Reading The Emigrants, by W. G. Sebald

The Emigrants, by W. G. Sebald (first published: Vito von Eichborn GmbH & Co Verlag, 1992)

At my mother's house, we have an old black leather suitcase filled with family pictures. They are mostly 2 x 3 and 3 x 5 black-and-white pictures, many of them of our family members in Greece from over the last 60-70 years. We used to take out the suitcase, open it on a table, and pull out the pictures (though we haven't done that in years). We would spend an enjoyably melancholy hour two talking about the people in the pictures.

Reading The Emigrants is a little like shuffling through those family pictures. Sebald was a German Jew who himself had emigrated to England, where he lived much of his adult life. There are four chapters in the book, each chapter devoted to a family member that the narrator either knew slightly, or not at all. Each chapter explores the life of that relative, pieced together by the narrator from interviews with surviving cousins, friends, and other relatives. The four people are each emigrants: an artist living in northern England, a peripatetic waiter who traveled through much of the world, a German schoolteacher, a retired professor. The time span of the lives is from the 30s to the 70s. Their generally sad lives are reconstructed, at times vividly so. The Holocaust is not referenced directly, but it seems to be there in the background.

There are no plots, no dramatic events. There are a few interesting conversations with people who reveal unknown facets of the lives being investigated. It is very much like sitting at home, for hours, talking about family members we've known, or hardly knew. To me, it's completely absorbing.

It's not exactly memoir, but an investigation in memoir. It is fiction, even though it may be based on real people, and real events. The very real photographs interspersed throughout the text give the book a documentary feel. But then, I believe almost all writing, even memoir, is either definitely fiction, or closely akin to it. This is a wonderful re-creation of lives, and it's full of life.

MetroWest Opera's Magic Flute -- a lot of fun, and don't worry about the story line

We saw Mozart's "Magic Flute" Saturday night in Weston, put on by MetroWest Opera. I didn't know that the company was founded by Dana Schnitzer, the soprano soloist who sings for the Brookline Chorus. It's an amazing feat of energy and organization to sing (and sing well) and to organize an opera company. And to not grab a leading role for herself in the opera, despite having the talent to justify such a move, said good things about her.

I had never been to The Magic Flute, though years ago we had seen and since forgotten the movie Ingmar Bergman made of a performance in Stockholm. The music was wonderful, the singers were wonderful. The bass who played Sarastro, John-Paul Huckle, filled the hall with his big voice. His voice startled me, full of the deep conviction and weight you expect from the character. The Queen of the Night, Christine Teeters, sang the amazing aria scene where she gives Pamina a dagger and orders her to kill Sarastro, with a surprising amount of menace (why did Mozart compose those cheerful soprano notes for that aria? And it works). And Matt Wight, as Papageno, sang well and was really moving, particularly in the scenes where Papageno (this silly clownlike man) sings that all he wants in life is a Papagena and family.

But the story line of the opera -- we couldn't make it out. It's very convoluted. We heard from a friend that Mozart was influence at the time by the Masons. There's a lot of mumbo jumbo about quazi-religious rituals, trials, citadels, membership among the elect. It was painful to follow. Better to concentrate on the music and singing, which was a lot of fun.

Singing Brahms's Eine deutsches Requiem

March 7, 2010 performance of Johannes Brahms's Eine deutsches Requiem by the Brookline Chorus at All Saints Parish church in Brookline, MA

A belated entry (I've been busy the last month, didn't have time to blog).

It was an afternoon concert on a sunny Sunday. The sun lit up the huge stained glass windows of All Saints. Friends were in the audience. I can't imagine a better place or time for this Requiem.

I loved singing this more than anything else I've sung since joining the Chorus, except perhaps for Carmina Burana. It's challenging and long. You have to pace yourself in order to have enough energy left for the last movement. It's a terrific journey.

To me the most heart-stopping moments come early, in the second movement, when we sing:

Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras
und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen
wie des Grases Blumen.
Das Gras ist verdorret
und die Blume abgefallen.

For all flesh is as grass,
and all the glory of man,
as the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower thereof falleth away. I Peter 1:24

We sing the words at first as a funeral march, a dirge, an acquiescent, resigned lament about the temporary nature of all life.

But then, a few minutes later, we blast out the very same words in an almost violent complaint against God and the universe. There's an orchestral buildup to this fortissimo over many bars. The music builds in tension and volume. You can see it, of course, in our director, Lisa Graham; with her increasingly tense gestures and her face, she makes you, the orchestra, and the audience understand that these are also very angry words.

The Huntington's "Becky Shaw" just manages to be a play, and not a sitcom

The Huntington Theater Company's production of "Becky Shaw," a play by Gina Gionfriddo, directed by Peter DuBois. We saw it Saturday night, March 20, 2010.

15 minutes into the play: what is this, television? A sitcom?

25 minutes: the moving sets -- whole sets sliding ostentatiously onto and off the stage, does it mean something? Am I not getting it?

The names of these people...Suzanna Slater, Max Garrett, Susan Slater, Andrew Porter, Becky Shaw. Not only is it television, but it's daytime soap opera. From the 60s. Maybe the town they're in is called Middleville or something like that.

Well, a high toned soap opera, actually, with some witty lines, a few laughs. Parts sound like a Woody Allen parody. The premise -- a group of academics or academically trained characters generating drama out of their neuroses, loves and self-loves. Yes, it's been done. This is a 2009 version.

Why are they swearing all the time?

30 minutes: The actor Seth Fisher, who plays Max Garrett -- he's very good. He takes over the stage whenever he's present. As soon as his cynical self is present, the energy level rises, and the story make sense (sort of).

60 minutes: wait, you mean this woman, who has lived with her adopted step-brother most of her life, who has a tormented relationship with him, finally has sex with him when they're in their thirties? Wouldn't they have worked all this out by now? Seems implausible.

80 minutes: the swearing, maybe it's a generational thing. Maybe they don't really mean it. The words don't carry the same weight for these 30 somethings as for us 50ish types. Really?

90 minutes: the cover photo of the program book is actually a good snapshot of the play. Becky Shaw, an adult woman, sits in a floral dress, showing a good bit of cleavage, yet her white-socked foot is turned in, in the manner of a little girl. Her blind date with Max gives her an opportunity to not so much seduce as to trap someone with her neediness.

110 minutes: This isn't a bad play. It's barely a play. A bit static. But it has a few laughs. The ragged nature of the relationships, the chaos, the emotional damage -- it all does seems real.

At one point, Susan says that love in marriage is a matter of "putting up" with your spouse. A lover is there to support you, despite your rottenness.( I'm not saying this is the playwright's belief -- it's what the characters express.) And whether you agree or not, Gionfriddo does capture this cynical view of what might be termed love on the stage. Love and marriage as devotion, as self-sacrifice, that's not here. For better or worse.

Honore Balzac's "Pere Goriot" -- it's all the same

Pere Goriot, by Honore Balzac (first published in 1835; I listened to it on CDs from Recorded Books).

It's a good story, how Eugène de Rastignac, a poor student from the country, his family's great hope, decides to take a short cut to fame and wealth by ingratiating himself into Parisian society. It's risky. He meets up with the most cynical people you could imagine, and acknowledges that he himself becomes one. It's old Goriot, Jean-Joachim Goriot, an old vermicelli dealer, who calls him back to reality with the example of his selfless (and cloyingly bottomless) love for his daughters.

I wondered if there was anything new in this book, compared to Lost Illusions and Cousin Bette, the two other Balzac novels I've read. The cast of characters are similar (maybe even the same in some cases). The experiences and motives of the characters -- all based on greed -- are similar. It's a decent pot boiler. But I'm not sure there's a good reason to read it if you've already read the the other two. Or even Lost Illusions alone.

Malone Dies, by Samuel Beckett: who cares?

Malone Dies, by Samuel Beckett (a Naxos Audiobook, originally published 1951)

Who cares?

Who cares about Malone's story, his life, his impending death? After hearing Malone describe the minutiae of his dying days, the routines of the asylum he finds himself in, the contents of his pockets, morbid scenes from his life as a parent, morbid scenes from his own youth, morbid scenes that I can't even place the time or location of...I was ready to say I don't really care about that guy, that old man in the asylum room.

Yet I kept listening/reading. All the way to the dispiriting, nightmarish end. That there is nothing there is surprisingly gripping. And after having spent time in nursing homes over the last few years, I do think Beckett has the environment right. Day after day, what else can the patients (or inmates) become to the staff other than objects to be moved and washed, like Malone?

And who cares that Beckett wrote the book? When I started writing this post, I was ready to say, "I don't". And now (with a few days pause in between), I'm ready to say that I'm glad he wrote it, and that I heard Malone's story.

Viewing the great movie "The White Ribbon" is a disturbing experience

"The White Ribbon" directed by Michael Haneke. In German, with subtitles.

This is an imperfect but very powerful film about a particular Protestant German village, in a particular time, 1913. The movie does not boil down to simplistic maxims about paternalism or repression, as some reviewers have suggested. It does show a drama of how people commit and respond to evil, and there's no single maxim you can put on that.

It is a well crafted film. The details of the characters' lives, their clothes, their hair, their manners, the flies in summer -- it all made me think that this was how it had to have been. There's a lot of Bergman-like cinematography here.

Is it possible that the village children committed the crimes depicted in the film? We don't know for certain. The schoolteacher who narrates the story has his suspicions. There are several scenes in which a window's curtains are drawn, the window opened suddenly, and there they are -- the group of them, blond children, presumably innocently inquiring about the health of a stricken classmate. I found myself gripping the arm rests. It's like a Hitchcock horror film in those moments.

It may be that the film's story dramatizes one of the deep currents that led to the rise of Nazism twenty years later -- that intimate, brutal repression results in the repressed himself committing small and large acts of evil. Of course, Nazism had many other roots (the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the economic and social chaos after WW I, the German longing to recover and avenge their lost territories, and on and on), but those are themes for other movies and stories.

Arthur Miller's play "All My Sons", at the Huntington Theater

We saw the Arthur Miller play "All My Sons" this past weekend at the Huntington Theater. The word "intense" was used often by local reviewers, and that's obvious enough as you watch the play, but I thought the words "improbable" and "overwrought" were better adjectives. I appreciate the clear moral drama, the nicely formed characters, and the actors were quite good (especially Will Lyman as the father, Joe Keller), but there was something way overheated about this play. The anguished yelling from every direction went on for a long time.

Woody Allen's humorous story, "Udder Madness" in the New Yorker Magazine

Udder Madness, a short story by Woody Allen, in the January 18, 2010 New Yorker Magazine. A first person narrative from the point of view of a cow who decides to murder a guest at the farm.

I read it aloud to Marilyn. We laughed so hard, we were gasping and nearly crying. "Imagine my surprise when I lamped the triple threat I speak of and registered neither a brooding cult genious nor a matinee idol but a wormy little cypher, myopic behind balck-framed glasses and groomed loutishly in his idea of rural chic: all tweedy and woodsy, with cap and muffler, ready for the leprechauns...lunch was served on the lawn, and our friend, made bolder by a certain Mr. Glenfiddich, proceeded to hold forth on subjects he hadn't a clue about...misquoting La Rouchefoucauld, he confused Schubert with Schumann...midway, the insufferable little nudnick beat his glass for attention and then attempted yanking the tablecloth from the table without upsetting the china...I needn't tell you that this proved to be a major holocaust...catapulting a baked potato into the cleavage of a tony brunette...."

It was like the younger Woody Allen, but even funnier.

Eric Jay Dolin's readable "Leviathan: the History of Whaling in America"

Leviathan: the History of American Whaling, by Eric Jay Dolin (Norton, 2007)

Full of detail and scenery, I found this an earnest, very readable history of whaling in America, with much of the book describing the destinies and fortunes of whalers in the ports of Nantucket and New Bedford, Massachusetts during whaling's heyday (about 1830 to 1860).

I was surprised to learn how important whale oil was to American industry, and to the history of American industry in general. It was the best lighting fuel in the world, and made life at night possible in cities all over America and Europe. There were other important products that came from whales -- ladies' corsets get mentioned a lot. But it was chiefly whale oil that industrialists and financiers made big money on.

Dolin navigates away from the moral issues that moves modern Americans, whether it's right to kill these wild, large, warm blooded mammals, and kill them nearly to extinction. He reports without contradicting the prevailing philosophy of people of the seventeenth and nineteenth century -- that these animals were meant to be hunted and harvested. I think that's fair, despite how I feel about whale hunting.

It's well researched, sometimes reading a little like an academic work. Dolin includes 75 pages of often interesting footnotes.

More about Native Son: Max's appeal for Bigger's life

More thoughts on Richard Wright's novel, Native Son (which I listened to on a Harper Audio recording).

Max, the white-haired, Jewish, Communist lawyer, defends Bigger Thomas in the court room and attempts to save him from execution. Bigger is the most despised man in America at the moment of his trial, a black man who has murdered two women, the white Mary Dalton, and his black girl friend, Bessie, though everyone knows that it is for Mary's death that he is to be executed. He is surrounded by people who hate him, except for Max and Jan (the young Communist white man who was Mary's boyfriend).

In his jail cell, Bigger wonders, "What was Mr. Max in it for?" (or thoughts to that effect). He thinks Max is "all right". But he doesn't see why Max has put himself forward to defend him. I wondered that too.

It's confusing. Max must want to clear the party of blame for involvement in Bigger's crimes. The police initially thought Bigger was inspired in some way by Communists (Bigger did, after all, sign his blackmail note as "Red" and drew a hammer and sickle in an attempt to mislead the police). But as Wright presents him in the novel, it's apparent that Max has larger motives for defending Bigger.

Near the end of the novel, during his lengthy appeal to the judge for Bigger to be spared the electric chair, Max accuses and indicts American society. This must be Richard Wright speaking through Max. His argument is the basic Marxian analysis -- we live in a system in which the labor of the poor, the oppressed, generates wealth for the upper classes. And in the process, the debasement of the poor leads to the creation of Bigger Thomases, and will continue doing so.

What an argument for saving a confessed murderer's life! Max depicts Bigger as a kind of soul-less agent of historic forces, without much of a will. Bigger's personality and character are hardly visible. There's no attempt to use the only possible argument for clemency -- sympathy for Bigger's impoverished background, for his mother, brother and sister. Max even insults the Dalton's (calling Mrs. Dalton's outlook and sensibilities "...as tragically blind" as her eyesight). The Daltons (who have lost their daughter to Bigger) are the only ones in the courtroom who could make a meaningful appeal for Bigger's life, but Max ignores that. Instead, Max gives out a lengthy ideological spiel. Max comes close to challenging the judge: send Bigger to the chair, and you contribute to the time when they (the blacks and poor whites of the country) will eventually rise up and get us.

This is an appeal guaranteed to fail. Richard Wright may have found a good stage, through Max, for presenting his ideology, but he did it at Bigger's expense.

And yet, this doesn't sink this novel. Despite its flaws, there is truth and power in this book, in its depiction of its characters and events. I can't get the scenes and words out of my head.

The novel's moving last scene, of Max talking with Bigger in his cell, just hours before Bigger is to be executed, are unforgettable, and probably make one of the best arguments for ending the death penalty I've ever read -- because it is an act of vengeance that forever ends the potential for redemption.

Sherlock Holmes, the movie -- great fun, even though it's ridiculous

Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie. Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes (a pretty good Holmes), Jude Law as Watson (bears no resemblance to the original Watson -- this Watson is a street-fighting stud who dresses nattily), and Michael Strong, as Lord Blackwood (who looks like a 30s movie Dracula).

The new Sherlock Holmes film (no title other than the name?) is a lot of fun. It's really an action film, from start to finish. Much of the time, I had no idea what was going on. And what was going on was preposterous. Doesn't matter.

A couple of things I missed, that I wish they would think about for the sequel: 1) the Holmes stories were always, at bottom, realistic. They presented Holmes and Watson with an inexplicable event or mystery (a person disappears, a crime is committed with seemingly no clues left behind). Holmes always proves that the crime CAN be explained. If we go too far over the edge into the fantastical and unrealistic, then we're left with Holmes and Watson as cartoon figures. 2) We're in late 19th century London and, as Doyle did with the original stories, it's good to linger on the details of the story, or of life. The movie does that a little, but in its rush to get to the next action scene, it obliterates Holmes's background solidity. He meditates. He thinks. He walks slowly and ponders sometimes.

But it's a decent romp all the same.