Barry Moser the Gold Standard of Illustration and Printmaking

Barry Moser

Design and Build: The Art of the Book

Hampshire College Art Gallery

Through September 30, 2016.

Illustrators often bring out the snobbery in art critics. Much of the time when you read the words, "competent draftsman" or "skilled illustrator," it really means, "But of course, it's not real art."

I hope you are not one of those misguided souls, but if you are, allow me to suggest Barry Moser as the antidote to your malady. More specifically, get thee to Hampshire College to sample the sublime Moser wood blocks, posters, illustrations and prints currently on display. Anyone who can gaze upon these with anything less than respect and awe is more Philistine than critic. Drawn from its permanent collection, Design and Build inspires, delights and, yes, illustrates the many splendors of Barry Moser (1940-). The Tennessee-born Moser came into his own in Western Massachusetts during the 1960s, first as a teacher/artist-in-residence at the Williston-Northampton School, and later at Smith College, where he is now based in his semi-retirement and is rightfully lionized as one of the nation's finest artists. Don't be swayed by anyone who denigrates draftsmanship or illustration; Moser's work has found its way into such august collections as those of the Met in New York, the Library of Congress, the Vatican Library, and the British Museum. His design for the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible led the National Gallery in Washington, DC to bestow upon him a singular honor: he is the only living artist to whom it has devoted a solo show. Moser has also won a National Book Award for his illustrations for an edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, though I much prefer the way in which he conceptualized Herman Melville's Moby Dick. (Confession: Moby Dick is on my list of most overrated novels of all time, though Moser's illustrations infuse life into parched sections of the novel in which Melville chronicles whale processing.)   

The Hampshire College show captures Moser's many moods: his investigations of faith, his   To my eye, his block prints invoke what I call nouveau medievalism and, if one overlooks monetary value, I'd prefer owning a Moser print to most Renaissance masters. I especially marvel over how much emotion Moser conveys in heavily inked shapes, cross-hatching, and meticulously rendered detail. Though it's personal taste to be sure, I like Moser's black and white works more than those in color.

whimsical side, his penchant of playing the trickster, his self-deprecating humor, and his love of spinning fantasy.

This fine overview of a half century of Moser's work reinforces the old saw that a picture is worth a thousand words, but it also forces us to reconceptualize it. The old adage suggests that printed word and image are at odds with one another; Barry Moser's prints enhance how we respond to text. It's as if he takes our half-formed imagination and renders it in full detail. If that's not art, the word is without meaning. –Rob Weir

PS: Apologies for the reflection on these images. One downside of the Hampshire show is that it is poorly lighted. The spot track lighting of the gallery simply needs to be redone as it flatters almost nothing everything displayed in this space (lower level of the colelge library). 

Room: A Small, Brilliant and Terrifying Film

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ROOM (2015)

Directed by Lenny Abrahamson

A24, 118 minutes, R [Sexual situations, violence]

* * *

Brie Larson won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Joy Newsome in this film. One can debate whether it was the best female performance of 2015, but Ms. Larson was certainly deserving of being honored. Most of you will probably need to see this film as I did: on DVD. Its theme is so harrowing that it pulled in a paltry $18 million at the North American box office. But see it you should.

Room is based on the eponymous novel of Emma Donoghue, who also penned the screenplay. It’s fiction, but it resonates with enough verisimilitude to explain why it didn’t generate an audience as big as its critical acclaim. It tells the story of a woman (Larson) who was abducted when she was 17 and imprisoned in a locked shed by a man she knows only as Old Nick (Sean Bridger). We meet her when she is 24 and is both Old Nick’s sex slave and the mother of five-year Jack (Jacob Tremblay). Jack knows nothing of the world; insofar as he knows, “Room” is the entire universe and “Ma” and Old Nick the only inhabitants. All of the stuff he sees on the snowy TV in Room is just “make-believe,” a story Joy tells him to help him cope and be happy. She also breast-feeds him, a way to reinforce intimacy as well as preventing another pregnancy. Room is Jack’s world and he is Joy’s. When sheer boredom and a perceived threat to Jack’s safety ensues, Joy enlists Jack’s aid in hatching an escape plan—no easy task as it involves undoing his socialization and deconstructing his worldview.

Think upon this. What would it mean to a five-year-old raised in a single room with one skylight to learn that there was an entire universe beyond the walls? Jack is, in essence, a feral child, so how would he adjust to having grandparents and neighbors? How would he make friends? What about Joy, who entered Room as a high school student? How would she cope with freedom? With the reality that her parents (Joan Allen and William H. Macy) had split and mom was now romantically linked to a former family friend (Tom McCanus)? One of the biggest challenges–adeptly handled in the film–is that Joy is also instant fodder for the mass media’s sensationalist lust. How can she psychologically cope with a gotcha question of why she didn’t ask her abductor to anonymously drop off her infant son at a hospital so he could grow up normally? That’s cruel and unfair, but do the inquisitors care?

This film begs the question of whether an amoral world is, in many ways, just as much a prison as Room. So yes, this is a tough film, but it’s also a superb one. It manages to be terrifying without being graphic and harrowing more through silences than histrionics. Kudos to Abrahamson for his appreciation of the principle of less is more. One can only imagine what a hash HBO would have made of this smart Canadian-Irish production. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised that the Academy honored a performance as nuanced as Ms. Larson’s. Rob Weir

All Star MLB Predictions Update

All Star Check-In:

Smudge on the Crystal Ball

How's Round-ball Nostradamus doing at mid season? Like most baseball analysts, my track record is a mixed bag. That's because, despite what the Stat Heads try to tell you, baseball has too many variables to allow for absolute certainty. Every year those of us who love the game end up with egg as a fashion accessory. But, thus far, I'm not doing too badly.

I'm 100% on the money re: the National League Central and close on all the rest, except the American League East, which I declared a toss up, and the AL Central, though I did pick the Indians as my dark horse. The Blue Jays were my pick in the AL East and they are coming on strong and the Orioles are fading.

Biggest Screw-ups: I really thought the Twins and the Diamondbacks would be much better. The Twins have been absolutely putrid–so bad, in fact, that one must contemplate whether their passel of young 'can't miss' players might be busts. The D-Backs spent a lot of money to assemble a win-now team, but are so lost in Roadrunner's dust that the only logical course is to fire the entire management team and hold a fire sale. Right now I would appear to be wrong about the White Sox, who are currently hovering near 2^nd in the AL Central. But I still maintain they are overrated and point out that they are just two games over .500.

Just as Bad as I Predicted: The Rays are a lost cause and my mantra remains: "Sell this AAA team to a MLB city." The A's prove that Billy Beane's sabermetrics are as worthless as his pitching staff. The Reds blew up their team, as did the Brewers, so there wasn't much hope there from the start. (Okay, I'll raise the issue: Does faded Cincinnati still warrant a MLB franchise?) The Padres are simply a mess I don't see getting better for some time. We also knew the Braves and Phillies were rebuilding, but the Phils are exactly as predicted: a team that loses more than it wins, but is really fun to watch–as in "watch out" in 2-3 years.

Things to Watch in the Second Half:

1. The Cubs have come back to earth and–as yours truly said–if you live by young talent, you can also die by it. Since the end of May, the Cubs haven't even been a good team, let alone a World Series favorite. I'm standing by my remark that the Cubbies will be hibernating long before the Fall Classic begins.

2. The injury bug has returned the to Mets young staff and this doesn't bode well, as the Mets remain offensively challenged. I look for the Marlins to overtake them in the standings and for the Nationals to win the NL East.

3. It probably doesn't matter who comes out of the NL Central and East, because the Giants and Dodgers are the best teams in the NL. I still think the Giants will win the World Series. The Dodgers are actually a flawed "team," but their pitching will make them dangerous in the postseason. Clayton Kershaw, if he remains healthy, is the hands-down Cy Young winner and, perhaps, MVP as well. 

4. I said the Red Sox would be better and they have been, but I doubt they are good enough. Their pitching is pretty bad, actually and, at present, the David Price contract looks like Rusney Castillo Part Two. Look for Steve Wright to return to earth around September 1; knuckleballers need summer air for their pitches to flutter. The Sox must get pitching help to go very far and they will have to overpay to get it. The days of GM hoarding young studs and offloading duds is over.

5. The Yankees have been worse than mediocre; they've become boring! So much to be done, but first: get prospects for Beltran and try your best to get someone to nibble on McCann, Ellsbury, and Sabathia. McCann should definitely be moved—catchers seldom stay in their prime beyond 4 years and he's well past his better days. Either trade or resign Chapman. I'd trade him, but not for middling prospects. If the Cubs want him—and they do–the price is Kyle Schwarber; take it or leave it, because if you leave it, the Cardinals and Pirates both have higher-ranked farm systems. Dump Pineda for any pitching prospect whose pitches travel under 400 feet. Teixeira would normally be a trade prospect too, but his bad knee makes that unlikely. There are very few untouchables on this team: Tanaka, Gregorius, Castro, Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, Jorge Mateo…. The A-Rod Problem: Ultimatum time. Here's the deal: A buy-out if he announces he's done at season's end, then a final swing through the AL with requisite ceremonies. Otherwise, release him and he'll finish his career elsewhere on Yankee bucks, but sans the acclaim he so dearly desires.

6. The Tigers may be facing many of the same decisions as the Yanks. It's simply hard to imagine this team as good enough, especially with the crippling loss of J D Martinez. Should they limp into the postseason and pray for a miracle, or sell ageing assets (Verlander, Maybin, Victor Martinez, Kinsler) while they still have value? If it's my team, I sell. 

7. Believe it or not, the Angels are more of a mess still. Their farm system is the worst in MLB and an already horrible pitching staff just lost C J Wilson for the year. Tim Lincecum isn't anyone's answer with an ERA north of 7.50. Mike Trout is having another monster year–­so much so that SABR manlove/numbers-crunchers have already proclaimed him MVP. I say he's not an MVP for the simple reason that he's not very valuable on this roster. The Angels could finish 4^th or last without him and should consider trading him for the gadzillion prospects he'd bring. Unless they rebuild radically, the future looks more hellish than heavenly for this team.

8. Was the Royals championship a fluke? Let's just say I'm not predicting another in the foreseeable future.

9. Like I said above, I like the Giants to win the World Series, though it sure would be neat if the Indians did so. If not the Giants my favorites are (in order): the Pirates, the Rangers, the Jays, or the Dodgers. Darkhorse? The Indians, of course. The would-need-to-get-lucky possibilities are (in order): Nationals, Red Sox, Astros, Marlins, Tigers, Royals, Mets.

Magruder's Curisoity Cabinet a Worthy Coney Island Novel

MAGRUDER’S CURIOSITY CABINET (2016)

H.P. Wood

Sourcebooks Landmark, 368 pp.

* * *

I’m fascinated by novels about Coney Island. I can’t explain why, though I’m hardly alone in my obsession; H. P. Wood’s debut novel is the third in the past three years to tackle Brooklyn’s den of pleasure, thrills, and iniquity. A short list of superb novels about Coney Island includes: Kevin Baker, Dreamland (1999); Sarah Hall, The Electric Michelangelo (2004); Alice Hoffman, The Museum of Extraordinary Things (2014); and Leslie Parry, Church of Marvels (2015). I jumped at the chance provided by NetGalley to preview Wood’s entrée into the Coney Island oeuvre and was glad I did. Objectively speaking, Ms. Wood’s novel isn’t of the quality of any of the aforementioned and, it must be said, Magruder’s, her central setting, is highly derivative of Hoffman’s Museum of Extraordinary Things. But Wood spins a wonderful tale, which she tells with a deft mix of period values and modern sensibilities, as befits the imagined history around which the action takes place.

If I had to hazard a guess as to why Coney Island is so seductive, I’d say it’s because it’s long been a liminal zone between tawdriness and over-civilization. Drifters, grifters, and desperadoes once populated Norton’s Point--now the hoity-toity gated community of Sea Gate--and few from the carriage trade came to Coney until the 1840s. That launched the era of grand hotels, which was soon challenged by amusement parks that catered to a heterosocial set. Wood sets her novel in 1904, the year Dreamland opened to compete with Steeplechase (1897) and Luna (1903) parks. Amusement parks and hot competition threw a spanner into hopes of taming Coney Island, which became a veritable stationary carnival filled with mechanical wonders, breathtaking rides, sideshow acts, con artists, and show-biz types far removed from the legitimate stage. The glitzy parks and their high-powered barkers also spelled trouble for longtime down-market attractions such as Magruder’s, which were their day’s version of Ripley’s museums: a few marvels, some anthropological oddities, and lots of things that seemed to be too weird to be true and weren’t!

The novel pivots around Kitty Hayward, a young English woman who became separated from her mother, after their boat was quarantined. She is naïve, alone, hungry, and homeless, but receives assistance from an unlikely source: Archie, an ageing huckster who feeds her and takes her to Magruder’s after she inadvertently helps him pull a grift. There Kitty enters the world of the “Unusuals,” the name the assorted “freak show” acts assume for themselves. The cast at Magruder’s includes Zeph, a tart-tongued legless black man who zips around in a special cart designed by Doc Timur, the mad genius behind Magruder’s; Enzo, whose face is badly burned on one side; Rosalind, a transvestite man who identifies as a woman and has the hots for Enzo; and P-Ray, a seemingly mute Turkish boy who collects fleas for the Cabinet circus. Soon their little gang will be joined by two unlikely compatriots: Spencer, an arrogant rich boy fascinated by the automaton at Magruder’s, and his date, Nazan, a beautiful upper-class woman of Turkish extraction. All will spend quite a bit of time together when all of Coney Island is quarantined due to a deadly outbreak of “The Cough,” a strain of bubonic/pneumonic plague. That last part is purely imagined, though had Wood set her book in 1918-19, the influenza epidemic induced similar hysteria.

The novel plays out like a cross between Escape from New York, Day of the Locust, and Station Eleven-a mix of panic, impending apocalypse, and the will to survive. Wood keeps our interest throughout her ahistorical plot because she builds such memorable characters that we want them to preserve even when we find the externals implausible. This is especially true of Zeph; were this a play, we’d say he stole the show. It also helps that Wood introduces splashes of Keystone Kops-like humor. There’s even some romance, but probably not the kind you expected.

If you don’t share my love of Coney Island novels and think you can only stomach one, it should be Hoffman’s magisterial Museum of Ordinary Things, or Hall’s gritty The Electric Michelangelo. But I say there’s always a place for another good book on just about anything and Magruder’s Curiosity Cabinet is like the rides of Coney Island—a cheap thrill in which you’ll be glad to have indulged. --Rob Weir

Josienne Clarke Scores Again on Nothing Can Bring Back the Hour

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JOSIENNE CLARKE and BEN WALKER

Nothing Can Bring Back the Hour (2014/download only in USA)

Folkroom Records

* * * *

You've heard me say it before, but I'll repeat it: Josienne Clarke is the next Sandy Denny. She and her guitar sidekick Ben Walker have won all manner of awards in Britain after their stunning 2013 release Fire and Fortune and that's as it should be. It also means that some serious cash was thrown into the follow-up, Nothing Can Bring Back the Hour. That's mostly a good thing, but sometimes the extra production gets in the way of the two things we want to hear most: Ms. Clarke's voice and Mr. Walker's accomplished acoustic guitar. The newest record is filled with cello, viola, fiddle, sax, flute, oboe, piano, trumpet, French horn and double bass, yet somehow the tracks that linger most are the simplest ones.

Clarke stretches her repertoire on this album on material that sounds time-tested, yet only three of the thirteen tracks are traditional, and Clarke penned the rest. Let's just add songwriting to her list of talents, shall we? The album opens with the elegant "Silverline," which has the lilt of a ballad from the Romantic Age and a passel of strings to enhance that feel. Clarke shows off a soprano voice that has clarity few can match. (Judy Collins comes to mind). Then she deftly cuts to the aptly named "A Simple Refrain," that is mostly her voice, Walker's backing falsetto, and his tasteful riffs. Then it's "I Would Not Be a Rose," that will start the Sandy Denny debates anew. It's also a Clarke original, though you'll swear it's drawn from a traditional well. And so it goes for another ten glorious tracks. As noted, Clarke does break out of the folk goddess mold from time to time. She gets a tad jazzy on "I Never Learned French," tosses in a bit of Americana giddy up on "Moving Speeches," and is downright torchy on "Water to Wine." But what she does best is use that supple voice of hers to make us weep, weep, weep. Check out the drop-dead gorgeousness of the melody of "The Tangled Tree." And then there are those three trads—"I Wonder What's Keeping My True Love Tonight," "Queen of Hearts," and "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme." The first of these was covered by Kate Rusby and it's not a patch on what Clarke has done with it—Clarke's that good! Clarke and Walker go Renaissance court music on "Queen of Hearts," complete with recorder interludes. "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme" is an old song also known as "Spring of Thyme" and refers to a warning to maidens to protect their virginity. Among the many who have sung this are Anne Briggs, actress Carey Mulligan, and Jacqui McShee, but few have done so with Clarke's innocence or her ability to convey enormous power and fragility in the same breath.

The only thing that prevents me from declaring Nothing Can Bring Back the Hour a masterpiece is my sense that, like just about every artist who has gone this route, at some point in the future Clarke and Walker are likely to see it as overdone in places. (I'd concur on "Mainland" and "Earth and Ash and Dust.") Put another way, you don't need a beer chaser if someone hands you a perfect single-malt. Do I gush over Josienne Clarke? Guilty as charged. Take a listen and join me on the crying stool.

Rob Weir

Lucy Barton is More Lightweight than Englightening

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MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON (2016)

By Elizabeth Strout

Random House, 208 pp.

* *

 

In her review for the New York Times Claire Messud asserted that wasn't "a scintilla of sentimentality" in Elizabeth Strout's latest. She's right—it's not a scintilla (speck); it's a boulder. I suppose we can say that its namesake protagonist finds something of herself by the novel's end, but the passive Lucy Barton is no Olive Kitteridge. Lucy Barton has been hyped to the skies, but my reading of it is that it's manipulative and lightweight. If you want me to believe that Lucy is any sort of role model for women, you'd better give that character better nicknames than "Wizzle" and "Button" and a life that doesn't live down to those handles.

At its best it is a book about tough love, the meaning of "home," and the search for self. We first meet Lucy in a New York City hospital bed during the 1980s—gravely ill from an unnamed infection. She yearns for her young daughters, who are kept at bay, and for affection from her cold fish husband who is "too busy" to visit her in the hospital. Instead she gets her mother, whom she hasn't seen for years and who flies to New York from the family home near Amgash, Illinois, to spend five days at Lucy' bedside. Their conversations take up the bulk of the book and, in dribbles punctuated by gossip about people Lucy barely recalls, we get flashbacks about Lucy's childhood before she fled Illinois for college and a writer's life in Manhattan. The conversations are, on the surface, mostly banal, but I got the point. They reminded me of strained chit-chat I used to have with my own parents after I moved away–complete with feigning interest in the lives of people whose names I didn't actually remember at all. So far, so good. But as we unveil the meatier dribbles and they reveal a childhood marred by poverty of the abusive variety, one begins to wonder why Lucy's mother is there in the first place. Is this some twisted attempt at atonement? Delayed parenting? Are we being set up to muse upon the question of whether biology is destiny? If so, good luck determining whether Lucy is an apple from the tree, or a hybrid graft that blossomed elsewhere.

I suspect the book is really about home–is it where you were raised, or where you put down roots? Is it about what makes you feel connected, or what brings you meaning? Is it the antidote for loneliness? Or is it something you find within, not on a map? Once Lucy leaves the hospital, the next four decades elide in the novel in a Whitman's Sampler of things that shape (reshape?) Lucy. I liked Lucy much better toward the end, but I found Strout's elision unconvincing and thin. Several flawed mentors appear—Jeremy in the 1980s and writer Sara Payne at other junctures–but it's ambiguous what Lucy takes from either aside from a few aphorisms. Nor did Strout offer enough to convince me that Lucy was a person who made things happen rather than one who just learned to roll with life's punches. I found Lucy cloyingly passive in the first part of the book, annoyingly so on too many levels later in life, yet inexplicably resilient in other ways. As much as I wanted to feel sympathy for the bad hands she was dealt, too many of the lessons Lucy draws felt like solipsism rather that self-discovery.

 I generally deplore the label "chick-lit," but I haven't felt this much gender manipulation since I reached the midpoint of Eat Pay Love, hurled it across the room, and never opened it again. Okay—maybe there's a mother-daughter thing going on in Lucy Barton that I just don't get, but before you call out the feminist hounds, ask yourself how you'd react to a father-son book written in such a frilly way. I loved Strout's Olive Kitteridge because Olive was everything Lucy Barton isn't: outwardly smart, assertive, self-contained, and principled. She's cranky, but she also has a moral center that didn't revolve around herself. Lucy Barton? Well—at least her story was short enough that I actually finished it.     Rob Weir

Midnight Plan of the Repo Man a Delicious Read

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THE MIDNIGHT PLAN OF THE REPO MAN (2014)

W. Bruce Cameron

Forge Books, 334 pages

* * * *

I’ve wanted to read this novel for quite a while, but the library wait list was so long I simply bought a copy. Now I understand why the demand is so high. The Midnight Plan isn’t exactly path-breaking literature, but it sure is a satisfying read. It is, at turns, social commentary, a ghost story, a murder mystery, a romance, and a black comedy. It’s also surprisingly well plotted (even when implausible) for a writer hitherto known mainly as a humor writer specializing in dog/human connections and disconnections.

The book’s protagonist is Ruddy McCann, a former college football superstar destined for an NFL career. That dream disintegrated in a single bad night in which circumstance, poor judgment, and bad luck aligned in a perfect storm. Now he’s 30, single, and living in the backwater town of Kalkaska, Michigan, in an unkempt bachelor pad he shares with an elderly dog named Jake. The bright lights of the NFL have given way to late nights: Ruddy is a repo man for a local collector/small-time operator, and doubles as a bouncer and co-manager at his sister Becky's not-very-successful bar and club. Shall we say that neither job is anyone’s idea of the fast track? Ruddy has become, simultaneously, an object of pity and a big fish in a small pond that includes characters such as malaprop-prone Kermit; hunky, dumb-as-a-brick and naïve-as-a-kitten Jimmy; and the lovely Katie, who may or may not be interested in Ruddy.

As we learn, Ruddy’s repo work—mostly cars in auto-crazed/cash-poor/post-industrial Michigan—is a combination of dullness, danger, tact, daring, and sleaziness. It’s fueled by adrenaline and caffeine and it's so stressful that it has its own associated malady: “Repo Madness,” a variety of slow nervous breakdown marked by squirrely behavior, insularity, and under-the-breath muttering. Ruddy is pretty sure he has it when a voice appears in his head and claims to be that of Alan Lottner, a dead realtor who has no idea how he has come to be inside Ruddy’s body.  Alan becomes a combination mentor, superego, nag, and major inconvenience, but somebody needs to help Ruddy think beyond his next repo job. And, as it turns out, Alan needs Ruddy’s help as well––he’s pretty sure he was murdered, but by whom and why? There’s your murder mystery connection, and Cameron spins a dizzy little swirl that involves swindle, infidelity, real estate, and small-town graft. 

Of course, none of Cameron’s tale is pure fantasy. This book isn’t intended to be anything other than what it purports to be: a frothy read. Cameron concocts memorable characters about whom we care, even though we know that their circumstances are implausible and the action set-ups equally improbable. People do really dumb stuff in this book, but we appreciate it, because we harbor gnawing suspicions that our own foibles are only a few degrees separated from theirs.  Ruddy thinks he does his best repo work after midnight, though we quickly discover that’s part of the self-deception he needs to jettison. But then there’s Ruddy’s Alan Lottner alter ego to remind us that we’re often not the best judges of our own strengths and weaknesses. Credit Cameron for making us laugh at all of this.

I ripped through this book like it was a package of opened Oreos sitting beside a glass of milk. Add this one to your summer-read list. Take it to the beach, curl up on your beach chair like lazy old Jake, and gobble it.  Rob Weir