Friends and Strangers a Lackluster Effort

Friends and Strangers: A Novel (2020)

By J. Courtney Sullivan

Knopf, 416 pages.

★★ ½

 

Authors often begin their careers with what they know and have experienced. This is forgivable in early books, but after a while the same ground is trodden bare. For example, do any of us need another John Irving novel into which there’s a bear, wrestling, and Vienna? Enough already!

 

I did not know J. Courtney Sullivan when she was a Smith student, but there is validity to some of the complaints she puts into the mouths of characters in Friends and Strangers. But, she’s 38 now and it’s time to put her undergraduate years behind her. The book has been tagged as “women’s fiction,” a term I intensely dislike and suspect Sullivan did not choose. I would say, though, that it’s not an inviting novel for men despite the fact that one of the major characters is a standup guy–when he’s paying attention.

 

The book centers on Andrew and Elisabeth, a couple that lived in Brooklyn until Elisabeth got pregnant via IVF. She didn’t particularly want children, but Andrew wants several. Much to her surprise, she instantly bonded with her son, Gil. She has not bonded with the idea of leaving Brooklyn and moving to the town where Andrew’s parents, George and Faye, reside. She likes her in-laws and is estranged from her own parents, but she is having adjustment problems to life in a small town. To put it bluntly, she’s a Metro-snob who thinks there is no life outside of Greater New York City. Elisabeth spends her days not writing, moaning there is no coffee shop at her doorstep, worrying about her sister, emailing her best friend Nomi who’s still in Brooklyn, and logging onto BK Mamas, a Facebook group for–you guessed it–new mothers in Brooklyn. Her breasts hurt, she prejudges the people in her neighborhood, and she needs a nanny.

 

About the town. It’s said there are three colleges within a few miles radius and is home to a women’s college that is Smith-not Smith. In other words, she subtracted two schools for her Northampton-not-Northampton “fictional” setting. Andrew gets to work with student interns on an idiotic-not-idiotic project at an offbeat school that is Hampshire-not-Hampshire. She can’t find good coffee in a town renowned for its coffee. And if there is a genre that is as tired as a glue factory horse, it’s one about writers complaining about writing. These opening parts tempted me to toss the book aside with a for-heaven’s sake-get-over-yourself flick of the wrist.

 

The novel improves when Elisabeth hires Sam, a not-Smith senior, to watch Gil so she can go to a rented office and not write. Sam has her own issues, not the least of which are her student loans and what she’ll do with an English/studio arts degree, but she’s a godsend who is amazing with Gil. Soon Elisabeth considers her to be a member of the family and perhaps her only friend in not-Northampton. At best, that’s creepy. Friends and Strangers takes a qualitative leap when it begins to explore boundaries of all sorts–employer/employee, appropriate/inappropriate boyfriends, youthful exuberance/stupid decisions, help/meddling, non-privilege/delusion….  Sullivan backloads her novel with subplots such as a wayward sister who drains Elisabeth’s bank account in her quest to be a social media influencer, Sam’s attempt to help the Latina college dining hall workers with whom she works, George’s critique of wealth and power, Elisabeth’s contempt for her father, Sam’s romance, and twists on  what constitutes cheating and when helping does more harm than butting out.

 

The book is set during the years 2014-15, with a coda in 2024-25, when Sam returns to not-Northampton for her not-Smith 10^th reunion. The novel's first part will raise eyebrows for those familiar with not-Smith. Sullivan slips in an African American college president, Shirley Washington, who is a fraud on several levels. This is a thinly veiled slam on Ruth Simmons who was president of Smith-actual-Smith from 1995-2001. Although I sometimes taught at Smith during those years, I only knew Simmons through secondhand reports. Apparently, students loved her, faculty was split, much of the support staff disliked her, and she left behind staggering financial challenges. Or so I’m told.

 

Smithies (of whom I am very fond) will have to make up their own minds about Sullivan’s take on their (and Sullivan’s) alma mater. However these matters are parsed, Friends and Strangers is problematic. Elisabeth is exceedingly difficult to like, Sullivan’s tone is frequently whiny, and it takes too long to get to the meat of the narrative, which means it feels overstuffed. Sullivan’s searing Commencement was published in 2010. A decade later, it’s time to move on.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Letitia VanSant: October Artist of the Month

Letitia VanSant

Circadian

 

 

Letitia VanSant comes at us from Baltimore with her sophomore release Circadian. Though you could mistakenly peg her as just another singer with a pretty voice, stop and listen carefully. First, there’s a bit of upper palate growl, but it’s not half as (if I might) biting as some of her lyrics. But let’s start with something sweet, the title trackCircadian. It opens with some high-range warbling that’s almost Japanese in melody and tone, but its theme is indeed the daily cycles of light fluctuation, though with a twist. She tells us that firefly mating and bird migrations get confused by the “halo” of city lights, and then adds a kicker: And they’re lost and lonely as I am. Without getting preachy, VanSant asks us to notice how our gadgets, machines, and noise make us deaf to the music of the world made before me and how it might be a good idea if lives leaned more toward natural circadian places and paces. Yep. That’s the kind of peace we feel on summer nights by a campfire with fireflies illuminating the woods.

 

VanSant has created an album that is very personal, but also one that balances light and dark. “You Can’t Put My Fire Out” is about her survival from sexual abuse and her arrangement is one that toggles between rising anger and a defiant determination to move on: I’m taking back my apologies/For every time that you hurt me/Your red hands I can plainly see/You can’t put my fire out. One might think of this song as the companion to “Tin Man,” which is melodically softer but is a takedown of society’s views of manliness. It’s not an original idea that men who buy into stereotypes damage themselves, but VanSant thinks that that deep down they know it: Even the tin man was searching for a heart. “Rising Tide,” another tough song, explores her father’s exposure to Agent Orange and she’s not in a forgiving mood: They pour all this money down the hole in your side/All the money on Wall Street, these tears can’t dry/They’ve got plans for our pockets, cigarettes for our lungs/Poison for our babies and bullets for our guns.

 

VanSant is often labeled as a folk artist, but she’s also in a honkytonk band. You can hear some of her cowgirl chops on “Spilt Milk,” where she turns her critical eye onto herself for the times in which she should have seen she was letting love spill away but, I was too careless to know. There’s also a bit of country to “Something Real,” a reflection on the death of Jimmy LaFave (1955-2017). She didn’t know LaFave, though his impact resonates in lines such as Someone give me a song to sing that sounds like something real…. Mostly, VanSant recognizes that life offers no magic wand to make things as we want them to be. That’s the theme of a song whose title says it all, “Most of Our Dreams Don’t Come True.”

 

Circadian features well-written songs. One of VanSant’s smarter moves was to work with Mary Gauthier’s producer Neilson Hubbard (who is also a guest drummer on the album). Hubbard should offer seminars on how to fill spaces without drowning the artist in echoey soup that highlights the session players instead of the headliner. His is a case of less is more. VanSant’s voice may sound a tad too sweet at times, but to come full circle, listen carefully.   

 

Rob Weir

Dear Edward Affecting though not Deep

 

Dear Edward (2020)

By Anne Napolitano

Dial Press, 352 pages.

★★★

 

 

 

Dear Edward isn’t the most complex novel on the market, but its story is very affecting. Its namesake hero (of sorts) is Edward Adler, a 12-year-old boy who boards an airplane bound from Newark to Los Angeles with his parents, Bruce and Jane, and his older brother, 15-year-old Jordan, whom Edward admires.

 

The boys have been homeschooled by their father, who didn’t get tenure at Columbia, which means mom, a writer for the TV show Law and Order is the main breadwinner. They don’t really want to leave New York, but are West Coast bound because Jane has been offered a ridiculous amount of money to write for Hollywood. Alas, their plane crashes in Colorado and 191 people are killed; Edward is the only survivor and no one can quite figure out how that happened. At 12, he is bears two heavy burdens, the loss of his family and the tag “Miracle Boy.”

 

Napolitano’s organization is one of flip-flopping chapters in which she does in-flight observations through Edward’s eyes, followed by post-crash ones in which Edward tries to adjust to a new life with his aunt Lacey, age 39, and his uncle John Curtis, 42. They tried unsuccessfully to have children and are now raising Edward in a suburban New Jersey town. Needless to say, Edward has plenty of healing to do, both physically and psychologically. Food has lost its allure and he can’t sleep in the Curtis home and begins to do so next door, in a home populated by Besa, a single Latina mom, and her daughter Shay, who is quirky enough to become Edward’s only real friend.

 

Napolitano via Edward does a nice job of providing backstories of some of those who perished: slightly pudgy Linda, on her way to move in with the Mr. Right she’s finally found; Veronica, a beautiful flight attendant; egotistical bond trader Mark; Florida, a large and flamboyant Filipino woman who believes in past lives; the wealthy but unhealthy Crispin; wounded Army officer Benjamin, who is also gay; and others. They haunt Edward, as do memories of his parents and Jordan. Edward even wears Jordan’s oversized clothes, which doesn’t help him adjust to junior high school, where some of the kids think he’s a curiosity item, others a freak, and still others privileged, as they know the airline has put a million dollars in escrow for him. Shay, Besa, a plant-loving principal, an offbeat therapist, and the Curtises try to help Edward move from grief to healing.

 

A few years pass before Edward and Shay discover bags in the garage containing letters from friends and relatives of those who perished. As if Eddie needed one more thing to shoulder, these are full of requests to honor the memories of the lost by becoming what they would have had their lives not been cut short. So how does a teenaged boy become a photographer, a philosopher, a poet, a paramedic, a civil rights activist, travel to Alabama to hug a bedridden mother, and walk the Great Wall of China? With Shay’s help, Edward tries to decide which letters to answer and which are best left alone. Harder still, how does Edward decide who he is and what he wants to be? How does one get beyond being the Miracle Boy?

 

Dear Edward is heartbreaking, mostly in good ways, though Napolitano does sometimes trip over sentimentality. One might also accuse the author of being manipulative by making a 12-year-old the crash survivor. Would our emotions have been aroused the same way if Mark had survived? Likewise, as suggested, the novel’s structure is mechanistic. The airplane chapters are a time signature countdown, but since we know things don’t end well, the drama is removed and only the horror remains. Some readers might also find the book’s big revelation improbable and its resolution forced. Napolitano’s strength lies with character development, though, and it’s hard not to root for Edward. I’d put Dear Edward in the breezy read category. It’s just weighty enough that you need not feel guilty as you zoom through it. I would, however, recommend not reading it the next time you fly.a

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Deacon King Kong is Hysterical, Yet Sad

 

Deacon King Kong (2020)

By James McBride

Riverhead, 384 pages

★★★★

 

 

 

Deacon King Kong is a very funny yet dark novel that is certainly one of the year’s best thus far. It is set in Brooklyn during 1969, the year the Mets surprisingly won the World Series. That’s about the only thing New Yorkers could celebrate that year. New York in the late 1960s and into the late ‘70s was a version of Dante’s Inferno–a teeming cauldron of social problems ranging from garbage strikes and decaying ghettos to muggings and riots.

 

Not that the black, Latino, and Italian residents of the Five Ends of Brooklyn noticed. Its odd name derived from its natural boundaries plus a painting of Jesus painted on the back of a church that was once Italian and Catholic but became African American and Baptist. At some point, Jesus was repainted as a black man but whoever did it made a shambles of it. No matter, Five Ends is a close-knit community where folks roll with whatever life throws at them. It is populated by a colorful cast of characters–many of them originally from Possum Point, SC–with nicknames like Beanie, Dome, Stick, Lightbulb, Bun-Bum, Moon, and Elephant. Those handles are so prominent that only a few actually know that “Sportcoat” was born Cuffy Lambkin, or that “Sausage” is Thelonious Ellis and not even the motor vehicle office is aware of  that, because Sportcoat borrowed Sausage’s ID to get his license and he, in turn, used the name Ralph Odum to get his. If anyone knows, it’s Sister Gee, who is married to neighborhood pastor and is the mother hen of the Five Ends’ barnyard.

 

Everyone, it seems, has a racket, whether it’s as harmless as numbers running or as destructive as selling drugs. If you recall Spike Lee movies where folks sit on steps and chuck and jive, that’s Five Ends. There’s little they won’t lampoon, but they know what’s their business and what isn’t. Except for Sportcoat, who is a deacon of the church, though he has little idea what that means other than occasionally doing minor caretaking. He’s decidedly a few marbles short of a full bag, courtesy of “King Kong,” the name he and his friends give to the moonshine they consume. Outwardly, Sportcoat is a happy-go-lucky alcoholic, but he’s also grieving and stuck in time. He once coached and umped baseball, and he tells everyone he intends to revive the local team and steer Deems Clemens into the majors. Never mind that Deems is now a drug dealer, or that Sportcoat shot off part of his ear. Sportcoat doesn’t remember any of that, so he’s not about to go into hiding. After all, he has to help an elderly Italian woman with her garden, another of his odd jobs. (He can’t remember her name, so her calls her Miss Four Pie for the treats he feeds him.)

 

Five Ends is bred for drama and Deacon King Kong has a lot going on. An Irish cop who has returned to his old neighbor tries to warn Five Enders that things are changing in dangerous ways but he’s just old “Potts” Mullen to them, and it’s doubtful many know his first name is actually Harris. Those who give him a second thought notice he seems to be sweet on Sister Gee and nuts about external dangers. They’re right about the first, but wrong about the second; the old days in which Italian gangs smuggled hot goods are giving way to battling crime syndicates and the heroin trade.

 

Deacon King Kong is that rare book that’s both poignant and laugh-out-loud hysterical. There is, for instance, the free “Jesus cheese” that mysteriously shows up once a year at the church, a man known as the Haitian Sensation who might not be Haitian, and Soup Lopez who became a Muslim in jail, but still helps Pastor Gee. Sportcoat is such a colorful individual that we both wish him to be rescued but hope he never changes. His rambling speeches are a cross between the surrealism of George Carlin and a Richard Pryor rant. Another deft touch is that McBride shows us a neighborhood in transition that will probably also shed a lot of its interracial skin. In 1969, it’s still one in which Italians stick with their own but treat African Americans with respect, one in which an Irish cop can admit his attraction for a black woman, and one in which a middle-aged fence and bachelor wants to chuck crime to marry a plump Italian gal and help her run her bagel shop!

 

Deacon King Kong is ultimately about community building, intersecting lives, and colliding worldviews. There’s even a little mystery tale woven into McBride’s storytelling. It would be nice if Five Ends paralleled the Miracle Mets, but McBride is too savvy for saccharine resolutions. Instead, he gives us a slice in time that’s both sweet and bitter.   

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Small Towns: Chesterfield, MA

 

 

The Hampshire County town of Chesterfield, Massachusetts, is an old town that was settled in 1760. Western Mass folks apply the term “hilltown” for a place like Chesterfield that’s perched above the Connecticut River Valley. It also tends to designate a place where once hardscrabble farming took place before those with commonsense stopped shifting rocks and too their plows elsewhere. You’ll see old stone walls in the area from its days of raising Merino sheep, but there are only a handful of farms in Chesterfield now. Mostly its history is reflected in the number of handsome Federal-style buildings that dot what is called Main Road, though it’s really pretty much the road and you have to know where you’re going to wander down a side byway if you’re in any kind of hurry.  

 

 

 

Hurry doesn’t define Chesterfield. It’s one of those places into which people move because they want to slow the pace of life. It’s a pretty close-knit community that still has a town meeting form of government but, in winter, it can be a challenging commute to places such as Northampton (14 miles), Springfield (34 miles), or Hartford (59 miles). Your cellphone probably won’t work in town and the local general store might give you some WiFi connectivity. The only guarantee is inside the town library.

 

 

 

 

Chesterfield has 1,222 people, a historical peak, but it seems like fewer as they are spread across 31 square miles. There’s a post office in the town center and a historical district on western edge, though the latter–basically an old schoolhouse–is tucked amidst some down-market homes and an abandoned building insulated by piles of garbage. But, as in the case of most hilltowns, locals like each other’s company and visitors looking for some solitude can find a few places to stay. Plan on driving for food, though, as Chesterfield has no restaurants. 

 

 

 

Why would anyone from the outside wish to do that? First of all, it’s a pretty place in the center–almost like what people from far away think of when they conjure an old New England town. If you’re a hiker or just like driving around backroads, you can take in some very pleasant scenery. The main attraction, though is Chesterfield Gorge, a Trustees of Reservations property. Its where the glacier sliced through a notch in the rocks through which the Westfield River rushes. Only those with a death wish would try to paddle it. The picture is from the spring. As you can see from the final photograph, in the fall after a dry summer like that of 2020, you can fill your bathtub and it will be deeper than the Westfield, as seen here a few hundred yards from the Gorge.

 

 

 

In normal years, though, the river further downstream offers pretty good fishing. Anyone passing through the area in spring should definitely make a detour off of Route 9, grab some coffee at the general store, and take a peek at the Gorge. Linger in town if you’re weary.

 

Rob Weir

John Lewis: The Kind of Good Trouble We Need

John Lewis: Good Trouble (2020)

Directed by Dawn Parker

Aspen Films, 96 minutes, PG

★★★★

 

 

2020 has seen the passing of too many good people. Among them is Congressman John Lewis, who died of pancreatic cancer in July, two months before a documentary about his public life was released. John Lewis: Good Trouble tells of his courageous battles against racism and injustice over the course of his life. As one of the tags to the film sums it: thousands of protests, 45 arrests, and 33 years in Congress.

 

Lewis was the last remaining speaker from the 1963 March on Washington, an event best recalled for the Rev. Martin Luther King, Junior’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” King’s voice was silenced by an assassin in 1968, but that of John Lewis remained steady and strong over the next 52 years. The documentary takes its title from a famed Lewis aphorism, “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” Director Dawn Parker presents a portrait of a man who found his calling in the civil rights movement when he was barely in his 20s. When the Freedom Riders sought volunteers, Lewis was there. When it was time to put bodies on the line to cross the Pettis Bridge into Selma, Alabama, Lewis was present. He was part of CORE, chaired SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) for four years, took part in voter registration drives, shepherded community organizing projects, and when SNCC fell under the decidedly violent sway of Stokely Carmichael, moved away from it and toward politics. In 1986, he challenged his friend Julian Bond in the primary, defeated him, and was elected to the House of Representatives. In his 17 terms, Lewis never got less than 69% of the vote in Georgia’s 5^th District.

 

John Lewis was battle-tested, which partially explains why he seemed to have a perpetual scowl on his face. One of the joys of Parker’s documentary is that we see Lewis with his metaphorical hair down. (He went bald early on.) His serious demeanor also came from the fact that he once dreamed of being a preacher and delivered sermons to the chickens on his parents’ Troy, Alabama, farm. As we learn from the film, Lewis retained a fondness for chickens for his entire life–including collecting silly chicken figurines that clashed with the magnificent art in his elegant Atlanta home. Lewis always smiled when talking about chickens. This, and the warmth he exuded when encountering supporters, were seldom-seen sides of the late Congressman.

 

His serious public countenance was linked to a core belief: “Freedom isn’t a state; it’s an act.” Lewis believed in non-violence, was an optimist, and loved his nation, but he seldom hesitated to call out racists and enemies of freedom. He explained his vote to impeach Donald Trump with these words: “When you see something that’s not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something, do something.” Those words defined both Lewis’ civil rights activism and his purpose for being in Congress.

 

Like most documentaries, there are numerous talking heads, some of whom are impressive and articulate, and some of whom are less so. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is among the well-spoken, as are Corey Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Clinton, and Representative Ilhan Omar. Surprisingly, Omar comes across as more sincere than Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Stacey Abrams, or Hillary Clinton, the latter three of whom clearly admired Lewis, though their remarks seemed more scripted.

 

Another small flaw is that the documentary often drifts toward hagiography. It is so tied to Lewis the activist and politician, that at times it feels like John Lewis’ greatest hits. Porter dug up some great archival footage, but we don’t get much of a sense of Lewis’ private life. Porter glossed Lewis’ decision to take on Julian Bond and his use of a dirty trick to do so. Bond was gracious in defeat, but confessed a rift in their relationship, which Porter mentions and drops. We also learn very little about Lewis’ marriage, other than his deep sorrow at Lillian’s passing in 2012. His musician son, John-Miles, doesn’t get much attention either.

 

Decisions must be made when making a biography that gives the sweep of a person’s life, hence I’m inclined to overlook the lacunae in Good Trouble. My takeaway is that Congressman Lewis was that rarest of birds in American politics: a man of conscience. Need I say that we live in a post-truth society? Or that in the age of robber baron narcissism we need more public servants driven by morality?

 

Rob Weir    

 

 

First Cow is a Dry Heifer

First Cow (2020)

Directed by Kelly Reichardt

A24, 121 minutes, PG-13

★★

 

 I planned to see First Cow back in March, but COVID-19 closed the theatre before I had a chance to do so. Now I can officially say at least one good thing has come out of the virus. I didn’t spend $10 to see it.

 

Director Kelly Reichardt is known for both her deliberate pacing and her love of the West. Four previous films are, like First Cow, set in Oregon: Old Joy (2006), Wendy and Lucy (2008), Meek’s Cutoff (2010), and Night Moves (2013). At her best, Reichardt gives us small slices of Americana that focus on the kind of ordinary people that Hollywood generally ignores. Her Certain Women, set in Montana, was one of my favorite films of 2016. But Reinhardt seriously misfires with First Cow, a film so slow you’re tempted to check if you have a pulse.

 

The setting is the Oregon Territory of the 1820s. That’s not the official U.S. region organized in 1848, rather a sprawling region stretching throughout the Northwest that encompassed parts of four eventual states, most of modern-day British Columbia, and parts of southern Alaska. At this point in history, the United States, Britain, and Russia all laid claim to the area, none of whom gave a hoot about indigenous peoples already on the land. Non-natives entered a place more akin to the Wild West than that mythical land ever was. Reichardt and cinematographer Chris Blauvet do a superb job of making us see how travelers, settlers, and fortune-seekers could get swallowed up in its very vastness. To the degree that Euro-American style civil authority existed at all, it was in scattered “forts” such as Fort Tillicum (present-day Washington State), which is where our two principals end up.

 

They are Otis “Cookie” Figowitz (John Magaro), the cook for a band of fur trappers, and King-Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese man on the lam for killing a Russian, whom Otis feeds on the sly. Otis cashes out and sets off for Fort Tillicum, where he again encounters Lu, who has a cabin nearby into which Otis moves. Fort Tillicum is not for the faint of heart. It is a muddy cesspit with a hard-drinking bar, a small native encampment, and whites living in ramshackle cabins and makeshift tents. The only substantial home in the fort belongs to the Chief Factor (agent) and life there is so rudimentary that the big excitement is the arrival of the namesake first cow. (Its partner died on the trip to Oregon.) Otis and Lu pass their days daydreaming of heading off to San Francisco to open a hotel or bakery, but they don’t have the wherewithal to get there.

 

When they observe the cow being milked by a lad named Lloyd (Ewen Bremner), Lu hits upon the idea of sneaking in at night to help themselves to the cow’s bounty. With the pilfered milk, Otis reverts back to being Cookie and his oily cakes, biscuits, and fritters are soon in high demand. See Otis bake. See Lu sell. See a key character have his cake taken by another. Not exactly what one would call heart-stopping action.

 

Just a few more batches, and it’s California here we come. That small detail is one of the biggest clichés in film. Therein lies a second major problem in the film. Foreshadowing is a time-honored device but in First Cow, the film’s ending is predestined by the modern find that opens the film and all that can possibly be revealed is how it happened. Once the cow’s owner is identified half way through, we know how and why as well. The only thing left is dotting the i’s.

 

First Cow also wastes some of its talent. Gary Farmer is a well-known Native-American actor, but he’s practically silent in this film. The Chief Factor is veteran British character actor Toby Jones, and his role is little more than that of Chief Egoist. You know anyone billed simply as “Chief Factor’s wife” won’t have much to do, and it’s a crying shame to subordinate the sublime Lily Gladstone (Blackfoot/Nez Perce). To add a note of solemnity, First Cow was one of the final projects for the late Réne Auberjohn (Deep Space Nine’s Odo) and it’s a mere cameo.

 

Metaphorically speaking, Kelly Reichardt painted herself into a corner with a poorly storyboarded tale. There is something to be said for making slow-paced slice-of-life films, but when anything remotely dramatic is taken from viewers, all that’s left is boredom.

 

Rob Weir