Rainbows and Dust

Arthur Rothstein, Texas, 1936

Tonight I decided I didn't need to finish yet another so-so book. What sealed the decision was, of all things, a TV show—a rebroadcast of part 1 of Ken Burns's magisterial documentary The Dust Bowl, of which I'd previously seen most of part 2 when it aired in January. Riveted by the unstoppable tragedy, the dignity of its aged witnesses, the clear-eyed storytelling, with its sense of historical sweep and human consequence, I realized I was no longer interested in the rather inconsequential, padded, and self-involved contemporary memoir I was reading by Frank Bruni, a writer I otherwise admire. 

I expected Bruni to be a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize earlier this month, if not a winner (he was neither . . . this year) for his great New York Times columns in which, among other things, he determinedly hammers away on same-sex marriage and other gay issues. I loved his essay about his father's evolving acceptance of having a gay son:

"In the years before Mom died, I had my first long-term relationship, and I could tell that seeing me coupled, just like my brothers and my sister were, gave [my father] a new, less abstract way to understand me. I just wanted what they wanted. Someone special. 

"He welcomed the man I was with effusively. Took the two of us out to eat.

"Then Mom was gone, and all the parenting fell to Dad. He tapped reserves I’d never imagined in him. When I broke up with the man he’d been so effusive toward, he must have told me six times how sorry he was about that. It was a message—that he was rooting for my happiness, no matter how that happiness came to me."

But Bruni's memoir, Born Round, about his lifelong battles with weight and eating, doesn't have the feel of consequence that that single column has. So, thanks to The Dust Bowl, I'm not going to finish it.

Even the last book I read—courtesy of my old pal the Total Femme—felt more substantial than Bruni's: The Other Side of the Rainbow: With Judy Garland on the Dawn Patrol, an out-of-print sleeper by the surprisingly not bad writer Mel Tormé. The book—about the making, and unmaking, of Judy Garland's one-season-long TV show, which Tormé worked on—illustrates the frustratingly sad fate of an out-of-control addict with mammoth gifts who has not a single person in her life really looking out for her (including Mr. Mel Tormé).

I've been on a bit of a Judy Garland kick of late (which perhaps the Total Femme intuited), having seen the fabulous Broadway show End of the Rainbow last year as well as, more recently, Garland's underrated final film, I Could Go on Singing, in which she plays, wittingly or not, a spot-on version of herself in the last, frayed years of her downward spiral.

What all of this rambling adds up to is this: We all deserve to have someone looking out for us, whether a loving parent, the government, a colleague, or a perceptive friend.

All in the Eyes

D. gave me the book The World of Downton Abbey for my birthday in September—which might be funny (see how the literarily mighty have fallen!) if it weren't for the fact that I've never been anywhere near as "literary" as people seem to think I am. (Example: At lunch the other day, a former colleague was telling me about her book group and how much she loved Democracy, the 1880 Washington novel by Henry Adams. "Have you read it?" No. "Oh, I really think you'd love it." Hmm, maybe. But what evidence have I given you that makes you think so? I'm not really drawn to Washington or political fiction, and I read mostly contemporary literature, albeit sometimes set in the past. By the way, did I like the much-lauded movie Lincoln? No, I thought it an endless, wonkish bore, as did D. Perhaps the subject of the future, contrarian post.)

Back to The World of Downton Abbey. The fact that I've read it might also be funny if it weren't such an interesting, gorgeously designed, and skillfully researched and written book (by Jessica Fellowes, niece of the show's creator, Julian Fellowes), about the history and sociology of the era and class divisions as much as about the show itself. Oh, and a book that happens to be about a TV series I'm so addicted to that I've seen most episodes at least three times.

For Christmas I received the book's sequel, The Chronicles of Downton Abbey, which is mostly tied into the third season (the first book covered the first two). It looks equally yummy, but I haven't explored much beyond the photos yet because I'm nervous that it might give too much away. (I already inadvertently heard two spoilers when I was in London in November, where the season had finished its run.)

One of the first book's insights pertains to one of my favorite characters, O'Brien—the lady's maid who is as loathsome as a badly overripe and discolored cheese, yet (in the third season) an increasingly, and strangely, sympathetic character, even as she plots revenge against her former ally, the footman-turned-valet Thomas. We're seeing more of her fear now as well as her sadness. She's becoming, for the first time within her downstairs world, a victim.

Siobhan Finneran and Rob James-Collier ( Carnival Film & Television Limited 2011 for Masterpiece)

"O'Brien moves almost seamlessly between floors; she is very good at her job, proud to be so, and her ease amongst both servants and family is a measure of this. Of all the servants, O'Brien is probably the best actor, showing only the face she wants her colleagues or her employer to see. Lady Grantham, after all, believes they are friends."

As for the actress who plays O'Brien, Siobhan Finneran, I agree with a comment in the same book by Rob James-Collier, who plays Thomas: "Siobhan is a fantastic actress to work with—you really learn from her. She's very measured and it's all in the eyes. In rehearsal you think there's nothing going on and then you see it on screen and you think 'wow—everything's happening.' "

A similar thing occurs when you watch an episode for the first time . . . and then for the third.

Laughter and Silence

Judy Dench as Ophelia, 1957 (Jimmy Sime/Getty Images)

If there's one path not taken that I'd choose if I had the chance, it would be to be involved in theater. I participated in a small way when I was a kid (and very briefly in college), and these days I've been lucky to see a few notable plays a year, but I think I would have enjoyed a career working in theater in some capacity. It seems to have a real sense of community that I sometimes find myself envious of.

This feeling arose again as I read Judi Dench's And Furthermore, which I finished tonight. It's not an autobiography (a point she underscores herself), more a collection of reminiscences and anecdote from her life as an actress. In fact, I read in the New York Times that it was assembled from transcripts of conversations with a friend and biographer, and that's exactly what it seems like: Judi Dench chatting, just talking. If you've heard her interviewed, she sounds exactly, but exactly, that way in this book. It's not great "writing," but it's worth the price just to have the amazing Judi Dench's voice residing in your head for however many days or weeks it takes you to read it.

If you lived in Britain from 1957 to more or less the present day, you could see Judi Dench onstage at least once or twice a year—that's how busy an actress she has been. It's of course partly a function of the difference between English and American theater, but I can't think of a single living American actor you could say that about.

As for the book, here's one passage I liked:

"On a film you have to sit and answer questions about what you think of the part, why you wanted to play the part, and I think that's none of the public's business. Why should you know the ins and outs of everything? You don't say to a dress designer like Betty Jackson, 'Why have you made a dress like that? Why did you cut the dress like that?' Why should the public know everything? The joy of the theatre is not really going and knowing that somebody had terrible difficulty playing this part, or why they did it; it is to go and be told a story, the author's story, through the best means possible. In any case, I never know why I've done something, it's for lots of reasons. I want to keep a quiet portion inside that is my own business and not anybody else's."

And these, the final words, at the end of the last chapter, "What Every Young Actor Needs to Know: Answers to Questions I've Been Asked Over the Years." For some reason, despite their simplicity and directness, they haunt me a little:

"What is the greatest reward of being an actor?

"Laughter if it's a comedy, silence if it's a tragedy."

Just Being

I was saddened by the recent death of Jill Clayburgh, an actress whose roster of leading or costarring roles is relatively small and who, I realized, I've seen in only a few things. But I've always liked her.

I remember when An Unmarried Woman came out in 1978. It was not a film I was old enough to see on my own, nor would I have had the opportunity had I wanted to—I was a 16-year-old boy; it was An Unmarried Woman. The pictures of a bearded Alan Bates intrigued me more than anything. I saw it a few years later in college, one of the free Saturday-night movies on campus. Because of my still-young age and the fact that the early '80s weren't so far removed from the late '70s, I don't think it resonated fully—how could it have? I remember liking it as a movie well enough. (I had by then seen Clayburgh's follow-up, the 1979 comedy Starting Over, and was familiar with her appeal.) And the bearded Alan Bates was just as sexy as I'd imagined.

This weekend, I rented An Unmarried Woman and was taken anew by it and by Jill Clayburgh. Would you believe that a 49-year-old man in 2010 could find a lot to identify with in the story of a thirtysomething woman in 1978 who is suddenly single and must navigate the world of dating, sex, independence, attachment, responsibility, risk-taking, and love (and not-love)? Well, it's true. I watched the whole thing through another time with the very interesting dual commentary by Clayburgh and director Paul Mazursky (who didn't seem to have been in the same room at the same time).

I also rented Starting Over, which I enjoyed when it came out (I think I saw it with my parents and brother). This time, it struck me as slighter than I remembered, but Burt Reynolds is totally endearing, as is Jill Clayburgh again, though to me it was more his film (yet she got an Oscar nomination, as did Candice Bergen, who was comical but wooden as usual).

Jill Clayburgh's acting has a low-key naturalness that's refreshing, like someone who's just being yet whose subtle illumination draws you to her. Her obituary in the Washington Post—which, surprisingly, was much better than the one in the New York Times—ended with this:

Ms. Clayburgh was proud of her understated acting style, believing it was more true to her characters and to life itself.

"I don't like being knocked out by performances," she told The Washington Post in 1978. 'I don't want anyone to say, 'what a fantastic actor' about me."

In the DVD commentary, Paul Mazursky said he originally offered the part to Jane Fonda, who turned it down because it wasn't political enough. He said, What do you mean? It's as political as you can get. After the movie came out, she told him he was right.

Fonda would have given the movie a different slant—I suspect much greater seriousness and overall angst. Had I seen that version, I probably would have come away saying, "What a fantastic actor."

After watching the actual movie—with Jill Clayburgh—I thought, "That was really, really good."

Loverly

Random obsession: Audrey Hepburn.This started when D. and I were at a B&B in Pennsylvania. I turned on the TV, and TCM was showing The Nun’s Story, which I’d never seen. I got sucked in.

I was struck by the almost documentary style—surprising for the 1950s—of the scenes in the Congo, where Hepburn’s nun works in a hospital, then by the seriousness and delicacy of her acting. I made a note to reacquaint myself with her.

My first stop was her official Web site, with a fascinatingly intimate trove of photos. I looked for biographies, and all seemed cheesy; what interested me most was a book by her son Sean Ferrer—not a memoir but presumably from a reliable source and full of more riveting photos. It turned out to be a rambling but sweet tribute. There’s an insularity and an idealism toward his mother that are both touching and odd—at her deathbed, you’d think he were an only child (he’s not; he has a brother, barely mentioned) and the only person with her in her final hours (hard to believe).

What I gleaned is that Hepburn was a truly kind, modest, humble, generous, family-oriented, loving, socially conscious person who probably was more complicated than her son cares to recall. Why should he? There was enough of the perfect to fill a book.

I’ve since read Fifth Avenue, Five A.M., about the making of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and “the birth of the modern woman.” It’s easy to read but has the feel of a quickie project (the author had written a book about Blake Edwards, who directed Breakfast, so the research probably didn’t require heavy lifting).

I saw Roman Holiday for the first time a couple months ago and rewatched Two for the Road recently, her second-to-last film before semi-retiring.

What next?

Nun's Story photo by Leo Fuchs
The Nun's story © Warner Bros. Pictures Inc. all rights reserved

History, Boys

I recently rented The History Boys and was especially struck by the matter-of-fact way this group of mostly straight boys in an British "public" (private) school accepted and joshed with and even sympathized with the gay kid among them, particularly his crush on the dreamiest straight guy of the bunch (Dominic Cooper). And at least as much by the matter-of-fact way the gay boy himself, even as he struggled with his feelings, openly talked about his attractions and identity.

It was refreshing to see, and I guess I have to assume it's not wildly implausible for the setting (England) and the time (1983), though the movie (and Alan Bennett play on which it's based) takes place only four years after I graduated from high school.

It couldn't be further from my experience in a private boys' school in the United States, in which heterosexism and homophobia ruled to such an extent that the gay boys either kept staunchly silent and softly invisible or let their peculiarities leak out (awkwardly queer mannerisms, penchants for sketching fantasy characters on every available surface) and were subjected to isolation, ridicule, even cruelty. One boy in the latter category (let's call him M.S.) when confronted with the message "M.S. is a fag" in large letters on the blackboard and all the erasers hidden—as well as a roomful of classmates waiting to see his reaction—had no choice but to wipe the words off with his own '70s-plaid polyester suitcoat.

I watched and said nothing. Guess which of the groups of gay boys I was in.

Where the Driveway Ends

Why has it been so hard for me to get back on track? Somehow my eight-week jury duty (with 22 people who, for the most part, I could not stand, hearing cases that were, for the most part, maddeningly repetitive and tedious, not to mention depressing) and my mother's fall (she's now almost fully recovered physically but much changed mentally) threw me off my blogging stride. The only way I'll ever get any words down is not to claim any continuity or structure for them.

I had one of NPR's much-touted "driveway moments" this evening when a story on Shel Silverstein came on All Things Considered just as I pulled up to D's house. I knew Silverstein wrote songs in addition to children's books (which, by the way, I never read as a child), but the only songs I knew he wrote were "The Queen of the Silver Dollar," on Emmylou Harris's great first album, Pieces of the Sky," and "I'm Checking Out," which Meryl Streep sings to amazing, triumphant effect at the end of Postcards From the Edge.

There's a new Shel Silverstein tribute album out, the subject of the NPR story, and who knew he also wrote those Top 40 songs of my youth "Sylvia's Mother" and "The Cover of the Rolling Stone," not to mention Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue" and Marianne Faithfull's "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" (which I love and haven't thought about in years)?

I had to sit in the car and hear the whole interview with the album's producers. And who knows -- maybe I'll buy it. See, there's still hope for me after all.

_______

Illustration by Shel Silverstein from Where the Sidewalk Ends.

The Blind Side

After this long blogging silence, the first thing I write about when I finally return is . . . Sandra Bullock?

A few months ago, I officially decided I couldn't stand her anymore. (Not that I was that much of an active fan to begin with.) What had started to get to me was that -- at age 45, with no biological children, and likely on the cusp of that unfortunate stage in a Hollywood actress's career when she's no longer "marketable" as a leading lady -- she was making a bit too much of a deal about how she really, really was maternal after all.

She seemed to bring it up in just about every story I saw about her. It came to a head for me in an article in Parade last November, in which she said that before she met her husband (the bandit Jesse James) and started helping raise his five-year-old daughter, "I was too selfish to have kids."

Yes, the old No Children = Selfish equation. What a fresh idea. Thanks for that, Sandy.

But that wasn't enough. She went on: "If you don’t have kids and animals, you don’t truly know what real life is about."

Okay, I have an animal (and have had animals plural), and I now find it hard to imagine living without them. But for many years I didn't have animals in my life (34 years, to be exact), and I'd never be so judgmental and presumptuous to declare that those without them don't know what life is about.

Life is about your life and what you make of it, period.

Sandy, I thought, you're just an insecure clod.

Now, as everyone knows, mere weeks after her genuinely moving triumph of winning an Oscar, she has been publicly humiliated by allegations that her husband serially cheated on her.

And I've felt for her.

In her Golden Globe acceptance speech earlier this year, she said that before she met her husband, "I never knew what it felt like to have someone have my back."
Lord, all of those quotes that have come back to haunt her.

I've been there myself. Do I think he could be seeing someone else? No. No way.I remember seeing a 20/20 segment in the '80s about people who couldn't get over the death of their pets. Who were in grieving support groups, who couldn't stop crying. Get a life, I thought. Anyone who's that attached to animals doesn't know how to deal with people.
Next Wednesday is the second anniversary of my beagle Charlie's death. I still pray for his soul sometimes.

It's probably best not to make sweeping declarations about what constitutes life -- yours or anyone else's. All you'll end up with is reminder of how human you really are.

Not such a bad thing, I suppose.

Acceptance

Vladimir: "I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever."

Estragon: "Me too." -- Waiting for Godot

Today D. finally e-mailed me this photo he took of us last May in London as we waited to see a production of Waiting for Godot starring Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. It's one of my favorite pictures of the two of us (I'm on the right).

I show it for no other reason than I need an anchor for my mind, which tonight refuses to alight on any single idea -- as it has refused for the last couple of weeks.

I just frittered away a couple of hours -- a fire burning and then dying in the fireplace, my dog sleeping and then waking beside me (breath in, breath out) -- trying to gain entry into coherent thoughts about friends falling away, relationships shifting, once-common interests diverging. Without planning to, I found myself Googling names and images, here and there coming across someone's familiar but drastically changed (or not at all drastically changed) appearance -- and, when I did, feeling little more than mild surprise or amusement, tempered by a curious sort of spongy distance from whichever potential This Is Your Life panelist it happened to be.

It is this detachment, among other things, that has kept me from joining Facebook: I believe that it's a rare, rare case where an old, lost friendship can be revived beyond the superficial level. What's more, my antipathy toward small talk is such that I'm reluctant to invite more of it into my life.

My long-held attitude toward organized reunions (i.e., that you should attend any and all that you have the chance to) is even changing, much to my surprise. My high school had an all-class reunion last spring that I was planning to attend, until I lost interest as the date approached. I haven't even considered going to this year's edition.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about a friend of almost 30 years with whom I currently seem to be on pause. We've had no contact for the last six months (possibly the longest we've ever gone) -- this after a perfectly pleasant evening with her and her husband and two little girls in which nothing untoward happened other than the fact that it became starkly apparent to me (and, I'm convinced, to her) that we were, figuratively, gazing in almost completely non-intersecting directions.

This is the friend who introduced me to Joni Mitchell's album Blue, the two of us sitting on a cold linoleum dorm-room floor, listening to it over and over again: I remember that time that you told me, you said love is touching souls . . .

Tonight I don't even quite know where I am. I feel a bit reclusive, a bit wistful yet non-sentimental, a bit at a loss for words.

D. leaves for a few days in LA tomorrow, a trip to see friends. I'm going to the theater on Thursday to see a new play with a friend of my own. He's a more recent friend than those I was Googling tonight. Someone who has helped see me through -- helped see me -- these last several years of change and reorientation.

So there you have it -- my bookends for this directionless and confused musing: nights at the theater. A curtain parting, a curtain closing, ideas to contemplate as I make my way back home.