Mark Twain's "Adventures of Tom Sawyer" -- this boy never grows up

What got a'hold of me and made me read Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)?

I don't know. It was lying there on the discount table at the Barnes and Noble in Brookline, a beautiful hardbound edition, with the Winslow Homer painting, Boys in a Meadow, on the dust cover, and a sticker with $4.95. I had to buy it. The nostalgia? The longing for the pastoral youth that I never had? Maybe. (By the way, that Barnes and Noble is closing down -- yet another book store about to disappear.)

I'm glad I read it. It's always readable. And I remember that I loved, and was surprised by, the novel Huckleberry Finn (it was a great novel). Tom is not a great novel, but I guess it is a kind of warmup for Huckleberry. Many parts are very funny, of course. You can just sense Twain unloading at his favorite targets. The satire is constant, and is still timely. It's worth the time. Here is the town minister:

"He was regarded as a wonderful reader. At church 'sociables' he was always called upon to read poetry; and when he was through, the ladies would lift up their hands and let them fall helplessly in their laps, and 'wall' their eyes, and shake their heads, as much to say, 'Words cannot express it; it is too beautiful, too beautiful for this mortal earth.'

"And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer it was, and went into details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the church, for the other churches of the village; for the village itself; for the country; for the state; for the state officers; for the United States; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for the President; for the poor sailors, tossed by stormy seas; for...."

A disappointing thing about the book: despite all he goes through, Tom is the same at the end of the book as he is at the beginning. He's still the very same child, still quick to dream in the very same childish way as when we first meet him. He hasn't grown at all. We like him, of course, but think he should've learned a thing or two.

Tobias Wolff's memoir-novel, "Old School"

I was engrossed with Tobias Wolff's novel Old School (2003). It is written in the form of a memoir recounting the narrator's years at an exclusive prep school somewhere in New England. He is one of a very few Jewish boys in the school. He masks his "Jewishness" for most of his time at the school. He doesn't speak about it to anyone. He desperately wants to be a writer, and much of the novel is about the urgent sense of competition among the boys to write and be rewarded for their writing -- the school mounts writing contests in which the winning boy gets a private meeting with a famous writer visiting the school. We get to see and meet Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Earnest Hemingway. The portraits of the writers are vividly detailed and realistic -- they feel as if they must be based on actual journalism.

The narrator does something unexpected in the climax of the story. It surprised me that a voice and a person that I had come to know and trust would suddenly do something so untrustworthy.

It was great to read about a school where literature is taken so seriously! Writers and writer wannabes are heroes in this school.

It reminded me a little of my all-boys high school, Hutchinson Central Techincial High School, in Buffalo. We were a public school, and not exclusive in terms of wealth; we prided ourselves in being smarter than the other public high schools in the city; in my first year, we wore ties and white shirts to school. Like the claustrophobic world described in Old School, we were all boys, and each day you had to make your place in the locker room scenes and bravado.

The environment and scenes are so realistic, they stand out and I remember them now (a few weeks after reading the book) more than the story itself and the thinking of the characters. The book was stoically old fashioned -- no highfalutin language, no obscure allusions, no scrambled time sequences. Just a real story with realistic characters.

One of Wolff's achievements here is that the language is clear and fluid. It seems to disappear and simply leave you with the story itself.

The Masterwork Chorale's surprisingly modern Petite Messe Solennelle, by Rossini

A belated posting on the Masterwork Chorale's performance of Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle, which we attended on November 16, at Sanders. This mass surprised me -- a couple of the early movements sounded almost folklike, you could dance to them. I loved the harmonium. Other movements were operatic. And other movements were more traditionally liturgical and mass-like. It takes you on quite a journey. The entire piece sounded surprisingly modern -- yet Rossini wrote it in 1863.

The conductor, our friend Steve Karidoyanes, seems to be steadily shaping the sound of the Chorale. They seem to have a tighter, and lighter, sound then they did a year ago.

Cambridge community Chorus's Messiah

We enjoyed the Cambridge Community Chorus's performance of Handel's Messiah (an abbreviated version) on Saturday afternoon. Their new director, Jamie Kirsch, seems like a great find for the chorus. He seemed energetic, and the chorus seemed to respond to him. Their sound was clearer than it was when we last heard them, in the spring. The sopranos especially sounded good. The movements sung by the soprano soloist Danielle Munsell Howard stood out for me -- she has a powerful and controlled voice.

And who'd have thought that over a thousand people would come out for the Messiah on a sunny Saturday afternoon!

MIT Gilbert and Sullivan Players "Pirates of Penzance" is a hoot!

We saw MIT's Gilbert and Sullivan Players performance of Pirates of Penzance last Friday night, and really enjoyed it. What a hoot! What a terrific production! And for only $10 a ticket! (We get the MIT community discount, $12 otherwise.) They're still performing through this weekend.

I know Mark Costello, the fellow who plays Frederic, because he sings with me in the bass section of the Brookline Chorus. He was very good. I knew he had a wonderful voice, but was surprised that he could sing tenor this well. And he was very funny, and seemed like a good comic actor (he seems like a natural ham). The student who sang the role of Ruth, Kaila Deiorio-Haggar, had a surprisingly strong voice and comic presence. As did, of course, the soprano Emily Quane in the role of Mabel (she's a conservatory grad, so I expected her to be good). And Lyman Opie in the role of the Major General was excellent (how does he get the words out so fast?).

Lots of funny bits and great touches (the troop of policemen made me laugh out loud every time they took the stage, and the sergeant was very good). This had the feel of a sincerely felt, well-prepared energetic amateur production.

The Huntington's "Rock 'n' Roll": well-crafted, significant, boring

We saw Tom Stoppard's play Rock 'n' Roll at the Huntington on Saturday, December 6. The play is hard to summarize. It follows a handful of people through the decades as they live through, or in relation to, the Czech velvet revolution.

It's dull.

I know, I know, it's well-crafted. The vicious hothouse atmosphere of left-wing academic politics is nicely detailed, at times funny, and sad. Max, the older professor (played by Jack Willis), is a standout character, and he plays an interesting True Believer (that is, a True Believer in Marx). The scenes of student life in Prague and Oxford will seem comically familiar to most people who lived through the 60s and 70s. And the set design (a sky placed as the background, with our perspective from street level looking up) is striking, and I suppose it has some relevance to the play's stories.

But there are long, long scenes of dry trivia, long discussions about arcane philosophical details. The fellow sitting in front of me (he looked like a professor of some sort), turned to me at the intermission and said, "My snoring wasn't bothering you, was it?"

The rock 'n roll reference...I don't get it. The play seems to have little to do with rock 'n roll. There are references to it, there are short music bits during scene changes, but I couldn't make out anything special about rock's influence on events, other than the usual one about rebellion against authority. As so often happens with a long, turgid play, the director blasted loud music in the last seconds of the play (the Rolling Stones in this case), perhaps to make one final desperate attempt at making you think that maybe you HAD seen something exciting after all.

It seems as if Stoppard wrote this play for a pretty narrow academic audience. How many people would understand the historical and political contexts?

Finally, near the end, there's some life, some drama, as the family starts bashing each other in front of us, some connections are revealed, people do unexpected things. But there's so little to get excited about at this point, after nearly three hours.

Does the Huntington think it can build an audience with this type of play?

David McCullough's 1776

The history 1776 was published in 2005. A very readable, even thrilling, account of the first year of the American Revolution. McCullough is such a good narrative writer I almost felt I was reading a page-turning detective novel. Yet, although he doesn't go deeply into the philosophical and social background of that time (he couldn't in a book this length), he writes with a lot of subtlety about the people and events from both the American and the British perspective. The British and their loyalist North American supporters are sympathetically described, and their perspective on the colonies is given what I feel must be a fair reading. King George comes across less a tyrant than an amiable man deeply out of touch with the events in North America. The same could be said about many of his supporters in Parliament. It was interesting to read about the number of British voices that loudly argued against militarily subjugating the colonies.

But the hero and center of the story is George Washington, and his army. Washington lost battle after battle, and was consistently outsmarted by the British for much of 1776. He is described as indecisive, and that surely is how he comes across. Yet, leading an undisciplined army, without an established administration, almost no battlefield intelligence, with unpredictable officers and soldiers, and with no actual personal experience leading a large force, the reader can certainly understand Washington's predicament, and his propensity to delay making a decision.

It is clear that Washington learned from the early battles, and from his mistakes. He got better as the year went on, and Congress somehow maintained its faith in him. (In a modern media age, would the public have tolerated the terrible defeats in New York without firing Washington? I doubt it.)

He comes across as a real patrician, and bit fastidious (writing detailed letters to his estate agent about remodeling the house while preparing to fight a battle in the muck and cold). He also comes across as loyal to his subordinate generals, and reluctant to punish, even when they have personally betrayed him. His most trusted personal aide carried on a correspondence with General Lee that was critical of Washington to the point of denunciation. This during the worst months of 1776. Washington discovered the correspondence by accident. He must have been painfully shocked. Yet, he benignly notified both men that he was simply aware of their correspondence. He took no punitive measures against either man. He did nothing that would harm the war effort. McCullough is practically reverent in his depiction of Washington as a humane and wise general. Perhaps Washington really deserved this depiction.

Another surprising point is how amateur the American army truly was. Men came directly from their farms, mills, and fishing boats. Some of them were made generals. And some of them turned out to be amazingly good generals.

Willa Cather's novel, "My Antonia" -- if Jim is Willa

I always liked the title of this novel, though I never got to reading it until now. Aside from indicating a permanent attachment or possession (as with a married couple or a close relative), the "my" can imply that one can keep and love a version of a person, or a particular cherished image of the person, regardless of what the real person does, or even if the person is far away.

This book was published in 1919. The novel's main character and narrator is Jim Burden, who is sent as a young boy to live with his grandparents on the Nebraska prairie frontier. The time seems to be the 1880s or 1890s, before motor cars and rural electricity. Jim develops an affection for Antonia Shimerda, a Czech girl four years older than he is, who lives with her dirt poor immigrant family on a nearby farm. The book follows their lives and their affectionate (but arms length) relationship into adulthood. Antonia eventually gets pregnant with a local lout, but then marries a kindly older Czech and has a huge happy family with him. Jim moves East, to New York, where he becomes a successful railroad lawyer.

Along the way, the characters and their families endure hardships, romances, rural intrigues, death, small town life, small and large incidents. I read the he first part of the book avidly, and loved the details of pioneer life as seen through Jim's eyes. The harshness of life, the never-ending farm work, the warm bonds with the people around him (even people he didn't necessarily like), and Antonia herself -- all detailed with a nostalgic, dreamlike intensity. He loves Antonia, and she loves him. Yet, there seems to be an undefined distance between them, and a sort of agreement that they will never close the distance. It's mysterious. Once they become adults, and Antonia's age (four years older than him) is no longer such an obstacle, what prevents them from being more than cousinly? It's as if both of them are already married to others. But they're not. The book gets sentimental towards the latter part, and seems a bit long.

I've read that Willa Cather was remarkably open about her own lesbian sexual persona (remarkably open for that time, at least). What if we imagine Jim Burden as a woman -- that the narrator is actually a woman growing up on the prairie, with a powerful desire for Antonia? Then, their forbearance would make more sense. Given the mores of that era, the two of them simply could not express their affection for each other in other than a chaste fashion. Perhaps this is Willa Cather, truly writing about her own Antonia.

The Chorus Pro Musica's performance of Rachmaninoff's Vespers

The Chorus Pro Musica performed Rachmaninoff's Vespers at St. George's church this past Sunday, November 9. Lisa Graham conducted (she is also our conductor in the Brookline Chorus). The Vespers are sung acapella. I immediately enjoyed the beautiful tone of the chorus. They moved so well from the loud to the soft passages, with many tricky layers of music in between.

I loved the poetry of the verses. I've always been moved by the simple hymn, Bless the Lord, O My Soul (Blagoslovi, dushe moya, Ghospoda), and these lines, familiar to me from the Greek service:

Thou art clothed with honor and majesty.
Blessed art Thou, O Lord.
The waters stand upon the mountains.
Marvelous are Thy works, O Lord.
The waters flow between the hills.
Marvelous are Thy works, O Lord.
In wisdom hast Thou made all things.

To me, the verses say that the infinite complexity of nature -- seemingly random in its ends -- from which we humans draw the ability to live our lives, is in fact God's work.

The alto Marion Dry sang with a throaty, solemn sound, her voice vibrating with...fear (fear of God was a common expression throughout). The tenor Charles Blandy sang intensely, and transmitted a kind of purity and innocence, in a voice full of longing for God.

Penetrating the visual design of the network election broadcasts

Watching the network election returns on Tuesday night (NBC, CBS, ABC), I was surprised by the distracting amount of visual information the set designers crammed into the screen. Always, one or more news anchor spoke, seen from waist up. Behind him or her were flashing moving screens and maps. The front of the anchor's desk had lit panels. The network logo fluttered in the lower left corner of the screen. Two lines of barely legible block letters (NY, CN, MO) flipped and moved across the bottom of the screen announcing results and names from states. Checkmarks everywhere. Behind it all, a background of even more moving color and light framed everything and screamed for whatever attention we had left.

Were viewers actually expected to absorb information from this cacophony?

There wasn't a warm tone or an expanse of quiet color anywhere. The set designers must have studied at a Vegas strip mall. NBC was the worst. The other two networks were marginally better. I suppose this reflects the infiltration of an internet web design mentality into these live broadcasts. I think the producers and designers should reconsider their strategy: when it comes to news, an unobstructed person speaking on TV should be the focus of our concentration. After all, Tim Russert was remembered and sought out by viewers for his work with a whiteboard and a black marker.

Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father"

I almost abandoned Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father (published 1995) after thirty pages or so. He is a cool writer, not unlike the character he represents in public life. I sometimes felt that it was only his best face that was put forward -- as if he was running for some kind of office. (The book was published in 1995, I believe before he had attained political office.)

But I kept on. Fortunately, that politico tone doesn't dominate the book. And now I think this is a fairly good book. He's a better writer than I expected.

He describes his boyhood with his mother and grandparents, in Hawaii and Indonesia, his years working as a community organizer in Chicago, and his search for the details and connection to his father's Kenyan family -- the central theme of the book. I felt a kinship with him in my own attempts to learn about my parents, and to stay connected with my Greek relatives and their histories.

His hungering for his African self -- for his Kenyan father, whom he barely knew firsthand -- is good reading.

I finally decided that it was overall a good thing that he's cool as a writer -- he shows us the characters of people around him by how they look, what they say, how their eyes and bodies work.

In the best passage in the book, he finally attends Reverend Jeremiah Wright's church in Chicago and hears a sermon there (he was not an avid church goer to that point, some time in his early 20s). He repeats a portion of Wright's sermon: "The audacity of hope! Times when we couldn't pay the bills. Times when it looked like I wasn't ever going to amount to anything...at the age of fifteen, busted for grand larceny auto theft...and yet and still my momma and daddy would break into a song...Oh yes, Jesus, I thank you...."

And then Obama concludes the chapter on Chicago like this: "And in that single note --hope!--I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones...As the choir lifted back up into song, as the congregation began to applaud those were walking to he altar to accept reverend Wright's call, I felt a light touch on the top of my hand. I looked down to see the older of the two boys sitting beside me,his face slightly aprehensive as he handed me a pocket tissue. Beside him, his mother glanced at me with a faint smile before turning back toward the altar. It was only as I thanked the boy that I felt the tears running down my cheeks."

It must have been wrenching for Obama to reject Reverend Wright earlier this year, when Wright gave that sermon about God damning America. But Barack Obama did it. As far as we know, he took his family and left.

As far as what the book says about him as a potential president, I can think of three things.

1. He trusts subordinates and other people. More than that, he promotes other people, putting them forward to accept the glory, as he does with his fellow organizers, whom he was managing in Chicago. (And sometimes he puts unprepared people forward to face a hot crowd, while he stays somewhere in the background.)

2. He believes in collective solutions to problems. But they don't have to be governmental solutions. His organizing days involved work with private community groups, often trying to motivate and organize neighborhoods to work on their own.

3. He naturally empathizes with people, and is able to understand and argue an issue from more than one perspective. With a white mother and a black father, this must come naturally to him.

Gutenberg! the Musical!-- a workshop idea stretched into a paying show

The New Repertory Theater's Gutenberg! the Musical! is about a pair of young actors who want to put on a brilliant musical. They need producers and financial backing, and we, the audience, serve as the producers for whom they audition the show. What follows is a frantic spoof of musicals and musical songs and story lines.

I appreciate the idea to give new and "cutting edge" (dreaded phrase) productions a chance, I like the energy and talent of the two actors, and I like the idea of getting some laughs. But this is a poor thin show. It feels like a college theater workshop idea that's been stretched into a show that people are expected to pay for.

I did get the premise, that these guys are spoofing musicals. How could you not get it? They explain it to you. But no amount of screeching, dancing, frantic gestures and diving around can hide the miserable story line, the empty songs that are supposed to be ironic and funny, and the labored cliches presented as new. They simply copied bad musical shtick. And did we need all the sight gags about masturbation? This must be the result of theater people raised on Betty's Summer Vacation. If they shorten it to 15-20 minutes, well, that might work.

We left at intermission. We like the New Rep a lot, and have been attending their shows for years. But we left at intermission.