Southern Bookman

Aaron Sorkin brings Atticus Finch to Broadway

Will Atticus Finch be as big a Broadway sensation as Alexander Hamilton?

Aaron Sorkin's play based on Harper Lee's classic novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" opens Tuesday night on Broadway, propelled by a big media fanfare and major advertising campaign. Tickets won't come open until March, according to breathless ads in The New York Times.

Along with Sorkin's reputation for dramatic narrative and crisp dialogue, the play is directed by Broadway titan Bartlett Sher, a consistent hit-maker with musicals, comedies and serious drama. 

The play stars Jeff Daniels, a deft character actor who has achieved enduring stardom in movies, TV and the theater. Although Gregory Peck defined the role in his Academy Award-winning movie performance, Daniels possesses the acting range and vocal dexterity to make the role his own.

Sorkin says he's conceived a fresh conception of Lee's character. He brings the play to New York after withstanding a suit by Lee's estate concerned about changes he made. Apparently not bound by a settlement with the Lee estate, Sorkin promises that the play will be different from the book, and Horton Foote's movie screenplay.

Will New York critics agree that it's a sin to kill a mockingbird, or Sorkin's version of it? 

I expect New York Times lead critic Ben Brantley to review the play, and I'll be surprised if he doesn't go along with the pre-opening excitement. Brantley tends to follow the prevailing popular mood.

The reaction of The Wall Street Journal's Terry Teachout will also be telling. Teachout is known for deflating the bubble of productions lauded elsewhere.

No matter what the critics say, the theatrical version of "To Kill a Mockingbird" is all but guaranteed to be a hit rivaling "Hamilton."

Lee's Atticus Finch and her story of a small Alabama town's reckoning with justice touch deep chords in the American conscience. 

 

Atlanta United championship brings memories of Knights...

The wonderful Atlanta United's MLS championship brought memories of another title won by a city team: The Atlanta Knights captured the International Hockey League's Turner Cup in 1994 by beating the Fort Wayne Komets. Like the Five Stripes, the Knights received a downtown victory parade.

I remember the Knights fondly; I covered the team for the AJC and spent nearly a week of my life in Fort Wayne, Indiana, during the championship series.

Good to see the United's win stirred recollections of the Atlanta Chiefs' 1968 title in the long defunct American Soccer League. 

And what about the Atlanta Crackers, who won titles in the old Southern League?

The NFL grows more enticing on cold and rainy Sunday afternoons in December. The games seem a waste on sunny days in October.

Does the NFL have more bad teams now than in the past? I remember when the Saints, the Panthers, the Falcons and the Bucs were all good in the NFC South. Now, outside of the Saints, all are bad. The Giants, the Bills, the Jets, the Browns, the Raiders, the 49ers: horrible football has infected the entire league.

Is it me or have the Christmas commercials fallen off this year? Nothing speaks of the season's spirit like vignettes of rich families receiving luxury cars. 

I feel sad when college football is gone. It's bad when the best sports option on TV is a mediocre NBA game.

Is the NBA made up of the same two teams, which just change uniforms?

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times came out with their 10 best books of the year. None of the selections seemed exciting. Really, a book on taking LSD? I thought we'd gotten beyond that when the Moody Blues sang "Timothy Leary's dead..."

Nick Ayres decided he wanted to spend time with his 6-year-old triplets rather than be Donald Trump's chief of staff. Ayres said he wanted more mature conversation.

Harold Baines in the Hall of Fame but not Dale Murphy?

I've mostly liked HBO's "My Brilliant Friend," depressing as it is, but it's tough to read the subtitles and keep an eye on the action when you're wearing bifocals. 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviewer emeritus Janet Maslin outshines regular Times critics in listing favorite books of year

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times when The New York Times' daily literary critics presented their favorite books of the year.

In a roundtable in the Weekend Arts section, the newspaper's Dwight Garner, Parul Sehgal and Jennifer Szalal looked back at the books they read and reviewed during 2018. 

Returning guest reviewer Janet Maslin stole the show with her witty compilation, avoiding the criticese that marred the comments of Garner, Sehgal and Szalal. 

A stellar arts writer for the Times before her retirement several years ago, Maslin still does the occasional book review for the newspaper, generally of thrillers, crime novels and Hollywood bios considered too lowbrow for the regular crew. 

Maslin's witty, urbane style sparkled among the turgid and portentous writing of the others. I had the warm glow of meeting an old friend at a wine-lightened lunch at some sophisticated Manhattan spot. Her selections also struck me as more interesting and surprising than the others'. 

Garner's heavy-handed piece was dismaying. Garner, whose weekly work I generally like, seems to have caught the Michiko Kakutani bug for this feature.

Each of the books he selected, "implicated the reader deeply" Garner said. I didn't realize that reading is a criminal act. Garner succumbs to Kakutani's bad habit of stretching words to the point of torture. 

Garner goes on to say that each of his books "delivers the sense of an especially sentinent human being seeking to explain something that matters." This banal observation makes authors sound like earnest adolescents. 

At least Garner's piece caused a reaction. In contrast, Sehgal and Szalal's offerings were predictable and unimaginative.

Maslin's presence highlighted how far the Times' book coverage has fallen since the days when her work was standard for the newspaper rather than the exception.

Barnes & Noble exits the music, video businesses

Visting my neighborhood Barnes & Noble for the first time in months, I was mildly surprised that the store had said goodbye to its music and video businesses.

The once vibrant CD and video section, recently augmented by vinyl's fizzled comeback, had been replaced by shelves bulging with toys, puzzles, games and glitzy gifts. Toys 'R' Us died last year, only to be resurrected at Barnes & Noble.

Gazing upon the shelves packed with Christmas kitsch,  I felt  like Jimmy Stewart's character in "It's a Wonderful Life" when Mr. Potter commercializes the town.

Books were still hanging on, although I wondered why anyone would want to buy the second volume of Gary Giddens' Bing Crosby biography. The hardcovers lying upon the "new arrivals" table seemed enervated..

The new "gifts and collectibles" section had also taken over space formerly occupied by the poetry, drama and music literature sections. I feared that poetry, like jazz, rock and classical music, had also been sacrificed to raging consumerism.

But I found that poetry books had been moved to a new, perhaps larger, section. Alas, the adjacent essays section appeared smaller, and the erstwhile literary criticism section had vanished.

Thank god and Rupi that poets come up with a couple of best sellers here and there. 

In contrast, the long-dying CD business and the zombie return of vinyl were unable to counter the popularity of music streaming. With so much free music, even big stars have to grub for money.

As for the death of video, blame Netflix, Amazon, Youtube, Hula, and so on. The old retail model couldn't withstand the "disruption" of mobile devices.

As struggling B&N raises its bets on kids' amusements, the book business received some good news. Magazine web sites like the Atlantic, Buzz Feed and New York magazine have boosted their coverage of books, the Columbia Journalism Review reported. 

A lot of the new book news gives attention to already popular authors. The sense of discovery of old book-review sections is gone. 

Despite the expanded poetry section, B&N likely will give more space to bestsellers, gimmicky self-help books and business oracles than serious literature. And Amzaon will remain the monster at the dark end of the street.

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Fountain seeks restoration of America's civic virtue

Ben Fountain's "Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion and Revolution" sees Donald Trump's election as the triumph of fantasy over reality.

The Dallas-based author of the excellent 2012 novel "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" looks back on Trump's 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton from a broad historical and philosophical perspective.

Along with summaries of monthly news events that occurred during the turbulent campaign, the book gathers searching, deeply researched essays that Fountain wrote for the Guardian.

That a British newspaper would offer such thoughtful reflections on America's chaotic politics shows the deficiencies of the American media.

Rather than a blow-by-blow recap of the Trump and Clinton campaigns, the book analyzes the election from a broader historical viewpoint.

With solid grounding in literature and historical facts, Fountain traces the decline of the American middle class, GOP-led efforts to preserve white supremacy, police violence against blacks and the cultural dominance of entertainment and celebrity. He indicts American "amnesia" and an avoidance of reality.

In analyzing the erosion of American democracy, Fountain draws upon books from well-known and obscure writers. With sometimes sardonic humor and a readable style, Fountain gives a comprehensive summary of American political thought that would be a good primer for college and high school students who are so often deprived of a basic civics education these days.

Without endorsing Bernie Sanders's socialism, Fountain demolishes conservatives' war against government begun by Ronald Reagan. He demonstrates that governmental support of the economy and education led to America's glowing prosperity after World War II.

Fountain's title comes from Robinson Jeffers' poem "Apologies for Bad Dreams," sounding a call for political  and moral renewal. The California poet's jeremiad takes on deeper and ironic meaning after the recent devastating fires in Jeffers' native state and alarming climate change reports.

The book ends on a positive, if ambiguous, plea for a new commitment to America's "possibility." Countering the subtitle, Fountain places his hopes on rational thought, Jefferson's ideal of an informed, committed citizenry rather than violent revolution. 

While sounding a clarion call for progressives, Fountain expresses the belief that moderate Americans also will heed his message and restore reason and justice to the political arena.

New Yorker special issue rediscovers Jean Stafford masterpiece

The New Yorker devoted its entire Dec. 3 issue to well-known and not so well-known pieces from its illustrious past.

What might seem a dubious exercise in nostalgia for a vanished golden age was captivating for an old New Yorker reader like me. While I don't look at the magazine's past with that bright a glow - the late era of William Shawn and the Robert Gottlieb/Tina Brown years were dismal - I discern signs of the magazine hitting the shoals.

A Talk of the Town introduction paid homage to magazine founder and legendary editor Harold Ross. Ross would recognize elements of today's magazine, but he would shake his head at the use of photographs, letters to the editors and profanity. He would also find the cartoons unamusing and the short stories unreadable.

The retrospective issue was a treat for longtime New Yorker readers like me who find the magazine lackluster these days. While the recycled pieces were uneven: I didn't care for offerings from James Baldwin, Frank McCourt, Nancy Franklin and Hilton Als, I was captivated by the reprised short stories.

Mexican artist Matias Santoyo's art deco cover from April 1927, showing a Manhattan traffic jam, was relevant to today's city. The issue even ran old cartoons, their humor as musty as 1950s TV sitcoms.

Editor David Remnick returned the magazine to its long-abandoned format of publishing two short stories in each issue, giving lovers of the magazine's classic short story era John Updike's "Snowing in Greenwich Village," from 1956, and Jean Stafford's "Children Are Bored on Sunday," from 1948.

The Thanksiving holiday issue's literary feast also included ho-hum poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore and Theodore Roethke, and Hannah Arendt's diffuse appreciation of W.H. Auden.

Considering that the magazine had a selection of stories from Peter Taylor, J.D. Salinger, John O'Hara, John Cheever, Ann Beattie, Irwin Shaw and so on to choose from, I wondered how Remnick and staff decided upon the Updike and Stafford stories. 

Updike's piece, displaying his characteristic felicity of language and blend of romantic nostalgia and sexual desire, was representative of his work, but not one of his major stories. "Snowing in Greenwich Village" was the first of his stories about the marriage of Richard and Joan Maple, depicting them as earnest and awkward newlyweds. The story features a witty, energetic and seductive character, Rebecca Cune, but in all the story was relatively lightweight.

In contrast, Stafford's "Children Are Bored on Sunday" is a stunning tour de force. I'd heard of the story through the years, but had never read it. 

An interior monologue, the story in which not much happens finds dramatic intensity in the complex thoughts of a  young woman named Emma. The story gives Emma's impressions of a Sunday afternoon visit to the Metropolitan Museum. A recent arrival to New York, she also anxiously remembers her attempts to enter the social life of young intellectual sophisticates in the city. 

During her visit to the museum, she encounters a young man whom she'd flirted with at one of the parties, a scruffy aesthete named Alfred Eisenburg. She tries to avoid meeting him again, but at the end agrees to go with him for drinks at a nearby bar.

Reading the story, I found myself screaming in my mind to Emma to not accept Eisenburg's invitation. Emma is based on Stafford, and Eisenburg is modeled on her husband, Robert Lowell. The story was published at the beginning of their volatile relationship. Along with increasingly manic behavior, Lowell ruined Stafford's beautiful patrician face by wrecking a car in which she was the passenger.

How apt that the best poem in the issue, Roethke's "In a Dark Time," speaks of the manic-depressive illness that Roethke shared with Lowell.

Early signs of Lowell's affliction first appeared during his marriage with Stafford, who later married famed New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling. Lowell went on to a fraught marriage to Elizabeth Hardwick.

Lowell's career overshadowed Stafford's during their lifetimes. While Hardwick has received increasing recognition as critic and novelist, Stafford's reputation had dimmed.

"Children Are Bored on Sunday" is a revelation of Stafford's brilliance, showing that she deserves a re-evaluation as one of our best writers.

 

 

 

 

Mississippi to decide if the past is really past

When Willie Morris returned to Mississippi late in the 20th century, the old magnolia state seemed poised to move away from its rancid racist past to a new era of tolerance and prosperity.

Now 19 years after Willie's death, Mississippi is deciding whether to advance toward his gleaming vision for his native state. In the last midterm battle between the repressive GOP and diverse Democratic Party, Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith seeks to hold on to her seat as a Donald Trump puppet in an unexpectedly close race against former U.S. Rep. and presidential cabinet member Mike Espy.

Hyde-Smith has crippled her own campaign with a series of gaffes, the worst a "public hanging" reference that evoked the state's lynch-mob history. 

Despite her horrible campaign, I doubt that Espy can overcome the state's engrained white supremacy and pull off an upset.

But I have hope in remembering that Mississippi is the native state of Willie Morris. William Faulkner. Jesmyn Ward. Nastasha Tretheway. Richard Ford. Eudora Welty. Robert Johnson. Son House. Ellen Douglas. Elizabeth Spencer. Jimmie Rogers. Oprah Winfrey. 

 

Remembering W.J. Cash's "The Mind of the South"

The "Cotton Fields to Skycrapers" exhibit at Charlotte's Levine Museum of the New South has a first-edition copy under glass of W.J. Cash's "The Mind of the South."

Cash's 1941 book, made obsolete by Southern economic development after World War II, was revered by Southern journalists of my generation.

The spirit of the troubled North Carolina newspaperman lives on in efforts by The New York Times,  sociology professors and cable news channels to understand those who support Donald Trump, the type of New York carpetbagger once despised in the South.

An examination of the South's persistent backwardness,  "The Mind of the South" is one of those cult works breathlessly praised by acolytes at bars and parties. Several of my AJC colleagues considered the book a sacred text, and Cash's name was reverentially evoked by poets and novelists at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Cash's apparent suicide in Mexico adds to his fascination.

The "Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers" exhibit told the story of poor Appalachian people who fled their depleted farms during the Depression to work in textile mills in North Carolina cities. They didn't need to go to a fancy restaurant in Charlotte or Charleston for "farm to table" dining. 

The old mills now serve as condos for the millennials flocking to Charlotte, booming again after the 2008 bank crash. The old-time music, recorded in places like the long destroyed Charlotte Hotel, rises from iPhones tuned to Sportify. Their grandchildren work for international companies, rent out Airbnbs, or drive Ubers.

Cash's old property-stricken South was  blown away in the 1960s, buried under glass and stone skyscrapers in cities like Charlotte and Atlanta. A video at the New South museum shows Charlotte's 1920s landmarks imploding in dark clouds of dust. 

As elections across the South attest, the old white supremacy holds on, clinging with gnarled hands to political power against a new generation of different cultures and lifestyles. 

The Mind of the South remains unformed. Cash's descendants keep trying to define it, all raising the objection, "and yet..."

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Stan Lee

Spiderman, the Incredible Hulk and the Fantastic Four entered my comic book universe late.

I'd grown up in the DC world of Superman, Batman, the Green Lantern and, my favorite, Aquaman.

Marvel Comics grew popular just as I was crashing into adolescence. I recall reading another Marvel series: "Kid Colt, Outlaw," in my childhood years before the company's superheroes arrived.

While I loved Superman, Superboy, Batman and Aquaman, my favorite comic book characters were the combat hero Sgt. Rock and his Easy Company, who foraged across an idealized Europe during World War II. I also read a Dell Comic series that featured adventures of Tarzan and the Lone Ranger.

I was always surprised years after my comic book years at the retroactive critical acclaim given to Marvel editor Stan Lee and his artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. I liked the Marvel books fine, but they always struck me as second rate compared with the stylized DC comics and their Superman/Batman mythical worlds. 

Peter Parker was just another mixed up adolescent like me. I was dazzled by the Fortress of Solitude, the variations on the Krypton origin story, how the space boy's rocket was found by Ma and Pa Kent, Superman's Lois Lane, the battles against Lex Luthor, the crazy effects of red kryptonite. I also loved the recurring Batman characters and themes, and the futuristic illustrations of Gotham City, the Bat Cave and Batmobile.

Lee, who died this week at age 95, created a lineup of characters whom critics believed had more literary depth than the other comic book heroes. Spiderman, the Hulk and Thor reputedly were more nuanced, showing fears and insecurities. The Marvel books also went into "metafiction" techniques such as inside jokes, self-referencing and so on.

I suppose it all went over my addled pre-adolescent head. I found the Marvel books entertaining, but nothing special. I even found the artwork crude and the stories boring. They were sort of like "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" movies.

While the acclaim given Lee is overblown, he was one of those strange American success stories, translating a hodge-podge of new-era talents into worldwide fame.

Remembering the poets of World War I

World War I's shocking death toll is reflected in the high mortality rate of its poets.

So many poets linked to the war didn't survive: Wifred Owen, Edward Thomas, Isaac Rosenberg, Rupert Brooke, Guilluame Apollinaire, John McCrae, Charles Sorley, Joyce Kilmer. The poems that brought them posthumous fame were often found in their mess kits, uniform jackets or inside the books they had carried with them to the front.

Two famous English poets who did survive: Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, enjoyed long lives, witnessing another world war, the deprivations of the 1950s and the freedoms of the swinging '60s.

Graves's "I Claudius" was one of the first BBC/PBS popular hits. His academically dubious study of myth and poetry, "The White Goddess," was a bible for 1960s new age mystics. Graves drew upon his war experiences for one of the best memoirs of life in the trenches, "Goodbye to All That." The book is one of the most striking accounts of soldiers' difficulties in returning to civilian life. 

On Sunday, the 100th anniversary of the end of the war, Emory's Michael Carlos Museum sponsored a special program on the World War I poets and how they were influenced by classical literature. The three Emory professors who read poems and gave commentary were fine, but I would have preferred a pure reading of the poems and letting them speak for themselves.

I was not convinced that Homer's "The Illiad" and "The Odyssey" were the major influences on Owen, Brooke and the others. The men killed in World War I were products of one of the last generations steeped in Latin and Greek, and I wondered if they read the classic works in their original languages rather than in translation. I believe that their most recent translation of Homer would have been Alexander Pope's from the 18th century. 

But the lecturers ignored the influence of the English pastoral tradition, although it was mentioned that one posthumous poem was found in a copy of Houseman's "The Shropshire Lad," an English pastoral hallmark. But Houseman was also a classical scholar, so his book found on the poet also showed the importance of Greek and Latin authors.

But the English poetic tradition was the World War I poets' main lodestar.  The upper class, Oxford-educated poets intimately knew the work of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Sidney, Milton, Pope, Blake, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Arnold, Tennyson, Hopkins, Kipling and Hardy. 

Poets like Brooke and Sorley who died early in the war remained faithful to the traditional English iambic pentameter line and expressed the noble sentiments of English history and culture.

Owen, who died five days before the armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, strained against the metrical tradition and refined upper-class style, presaging modernism with his sardonic irony and use of the vernacular. His work rejects the traditions of valor and English certitude. 

The armistice was signed in a rail car in France's Compiègne Forest at 5:45 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918. But the killing continued for another six hours, until the armistice took effect under the agreement at 11 a.m. Paris time, noon in Berlin.

In many ways, the war never ended. The great war's poems will last until war stops forever.