My Year in Things Other than Film 2010

NEW YORK—One of the more obvious selling points of moving to New York, of course, was the easier access I would have to its art-house and repertory film scene. Certainly that has proved to be the case, and I have tried to take full advantage of it, taking in screenings after work on some weekdays without the expectations of having to come home at a "reasonable" time.

But a funny thing has happened to my movie-going habits since moving here: In some ways, my movie-going has taken something of a backseat to my interest in expanding my full range of cultural and social experiences here in New York. In other words, since moving to New York, I find that my life no longer revolves quite as obsessively around movies as it did when I was still living at home in East Brunswick, N.J. These days, I'm more interested in striking some kind of balance between various artistic disciplines: film, music, literature, theater, visual art and the like—because, as my mother has reminded me time and time again, movies aren't everything. (Of course, I have a feeling she had more practical things in mind when she has issued that reminder to me every once in a while.)

For that reason, I feel that no personal year-end summary would be complete without acknowledging some of my more memorable non-cinematic discoveries in 2010—a lot of them coming in the last four months of the year, after I had moved to Brooklyn. In music, literature and theater:

Top Music Discovery of the Year:

Bossanova (1990), Pixies

I had heard much about this Boston-based alternative rock unit over the years, and a friend of mine in East Brunswick had previously introduced me to parts of their second album Doolittle (1989). This year, though, I was reminded of the group when I went to see French filmmaker Olivier Assayas's third feature Paris at Dawn (1991)—screened as part of Brooklyn Academy of Music's Assayas retrospective in conjunction with the official U.S. theatrical release of Carlos—and witnessed one of the film's stars, Judith Godrèche, dancing in a club to "Debaser" during one scene. So when I went to this year's WFMU Record + CD Fair in October and saw CDs of both Doolittle and their first full-length album Surfer Rosa (1988) available for $5 apiece, I decided to pick them up and start exploring.

Most people seem to cite Doolittle as their best album, and in some ways, I suppose it is: more stylistically varied, but with arguably more memorable melodies than in their debut. Compared to that one, their third album, Bossanova, sounds slicker and more consistent in style and tone. And yet, this is the one I find myself returning to over and over again, from its apocalyptic cover of the Surftones' "Cecilia Ann" to its lyrical closer "Havalina." Lyricism, in fact, is one quality Bossanova manages to exude even at its most hard-rocking, with atmospheric melodies buttressing lead singer Black Francis's obsessions with women and outer space. We all knew the Pixies had attitude from their first two albums...but who knew they also eloquence in them, too?

Other notable music discoveries:
—Aquemini (1998), OutKast
—Berlioz: Requiem (1959), Charles Munch & Boston Symphony Orchestra
—Court and Spark (1974), Joni Mitchell
—Have One on Me (2010), Joanna Newsom
—Listen to My Heart (1995), Nancy LaMott
—Mozart: Le Nozze di figaro (1955), Cesare Siepi, Lisa della Casa, etc.; Erich Kleiber & Vienna Philharmonic
—Pet Sounds (1966), The Beach Boys
—Plastic Ono Band (1970), John Lennon
—Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978), Devo
—Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers (2003), The National
—Vampire Weekend (2008), Vampire Weekend
—尘缘 (1984), 蘇芮

Top Literary Discovery of the Year:

Ulysses (1922), James Joyce

Much has been written about this masterpiece of modern literature, of course...but all those dry exegeses of Joyce's intricacies of language and numerous literary, historical and cultural references obscure just how fascinating it is to actually read the darn thing. It's not an easy read, to be sure; Joyce doesn't always make it easy to comprehend what is actually going on in his "narrative," so to speak. But does it necessarily matter, in the end? What Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus get involved in in the course of the book's narrative is fairly mundane: They eat, drink, reminisce, sin and feel guilt like the rest of us mortals. The thrill of Joyce's restlessly experimental prose, though, comes from the realization that here is a true artist of words transforming ordinary experience into something beautiful, and reaching all the way down to the Greek epic tradition to do so. In one grand masterstroke, Joyce not only pushed the boundaries of literature, but also managed to imbue common human experience with a nobility that many writers seek but few successfully achieve. I don't normally collect books, but Ulysses was an exception; I already can't wait to read it again.

Other notable literary discoveries:
—The Day of the Locust (1939), Nathanael West
—Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber, Ed.: Robert Polito

Top Theatrical Experience of the Year:

Angels in America, Signature Theatre Company

Tony Kushner's two-part epic about humanity, politics and spirituality during the AIDS crisis in the '80s was revived by the adventurous Signature Theatre Company this fall, and while this new production overall feels more like a respectful, if still startlingly effective, reiteration than a bold reimagining of by-now familiar material, the drama still packs enough of a wallop over the span of its seven hours that it hardly matters, in the end. I'm biased, though: Being that my first experience with this play was through Mike Nichols's HBO miniseries adaptation, I am just grateful for the opportunity to see it performed on a stage in my lifetime—because, as good as the miniseries is, Angels in America feels much more revolutionary on a stage. And the material is still revolutionary, even as its topical immediacy has somewhat faded. It remains one of the great works of modern art, in any discipline, and still powerful in its theatrical daring and deep humanity.

Oh, and this new production has Zachary Quinto in it—the man many of you might know as young Spock from the recent Star Trek reboot, or as Sylar from the TV series Heroes—playing the guilt-ridden Louis Ironson. He's quite good in it, too. And he also took this photograph with me:

Other memorable theatrical experiences:
—The Break of Noon, MCC Theater
—Our Town, Barrow Street Theatre

As you can see from my relatively sparse literature and theater lists, and the absence of a visual-art list, there are still major gaps in my overall cultural enrichment. So: read more books, see more theatrical productions, and go to more art museums. Those all sound like good New Year's resolutions to me!

Here's to another year (no, not the Mike Leigh film) of wide-ranging artistic exploration! I hope you'll all be along for the ride!

A Literary Interlude, Courtesy of Nathanael West

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Yesterday, I finished reading Nathanael West's famous 1939 Hollywood horror/satire novel The Day of the Locust, and was so thoroughly dazzled by the particular passage below—coming as it does in the midst of that amazing apocalypse he unleashes in the finale—that I felt a great need to briefly chime in here and share this with you all:

New groups, whole families, kept arriving. [Tod] could see a change come over them as soon as they had become part of the crowd. Until they reached the line, they looked diffident, almost furtive, but the moment they had become part of it, they turned arrogant and pugnacious. It was a mistake to think them harmless curiosity seekers. They were savage and bitter, especially the middle-aged and the old, and had been made so by boredom and disappointment.

All their lives they had slaved at some kind of dull, heavy labor, behind desks and counters, in the fields and at tedious machines of all sorts, saving their pennies and dreaming of the leisure that would be theirs when they had enough. Finally that day came. They could draw a weekly income of ten or fifteen dollars. Where else should they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges?

Once there, they discover that sunshine isn't enough. They get tired of oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don't know what to do with their time. They haven't the mental equipment of leisure, the money nor the physical equipment for pleasure. Did they slave so long just to go to an occasional Iowa picnic? What else is there? They watch the waves come in at Venice. There wasn't any ocean where most of them came from, but after you've seen one wave, you've seen them all. The same is true of the airplanes at Glendale. If only a plane would crash once in a while so that they could watch the passengers being consumed in a "holocaust of flame," as the newspapers put it. But the planes never crash.

Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they've been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. This daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can't titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing.

My response to this? God help me if I ever get to such a jaded, cynical point in my own life! (Although, judging by some of the thoughts running through my head during Toy Story 3 last night, I wonder if I haven't reached that point already...)

Oh, and if you haven't already read The Day of the Locust: Yes, I do think it is worth reading, provided that you're able to adjust to its surreal wavelength and not expect much in the way of realism, psychological or otherwise. Though it's commonly considered a satire, to me it reads mostly as a grotesque horror tale about the dark side of the Hollywood dream factory; that is why its over-the-top ending feels all too appropriate. I'm not sure that I find West's bleak vision totally persuasive—I have this nagging feeling that his targets are a bit too easy for its satire to be particularly penetrating—but, whatever you may think about what he's expressing, he does so with a ferocious intensity that, at the very least, demands respect. And nowhere do you sense that ferocity than in the passage above.

Okay, back to enjoying the weekend...

R.I.P. J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—

...and now J.D. Salinger has died??? So many artists who spoke to me at certain points in my life, all dying within a relatively concentrated period of time? Damn...

In the interest of honoring Salinger's distrust of "phonies," I might as well disclose early on that, other than The Catcher in the Rye, I haven't yet read much of Salinger's other work. (I guess I know now what will be next in my reading queue after I finish Farber on Film!) In fact, it was only after his death was announced today that I finally got around to reading his famous short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"...and, in addition to being a deeply affecting piece of writing (its ending is as blunt-force stunning as the impact of the bullet that Seymour empties into his brain), it vividly reminded me of what I loved about Catcher when I acquainted myself with it during my high school years.

I like to think that one of my better qualities is that I always try to be honest with people, both in person and online, about the kind of person I am; I think The Catcher in the Rye played a huge part in shaping that quality in me. Also—to be perfectly honest—it spoke profoundly to some of the darker emotions I was feeling during my adolescent years, as someone who always felt rather outside of the loop in many ways, particularly socially. Admittedly, I haven't re-read the book in years, and even after reading "Bananafish" tonight, I do wonder, years removed from those emotionally tumultuous high-school years, if I'd embrace it with nearly the same passion that I did back when I was younger. (In the back of my mind, I wonder if Salinger's vision, casting as it does a gleaming light on the innocence of childhood, has begun to come off as merely sentimental as I wade deeper into adulthood. Or have I really become that cynical? I shudder at the latter notion.) But I won't deny the impact The Catcher in the Rye had on me...and I can't imagine its brilliance simply as a piece of writing has dimmed one iota over the years.

And now, I will end this remembrance here, reserving to right to say more about Salinger once I get to the rest of his work. Nevertheless, I thought this particular loss, and my own personal (if perhaps not wholly well-informed) investment in said loss, was still worth noting here.

R.I.P. Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—

Howard Zinn, the great American historian and political activist, has died.


His epochal People's History of the United States remains an important work in my life, not only in profoundly influencing the way I look at American history, politics and politicians, but also providing inspiration simply as a work of tremendous curiosity and bravery. Zinn perceived mainstream U.S. history as, for the most part, "written by the winners," so to speak, and thus proceeded to look into alternate voices—ranging from minorities (Native American, African American, etc.) and women, to laborers and even prisoners—to recount history from the viewpoints of the oppressed and unfairly treated. The result is a genuinely revelatory work of rigorous research and humane empathy, one that asks all of us to always consider our fellow man while cultivating a healthy skepticism toward our government (because, believe it or not, our government officials, democratically elected or not, may not always, and quite possibly rarely do, have our best interests in mind).

There are few books that I have read (and few movies that I have seen, for that matter) that I can say has stirred in me an honest-to-God desire to try to go and bring out some kind of change in the world I live in. Zinn's People's History of the United States is one of them. May his passion for championing the rights of the downtrodden continue to reverberate in all of us even after his death.