Archives for 2007

Mrs. T and I tied the knot a month ago yesterday. Two days later we launched our honeymoon by checking into one of our favorite hiding places. Alas, a lingering virus left us both too sick and tired to do much more than sleep late, take long naps, and go to bed early. It was, however, rejuvenating to eat our delightful host’s generous breakfasts and look out our picture window to see the Delaware River at its most autumnal.
A few days after that, we drove to western Pennsylvania to tour Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob, two of Frank Lloyd Wright’s greatest houses. I’d visited Fallingwater once before, but Hilary had never seen the house other than in photographs. It had the same effect on her that it has on most first-timers, especially since we treated ourselves to an in-depth two-hour tour led by a formidably well-informed docent named Ute-Jutta Crooks. “It’s like a church,” Mrs. T said afterward. “I don’t know whether I’d want to live there, but I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.” Kentuck Knob, by contrast, was more her idea of a place to hang your hat. (Mine, too.)
My own feelings about Fallingwater remain more or less the same today as they were in 2003:

I think it would be a profoundly soul-satisfying experience to live in Fallingwater–if you were rich enough to afford a staff of servants and young enough to negotiate the stairs….
Fallingwater is one of the most extraordinary buildings in the world, fully deserving of its singular reputation. I’ve never seen a more beautiful house in my life. But I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if in the very long run, Wright’s Usonian houses [of which Kentuck Knob is an example] prove to have been a more significant contribution to Western culture–which is the surprising conclusion I drew from my visit to Fallingwater.

Be that as it may, Fallingwater, like all masterpieces, profits from repeated viewing. It is far too complicated to give up all its secrets, or even very many of them, in the course of a single visit. Hilary and I are already raring to go back again–preferably on a somewhat warmer day.
(Incidentally, I commend to your attention this delightfully unselfconscious memoir by Bernardine Hagan, one of the original owners of Kentuck Knob. She loved it there.)
From Wrightland we drove across Pennsylvania to Malvern, the well-heeled Philadelphia suburb that is home to People’s Light & Theatre, a company I’d been wanting to see ever since I first heard its name. The show we saw there, a new English-language version of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author that I praised lavishly in The Wall Street Journal, has recently been extended through November 11. If you live in or near Philadelphia, I urge you to see it–and to dine at Places, PL&T’s excellent on-site bistro, where Mrs. T and I raised a champagne toast to our good fortune.
(To be continued)

Wedding is great Juno’s crown,

O blessed bond of board and bed!

William Shakespeare, As You Like It

I’m still in Washington, D.C., attending a meeting of the National Council on the Arts, but the Wall Street Journal drama column continues as always. Today I report on shows in Minneapolis (the Guthrie Theater’s production of Brian Friel’s The Home Place) and on Broadway (Cyrano de Bergerac). The verdict is mixed:

“The Home Place,” first performed in Dublin two years ago, is the latest of Mr. Friel’s increasingly subtle and penetrating variations on a theme that has preoccupied him for much of the last half-century. It is the story of a man torn between two countries and two identities, alienated from his native land but ill at ease in the place where he has chosen to live. That place is, of course, Ballybeg, the fictional Irish town that is to Mr. Friel what Yoknapatawpha County was to William Faulkner. The year is 1878, and the poor peasants of Ballybeg are fast losing patience with the wealthy Anglo-Irish landlords who rule them, even one as sympathetic as Christopher Gore (Simon Jones), a kindly widower whose only sin is that his English ancestors chose to seek their fortunes in Ireland. He loves his adopted home in a superficial but well-meaning way, and he also loves Margaret (Sarah Agnew), the much younger Irishwoman who keeps his house and runs his life. All Christopher wants is to live out his days in peace–but the angry young men of Ballybeg are about to bring him and his kind not peace, but a sword.
Part of Mr. Friel’s genius (and I use that word deliberately) lies in his near-miraculous ability to treat Ireland’s tangled political life as a means, not an end. His end is art, not propaganda, and his study is the human heart in all its fearsome complexity….
If you’re wondering what a 110-year-old French verse play is doing on Broadway, I can tell you in two words: Jennifer Garner. The star of “Alias,” “13 Going on 30” and “Dude, Where’s My Car?” has now made her stage debut opposite Kevin Kline in “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Alas, Ms. Garner is no Claire Danes, though she does do better than Julia Roberts in “Three Days of Rain” (which isn’t saying much). I admire her nerve, but her performance is vocally monotonous and just as narrowly limited in every other way….

As per always, go buy a paper to read the whole thing, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, a smart move for art lovers in all financial categories. (If you’re already a subscriber to the Online Journal, the column is here.)

“I call people rich when they’re able to meet the requirements of their imagination.”
Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

I’ve been doing a fair amount of gadding about lately with family and friends. The plan is to hunker down and work hard on the book for the next six weeks before the holidays start and the Festival of Peppermint Schnapps begins. But this past week’s break from the hermit lifestyle has been welcome. A few highlights:
• On Saturday, Roy Kesey came to Malaprop’s to sign copies of his new collection of short stories, All Over, a book which also marks the debut of the Dzanc imprint. Mr. Tingle and I went downtown to hover uncomfortably over Kesey at his signing table for a bit, then went with him, fab Dzanc publicist (and recent Asheville transplant) Lauren Snyder, and her charming feller Seth up the street to the Sky Bar.
The Sky Bar consists of three balconies (read: glorified fire escapes) hung off the side of the Flat Iron Building, one of Asheville’s best buildings. About the rickety dilapidated glories of the Flat Iron all I can say is that if you ever wanted to open a detective agency where you hoped to solve cases despite an ongoing problem with whiskey and women, this is where you would hang your shingle. I used to keep an office here — used to even sleep there when on deadline — and it was odd to ride the familiar hand-operated elevator up to the top of the building and have it open not on dusty offices, but a Euro-flavored bar selling Tanqueray and espresso. But the views are great — facing west, with downtown below and the mountains beyond — and the drinks, as Lauren noted, are poured with a generous hand.
The company was excellent, with the conversation ranging across everything from the travel writing of Pico Iyer to the perils of entertaining with asparagus and cranberry liqueurs. Previous to his book with Dzanc, I only knew Kesey from his dispatches for McSweeney’s, but he’s someone you can talk to for only a short time and feel like you’ve known much longer. I believe it’s part of the training of a diplomat’s spouse.
In addition to his collection, you can find a story by Roy in this year’s Best American Short Stories, edited by Stephen King, and I also recommend this interview he conducted with George Saunders, even though there he’s the interviewer, not the subject.
• On Sunday, the lovely Cinetrix made a visit to the mountains, and we went to see a matinee of Darjeeling Limited at the plush Fine Arts Theatre. Watched alone, on iTunes, I found the movie’s prequel, “The Hotel Chevalier,” stultifying and a little creepy. It becomes much more meaningful when seen in tandem with Darjeeling, when the stultification and claustrophobia seem more purposeful, less a byproduct of an overly curatorial director, and give way to ravishing color and the open vistas in the movie’s finale. (See the Cinetrix’s remarks about the film.)
Afterward we moseyed around downtown in the dusk, hopping into Malaprop’s to admire the books and then creating an inadvertent Indian theme to the day by dining at Mela, where we drank pints of Guinness, ate green peppers so hot they temporarily gave me the ability to “see through time,” and were waited on by the Unctuous Homunculus whose attempts to upsell us on our ordering were to little avail. (The appropriate Simpsons reference was Trixie’s, natch.)
• Then Halloween! My favorite holiday, my husband’s least. I played hooky from writing class, and we went out for the traditional Hallloween sushi. Then Mr. Tingle (very tolerantly) chauffeured me on various field trips related to my novel. Asheville is low on sidewalks and so trick-or-treaters tend to congregate in great hordes along a few major streets. As we clipped along Montford on our researches our car’s headlights kept picking up bits of shiny costumes and yards overrun with princesses and dinosaurs.
When we got home we built a fire off the deck and sat outside, drinking coffee and eating candy; each year we have a giant bowl full, and each year we get no trick or treaters and must eat the candy: It’s a vicious cycle. Our yard is heavily wooded, but there’s a clearing around the back, and so the fire had room to shoot up and the stars were popping out of the sky because it was so chilly. Then we went in and watched To Die For (still marvelous) and made lists and notes until it was time for bed. A very quiet evening, but one of the nicest Halloweens I’ve spent.

• A profile of Paris Review editor Philip Gourevitch in The Observer explores how the magazine is changing to flourish in the post-Plimpton era.
• Lately, Jerry Seinfeld has been reminding me of the retired guy who doesn’t want to be retired. You know the type — the former titan who roams around the house looking for something to do, people to chat up, a “Bee” movie to promote.* Another new hobby: Calling people “wacko” on national tv. (Via Syntax of Things.)
• Yesterday, walking in the woods I came across a giant orange spider with black-and-white striped legs (like tights!) hanging in a web across the trail. Looking it up on the Web later I came across this photo essay on Vietnamese spiders. Spiders are so strange and beautiful in close-up, and the ones shown here should be good for a couple post-Halloween chills.
I still haven’t been able to identify my spider, the tangerine glob, although the one that appears in this fuzzy YouTube footage looks to be the same type. Except mine was prettier and kinder in the face.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• A Chorus Line (musical, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• The Drowsy Chaperone (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)

• Grease * (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)

• Pygmalion * (comedy, G, suitable for mature and intelligent young people, closes Dec. 16, reviewed here)

• The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children old enough to enjoy a love story, reviewed here)