Book: Book about Books

 The Bookshop; A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss, Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2024

Provenance:  Village Books and Paper Dreams, a three-story bookstore in the Fairhaven district of Bellingham Washington. According to the receipt I was using as a bookmark (and admit it, you do the same). I was up north for one of the Lovely Bride's tax-preparer conventions, and while she attended meetings on the tax implications of crypto, I book-shopped. 

I've noted elsewhere that actors love plays about the theatre, but I don't find a lot of writers writing about the process of making and selling books. Most of the "books about bookstores" have been fiction and in particular romances (cue up the movie "You've Got Mail"). So it's good to get ahold of something talking about the history of bookstore. 

And physical bookstores are odd things in our digital world, in that they have a "baby turtle" approach to sales. A host of authors create works, which publishers create a huge printing of individual volumes, which are then scattered throughout the country to bookstores large and small, independent and chains, on the off-chance that someone will come in and adopt them. There are cases where I go in looking for a specific volume or author, but just as often I'm just browsing, seeing if something piques my interest. 

Which is how I found this particular book. Up in Bellingham.

Review: The Bookshop is more of a collection of short vignettes and anecdotes than a solid linear history of the bookstore, which sounds about right given the individualistic anarchic nature of the history of selling books. It is a swarm of origin stories, and swings all over the joint and all over the country. We intro through the author's local bookstore, the Three Lives in NYC, then spring back in time to Ben Franklin and printer/publisher/ booksellers, then the oldest Bookstore - the Old Corner in Boston. Then we go to bookmobiles, Marshall Fields to introduce the department store bookstore, and the Strand, again in NYC, as the first superstore. we skate along specialty bookstores (Socialist, Nazi, Queer, Black, though nothing on SF or Mystery book shops), then into Barnes & Nobles and the mall/destination bookstore, and Amazon's attempt at a physical bookstore (There was one at University Village, but that's now a restaurant). We take a side alley into the sidewalk vendors of New York, and finally lands on a bookstore co-owned by an author, Anne Pattchet, as an example of the modern indie, blonde-wood bookcases and all. 

Despite the scattershot vignettes, there are a lot of through-lines. The modern independent bookstore is a community gathering place - its owners are in the shop (and often characters in their own rights), and has its regulars and its signings, lectures and events. These bookstores have also always been under siege - underfunded and often running on fumes, with threats from larger chains, censorship, local government regulations, the Internet, Book of the Month, e-books, and even libraries. Plus they have taken the hits from the twentieth century - war and depression and AIDs and COVID. Bookstores close and move and get new owners. So the story of the bookstores are one of survival and community. 

And despite the wide net cast by the author, we're missing stuff. A lot of bookstores get a glancing mention (Powell's in Portland, City Lights in SF, Third Place in Seattle), with the assumption that the reader knows about them. Brentanno's gets mentioned a lot but I don't know much of their story from what is here. There is a lot of famous-authors-as-patrons. But what's missing is the publishers - they move like great dark shapes in the waters offshore, mysterious and powerful. I am STILL looking for a good history on publishers. 

Still, it is a worthy and readable volume that lionizes the independent bookshop and presents its people as unlikely community heroes. Worth diving into.

More later,

Book: Women in Their 20s

 Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties by Marion Meade, Harcourt Books, 2004

Provenance: Unsure, but from the pencil marking on the inside cover, I'd guess Half-Price Books. It looked like an overstock as opposed to a truly used book. 

Review: First off, bad title. The hair style of the title make is only glancingly noted, and references to bootleggers and speakeasies are mostly incidental. It doesn't exactly scream 1920s, but maybe. The secondary title is kinda incomplete as well, since we're going to be talking about four women who write as opposed to everyone else in the field. Only when we get to the third sub-title down do we address who we are talking about - Edna St. Vincent Milay, Edna Ferber, Dorothy Parker, and Zelda Fitzgerald. Important female writers of the era.

OK, quick summary for those under 100 years old: Edna Ferber was a popular and award-winning novelist who is best remembered for her Broadway adaptations (like Showboat, which you may have seen in high school productions). The other Edna - St. Vincent Milay, known here as Vincent, was a popular poetess. Dorothy Parker made her way on essays, short stories and sniping reviews in the nascent New Yorker. And Zelda labored in the shadow of her husband F. Scott, who wanted to be more successful than he was. 

They were not a group. They were not a movement. They worked in different spheres. They attended some of the same parties, but direct encounters between them were few and unmemorable. They all worked in the hothouse environment of New York City literati in the 20s, a neatly-compacted decade that ran from the creation of Prohibition to the Crash. 

And we have a lot of information about these writers because they were wrote everything down - diaries, notes, letters, and stories on things based on their lives. Moreso, since they ran about with a bunch of other writers, we have all of their notes, diaries, letters, and stories as well. The end result here is a chatty, gossipy, personal, and in places honestly bitchy presentation of the 20s in New York City. And Europe. Because post-war France was a great, cheap place to escape to if you were a member of the Lost Generation and had the petty cash. 

The book itself travels through the decade year by year, and concentrates on the lives and adventures of its subjects. Alcohol and abortions. Insights and illnesses. Trysts and travails. It gives a good scan of their growth and success as writers, but also the pitfalls of their craft - writer's block and problematic relationships and too many house parties and summer homes. 

All of the writers have their own arc and some sense of resolution. Ferber got a Pulitzer and showed you could succeed both commercially and literarily and ended the decade hosting small parties at her penthouse. Milay ascended into poetic godhood, retreated to the country, and pursued a young muse with her husband's permission. Zelda suffered under F. Scott (who comes off as complete asshole here), who only started to support her when she went into physical and mental decline. And Dorothy kept plugging along through boom and bust times, just writing. Of the group she's probably the best-remembered, owing the wit and meme-worthiness of here poems and short works.

The past is a foreign country - they do things differently there. I'm a fan of the 20s, which dovetails neatly with my interest in the Call of Cthulhu RPG. From this volume I've picked up that a trans-Atlantic cruise was not THAT big a thing if you had the money, and at the time, writers were actually being paid more (An easy conversion was to multiply any figures within by ten). There are a lot of bits and bobs here that I may find use for elsewhere, and you might as well. 

In the meantime, I've excavated a collection of Dorothy Parker's short stories from the basement library, and intend to curl up with that. 

More later,

Theatre: Rocky Revival

 Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks, Directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton, Arts West, in co-production with the Hansberry Project, Through March 1.

It has been rerun sort of season this year. We've already had Come From Away return to the Rep, and now here's another play the Lovely Bride and I saw at the Rep all the way back in 2003. The LB and I didn't really care much for it. Here's the review I posted at the time. And we STILL feel that way after the new production. The only difference is that I know more about plays now than I did then. 

Topdog/Underdog is about two impoverished African-American brothers living together in a single room. Lincoln plays President Lincoln at an arcade where people pay to assassinate him (was this ever a thing?). He used to run 3-card monte but swore off it. Booth, his younger brother has no steady job, but gets by boosting stuff and dealing with his girlfriend. The two spend the two and a half hour runtime in their small apartment, squabbling and trying to exert dominance over each other. Lots of cursing. Lots of yelling. Lots of violence just bubbling beneath the surface. Stuff escalate to 11 regularly, then ratchets back half a notch, then cranks up again. 

The characters are pretty irredeemable, in that you are just yearning for some Save the Cat moment, when they reveal they have heart and affection for each other and a glimmer of hope in their lives. No dice, here. Chekov's Gun checks in early, and hangs about for the duration, and the characters' moods flash back and forth erratically. 

The characters are petty and venal, not even evil enough to merit our anger or pity. The actors, on the other hand, are really, really good, which they need to be to handle their personalities. You see flashes of humanity, understanding, and pathos before it all gets buried in one more escalating argument. I'd love to see ML Roberts and Yusef Seevers in something else, in part because they do not give up on their characters, and try to bring some nuance to them.

One thing that is better with this revival is the set. As opposed to a bare-ish stage with hints of the world around them, their apartment at Arts West is a cluttered mess that reflects their lives. There is even a curtain installed of a bleached American Flag, hung upside down. Not subtle, but then play isn't as well. 

Back twenty-plus years ago, I asked the question "Pulitzer? This won a Pulitzer?" Yes it did, and a whole bunch of other awards as well. And the revival a few years back won more. This is definitely a case where my viewpoint does not line up with others who are experts on the craft. And to be honest, it was a full house that evening, the stage manager counting all the full seats before the performance. The side wings were filled with what seemed like high school seniors - maybe an English class? I'd love to sit on the post-play discussions about this one.

OK, enough belly-aching. It was a frustrating play that has not aged well with the passing years. The most positive thing I can say is that it shows glimmers of possibility for those involved. In the meantime, I'd recommend you check out Here There Are Blueberries at the Rep. 

More later,

Play: Revival of the Fittest

 Come From Away by Irene Sankoff & David Hein, Directed by Brian Ivie Seattle Rep through Jan 4

So in the face of the atmospheric river pummeling the Seattle area, the Lovely Bride and I bundled ourselves out to the second performance for the Seattle Rep season, a revival of a musical we saw way back in 2015. OK, its a revival, I thought, I've seen more than enough versions of the same Shakespeare play, or works by August Wilson, so I thought I could manage a new version of a feel-good musical about 9/11. I can do this fairly dispassionately.

Not really. I was in tears after the first five minutes, and kept quietly weeping at points throughout the play. Looking at my original review, I had been emotionally touched, but it felt harder this time. Maybe its post-tramatic stress, maybe it was old memories being excavated, maybe it was just some things going on in my personal life, but I tired of trying to surreptitiously wipe the tears from my eyes and just let them run down my cheeks. The heck with it.

Everyone has their own 9/11 stories, like my parents had Pearl Harbor stories (coming home from church and hearing about it on the radio in the living room). And seeing the performance on Pearl Harbor Day may have had something to with my reaction as well. The one thing I haven't mentioned before about it in this space was the silence in the skies in the week that followed. We are on the opposite hill in the Green River valley from SeaTac, and just south of both the Renton airport and Boeing Field, so while we don't get a lot of airplane noise, there is enough of a background rumbling from time to time to make us aware of its existence. But in the week that followed 9/11, there was nothing. And oppressive silence. It was a ghost in my memory until the play brought it all back to me.

Anyway,

Come From Away is a feel-good musical about 9/11. After the four passenger jets hit, all air traffic was grounded, and planes in the air had to land ASAP. A lot of the transatlantic flights, like 38 planes, include jumbos, had to come down in Newfoundland, in a small airport near the town of Gander (back in the day before jet travel, planes would fly to Newfoundland, refuel, and make the jump across the Atlantic. My father went to war on a bomber that refueled there). So the airfield was larger than was then-needed for the present day, until 38 planes had to touch down and 9000 passengers were grounded for the better part of the week.

The musical is about those passengers and the nearby towns (Gander and others) who suddenly had to take care of the new arrivals. It is a normal day until all hell breaks loose as the passengers worry, panic, try to get in touch with loved ones, and find out what happened, while the townies struggle to get basic support for the new arrivals, with no idea how long the emergency would last. There are all sorts of stories spinning out of the situation - the pilot that can no longer fly, the mother whose son is fireman in NYC, a couple gets together, another couple breaks up, a rabbi has to set up a kosher kitchen, the local ASPCA has to deal with all the animals trapped in the luggage compartments (including a couple chimps). 

And the actors pull it off incredibly well. The cast - a massive (for modern theater) dozen actors, plus a six-member band are on stage for the duration of the performance, and move effortless between characters, such that I did not recognize them when they transformed. Accents and mannerisms are added and dropped with each costume changes. And a lot of the folk on stage are locals that I have seen at other performances in the Seattle Area, though even many of them are making "Their Seattle Rep debuts".  And that's something I love about local theatre, particularly if they create such strong performances.

And the performances are strong, the songs are excellent, and the action moves swiftly from beginning to end. There is not any dead spots here - most of the scenes are frenetic and even the slow songs have an emotional weight that pushes them through. There are strong Celtic/Irish/Nor'easter flavor to the music, including a lot of stomping and dancing. And the actors play their own instruments on-stage, which is something I don't remember from the original. It is a conceit that works incredibly well.

Is there one actor to single out? Not really, because they are ALL that good, and put everything out on the stage to a packed house. It was really an ensemble job, and all of them were frankly amazing. 

Can I quibble about anything? Sure. The revival felt over-produced as far as stagecraft. The original we saw (pre-Broadway) worked from a mostly-empty stage, with chairs and boxes brought on from the periphery. This version set up the framing device of a 10-year reunion by physically setting it in the Gander high school gym, complete with basketball hoops folded up along the walls. I don't know if all that was needed, since the action at the center quickly took hold and dominated the space.

So, is there a moral here? People pull together in times of stress and heartbreak? Canadians are basically nice? I can't exactly say, but this is revival that you should attend. It is more than worth it. Good job, mates. 

More later, 

Book and No Movie: On the Rocks

 The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake, Grand Central Publishing, previously known as Warner Books, a Division of Hachette Book Group, 1970.

Provenance: Apparition Books, Renton, which has an excellent collection of esoterica, plus solid SF and mystery sections. After discussion of caper films among my Saturday night group which mentioned the movie version, I found this copy, its spine uncracked, on its shelves. 

Review: I've talked about Donald Westlake before in these pages, and how he balances both hard-bitten, hard-boiled protagonists with lighter, more human-sized, comical characters. The Hot Rock is an example of the latter. I was attracted to it because, many years ago, I saw the movie version with Robert Redford and George Segal, and when the subject came up in our group, I kept my eyes out for a copy.

This is the first of the novels featuring John Dortmunder, a very good thief with very poor luck. He goes free from prison and an old buddy picks him up in a stolen car with MD plates. The old buddy, Kelp, has a job for him - stealing a large emerald belonging to an African nation on the behalf of a rival African nation. Dortmunder is uncomfortable with the idea, but lacking a lot of options, throws in with Kelp. 

They put together a team: Dortmunder is the planner. Kelp is the contact. Murch is the driver (who obsesses about driving), Chefwick is the locksmith (who is model train fan), Greenwood is the all-around, the utility outfielder of the group, a hapless romantic. They're all mugs who have had their run of hits and misses, but never a big score. They meet in the back of a bar and plan out the heist from the New York Coliseum. No small thing. The heist works, until it doesn't. Greenwood gets caught with the emerald. 

So now the plan becomes how to get Greenwood out of jail with the emerald. And they do, but they don't. Author and screen critic Robert McKee refers to this as "the gap" which drives character development - the space between character expectations (Greenwood gets the gem) and reality (The cops catch Greenwood). That sets up the next part of the heist (getting Greenwood back) and ratchets up the tension as a result. This happens a number of times - where they succeed until they fail. And as Gilda Radner's character, Rosanne Rosannadanna says, "It's always something."

And so it is. Dortmunder is the pessimist and ready to walk away several times. Kelp is the optimist, and keeps bringing him back into the fold. The risks get bigger with every iteration, as do the resources. The plot bounces along nicely, the characterization is good, and Westlake has an economy of style that plays out incredibly well here.

Anyway, after talking about it in our Saturday night group, we went hunting for the film version from 1972, with Redford, Segal, Paul Sands, and Zero Mostel. And we couldn't find it. Anywhere. Not streaming. Not on Amazon. Not even at the venerable and incredible Scarecrow Video. which is the last local outpost of rentals. In our overheated, overproduced, content-heavy modern times, it is not to be found. I found a Spanish-language version, but that's not the same thing at all. I remember seeing it in the theaters fifty years ago, and seeing it on TV once or twice, but the ground has opened up and swallowed it whole. Would love to know the story of why.

Maybe we have to plan a heist.

More later, 

 

Theatre: Women's Plays

The Roommate by Jen Silverman, directed by Kathryn Van Meter, Arts West through October 19th

Fancy Dancer by Larissa FastHorse, Directed by Chay Yew, Seattle Rep in conjunction with the Seattle Children's Theatre, through November 2nd

 Theatre is for everyone, but some of it skews to a particular demographic. This past weekend the Lovely Bride and I saw two plays, both female-centered and pretty darn good.

Our attendance at both of these plays are delayed by travel - the Lovely B and I were in Pittsburgh for our 50th High School Reunion and pressed on to visit friends and family in Philly (and no, I didn't tell you. I don't tell you everything in these write-ups). So as opposed to opening night at the Arts West or the first few weeks of the Rep's run, we're tuning in late here. 

Friday night, we headed out to West Seattle for The Roommate. A tightly-wound woman in Iowa gains a freewheeling boarder/tenant/housemate in the form of a more worldly Brooklynite. Wackiness ensues, but takes a dark turn as both women evolve off each other. The spirit of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple haunts this, as this is also a play about polar opposites sharing the same space and setting off sparks. But this one has more emotion, more passion, and more grounding than Simon's take on the situation. 

Sharon (Sarah Harlett) is a agitated, frantic worrier, a retired wife and distant from her grown son. She a county mouse, and she frets, cleans, and moves around the stage like a hummingbird, always castigating herself for her mistakes. Robyn (Mari Nelson) is the roommate from New York city, gay, vegan, more comfortable in her skin, trying to quit smoking other nastier habits and make a fresh start. She's the city mouse, a woman with a past. And Harlett and Nelson are brilliant in their roles as their characters move from a wary first encounter to a team-up and to a break-up that leaves them both changed. 

The play itself has some weaknesses, which requires\ you to just accept it as part of the plot., The pair fall in with themselves extremely quickly. We're a little weak on the why and how of why the mousy Sharon wants a roommatein the first place and how Robyn found out about the opportunity. And there are small things that threw me a little, like getting high off of two hits of a reefer and using a traceable land-line to run phone scams (Iowa apparently does not have caller ID). But the acting stands out here as Harlett and Nelson encapsulate their characters. It was definitely worth it, and a strong start to the Arts West season.

Sunday afternoon we caught Fancy Dancer at the Rep, which, again, we also had to delay because of the trip East (actually, it from exhaustion on returning from the trip East, but never mind). Fancy Dancer is a one-woman show presented by the author, alternating with another actor-dancer. We got to watch the playwright perform, a half-Lakota Sioux woman drawing on her own history for the play. Her story is growing up in Minnesota, abandoned by her parents, raised by a white couple, bullied and abused by her fellow students, but finding a goal in life through ballet, and as part of that inspiration through the work of Maria Tallchief, who was America's first prima ballerina as well as half Native American (Osage tribe). 

Maria Tallchief, 
who has her own
quarter

FastHorse tells her story with wonderful dance (of course) and excellent stagecraft. The floor is bare with a minimum of props, but storms and stars are projected on the walls, moving use through time and emotions. The tale runs through many personal setbacks and small triumphs, and ends with her finally getting her first professional job, and finding the strength to move forward. 

The thing is, this is only half the story. doing the research on FastHorse, I found she was a professional ballerina for only a decade, until an injury forced her to retire from the stage. She regrouped and began teaching and writing her own plays, and her voice carried to the point where she was the first known Native American to have a play on Broadway. And that feels like a play on its own.

And this was a performance that reached out to the women in the audience. The audience was heavily weighted towards woman for our matinee, along with more children than I have previously seen at a Rep performance (many of whom, I suspect, were also in dance class). And it is a personal tale of triumph in the face of adversity. 

The Lovely Bride did not care for it as much, in part because it was a one-person show. Without the interaction and conflict of multiple actors, it is less of a play and more of a straight-forward storytelling experience. I think a single-actor play has validity as theatre (though I've seen some real questionable ones over the years), and FastHorse's portrayal of her youth is as much theatre as the two-hander of The Roomate. 

So in the end, I liked these plays, but did not love them. They did not hit home for me, in part because I don't share similar experiences (never took ballet, never felt I had been retired from my marriage). I am, as the Lovely B says, "not the target market". And that's OK. They were well-done, well-performed, and well-presented, and deserve the level of attention. If you're looking for a comedy, I'd give The Roomate the edge. For a more personal tale, check out Fancy Dancer. 

More later.

The Big Pile of Books: Plane Books

A Right To Die by Rex Stout. Bantam Books, originally published in 1964. 
Too Many Clients by Rex Stout, Bantam Books, originally published in 1960
And Four To Go By Rex Stout, Bantam Books, originally published in 1958
Fade to Black by Robert Goldsborough, Bantam Books, originally published in 1990
The High Window by Raymond Chandler, Vintage Crime originally published in 1942
Pickup on Noon Street by Raymond Chandler, Ballantine Books, originally published in 1952
Playback by Raymond Chandler, Ballantine Books, originally published in 1958
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, Arcturus Books, originally published in 1920 

So I've been doing a lot of air travel this year, and when I travel, I bring along paperback mysteries. They are small, portable, you don't have to turn them off when landing or worry if the batteries are low. I usually get them at used bookstores, so if you lose them, you're out a few bucks.

And there's something I've noticed that I haven't seen anyone else comment about - the demise of the mass market paperback. I've been in a couple big chains, and the stubby pocket-sized mass-market paperback has been almost completely replaced with the larger-size trade paperback. The only mass-markets I'm finding (even in grocery stores, is the aisle next to the greeting cards) are by established authors and part of larger series that have been running in that format for years. Even a couple of the entries here are trade-sized reprints, purchased while on the road. Is this change-over really a thing? Are we losing the traditional mass market paperback of our youths?

Anyway.

These mass-market mysteries are also relatively short, unlike the doorstop fantasy books of the last several decades. That works out as well, since I can finish a book in one hop from Seattle to Milwaukee, or a round-trip to LA. 

I still tend to favor Nero Wolfe mysteries, if you haven't noticed, but I am getting towards the end of the Rex Stout canon, and have actually bought the same book twice under different covers because I was unsure if I have read it or not. I've even engaged with Stout's estate-approved successor. So I'm doing a bit more experimentation, this time with some Raymond Chandler I had never encountered before, and dabbling with Agatha Christie. 

Anyway, here are some recent additions

A Right To Die - Usually, Wolfe's world exists in a 7-year bubble. When we first meet Archie and Nero in the 30's, they've been together about 7 years. In the fifties, they've been together about 7 years. But now we are in the 60's and suddenly we get a direct call-back to an episode in the 30's. Back in 1938, Wolfe cracks the case in Too Many Cooks by appealing to the better nature of a group of African-American waiters. Now, one of those former waiters shows up at his door, quoting the speech that Wolfe had made that night. His problem is that his son is engaged to a white girl, and he wants to find out what's wrong with her. And then, of course, the white girl turns up dead. I mentioned that Wolfe's world is predominately white, but this is one of the times that Stout touches on racism.

Too Many Clients - This is Stout's sex mystery (amusing since the back cover of the paperback edition has a promotion for Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex* (But were afraid to ask). Much as A Right To Die delved into race relations, Too Many Clients deals with a high-level exec maintaining a sex-den in Spanish Harlem, where he um, entertains young women. When the exec turns up dead, Wolfe starts gaining client after client who wants to know who did it (and confirm that it wasn't them). The sex is polite, gentile, and mainly confined to the erotic art on the sex-den's walls. And since Archie Goodwin, our narrator, is a gentlemen, it doesn't get much further than a passing glance. Very much of its age.

And Four To Go - This is collection of Stout's shorter works, which originally saw print in glossy magazines like Look and The Saturday Evening Post (both long-gone as regular periodicals). This collection deals with a murders set around the holidays - A Christmas Party poisoning, an Easter parade shooting, a Fourth of July picnic stabbing. Each with a host of suspects and motives and a solid reason for the relatively inert Nero to get involved. Also was a fourth story that was an alternate version of a story that appeared elsewhere, with only the age of a female character changed. Interesting and a pity that such few avenues for this type of fiction now exist.

Fade to Black - Robert Goldsborough is the appointed heir (by Stout's estate) to carry on the stories of Nero and Archie. And it's all right - I can't really fault it. All the pieces are there - the brownstone, the orchids, the gourmet meals, the dicey relationship with the cops. But is does feel a little off, oddly because Stout's stories were always in the moment when they were written. Wolfe is always reading some recently-published volume, and the New York of the era is drivable. Fade to Black hews to that rule as well, but it feels weird once we get into later decades. The first line is "The whole business started at Lilly Rowan's Superbowl party", which just feels odd to me. The mystery involves dueling add agencies and stolen ideas, and there is a body, of course. It's not bad, but we are looking at a different place and time.

(As an addition, this volume was publishing in 1990, and the evolution of the mass-market paperback is clear from the earlier books of the 60's. It is a mass-market, but the margins are wider, and the leading (the white space between the lines) is larger. The book itself has more pages and is thicker, though I doubt there are more words. Paper in this later era was apparently cheaper, allowing the book to swell and take up more space on the bookshelf).

The High Window - This was purchased in Missoula Montana at Shakespeare's, a bookstore across the river from the hotel where MisCon was being help. I had finished Murder at the ABA and wanted to get a book for the return trip. I had read most of the "big" Raymond Chandler (The Little Sister, The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye), and wanted to dig into the ones I had not heard of before (or had not been turned into movies). In The High Window, Phillip Marlowe is hired by an upper-class client to recover a rare coin. . Almost immediately hoods start leaning on him and dead bodies start piling up. Two things stay with me as I read through these - one is how Chandler managed to turn LA into a character, an impressive thing for a town that legendarily has "no there there". Chandler here is dealing with the upper crust and the roots they've set down in the more sordid parts of LA

(And by the way, this the trade version of the book, reprinted in the 1992, and can be compared against the earlier mass markets. Thinner, taller, but also wider margins and leading. And a higher price tag, even taking into account inflation). 

Playback -  One other theme that haunts Chandler's pages is broken women - those who have been traumatized as a foundation for their actions. You notice it after reading a few of them. In The High Window it was timid secretary Merle Davis. In The Long Goodbye it was Linda Loring. In this case it is Betty Manning (with a host of other names) who is on the run to California. Detective Phil Marlowe is hired to shadow her, then switches sides and becomes her defender in a cluster of lies and betrayals. The part of LA that Chandler defines here is Enclave Culture - those wealthy colonies along the coast where the old money retires, the young money wants to be included, and the help staff can't afford to live within the town boundaries. That part is the most interesting feature, along with Marlowe's internal monologues.

Pickup on Noon Street - This is a collection of shorts originally written for pulps like Black Mask. There's no Marlowe here, but rather characters named Dalmas and Carmady, both of which have their own internal code that Chandler relies on. LA is here as well, but seedier, seamier sides, which means a lot of hoods and guns, troubled women, and bodies on the floor. I picked up the book at Half-Price, and it came with its own little mystery - a polaroid used as a bookmark of what could be a shoreline or a distant mountain range in the distance, with a non-descript skyscraper along one side. 

The Mysterious Affair at Styles - The first Agatha Christie novel, and the first Poirot, this feels like a bloodless affair in the wake of Chandlers continual callousness and Stout's colorful domesticity. It is the classic Manor Mystery where the suspects are all in the house the night of the murder and everyone has a motive somewhere along the line. Christie wanted to write a mystery where she plays fair, and gives all the clues needed to solve the puzzle, but the passage of a hundred years made this reader sail past the pertinent clue in identifying the murderer. Yet it has a clockwork logic to it and a very British reserve that contrasts with the other books described in this post. The character with the most personality is narrator Hastings - Poirot's expository sidekick in the style of Doctor Watson and Archie Goodwin - who falls for one of the suspects. This particular edition was another trade paperback, nicely presented and large-formatted. 

And that's it for the Plane Books of 2024. The thing that strikes me in this mystery reading is the frame holding the mystery is sometimes more engaging that the mystery itself. Dorothy Sayers has a very political in her writing. Stout (and his successor) takes New York City and turns it into a cozy place for the occasional killing. Chandler reveals the LA outside his window, and Christie gives a tour of the upstairs/downstairs life in the interwar years. The books are centered on the mystery, but what makes them successful is what they're really about.

And I'm looking at stocking up for next year's trips. There will be fewer of them, but they will still be there.

More later.

Theatre: Dreams and DREAMers

 Sanctuary City by Martyna Majok, Directed by Desdemona Chiang, Seattle REP through 31 March.

First off, parking stories continues. We did get reasonable parking through the theater app, but it was across the width of Seattle Center, which was a long walk for folk of our age, even taking it in multiple stages. On the parking lot elevator, we encountered another grey-haired couple in the elevator who were also attending the same play.

SHE: What do you know about the play?

ME: I don't know much. I tend to go into these things blind.

SHE (Poking her husband): HE'S the same way!

And yeah, we have season tickets, so we're going, even though the matinee has been moved up to noon and we had Daylight savings time to boot. 

Anyway, Sanctuary City. It was very, very good.

The play divides into two neat, well-produced halves. The Boy, simply identified as B (Junior Nyong'o) and the Girl, G (Emilie Maureen Hanson) are both Millennials in Jersey, underage and illegal in a post-eleven America that does not want them. Their situations are not exact, but they team up as friends, G crashing at B's place to avoid a violent stepfather. We follow them through their high-school years in a scattershot of short, short vignettes, the actors dipping in and out of repeated sequences to set up the pattern of their life from school through graduation. On a bare stage, the short vignettes, slammed into each other over the course of years, like the kids are workshopping their adult lives and what they're going to do. Spoiler - one gets legal, and promises to marry the other, regardless of the personal risk.

And it works surprisingly well. Director Chiang tried this sort of thing in Constellations, which did not work, but here, under the fire and talent of the leads, it powers through effortlessly grabs the audience and does not let go.

And probably if that was where it ended, it would have rewarding but not enough to justify a full production. But, then, everything changes, the black backdrops rotate (a deft use of the Rep's often-overplayed stagecraft), to transform into an apartment over the New Year's break, three years after the promise. Things have changed, and the kids have moved from sharp, all-elbows and worry to long-term angst and stress. Their lives have changed. G visits and discovers B living his lover (a sharp Josh Kenji). Relationships are tested, and the characters have to face a no-win situation, that, regardless of the choice, someone will have to sacrifice their future.

And it is sad and beautiful and honest. Hanson and Nyong'o grow up (and apart) before our eyes. And while delving into the depths of the political situation of the age (post WTC, pre-cell phones), it is political but never weighed down by the overwhelming politics of the era instead concentrating on the characters' own situations. They take the politics and make it personal, and in doing so conquer their lives. 

Yeah, I liked it. Glad I went in blind, because it left me wondering how it would all turn out, and it was sad and funny and damned good writing with damned good actors. More of this, please.

More later, 

Theater: Jeeves Takes Manhattan

Jeeves Takes a Bow Adapted by Margaret Raether from the stories of PG Wodehouse, Directed by Scott Nolte, Through June 17, Taproot Theatre Company

The theater seasons I pay attention to are coming to a close, but Janice Coulter and her husband, Sacnoth, treated us to this production at the Taproot up in Greenwood. north of the city. Our planned lunch place, the Olive & Grape, had changed its opening hours to later in the day, so we had lunch at Razi's, a pizza place that makes nice salads as well, and hunkered down at the Taproot's Jewell Mainstage for an afternoon of Wodehouse. 

The Jewell is, well, a little jewelbox of a performance space, the stage thrust out deeply into the main space and surrounded on three sides by the audience, who are also sprinkled overhead along thin galleries. It brings the audience right on top of the action (such that they warn the patrons not to put their feet on the stage, lest they be trampled), but has the downside that sightlines don't always work, and we were treated to a great deal of "back-of-the-head exposition".  Which is a pity, since the actors were all excellent. 

Long-time readers of this blog know about my enjoyment of Wodehouse's world. The plot of Jeeves Takes a Bow is pillaged from the Bertie and Jeeves canon, along with original material heavily influenced by the genre. Bertie Wooster (Calder Jameson Shilling) and his stalwart valet, Jeeves (Richard Nguyen Sloniker) have decamped from England for New York City, only to discover that Bertie's old pal Binkey (The oil-slicked Miguel Costellano) has been pretending to be Bertie, auditioning for a local theater production, and romancing the female lead, Ruby (Claire Marx). Ruby in turn is trying to elude her overly-protective producer, the wise guy Daniel "Knuckles" McCann (Tyler Matthew Campbell). Also dropped into the mix is strait-laced old girlfriend of Bertie's, Vivian Duckworth (Kelly Karcher) who wants to research the dens of iniquity in NYC, including speakeasies and, of course, the theater.

In other words, it has all the trappings and tropes of a Wodehouse production. New York is a regular venue for his stories, and the plot is a collection of colorful characters, mistaken identities, and travails for Bertie and solutions by Jeeves. The foolish master with the crafty, wise servant has been with use since the Roman Plautus if not before, and Wodehouse expands upon that fine tradition. And the plot in one familiar to fans of Wooster & Jeeves - Bertie gets into a tiff with Jeeves (in this case involving purple socks), then promptly gets himself in a jam which requires Jeeve's help, and Jeeves gets him out of the jam, but in a fashion that embarrasses and chastises Bertie.

Shilling's Bertie a likable mixture of good intentions and self-deprecation - he's aware of his shortcomings and leans into them, which makes him sympathetic as his well-meaning nature gets him more deeply involved in his predicament. Costellano's Binkey helps support Bertie in that Binkey is even more hapless and hopeless than Bertie. Marx's Ruby is pure brass, Karcher's prim Vivian is a delight, and Campbell thunders with just the right amount of threat as Knuckles. 

And through it all, the calm center is Sloniker's Jeeves, always there with a spot-on comment and chilled cocktail ready for delivery. Even in rough-and-tumble New York, Jeeves rises head and shoulders among his compatriots, and is the wise head that everyone recognizes and relies upon.

The lingo is completely 1920's argot, and you might find one or two lines among the Americans that do not reek of the era. The dialogue is fast and furious rolls through the entire stage as the actors throw themselves into the works and across the stage in bringing the page to life.

Kinetic, Frantic, Antic, Manic. Yep, that about sums it up. All in all an afternoon well-spent.

More later,   

Meanwhile: Twenty Years Later

 

More later,

Plague Books: Clap for the Wolfe, Man

Too Many Cooks/ Champagne for One by Rex Stout. Bantam Books, 2009 reprint of novels from 1938 and 1958.

Provenance: Purchased at the Strand, New York City, in the before times. I had gone to the Strand to look for the new Will Gibson book, but they had sold out. But I did find this one.

Recently, I bogged down with three rather involved tomes, so when I went in for my shot, I took this book along. Didn't really need it, but once started, I spent several pleasant spring afternoons on the back deck reading it.

Review: This is a reprint compilation - two books, twenty years apart, shoved together under a single set of covers. No additional editing, and it shows. The first book runs its course, and the second begins with new page numbering. The fonts and leading are different in both halves. There's a big globby typo on page 104 of the first story that is still there. So the effort on the 2009 reprint consists of new covers and printing.

What it does do is that it allows us to compare two books, same author, same characters, same general setup, twenty years apart and eighty years back in time. Yes, there is some creakiness involved, but in general, they hold up.

(OK, for those who haven't heard me talk about this before, here's the overview of the series: Nero Wolfe is a brilliant, overweight, cantankerous private detective with a superiority complex and preference for fine food, orchids, and not working. Archie Goodwin is his legman. employee, and friend, the wisecracking Watson in this pair, but more social and more street savvy. He pushes, goads, and otherwise manipulates Wolfe into doing the right thing as part of his job. Together they're detectives.)

So, Too Many Cooks. Here Wolfe is out of his element. He is going to a gathering of professional chefs in West Virginia to give an after-dinner speech and enjoy the food, and maybe get a secret recipe from one of the chefs. One of the chefs present is one of those guys who everyone says deserves to be stabbed. Yeah, he is stabbed. So, large crowd of suspects, Wolfe having to do things he does not want to do, Archie is being charming and flirtatious, but with a heart of gold. Even at this early date, a lot of the components of a Nero Wolfe story are pretty much set in stone. 

An interesting exception deals with race. Up to this point, I hadn't considered how white Wolfe's world is, but in this case a major set of witnesses at the resort in W Va are black men. Despite being set in New York, a lot of the people who Wolfe is dealing with are Caucasian. Some of that is dealing with the Upper Class, his clients, but also most of the day-to-day that Archie runs around with - cabbies and doormen and receptionists. There is a variety of European heritages - Italians and Irish and Polish and French, and Wolfe himself is Serbian. But these would fall under the ancient rubric of "White Ethnic", a phrase I don't think I've heard since 1978 (Its flipside would be WASP - equally extinct in the modern age, even with a recent failed attempt to resurrect it as simply "Anglo-Saxon")).

But we are in West Virginia for this tale, and black men are the resort staff. They cook and serve the food. They hold the doors. The help. They are made semi-invisible by the shade of their flesh. How does Stout handle it? Casual N-bombs are thrown in the text, but not by Archie or Nero, though Archie does use a few archaic epithets that I had to look up. When confronting the staff as potential witnesses to the crime, Wolfe delivers a "Brotherhood of Man" speech that borders on cringe-worthy to modern ears, but Wolfe pulls it off in part because of his own insufferable superiority to everyone regardless of race or creed. And Stout's characterizations of the African-American staff are better than most films of the era, and he makes clear why the staff would be unwilling to cooperate with the white establishment, regardless of where in Europe those ancestors came from.

Champagne for One also involves a hot topic of its time - in this case unwed mothers. Up to the mid-70s, there were "schools" that would take pregnant unwed mothers in, see them to term, provide varying levels of support and putting the children up for adoption. The lessening of stigma about teenage pregnancy did a lot to reduce their popularity and the rise of birth control, but they are at the heart of this part of the mystery.

The setup for this one is a bit stilted, but bear with me. Widow of the founder of one of these homes continues her late husband's tradition of inviting three of the women from the school (post-birth) and three young men (of upper middle class) to a dinner at her mansion. At this particular one, Archie is leaned upon to fill in as one of the young men. One of the women, who had told people she kept poison in her purse in case she decides to do herself in, is poisoned. Everyone assumes it is suicide, but Archie goes on record as saying it is murder. And that eventually brings Wolfe in.

And here, twenty years later, the formula is firing on all cylinders. We have the brownstone on West 35th street. We have the supporting cast, both household and professional. We have the cigar-chomping chief of detectives, who lives in the pantheon with Piroit's Inspector Japp and Holmes Lestrade as foils and frenemies. We have the big cast of upper-class suspects, who pack their own secrets and agendas. That last is definitely a Stout trademark - the murder is not frozen in amber, but rather the players continue to conspire and plot as Wolfe closes in. But the setting and action is comfortable, right down to the red chair in Wolfe's office. Are these "cozy mysteries", a term used for rural sleuths like Miss Marples? Yeah, I can see it. Comfort food with a little murder on the side.

I guessed the murderer in the first book, but not the exact method. Was surprised by the murderer in the second even though I caught the fatal statement that led to the reveal. Not that I claim to be up to Wolfe or Goodwin's level.

More later,

MADness Takes Its Toll

There are other, more important things going on in the world, but I'm going to talk about the demise of MAD Magazine.

And yeah, it's a demise. Death. Pushing up daises. Cue the Choir Celestial. It is an ex-Magazine. As the news hit and people reacted badly, the spin control engaged - it wasn't QUITE dead. It would do some reprint stuff. And a yearly annual. And the reprints would be in the direct sale trade, and the chain bookstores - those that are left.

Look. LIFE Magazine died in 1972 as a weekly magazine, but it still shows up at the grocery check-outs with special issues on the latest film or some ancient anniversary. But LIFE is dead. Ditto MAD.

And I've taken the news with the stoicism of a hearing of the passing of some old friend from high school that you haven't talked to in three decades. As a kid, MAD magazine was a staple in the tree fort in the backyard, and the smell of the slightly moldy, aging paper stock stays with me to this day. And we got the paperbacks that reprinted stuff from the fifties and early sixties as well. Nostalgia is strong, but not strong enough to continue support over the years.

MAD defined for me what New York was like, along with its native New Yorkers. It was hip, sophisticated, cynical, urban, multi-cultural. It was sarcastic and sardonic. It was smart and infantile at the same time. It was definitely left of center (though it out time to lash liberal hypocrisies as well as conservative ones) and any commercial. It was educated. I knew a lot more about Broadway musicals and current films from the Mad satires. And the music parodies, mostly written by Frank Jacobs.Those I can still remember better than the last book I read.

A favorite Broadway parody - "My Fair Ad-Man", with Cary Grant trying to turn a beatnik Frank Sinatra into a proper grey-flannel suit. A favorite song - "Hello, Deli".( Hello, Deli. This is Joe, Deli, Will you please send up a hot corned beef on rye).

And the talent. Names to conjure with like Mort Drucker, Jack Davis, Dave Berg, and Don Martin (When naming Asura for GW, I always recommended their names sound like Don Martin's sound affects). Sergio Aragonnes and his marginals. Al Jaffee and his fold-ins Even the tags at the top of the page held a chuckle.There was a lot of depth going on in the page, a lot of stuff all happening at once. It was really, really good.

And yeah, I know that the magazine had fallen on the hard times of not being sufficiently profitable for its corporate overhead. Bill Gaines ran it his way until he passed, and since there it has been a slow cascade of corporate decisions, each made while looking over its corporate shoulder to see if THIS would be the one that killed it. Folding it into the greater Warner Brothers empire, cutting pay rates, reduced shipping schedules, moving the whole furshlugginer operation to California. And now the zombie-like demise where the Brand survives but everyone who made it a brand is gone. Feasting off the corpse.

But as I said,. I haven't read it in decades. I can't remember the last thing I read in the magazine, the last issue I bought. I moved on to other things, as one does. I picked up a lot of National Lampoons in college (dead in 1998 (after five years of sporadic publication), and SPY magazine therefore (Also dead in 1998), and suppose my current fling with the New Yorker is that most recent engagement with the New York State of mind, of an era when Manhattan was the hub of the publishing universe, with all the intelligentsia swarming around it. And MAD was its court jester.

Farewell MAD. Farewell, Alfred E. Neuman. Farewell, those bits and bobs and punchlines that people of my age can quote and discover others get the joke. It's been real.

More later,

New York State of Mind

One of the things I've been doing other than blogging has been traveling, both to Los Angeles and New York City, on business. LA has become a frequent stop, so I slip in and out like a thief in the night. New York, on the other hand, I haven't been to in more than a decade. So here are some thoughts:

Messrs. Emerson, Grubb, and Khan.

It was 2007 when I was last in New York (and that was for potentially turning Guild Wars into an animated TV series - nothing came of it). Back in the days of TSR, I was in town, regularly, in February, for Toy Fair. Toy Fair is still a thing, but I'm not there this time. This timeI was in town for a recording session for a game we're working on. I was recording lines with the brilliant Michael Emerson (of "Lost" and "Person of Interest") and the extremely talented Kamal Khan.  I can't and won't give details, but both actors were fantastic.

But I've noticed some differences of the town from almost ten years ago. There are more children and families in Manhattan than I noticed previously, and less sirens in the night. People honk less (I didn't say they stopped - I said they honked LESS). The lullaby of Broadway of continual gridlock is still there, but with less aggression.

One thing I had forgotten about was salad with breakfast. The complimentary breakfast provided from the hotel was completely insufficient (three muffins), so I ended up ordering an omelette each morning, and it came with a salad. That worked out well for me.

It snowed when I was out there. I mean, New York in February, so of course it snowed. A couple inches, enough to paralyze Seattle. Here it was a nice dusting. Families were sledding and building snowmen in Central Park.

Bright Lights, Big City

We were quartered right off of Times Square. New York hotel rooms are just as  .... cozy ... as I remember. Times Square itself is America's Ginza district, and is amazing with its lights. In snow it is even brighter as each flake catches the light and reflects back. And yes, there were people everywhere, watching the snow.

We had some down time, and took the opportunity to sight-see a little. Caught an exhibit on Stonewall at the New York Public Library by accident (we were checking out the architecture) on the way to the Tolkien exhibit at the Morgan Library. The latter was a beautiful small jewel box of an exhibit, crammed with all manner of Tolkien's artwork, both the famous (some of it graced various editions of the books) and the mundane (designs on crossword puzzles, creatures created for his children). Highly recommended.

I have a niece (who works for the NY Public Library System) who lives in Brooklyn with her husband (who is working with a startup), and so I journeyed one evening by subway down to her neck of the woods. The slotst hat used to take tokens are gone, now. Brooklyn was pretty nice, and reminded me of the North Halstead neighborhood of Chicago - lot of brick, neighborhood corner stores, quiet streets, a variety of apartments and homes. We went to a place that offered Thai Street Food, with dished like pad cha, weeping tiger, and something with five syllables that sounded vaguely Klingon. Excellent food.

My niece had warned me that the subways changed schedules on the weekends. Despite this, I and a companion got on a train heading for the American Museum of Natural History (about 81st street) but ended up under 125th street (walking distance to the Apollo in Harlem). A very helpful old man (from Brooklyn - he lived on the street that used as an establishing shot in "Welcome Back Kotter") told us what we did wrong and helpfully directed us to another platform, which didn't have ANY trains running on it (because, weekend). Finally found a transit authority figure in an orange vest who was helping out confused travelers.

Oh, yeah, did I mention that I have "talk to me" written on my forehead? Because that's what keeps happening. In New York City. On the subway. No, you don't need to talk to me! You have phones! Oh, all right, fine, tell me about your nephew in Queens.

Serious skeletonage

First time at the American Museum of Natural History. I grew up with the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh and loved the Field Museum in Chicago, and yet was very, very impressed. Their wildlife dioramas were amazing. The whale hanging over their Hall of Marine Life was great. I would give them the edge on the natural exhibits, but think the Field did better on exhibits on ethnography (other peoples). Parts were under renovation, it being February, including the Hall of the Pacific Northwest. Curious what they will do with it.

A necromancer's paradise.

Their top floor - the Halls of Vertebrate Evolution - where they keep the dinosaurs, are just amazing. I don't think I have been in a museum with as much textural density in years. Their presentation take no prisoners - you have to keep up with the Latin names and clades and synaptic openings and maniraptors. I could have spent a full day on that floor alone. I officially feel behind the times when confronted with both the traditional presentation of equine evolution and how more recent fossils blow a hole in that traditional view of evolution.

I went in search of a mural from my childhood, in some LIFE book on evolution. Could not find out, and now realize that it was in the Peabody Library at Yale. Ah. There were good murals of the mammals, though.

Strawberry Fields

Did not get to Ground Zero this time. It was hard enough to visit Strawberry Fields, which commemorates John Lennon. There was a young Asian woman playing Beatles tunes on a folk guitar and an artist selling "bad portraits" Yes, they were bad. Just being there was a bit of a hit to the stomach. I had to sit down on a snowy bench and pull myself together. Walking through Central Park was wonderful however, and I rewarded myself with a Nathan's Hotdog from a stand.

The New York food carts, by the way,  have a lot more neon signs these days. And there are flatscreens on the subway. It is a very advanced world.

All that said, 432 Park Avenue, one of the tallest buildings in New York, is as ugly as sin. It is the box should hold a mammoth toothbrush. No picture, because it is so ugly.

I got down to the Strand Bookstore, which was heavenly. If you like Powell's City of Books in Portland, you'll be at home in the Strand. Lots of books, used and new, lots of people sprawled everywhere. Looked for some Nero Wolfe (I read Rex Stout's mysteries on the plane) but left with a volume of Johannes Cabal (The Fear Institute) by Johnathan L. Howards. Pro tip - there are cash registers elsewhere in the shop - you don't have to get in the big line by the entrance.

Failed to hunt down the neighborhood of Nero's Wolfe's brownstone either, though I understand that the block was completely rebuilt when the Lincoln Tunnel was pushed through. Still, there is a plaque somewhere for that.

A round table, but not THE Round Table

The final evening I was on my own, and realized that my hotel was next door to the famous/infamous Algonquin Hotel, home of of the famous/infamous Algonquin Round Table. This was a daily lunch group of authors, editors, and other celebs that engaged in witty wordplay, logrolling, and mocking those who were not at the table. The restaurant has been renovated and the table itself is gone, but a portrait of the group does loom over a replacement table.

Took one of my producers out to New York Pizza. It is more than just a thin crust pizza - it is very good, and I am a fan of Chicago Pizza, so that's saying a lot.

I've said this before - New York City is a town that every American knows even if they have never been there. MAD Magazine, the New Yorker, Marvel comics, innumerable movies and TV shows. You know that location, and that building, and it all has a sense of familiarity about it. It is America's back-lot, and it is good to connect back to it again.

More later,

Theatre: North Side Story

In The Heights, Music and Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Book by Quiara Alegria Hudes, Concept by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Directed by May Adrales. Seattle Rep through December 30.

So there is such a thing a performance being too large for the hall that contains it. I've always thought of the venerable Bagley-Wright Theater as being a large venue with a lot of space on stage. Yet, for In The Heights, it is seriously too small, both on stage and as far as sound quality is concerned.

Let me deal with this bad news first before pushing on to say how good the cast is. The sound quality from the performance pitched the on-stage band against the miked-up actors, and the result was an unsatisfying tie. Often the words got lost in the upswelling music, and the audience was at times blasted by the resulting combined volume. It took much of the opening number for my ears to adjust and actually hear the words. The touring stage was a great design of multiple levels and exits, but it cramps the forward part of the stage, and I found myself marveling at the dancers not getting in each others' ways as much as their superior choreography.

And yes, the dancing is fantastic, the music is ecstatic, and the actors are all superior both in acting ability and the power of their voices. There isn't a weak singer in the lot (By way of comparison, you can give the role of the tailor in The Mikado to someone who does not have a huge amount of vocal range). This is an incredibly amazing cast from the leads to the ensemble who do their darnedest to sell the story.

And the story is, well, it is not the selling point. I can't give you a good summary without tipping my hand to spoilers, as you can see where everything is going from the get-go. It takes place over the 4th of July weekend in Washington Heights, a strong Hispanic community at the northern tip of Manhattan. Poor but proud, its people are second and third generation, both American and loyal to their family heritages. They've made something of themselves, and can make a bit more, but it may mean moving away from the Heights.

There is the bodega owner that wants to go back to his family's homeland. There is the student coming back from college. There is the father who has hopes for his daughter. There are the girls who work in the beauty shop. There is the neighborhood matriarch. Everybody gets their moment, everybody gets their song, everybody aims for a showstopper. There are revelations. There are fireworks. There is a power black-out. There is a winning lottery ticket. And by the end of it all, every character has their arc resolved in time for the finale.

The stakes in all this, however, are pretty low, and it is more of a slice of life with strong Latin flavor and a hip-hop beat. The threats are pretty mild, and when one of them seems about to rear its head, it diffused and lets all the air out. There are no real surprises. As I said, so much of what is good about this performance are the performers. Ryan Alvarado, Sophia Macias, David Kaverman, Alyssa Gomez, Stephanie Gomerez, Tony Chirolders, Karmine Alers and Yassmin Alers (yes, sisters), heck yes, even Henry Gainsa as the Piragua Guy engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Mr. Softee. All great.

I want to say that this is riding on the coat-tails of Lin-Manuel (Hamilton!) Miranda - they promote that angle heavily, and it was his first work. But the original show (pre-Ham) pulled down all manner of awards both on and off Broadway, has had some serious national tours (It was here in Seattle at the 5th Avenue in 2010 - probably a better venue), and will become a movie in 2020. There is something here that engages and delights, but it doesn't have that much foundation to it. This is one of those plays where I look at 4 Tony Awards (as opposed to a single award for the clearly superior Come From Away), and wonder what I am missing about the tastes of Modern American Theatre.

More later,

Daisey History Six: Renters

Mr. Daisey has moved on to his next gig, but still, we persist.

Daisey's sixth entry into his  People's History talks about the imbalance between those with power and those without. He talks a great deal about his personal experiences renting in Brooklyn, but the historical entry come from the Anti-Rent War.

What, you've never heard of it? The ANTI-RENT WAR. 1830's? New York State? No?

Hey, it got a historical marker and everything!

Yeah, this falls in the hole between 1812 and 1860, but it is extremely instructive as to how change gets made from below, as opposed to being granted from above.

Not-so-short version: The Hudson River Valley ran for a couple centuries on a feudal-style manor system run by patroons, who were the major land-holders. The inhabitants were effectively tenant farmers, who did not have control over the land they farmed. The patroons held a lot of the power, including control of the local courts and law enforcement, getting a big chunk when leases were sold, and a serious taste of the gross productivity.

In 1839, the tenant farmers revolted and refused to pay. The ruling patroons sent in tax collectors - they were tarred, feathered, and run off. They sent in a posse of 500 men. THEY were surrounded and run off. An agent of the patroons was killed. Finally the State itself declared it was an insurrection, sent in the military, and made arrests. Eighty-four anti-renters were arrested, thirteen was convicted, two were condemned to the gallows.

But the anti-renters transformed into a political force in NY State, a faction that contributed to vote out the then-current governor for a more progressive one. The convicted anti-renters were pardoned, and the feudal patroon system itself was disassembled in the New York Constitution of 1846. So, ultimately, the anti-renters won. Long fight, but they won.

It is an interesting story, and generally forgotten.

And what's interesting is that there as SO MANY stories like this that are sidelined, sidebarred, forgotten. Whiskey Rebellion. Shay's Rebellion. Pullman Strike. Haymarket. Occupy. They get moved off to the side, treated as exceptions to the rule as opposed to how things really move forward around here. Particularly if they have long-term results as those involved get a place at the table.

Wikipedia, interestingly enough, soft-pedals the Anti-Rent War in its entry. They blame the previous patroon for the uprising, who was too easy on the tenants, so that his heirs roused their anger by adhering to the established feudal laws. It ignores the Panic of 1837, which put the economic pressure on the patroons to demand their money and on the inability of the tenants to pay. It mentions but does not explain the "Calico Indians" (not Native Americans, but rather white dudes dressed up as false Indians, much like the Boston Tea Party). There is a mention how the soon-to-be-ex governor tied to get disguises outlawed, echoing the modern complaints again the Black Block protesters. Oh, and two of the anti-rent ringleaders would go on to help found the Republican Party. Howboutthat?

Yet this is a pattern we see again and again - Rebellion, Violence, Repercussions. Accommodations, Change. It doesn't always go through the full cycle, and does not always represent forward progress. But it is a theme that is showing up again and again in these discussions. And perhaps the real narrative that we're looking at in our history.

More later,

Game: Boss Tweed

Very Gangs of New York

Tammany Hall designed by Doug Eckhart, Pandasaurus Games 2012

Let's move on from politics to ... a game about politics!

Provenance: This is the Kickstarted version of the game. I purchased it at North Texas RPG Con as my "Big Buy" of the con (I try to limit myself to one, because I have to lug it back). Brought it out for our Monday Night gaming group.

Review: We've played this game three times, and there are issues. But let me give you the lay of the land before I start complaining:

Tammany Hall is a unit-placement game set in New York City in the mid-19th century. This was the time of the rise of the great urban political machines, and I am a fan of the era, and in particular William Marcy (actually Maegar) Tweed, who was the "Boss" of Tammany Hall and the Democratic Party in post-bellum NYC. The board is lower Manhattan, divided into three districts with numerous wards in each district.

A pool of immigrants shows up at Convent Gardens (this is pre-Ellis Island) - four national groupings - Italian, Irish, German, and English (different colored cubes). You have a hefty number of "Ward Bosses" (meeples) and can put a ward boss and an immigrant cube in a ward, OR put two ward bosses in one or more wards. Easy peasy. If you put an immigrant cube, you get a "favor token" for that immigrant group.

After four turns (years) you have a vote for mayor. You only look at the ward bosses in each ward, since they deliver the votes. No other ward bosses? You get the ward. Other ward bosses in the ward, you square off, secretly adding appropriate favor tokens to the number of ward bosses you have. High score gets the ward. Guy with the most wards (and there are all sorts of tie-breakers) gets to be mayor.

The mayor then hands out the city offices, which allow to gain free favor tokens, lock down wards, or move or remove immigrant tokens. Everyone gets an office, so the trick is to hand out the more powerful ones to people you think you can trust. After four elections (16 turns), the game ends and the high score (VPs awarded after every election) wins.

And that's pretty much it. But after playing it three times, I get the feeling we're doing something wrong. And that's not good. First game we were being polite and learning the rules. Second game we got into a little more deal-making. Third game we tried to dogpile on the leader. None of these worked out that well, and in the last two we had to call time (a two hour playing time is a bit rosy in its estimation).

Part of the problem is that mayor is a very powerful office, long-term. Short-term it sucks - everyone else has something they can do. You just get 3 victory points. But since you have to control a lot of wards to get to be mayor, you have more victory points already. The end result is that the mayor (particularly if you can get re-elected) gets a huge head-start on everyone else. The rich get richer. In each game, we had the first mayor get out front, a second place player at about half points, and the rest in a mob at the bottom.

The idea that it is clear that taking down the mayor is a catch-up feature, but it is very hard to do. Challenging other wards requires effort and resources that might be spent better elsewhere, and leaves both combatants weakened. There is a "scandal" mechanic that can take out enemy ward bosses, but it requires a layout of future victory points and favor chips, and requires you have a good setup in the first place. The ideal form of combat is "Let's you and him fight" - getting two opponents to take each other on while you hold down your own territory.

Dealmaking is also a challenge, in that there is precious little you can actually trade at the time. You can't trade the favor tokens, and there is no rule to punish deal-breakers (other than everyone saying, "Oh, Stan! He broke a deal once! Let's you and him fight!"). And since you have to give out all the offices, you have to give good powers to less-than-responsible people.

The quality of the game components are excellent, the rules are fairly clear, and most of the information you need is repeated on the game board. It has an excellent physical design. Tammany Hall gets good reviews, in particular from those that claim that it will turn players against each other faster than Monopoly, Diplomacy, or Kingmaker. I'm not seeing it. Our group gave it the old college try, but it came up empty. Not a bad game, but not as amazing as I expected. Maybe I should check out its ancestor, El Grande, to see if I'm missing something, or if it is just us.

More later.

Short Story: That Fitzgerald is a Funny Guy

The I.O.U. by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The New Yorker , March 20, 2017 Issue

The magazine in question.

Provenance: I've subscribed The New Yorker recently. I read the magazine sporadically in the late 70's when it was laying out on the lobby tables in my dorm at Purdue, but it never really caught.It felt at the time to be dry and bloodless and unconnected with my Midwest Engineering Life, even down to the cartoons (and I was a big fan of Chas Addams work growing up). In my most recent stab at East Coast culture, I now find the magazine deep, engaging, and with a lot going on. Cartoons have improved a bit as well. There is usually some huge article (Anthony Bourdain, the Mosul Dam, Russian cyber-policy) which I find worth plowing throw in detail.

In any event, the most recent issue found its way to my mailbox, with a lovely cover by Tomer Hanuka I found nice, but that my friend Stan! asked to have after I was done with the magazine, and my Lovely Bride declared "That would be worth the subscription". The magazine contains a "lost work" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Written for Harper's Bazaar but never published, The I.O.U. is a short piece about, well, let's leave the summary  for the review section. In any event, there is a book of unpublished stories from Fitzgerald coming out in a single volume, which includes this one, and so the promotional nature of publishing lays it at our doorstep. Which is amusing, since the story is about publishing.

Review: This is a humorous story about publishing, ts characters larger than life, its resolution as straightforward as a punchline. Our narrator is a publisher who has unleashed his most recent bestseller - a book of spiritualism in which a noted psychologist and psychic researcher communicates with the spirit of his nephew who died in the Great War. The publisher goes into great detail about the process of preparing the book for launch, and upon a successful release, sets out by train, a case of books under his arm, to meet with the author in Ohio. And on the train he meets someone who will completely blow the gaff and doom his publication. To say more is to reveal too much. Our publisher is set up for the fall from the onset, and we get to see him scrambling faster and faster to keep all the balls in the air.

Illustration from the story.
Heck, just go read the thing.

The story was written and published in 1920, around the time Fitzgerald's first novel  This Side of Paradise, showed up up to great acclaim and suitable sales. Yet this period was also one where Fitzgerald was getting published mightily for his short works - magazine pieces that paid surprisingly well, yet today live in the shadow of The Great Gatsby. And Fitzgerald's language is firing on all cylinders, particularly when he it is laying out litanies, be it towns in which the books with be distributed or reporters calling out their representational papers.It is, at heart, a good read.

This could be Wodehouse with only a few more malaproped allusions. Bertie could be saddled with this mess with some ally in the Drone's club in the publisher's role, Jeeves directing the final shatterer of their plans in the proper direction. Psmith could serve equally well with just a bit more trimmings. The female lead, Thalia (Goddess (well, Muse) of Comedy - shall F. Scott put a lampshade on all this for us?) is one of those drippy dedicated young maidens that populate Wodehouse's work. Happenstance weighs heavy in the plotting and the resolution.

Fitzgerald can be a funny writer, and Gatsby itself is filled with comic bits that get glanced over in the seriousness of being a "great novel". The Owl that Nick encounters in the library is one such moment, as is the comparison of the names of East Egg and West Egg cognoscenti. Yet we breeze past these, and I wonder if we think of Gatsby as a comic novel with a bleak ending, it holds together better. I'm sure there is some doctoral dissertation out there on "Uses of Humor is F. Scott Fitzgerald's Canon", and if there isn', there should be. Perhaps Fitzgerald, like God,  is ultimately a comedian playing before an audience that is afraid to laugh.

More later,