Archives for February 2008

A while back I realized I’d bought several novels simply because their jacket copy invoked Nabokov in some shape or form, e.g., “reads like a crazy love child of Nabokov and Gogol” or “prose so dazzling you’ll feel like Nabokov walks among us again.”
It turns out I’ll also buy anything that says “Illustrated by Edward Gorey” on the cover. Most recent example: Men and Gods, which NYRB just put out. It’s a beautiful little book; it’s a small hardcover and the whole presentation — size, type style, the mint color of the cover — is pleasingly reminiscent of old middle-school library books. (I can’t help but think what a nice Valentine’s Day present it would make.)
I’ve been reading a lot of Greek mythology lately, and with the more in-depth books – meaning here anything more difficult than D’Aulaires — I’m finding certain bits hard-going before bed. Here is a typical passage from Warner, with a track of my comprehension:

Jason knew the story of Phrixus, since he had been told this and other stories of gods and heroes by the centaur Chiron. [We’re good.] He also knew that Phrixus had been related to him, since his own grandfather had been the brother of Athamas, who in the end had been driven mad by Juno [Still good.], but who had had by his first wife, Nephele, two children who were called Phrixus and Helle. [Faltering but still following.] Later Athamas had married Cadmus’s daughter Ino [and I’m out.]…

I blame my mother for not making me read the Bible more as a child.

Last week, David Itzkoff started off a review in the NYT Book Review by observing, “I sometimes wonder how any self-respecting author of speculative fiction can find fulfillment in writing novels for young readers.” It’s a maddening lead, especially for people who write and love young adult literature. Neil Gaiman, whose novel InterWorld was one of the two YA books covered in Itzkoff’s review, responded in a puzzled way on his blog, noting, “I think that rule number one for book reviewers should probably be Don’t Spend The First Paragraph Slagging Off The Genre.” And at Crooked House, Stephany also provides an eloquent response.
I like what Stephany writes so much I’d like to print it here except that wouldn’t leave me room to share this lovely, sensible thing E.B. White said in his Paris Review interview that seems apropos:

Interviewer: Is there any shifting of gears in writing such children’s books as Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little? Do you write to a particular age group?
White: Anybody who shifts gears when he writes for children is likely to wind up stripping his gears. But I don’t want to evade your question. There is a difference between writing for children and for adults. I am lucky, though, as I seldom seem to have my audience in mind when I am at work. It is as though they didn’t exist.
Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth. They accept almost without questions, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly, and clearly. I handed them, against the advice of experts, a mouse-boy, and they accepted it without a quiver. In Charlotte’s Web, I gave them a literate spider, and they took that.
Some writers for children deliberately avoid using words they think a child doesn’t know. This emasculates the prose and, I suspect, bores the reader. Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention. I’m lucky again: my own vocabulary is small, compared to most writers, and I tend to use the short words. So it’s no problem for me to write for children. We have a lot in common.

I read White’s interview last year — shortly after Terry mentioned his enduring affection for Stuart Little — and that part’s stayed with me.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town 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:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps * (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, closes Mar. 23, reviewed here)

• August: Osage County (drama, R, adult subject matter, closes Apr. 13, reviewed here)

• 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)

• Come Back, Little Sheba (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Mar. 16, reviewed here)

• The Farnsworth Invention (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

• Grease (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, closes Mar. 2, reviewed here)

• The Homecoming (drama, R, adult subject matter, closes Apr. 13, reviewed here)

• Is He Dead? (farce, G, reasonably family-friendly, reviewed here)

• The Little Mermaid (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, reviewed here)

• November (comedy, PG-13, profusely spattered with obscene language, here)

• Rock ‘n’ Roll (drama, PG-13, way too complicated for kids, closes Mar. 9, reviewed here)

• The Seafarer (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Mar. 30, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN RED BANK, N.J.:

• Macbeth (drama, PG-13, very violent, closes Feb. 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children old enough to enjoy a love story, closes Feb. 24, reviewed here)

• The New Jerusalem (drama, G, too complicated for children but accessible to mature adolescents, closes Feb. 20, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY:

• The Devil’s Disciple (drama, G/PG-13, not suitable for children, reviewed here)

“The true way leads along a tightrope not stretched aloft but just above the ground. It seems designed more to trip one than to be walked along.”
Franz Kafka, The Collected Aphorisms

Two years ago…but you know all about that. Today I’m married, healthy, and happy. Most of the time, in fact, I’m happier than I’ve ever been, and most of the rest of the time I’m too busy to know the difference. I have the best of all possible wives, the best of all possible jobs, and the best of all possible co-bloggers. I’m finishing a book and working on the libretto of an opera. Not bad for a man who turns fifty-two today.
Mrs. T is in California this week, so we won’t be celebrating jointly until I meet her there next Monday afternoon (I’ll be reviewing a half-dozen shows in Los Angeles and San Francisco). But I’m already feeling festive–and very, very lucky. May you be so, too.

“One must not only die daily, but every day we must be born again.”
Dorothy L. Sayers, Creed or Chaos?

• Zadie Smith explains why no prize will be given this year in the Willesden Herald‘s short story contest. Really provocative & interesting. (Via TEV.)
• The affair of the mind that may have inspired Possession. (See also.)

“Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders.”
Virginia Woolf, The Death of the Moth