wide to see what I’m supposed to miss.

I can’t comment on places I’ve never been, though I can’t for the life of me imagine that I would like Mount Rushmore, the Las Vegas Strip, or Copenhagen’s tiny statue of the Little Mermaid. I would like to go to Denmark someday, but I’m fine with giving South Dakota and Nevada a miss. But I can slap down my two pennies when it comes to places and things I have seen.

Let’s start with a few experiences that I agree are way overrated. Neither site cared for the Hollywood Walk of Fame, not should they. It’s like strolling through one of those cemeteries where all the markers are flush to the surface, except the little inscribed stars are set in granite. Some are smashed or covered with graffiti as the Walk is located in a rather seedy part of the city.

I really like London, but I concur that the London Eye is less than meets one’s ocular units. It’s just an expensive whirl around a Ferris Wheel whose biggest impact is to be photographed at night from a distant bridge. You don’t even get cotton candy.

I guess you can say you saw it

The Four Corners where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah intersect is just one of those kill-four-birds-with-one-screech-of-the-car wheels place for state collectors. It only exists because there’s so much barren land out those parts that surveyors just squared the boundaries. It’s also analogous to Greenwich, England, where you can stand with one foot on either side of the Prime Meridian. Having had a toe in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres as well as the above four states I can tell you that you won’t detect any differences.

Pucker up for a sloppery rock

The Blarney Stone gets no love and doesn’t deserve any. The castle is perfectly fine, but it’s a tip-off when there are competing legends of why it’s lucky to be tipped onto your back, have your head pushed under the walls, and kiss a wet rock. Can you say, “gullible tourists?” I will say, though, that it’s way more interesting than Plymouth Rock, which also gets thumbs down. It’s there because, you know, it has to be authentic, right? I don’t think there are any other big fricking granite boulders anywhere in New England. Funny the Pilgrims failed to mention such a stone.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa deserves to fall out of favor, unless you think the world needs more photos of grinning tourists pretending to hold it up. Spend an hour in Venice and you’ll see lots of sinking towers.

The White House deservedly makes the lists as well. It might feel very patriotic as you wait to get in, but there’s not much to see in the public areas. Besides, who wants to see where sports stars eat McDonald’s burgers with a fat man and his comb over?

Mildly Disagree

There are some places that probably are a bit naff, but I nonetheless liked them. The entire tale you are told about the Alamo in San Antonio is a load of horse exhaust and there’s not much left of the old fort, but it’s nice to visit and bite your tongue because you know the whole damn thing was about the right of illegal immigrants from the South to bring their illegal slaves into a foreign country.

So maybe it does look like 2 am outside a bar

The Mannekin Pis fountain in Brussels is what it sounds like: a statue of a small boy with a jet of water shooting out from his bronze tallywacker. It’s stupid, but in a good way.

Yes, Temple Bar in Dublin is crammed with tourists bellying up to try to convince themselves that Guinness is actually worthy of being called beer. If you’re lucky, though, you might actually find an Irish person with whom you can get a recommendation for a real beer.

Sites routinely list the Sydney Opera House as not worth the effort. Well, it’s hard to beat its exterior visual impact, especially when strolling across Harbor Bridge. The interior is a letdown, though. It opened in 1973 and there just isn’t much to be said for no-frills functionality. It feels like being in a shopworn megachurch.

Are Your Nuts!?

Dreams of Nessie

Now for stuff where I want to cry out, “Getta life, you idiot!” I’ll start with one dear to my heart. Sites tell you to avoid Loch Ness in Scotland. Nessie might or might not be a real lake monster, but the lake is deep and lovely and the ruins of Castle Urquhart add to a dazzling tableau. If you can’t dream here, take up an unimaginative profession such as becoming a member of Congress.

Neither site liked Stonehenge, which suggests their writers have rocks in their heads. You cannot gaze upon Stonehenge or any of a number of comparable megalithic locations without realizing that what we call “ingenuity” is an ever-evolving concept. Besides, the Druids told me this place is cool.

Along the same lines, how can one not be impressed by the Great Wall of China? Smug writers who pooh-pooh it need to be sent to re-education camps.

Or maybe fed to the lions. That fate should be for those who tell you to avoid the Coliseum in Rome. Yes, the stadium floor is missing. It’s coming up on its 2000^th birthday. Send me a postcard of what you will look like in another 1,970 years.

Please tell Leonardo to make it bigger

One site said that viewing the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is a disappointment. Okay, so the room is crowded but this painting is considered one of Western art’s greatest masterpieces. The same site complained that is was so small. That individual should retire to his dorm room and gaze lovingly on his life-sized poster of Def Leppard.

I’m not Catholic, but if anyone tells you that the Vatican isn’t worth seeing, convert, and strangle that fool with your rosary beads. The Sistine Chapel is a marvel, and it’s much bigger than the Mona Lisa. You also need to see all the (literal) loot carried by to Rome over the centuries. If you want to draw some lessons about blind faith, who am I to dissuade you?

Anyone who tries to tell you that Venice isn’t worth seeing needs to be lobotomized. The main sites can be overrun by day trippers, but if you venture away in any direction you will find solitude and architectural wonders that restore your faith in humankind. The food also gets better in those quiet plazas. I advocate a stroll across the Bridge of Sighs for those who don’t like Venice.

Labyrinth of the Spirits is a Masterpiece

Labyrinth of the Spirits (2016/2018 in English)

By Carlos Ruiz Zafόn

★★★★★

If you are a fan of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, you already suspect that Labyrinth of the Spirits, the fourth and final book, is worth reading. I will go one step further, though, and aver that it’s one of the few genuine masterpieces yet to appear in the 21^st century. You could read this one on its own, but if you’re not yet a fan I highly recommend that you devote a few months and devour the entire quadrilogy. Reading Carlos Ruiz Zafόn is a bittersweet experience; you keep turning the pages to see what will happen next, yet you don’t want the story to conclude.

One of the most dangerous times in an authoritarian state is when it seems the dictator’s grip is loosening. In part that’s because fascists like Spain’s Francisco Franco never really want to give up control, and in part because there’s an entrenched power structure dependent upon not relaxing the grip. In the case of Spain in 1960, when much of the action of Labyrinth of the Spirits takes place, this would include the police, the secret police, the military, Opus Dei, and a host of now-respectable citizens who have vats of blood on their hands.

Labyrinth of the Spirits retains a cast of characters that feel like family to devoted readers, including Daniel Sempere and his aging father Juan, the owners of a book store; Daniel’s wife, Beatrice; Isaac Montfort, the caretaker of the secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books; and, of course, Daniel’s mentor and partner in adventure Fermín Romero de Torres, one of literature’s most outrageous, funny, and lovable characters. Like the first three books of the series, this one flashes back to the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), a bloody event often viewed as a dress rehearsal for World War II. Most secrets, after all, have been moldering for many years.

By 1960, Franco was 68-years-old, and had been in power for 21 years. He chose to “liberalize” Spain, mostly in a (successful) attempt to attract foreign investment that would revive Spain’s moribund economy. With it came rumors that Franco’s Falangist Party was also relaxing social codes. In Barcelona, where the novel is set, most citizens were justifiably skeptical. (The city had long been a center of anti-Franco sentiment.)  

Zafόn introduces a new character, Alicia Gris, a Barcelona native but now a member of the secret police based in Madrid. She is beautiful, though damaged; walking is difficult for Alicia, as she hobbles on a hip damaged when Franco’s planes bombed Barcelona in 1936, when she was a child. (She was rescued by none other than Fermín, but you can discover the details of this on your own.) Alicia is a deadly femme fatale, the star creation of ruthless mentor Leandro Montalvo, who sends her to Barcelona to discover the whereabouts of Mauricio Valls, who was once a merciless man in his own right, but is now Spain’s Minister of Culture. Montalvo sends police detective Juan Manuel Vargas to assist her, over Alicia’s vehement objections­—she’s a classic lone wolf—but she reluctantly (and only to a degree) partners with him. Alicia has her own sources, including a young man named Fernandito, who is in love with her. 

On a parallel track, Daniel is haunted by his mother’s death and rumors of her life before she married his father. He has become downright sullen and, in turn, his wife Beatrice is losing patience with him. The two tales will overlap, with clues emerging in archives and in an ominous children’s book by Victor Mataix. Alicia comes to suspect that there are layers of secrets that lie deeper than even she realizes.

 Labyrinth of the Spirits is a serpentine mystery filled with the unexpected. Note that the final word in the title is plural. Metaphorically speaking, it is a book filled with ghosts. For instance, the section of Barcelona known as Montjuic is perhaps best known as the site of the 1992 summer Olympics. In the 1940s, though, it was the location of the kind of prison one exits posthumously and probably not in one piece. It factors into the story, as do some exceedingly creepy houses, a terrifying henchman named Hendaya, a missing banker Ubach, and much more. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books is also integral to a story that reveals more details about those from the previous three books whose back stories had remained ambiguous: Julián Carax, Daniel Martín, and Daniel’s mother. It is a sprawling novel and at times you might feel lost, but don’t worry or hurry—all is revealed in due time. Plus, just when things become almost too tense to endure, Fermín comes to the rescue with one of his outsized boasts that make you snicker out loud.

The one knock on Zafόn is that his female characters are too passive. He compensates in spades in his finale. Finale—a word I’ve been loath to type. But I get it; I can’t imagine how he could top Labyrinth of the Spirits.

Rob Weir

Nothing Here to See Catches Fire

Nothing to See Here (2019)

By Kevin Wilson

HarperCollins, 272 pages

✭✭✭✭

Welcome to chapter two of offbeat novels week. Nothing to See Here is from the pen–okay keyboard–of Kevin Wilson. If the name rings a bell, it’s because he previously wrote The Family Fang, which was made into a movie starring Nicole Kidman and Jason Bateman.

Nothing to See Here begins routinely enough. Two girls meet at a private school and become best friends. It’s an unlikely pairing as Madison is tall, beautiful, blonde, and rich. Lillian is a scholarship student, has no idea who her father is, and was (barely) raised by an emotionally unavailable mother distracted by financial pressures and a series of inappropriate boyfriends. Family dysfunction is a point of contact; Madison’s parents have also checked out in the affection department, partly because she’s a girl, but mostly because they just can’t be bothered, which is why she’s in a boarding school in the first place. They seem to care only about reputation. Lillian swears like a sailor, which is a perfect match for Madison’s internalized anger. By their senior year, both need to figure out what comes next. Fate makes that decision for them. Drugs are found in Madison’s desk, which is an automatic expulsion offense. Except it’s Lillian who gets the boot, because Madison’s father pays her money-hungry mother a tidy sum to force Lillian to say the drugs were hers. Mom gets the cash and Lillian gets a dead-end service industry job. So much for friendship.

Move the calendar ahead a few years and Madison reappears with a tale of how “embarrassed” she was over her father’s bribe. She’s now married to Jasper Roberts, a U.S. Senator from Tennesee, who is older than Madison but was dazzled by her beauty and left his wife and two children for her. Together they have a four-year-old son named Timothy and they live on the Roberts ancestral estate. She was rich before, but now she’s filthy rich and married to a man many believe will be a future U.S. president. Madison has a proposition for Lillian. Would she like to come live on the estate and become a governess?

Here’s where it gets weird. Lillian would not be Timothy’s governess, rather that of Jasper’s first two children,10-year-old Bessie and 9-year-old Roland whose mother has committed suicide. And by the way, they sometimes catch on fire. Yes, you read that correctly. They don’t start fires; they catch on fire! They are not harmed by the flames, though it’s not so good for clothing, furniture, curtains, or other combustible objects. There are a few other impediments to consider. First, Lillian knows nothing about children. Second, she has no training as a teacher, psychologist, or firefighter. Third, she’d be living on the estate and has the social graces of a badger, the wardrobe of a skateboarder, and every other word out of her mouth is “fuck.” Finally, the kids are not exactly thrilled to be coming to live with a father they barely remember or fobbed off to some girl they’ve never met.

You’ve got to admit, it’s an original premise! Fobbing off is exactly what’s supposed to happen. Senator Roberts is an ambitious cold fish. Madison claims to love her husband and her life, but deep down she realizes that she married into a situation analogous to the one in which she was raised. In truth, the only close relationship she’s ever had was with Lillian. Back on the estate, there’s lots of staff to help out, including Mary, the skeptical cook, and Carl, who seems to be a combination senatorial aide and fixer. He is also supposed to keep an eye on Lillian, whom he treats with disdain. In other words, Lillian is so far out of her element, that things might just work. After all, what could possibly go wrong with to kids who self-combust when agitated? Kids hardly ever get upset, right?  

Wilson could have played this for dark comedy laughs, a route he sometimes takes. Alternatively, he could have taken the logical illogical path and made this into an absurdist novel–perhaps a Southern-fried mix of Lewis Carroll, Joseph Heller, Tom Robbins, and Samuel Beckett. Instead, Wilson chooses a more conservative gambit that, frankly, I don’t think works as well as he does. To be candid, there were times in which the book flounders stylistically. Madison and Lillian often act and speak as if they are 26 going on 14. Consider this small sample. In a moment of anger Madison accuses Lillian of jealousy. She replies, “I don’t want your life. Your life seems fucked up. It seems sad.” Prose like that is neither Virginia Woolf nor Tom Wolfe. If I might, such passages are in no danger of igniting.

Nonetheless, if Nothing Here to See isn’t deathless prose, it is surely well-plotted. No matter what else one might say, Wilson has one helluva central hook. His device eventually leads us to muse upon questions of damage and healing. We often hear glib comments about the resiliency of children. Allegedly they recover from trauma more easily than adults. If it’s so, why are Lillian and Madison stuck in adolescence? (If that is so, why do psychologists spend their careers helping grown-ups resolve haunting memories?) Wilson’s novel touches upon the search for keys to unlock youthful hurt. Plus, don’t you really want to know what’s in store for kids who catch on fire? I know I did. Thus, even if Nothing Here to See isn’t a perfect novel, it’s so odd that it works against all odds. (Word play intended.) It’s a quick and lively read and sometimes that’s all the flame one needs.

Rob Weir  

Crossings a Weird and Unique Novel

Crossings (2019)

By Alex Landragin

St. Martins Press, 384 pages

★★★★

Crossings, the debut novel from Alex Landragin, has a bit of everything: pure fiction, literary fiction, science fiction, romance, mystery, anthropological observations, and paranormal activity. It spans 150 years of time, but implies things ancient and inexplicable.

The novel opens with a clever device. It’s opening lines are, “I didn’t write this book. I stole it.” Baroness Beatie Ellingham visits a respected Belgian bookbinder and advises she will send a book by courier with instructions and materials on recovering the text. She makes him promise that he will not read it. All bets are off, though, when the bookbinder discovers several days later that the baroness is dead, the victim of a grisly murder in which her eyes were cut out. As the bookbinder peruses the volume, he observes that the baroness has made notes on how to re-sequence the chapters. And so, it is left to each reader to decide whether to read it straight through as originally written, or as Baroness Ellingham re-arranged it.

The first path will take you through three interconnected novelettes: “The Education of a Monster,” reportedly an unknown ghost story from French poet and essayist Charles Baudelaire (1821-67); “City of Ghosts,” a noir romance whose central character is clearly German philosopher/theorist/critic Walter Benjamin (1892-1940); and the third, “Tales of the Albatross,” which involves Polynesian rituals and a (literally) timeless love story. The baroness’ path is more circuitous, but it weaves the three separate stories into a single strand.

Any way you read it–and most will choose one and sample the second–you will wend your way through an amazing, often perplexing tale in which Baudelaire and Benjamin factor prominently. If you take you cues from the baroness, the narrative opens with a chapter titled “This is Where the Story Ends.” A man (Benjamin) encounters a mysterious woman in Paris’ Montparnasse Cemetery standing aside a tomb in which four past presidents of the Charles Baudelaire Society are buried. The year is 1940, Nazi troops are just outside of the city, and Benjamin, a Jew, knows he needs to flee. Yet he lingers as he yet he is drawn to the woman, and over several dangerous days, falls in love with her. It is truly a fatal attraction, though not how you might imagine.

The baroness’ sequence is, however, neither how the story ends or begins. A true beginning requires gleaning from the novel’s most difficult-to-grasp sections from “Tales of the Albatross.” These take place on a Polynesian island named Oáeetee, which we visit first in 1771. There we learn of several unusual rituals, including a tattoo practice restricted to inscribing the body only with inked eyes. More unusual still is the rite of “crossing,” which gives us the novel’s title. Initiates (and sometimes a novice) stare into each other’s eyes and by doing so, exchange bodies. It is such a powerful and potentially dangerous practice that the island’s chief mandate (merely called the Law) is “there be no crossing without a return crossing.” “Blind crossings,” those in which the second party is unaware of the exchange are considered especially dangerous. In 1791, however, a French ship enters the harbor and circumstance drives two lovers, Koahu (male) and Alula (female) to violate the Law. This will set in motion a pursuit across time and the globe in which Koahu will assume six bodies and Alula seven. Baudelaire is somehow in the middle of all of this.

Crossings will put you in mind of David Mitchell novels. This means that it is nearly impossible to describe what happens in a linear fashion. Crossings also involves gender transformations that evoke Virginia Wolff’s Orlando, as well as racial crossing. From here you can start adding elements: a mad bookseller, mesmerism, colonialism, slavery, gold teeth, violence, evocations of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, and the appearance of French designer Coco Chanel. She, Baudelaire, Benjamin, and Jeanne Duval, a former slave who was Baudelaire’s muse and lover, are historical figures who interact with colorful imagined characters.

Is Crossings a vampire tale? Not really. A paranormal fantasy? Maybe. An overdressed romance? Possibly. I don’t mean to be coy. Like a David Mitchell novel, reading Crossings is more experiential than sequential–another reason why it can be read several different ways. It is also one whose internal logic is peculiar to the worlds Alex Landrigan interconnects. Your imagination is the only key that can unlock any of it.

Crossings is also a book one hopes is never adapted for a film. At best, a movie would impose coherence to a book whose magic lies in controlled incoherence. At worst, as was done with Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, a movie would make a complete hash of the novel. Crossings may frustrate you at times–I suggest you keep a list of characters and their avatars–but I heartily recommend that you read it. You are unlikely to come across too many other books this delightfully weird and unique.

Rob Weir  

       

Mastersons, Railroad Earth, Asleep at the Wheel, and More

Just before COVID shut down live music for the foreseeable future, I attended a show headlined by Wilco. They were merely okay, but I was quite taken by The Mastersons, who opened the evening and enlivened its ending when they joined Wilco on stage. You might recognize the husband/wife duo of Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore, even if you don’t know their solo work; they’ve been part of Steve Earle’s band The Dukes, and have also worked with Jack Ingram and Son Volt, among others. The Mastersons have got a new album coming out, No Time for Love Songs, which has a pretty good pedigree; it’s produced by their friend Shooter Jennings (son of Waylon and Jessi Colter). Unlike Shooter, though, their music tends to be more optimistic than the usual outlaw country fare. The title song touches on holding onto a relationship when the world conspires against it, but also leaves some wiggle room for hope. As Red House Records puts it, the album “explores the emotional challenges of a morally compromised era.” There is great energy and synergy throughout, with a typical song built around Masterson’s robust guitar and Whitmore’s let-‘er-rip vocals. On “Spellbound” she sings: I told you nice and I’ll tell you again… Some say life is a means to an end…. We’re all looking for answers and I know that you’re hurting/Tell me what you’re searching for. She hits similar themes on “So Impossible” when she challenges, Everything that goes up must come down/No one is immune to what goes round/More lost than found/You’re so impossible. That one is sung atop Tyler Chester’s piano and is like a blend of torch music and Melanie Safka. I have a slight criticism of the record. The first four tracks have the same high octane feel and blend into each other, though I did like Masterson’s guitar swirl on “Circle the Sun,” which gives it a subtle country acid rock feel. The last six–beginning with “The Last Laugh”–mix things up more by taking things down a notch. “There Is a Song” to Sing” is acoustic and folky, “The Silver Line” is dynamic, and “King of the Castle” a backdoor love song. Perhaps it’s best to think of the first half as music to make you move and the second, music to make you muse.  

Railroad Earth has a devoted following among bluegrass fans. If you’re not familiar with them or if you are and wonder what’s next, you can catch three songs from an upcoming project All For the Song. Railroad Earth is a large ensemble–often as many as seven for tours–so they can make some noise, though they are generally more of a jam band that lays down melodies crisscrossed with keys, percussion, and lots of strings (fiddle, mando, banjo, guitar, bass). They’ve released a single from the new album titled “Great Divide” that showcases exactly what I’ve just said. The tune is catchy, instruments flow in and out with ease, and Todd Sheaffer’s vocals are solid and inviting. “Slippin’ Around” has the hard-driving edge of a runaway train song, though if you watch the performance, you’ll be surprised by what inspired it! You also get to hear the title track, which is a nice slow waltz tempo.

It seems like a million years ago when I saw Asleep at the Wheel. I think that founder and front man Ray Benson is the only remaining member from that concert. The band is the pride of Paw Paw, West Virginia–I’ve been there. Don’t ask! –but Asleep has been viewed as a Texas band since it first took the stage back in 1970. Fifty years on, Brown is still doing his thing and doing it well. A Paste Studios concert consists of three songs, including their 1976 hit single “Route 66,” which is actually a cover of a Glenn Frey composition. They do it a bit like a backroad version of Manhattan Transfer. “Miles and Miles of Texas” is evocative of Bob Wills, and “I Guess I’ll Call It a Day Tonight” sounds like something out of a late 1950s variety show. Retro ought to be Benson’s middle name. As you might expect, this is one tight band.

Remember "Teenage Dirtbag?” It was a cult hit for Wheatus in 2000 and you get to hear it again. Much like Asleep at the Wheel, only its lead vocalist and guitarist Brendan Brown remains from the original lineup, but Wheatus now features what it calls its “classic lineup.” (Can an alt.rock band have a ‘classic’ anything? Just asking.) Karlie Bruce and Gabrielle Aimée Sterbenz are back to anchor backing vocals, which is a good thing. You’ll also hear “Break It Don’t Buy It” and “Valentine,” the last two from their 2013 record Valentine.

Agnes Obel is a Danish singer songwriter whose music is a Venn diagram of folk, classical, indie pop, and New Age genres. Her new album Myopia is about epistemological perceptions. How do we know ourselves? How can we trust what we perceive and value? “Broken Sleep” is Enya-like in that it is layered, lush and more atmospheric than melodic. Drone-like instruments stand cheek by jowl with rain-like keys, sonorous strings, and enigmatic lyrics such as: Twisted rope, defies all I know/It holds my dreams. “Island of Doom” is more in that vein; “Won’t You Call Me” is smoky and melancholy. Obel has a lovely voice, though it lacks clarity–possibly by design. Is her music cerebral and arty, or just vague and overly processed? You decide.

I loved an Eileen Carey sampler I ran across last year so much so that I said I was looking forward to her upcoming release Finally. Perhaps I spoke hastily. Finally isn’t a bad record, but I was underwhelmed by Taner Tumkaya’s production work. Carey has a strong voice and her past work is marked by grit and a dollop of country bad girl. I couldn’t help contrast that work with the title track and single from Finally, in which Carey sings a paint-by-the-numbers tune in a higher register more befitting a pop star. “Hearts of Times” lifts the opening riff from “Beast of Burden,” and “Don’t Get Me Wrong” is decidedly retro. The one that works the best for me is “That Was Her, This is Now” which has some country attitude, though it could use some lyrical editing to make it tougher. From what I gather, Carey’s career is on the uptick, but from where I sit, she’s taken a step backward artistically.

Rob Weir