Kyle T.

Webster

•
ART by Robert J. Hughes, Phoebe Hoban and Rachel Corbett THEATER by Jesse Oxfeld and Robert J. Hughes
• • •
FILM by Daniel D’Addario OPERA by Zachary Woolfe MUSIC by Daniel D’Addario DANCE by Robert Gottlieb and Guelda Voien
BOOKS by Anne Diebel, Michael H. Miller and David Freedlander

lB onde? Maybe.
Dumb? Hardly.
Photo by Justin Stephens.

Telecharge.com or 212.239.6200
BornYesterdayOnBroadway.com

GUITAR
HEROES
Legendary Craftsmen
from Italy to New York
multimedia tour app at metmuseum.org
The exhibition is made possible in part by
Mr. and Mrs. Richard L. Chilton, Jr.
The multimedia tour is made possible by
The Jonathan & Faye Kellerman Foundation.
The Audio Guide program is made possible by Bloomberg.
2 March 14, 2011
spring arts preview
Spring
Brings
a King
A
little snow never kept a New Yorker away from
an essential cultural event, but we could be for-
given if this winter’s blizzards had us home
reading old books and watching DVDs instead
of wading through snow banks in Chelsea in
search of the next John Currin. Now comes
the thaw, and we return to the theaters and galleries and
bookshops to identify the latest genius and avoid the new-
est dreck.
So it may be counterintuitve that what most intrigues this
spring, in the midst of so much emerging talent, is a book by
a dead guy—one he never got around to finishing. Brilliant
“chunklets” (as he called them) of David Foster Wallace’s fi-
nal, unfinished novel, The Pale King, have been popping up
here and there for years. Inside, David Freedlander reports
on “The David Foster Wallace Industry,” the sprawling field
of cultural output, commentary and reputation-mongering
that has bloomed in the wake of his 2008 suicide.
While Wallace may have been the novelist whose work
prepared us for the coming of the Internet—an endnote, af-
ter all, is sort of like a hyperlink—Blake Butler is a novelist in
and of the Internet. Michael H. Miller talks to him about his
new novel, There Is No Year, and the group blog he runs for
writers, HTML Giant.
Tom Stoppard and Tony Kushner—theatergoers could
hardly ask for more enticing playwrights—both have work
in production this spring. We talk to Michael Greif, direc-
tor of Mr. Kushner’s new play The Intelligent Homosexual’s
Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scrip-
tures, and Raul Esparza, one of the stars of the revival of Mr.
Stoppard’s Arcadia.
Woody Allen, last heard from in September, returns with
another of his European efforts, Midnight in Paris. Those
who liked his trip to Spain in Vicki Cristina Barcelona may
be interested in the evolution of Chris Messina, a congenial
cuckold in that film, who tells Daniel D’Addario about his ef-
forts to shed his nice-guy persona with his upcoming role in
Monogamy.
Though they proliferate in cinema, nice guys can be hard
to find in the real world, as recent events in Wisconsin have
shown. The Metropolitan Opera, as Zachary Woolfe explains,
is facing labor anxieties of its own, but these don’t diminish
the allure of the company’s exciting spring lineup.
Yet what good is a new season without a new set of anxiet-
ies? What are we missing? Or, more important, what should
we be missing? Spring lasts only three months, and we can’t
read, watch or look at everything. So we’ve tried to pick the
best of the best. And as for the worst? Well, if we stay in, it’s
not because of the weather.
—The Editors
Through July 4
John Monteleone, Archtop Guitar, Sun King model
(serial number 195), detail, Islip, New York, 2000,
Private Collection. Photograph © Archtop History, Inc.
from the book ARCHTOP GUITARS: The Journey from
Cremona to New York by Rudy Pensa and Vincent Ricardel.
observer.com | the new york observer
 UNCOVER THE BEAUTY OF ASIA

An Exceptionally Rare Blue-Glazed Flask-Form Vase · Qianlong six-character seal mark in underglaze blue and of the period (1736–1795) · Estimate on request

Auction Calendar
New York · Asian Art Week 2011

christies.com
Property from the Indian and South Asian Modern Japanese and Korean Art Magnificent Fine Chinese Ceramics The Beauty of Art:
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Alsdorf Collection (#2425) (#2424) 23 March Porcelains and Earlier Including Property from by Shi Lu from the
(#2510) 22 March 23 March Works of Art from the the Arthur M. Sackler Private Collection of
22 March Viewing: Gordon Collection Collections Robert Hatfield Ellsworth
Viewing: Viewing: 18 –22 March (#2516) (#2518 & 2427) (Special Exhibition)
Viewing: 18– 22 March 18– 22 March Japanese: 24 March 25 March 15–31 March
18 –22 March Anita Mehta Anita Mehta Katsura Yamaguchi
Anita Mehta amehta@christies.com amehta@christies.com kyamaguchi@christies.com Viewing: Viewing: Viewing:
amehta@christies.com +1 212 636 2190 +1 212 636 2190 +1 212 636 2160 18 –23 March 18–23 March 15–31 March
+1 212 636 2190 Korean: Michael Bass Christopher Engle Elizabeth Hammer
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CHRISTIE’S NEW YORK 20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020 REGISTRATION IS EASY
Join us for the presale exhibitions and auctions, all of which are free and open to the public Register to bid in person or by telephone by calling our Bid Department at +1 212 636 2437. If you are unable
Monday – Saturday 10 am – 5 pm and Sunday 1 pm – 5 pm. to attend the auction, visit christies.com to arrange for absentee and online bids. Also available on christies.com are
For specific viewing times, please call +1 212 636 2000. the international auction calendar, online catalogues, and a full listing of upcoming valuation days around the globe.
spring arts preview l Table of Contents

6 The Arts: Who Matters

Now 20 Directed Suicide
At the Public, Michael 24 When Nice
Becomes Vice
A baker’s dozen of the season’s Greif helms Tony Kushner’s The hardening of Chris Messina.
rising stars. newest play. By Daniel D’Addario
By Robert J. Hughes By Robert J. Hughes

28 Anxiety Takes the

11 Judy Chicago,
MAD and Angry
With a new show at MAD, the
Stage
Labor pains and other problems
will plague opera’s spring season.
feminist, political artist is thriving By Zachary Woolfe
at a time in which feminism and
political art aren’t. 32 The Last Dance
The Merce 33 Filling Your
Dance Card
By Phoebe Hoban Cunningham troop, on a farewell What to see this spring.
tour at the Joyce, unearths a rare By Robert Gottlieb
work.

14 Alexander McQueen,
Suddenly
By Guelda Voien
36 Half an Orphan
A poet loses her
After his suicide, the Met mother.

PLUS
scrambled to salute the Brit By Anne Diebel
designer swiftly.
By Rachel Corbett

What we’re most looking 38 Virtual Literary

TOP
Colossus

18 Raul Esparza’s
forward to this season: Blake Butler and what happens

S
Formula when a novelist lives on the

T
The actor has the brains to Internet.

I S
play Stoppard. By Michael H. Miller
8 Visual Arts 26 Opera

L 10
By Jesse Oxfeld

cover
illustration by
16 Theater 30 Music 40 The David Foster
Wallace Industry

Kyle T. Webster
22 Film 34 Books Dead author breeds big business.
By David Freedlander

4 March 14, 2011 observer.com | the new york observer

 A vibrant
musical ka
leidoscope

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Pianist Louis Lortie performs Liszt’s ensemble in concert versions of two of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s
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JORDI SAVALL
THE ROUTE OF THE NEW WORLD:
FROM SPAIN TO MEXICO New York premiere
ORCHESTRA OF THE
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Sir Roger Norrington, conductor
Steven Devine, harpsichord; Richard Lester, cello
WED, MAR 16 AT 7:30†
ALL–C.P.E. BACH PROGRAM
Jordi Savall’s vibrant, revealing
take on centuries of musical and
cultural history from both sides
of the Atlantic.
MON, MAR 14 AT 7:30†
Jordi Savall, vielle and
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Tembembe Ensamble Continuo
Montserrat Figueras, soprano
La Capella Reial de Catalunya
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SONGS OF WARS I HAVE SEEN
HEINER GOEBBELS New York premiere
Music director Heiner Goebbels returns to Lincoln Center with
an innovative program that features his visionary composition
with spoken selections of a memoir by Gertrude Stein.
FRI, MAR 18 AT 7:30†
London Sinfonietta
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Anu Tali, conductor
Sound Intermedia, sound projection
Heiner Goebbels, conception,
music, and director
ALL–HEINER GOEBBELS PROGRAM
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Songs of Wars I Have Seen

Gertrude Stein

Enjoy conversation and a free drink at the Tully Lounge after each concert.
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Photos: Alice Tully Hall: Nicole Szalewski; Lortie: © Elias; Savall: David Ignaszewski;
Friends of Lincoln Center Les Arts Florissants: © Guy Vivien; Stein: Donated by Corbis
spring arts preview
The Arts: Who Matters Now
A baker’s dozen of the season’s rising stars
B y R o b e r t J. H u g h e s
With warmer weather comes the
heat. Here are some of the fresher
faces in theater, opera, dance, the
visual arts, film and television—the
ones people will be talking about
this spring.
David Lomeli, singer
Nemorino, The Elixir of Love
New York City Opera
March 22 to April 9
In this production of Donizetti’s
Elixir of Love, the action is trans-
ported, illogically but (perhaps) in-
ventively, from Europe to the Amer-
ican Southwest in the 1950s. Think
soda jerks, a convertible, a roadside
diner. The young Mexican tenor Da-
vid Lomeli makes his debut with the
company as something of the ersatz
cowboy on the scene. He’ll get to sing
one of opera’s great show-stoppers,
“Una furtive lagrima (One furtive
tear),” a soaring aria that rarely fails
to bring down the house. Mr. Lom-
eli was born in Mexico City and won
notice for taking first prize in Plá-
cido Domingo’s 2006 Operalia com-
petition. He’s the latest tenor—in
the tradition of opera-geek idols Ro-
lando Villazón or Juan Diego Florez,
not to mention Domingo himself—
to bring Latin ardor to the stage.
Holliday Grainger, actress
Lucrezia Borgia, The Borgias
Begins April 3, Showtime
Lucrezia Borgia. Beloved femme
fatale of history and a strategic poi-
6 March 14, 2011
l Rising Stars
soner long before Connie Corleone,
she’s played by the demure-looking
Holliday Grainger in cable’s upcom-
ing bloody historical thriller. Show-
time had a hit presenting a sexed-up
version of Henry VIII and his wives
with The Tudors, so imagine what it
will do with the infamous and even
more dastardly Borgia clan of Renais-
sance Italy. The series chronicles the
rise and corrupt papacy of Rodrigo
Borgia (Jeremy Irons). But the whole
family is on hand, including Rodri-
go’s illegitimate daughter, played by
Ms. Grainger. She stars with—and
pursues in the show—Robert Pattin-
son, best known as brooding vam-
pire Edward Cullen of the sadly un-
killable Twilight franchise.
Seth Numrich, actor
Albert, War Horse
Lincoln Center’s
Vivian Beaumont Theater
Opens April 14
Few actors get
steady work, nev-
er mind right out
of school. On that
front, Seth Num-
rich is downright
annoying. He plays
Albert, the young
boy who’s the
owner of a battle-tested horse in the
new play War Horse, at Lincoln Cen-
ter Theater. He’s pretty fresh out of
Juilliard, and he comes directly to
War Horse from The Merchant of
Venice, where he played Lorenzo,
opposite Al Pacino. Heady company.
War Horse, which begins previews
at the Vivian Beaumont March 15,
was a massive critical hit in Britain.
It’s about a beloved horse sold to the
cavalry and shipped to France in
World War I, and the young boy
(Mr. Numrich) who follows him
blindly to the front. And, oh, for
“Lion King” fans, the horses
are played by giant pup-
pets….
Cory Arcangel, artist
“Pro Tools”
The Whitney Museum of
American Art
May 26 to Sept. 11
The generation of people
who grew up on video games,
where a constantly shifting
landscape is the only landscape,
Joyce Yang.
Cory Arcangel .
see the world differently from ones
with views shaped by movies and
television. Digital artist Cory Ar-
cangel, whose art work and perfor-
mances use machines, the Internet
and games, is one of the former.
The popular and playful artist, who
showed at the 2010 Whitney Bienni-
al, is back at the museum again this
spring, this time with a show, “Pro
Tools.” Mr. Arcangel is an interactive
artist—he allows people to access
his code, he leaves bread crumbs of
himself on the Internet—and one
who’s immersed himself in an im-
mersive game, creating art that re-
flects back our own obsessions. Re-
cent sculptures include humidifiers
filled with Coke Zero and an instal-
lation featuring the entire history
of video bowling games, from Atari
2600 to Playstation II.
Joyce Yang, pianist
Alice Tully Hall
May 5
When pianist Joyce Yang stepped
in for the superstar pianist Lang
Lang, who had fallen ill before a con-
cert in Buffalo, N.Y., at the end of Jan-
uary, she had one of those “star is
born” moments. Buffalo Philharmon-
ic conductor JoAnn Falletta dubbed
her “the real deal,” and usually per-
snickety reviewers praised her
muscular power and charis-
ma, plus her playing of Ra-
chmaninoff’s second piano
concerto (a toughie, and
a Lang Lang special-
ty). Born and raised
in Seoul, Korea, but
now living here, she
is known for credit-
ing her teachers, in-
cluding her (Tiger?) aunt,
with much of her success. A
pianist since age 4, and win-
ner of the Silver Medal in
the 12th Van Cliburn Inter-
national Competition, she
makes her New York solo re-
cital debut May 5.
Paul Appleby, tenor
Brighella, Ariadne auf Naxos
The Metropolitan Opera,
May 7, 10 and 13
The world is al-
ways on the look-
out for the next
tenor. Well, the op-
era world, anyway.
Paul Appleby may
be it. The young
Indiana native, al-
ready something of a heartthrob to
the Mozart set, won the Metropoli-
tan Opera’s National Council Audi-
tions, and is making his Met debut
in May. He’s Brighella in Ariadne auf
Naxos, Richard Strauss’ brilliant
combination of opera spoof and
operatic sublimity. (The plot goes
something like this: At the home of
Vienna’s wealthiest man, an opera
and a burlesque show are staged
simultaneously.) New Yorkers have
seen and heard Mr. Appleby before—
he recently made his recital debut at
Alice Tully Hall, singing Shubert’s
“Die Schöne Mullerin” to excellent
reviews. The tenor has a rich, beau-
tiful voice that’s both commanding
and intimate, and he is at the begin-
ning of a possibly brilliant career.
Jez Butterworth, playwright,
Jerusalem
Music Box Theatre
Opens April 21
Johnny “Rooster” Byron, the lead
character in this Jez Butterworth
play, is a washed-up daredevil mo-
observer.com | the new york observer
Kristina Hanna.
torcyclist who lives in a trailer in
the woods, drinking and drug-
ging heavily and ranting about
the world. American audiences
might not know the work of play-
wright Mr. Butterworth, unless
they caught his Parlor Song, which
eviscerated suburbia, in New York
a couple of years ago. But this com-
edy was a smash success in Lon-
don when it opened in 2009 (win-
ning three “Best Play of the Year”
awards and the accolade “A Bucolic
Noir” from the Sunday Times). The
magnetic actor Mark Rylance is re-
peating on Broadway the Olivier
Award–winning role he played in
London, of a ferocious, angry anti-
hero on speed.
from top left: getty images; Jonathan Hession/SHOWTIME; arcangel studio; Oh Seok Hoon; Matthew Murphy; getty images;
Kristina Hanna, dancer
Keigwin + Company, EXIT
The Joyce Theater
March 8–13
If this dance company sounds
familiar, perhaps it’s because it
is best known for staging Fash-
ion Week 2010’s sparkly opening
extravaganza around the Lincoln
Center Fountain. Director Larry
Keigwin hired one of the company
stars, Kristina Hanna, right out of
Juilliard a couple of years ago, and
since then she’s become known
for intelligent and vibrant perfor-
mances with his contemporary
dance troupe. She has the ability
to stand out in a crowd—no small
feat among dancers, though she
has said that Mr. Keigwin encour-
ages his dancers to be “individual
movers.” She’s appearing, in black
leather, in Mr. Keigwin’s new eve-
ning-length work, EXIT (which, un-
til recently, had the more tempting
title Dark Habits). It’s inspired by
the worlds of fashion and drama,
and features music by Chris Lan-
caster and Jerome Begin, played
live at the Joyce Theater.
 Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, actor
Jaime Lannister, Game of Thrones
Begins April 17, HBO
Villain alert. Epic-fantasy fans
are juiced for the premiere of Game
of Thrones, the HBO adaptation of
the best-selling A Song of Fire and
Ice novels by George R.R. Martin.
The lush big-budget series features
kingdoms vying for power in an en-
chanted land, and was adapted by
David Benioff (a novelist who wrote
the screenplay for The Kite Runner,
from top left: Helen Sloan; Getty images; Uli Weber; getty images;
among others) and D.B. Weiss. The
cast includes some known actors,
but it’s Nikolaj Coster-Waldau who’s
likely to make a splash, as the im-
pulsive, arrogant and, best of all for
cable, amoral knight Jaime Lannis-
ter. Coster-Waldau, a Danish actor,
starred in the short-lived Fox series
New Amsterdam. As HBO knows, it’s
the bad guys fans remember most.
The Woolworth Building, New York
observer.com | the new york observer
Freida Pinto, actress
Miral, directed by Julian Schnabel
Opens March 25
So, far Freida Pinto has been the
definition of a one-hit wonder. Of
course, that one hit was the Oscar-
winning Slumdog Millionaire, in
which she was one of the three ac-
tresses to play urchin-turned-
bombshell Latika. It was her
first major movie; she was
previously known for for-
eign television roles and
for her years as a model in
India. But since Slumdog,
she’s filmed several mov-
ies, and the first one, Miral,
opens this month;
in it, she stars as
an orphaned Pal-
estinian girl pulled
into the Arab-Israeli con-
flict. Miral is directed by
artist Mr. Schnabel, based
Auction
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on the book of the same name by is singing at Carnegie Hall in May, in “Various Illuminations (of a Crazy
Rula Jebreal, the woman he left his a wide-ranging recital of songs by World).”
wife for in a recent art-world scan- Schumann, Ravel and many others.
dal. Ms. Pinto has a fighting chance It’s drawn from her new recording, Athina Rachel Tsangari, director
of going two-for-two: Mr. Schnabel’s A Lesson in Love, out March 8. The Museum of Modern Art Cinema
last film, The Diving Bell and the March 31
Butterfly, was nominated for Best Ms. Tsangari’s debut feature, The
Picture, and Miral is produced by Slow Business of Going, a sci-fi road
kingmaker (or queenmaker) Harvey movie filmed in nine cities around
Weinstein. the world, had a curious distinc-
tion: It was voted one of “the best
Kate Royal, soprano undistributed films” in a Village
Euridice, Orfeo ed Euridice Voice poll. Her newest, Attenberg, is
Metropolitan Opera, April 29 to May 14 featured in the Film Society of Lin-
Carnegie Hall, May 20 coln Center’s New Directors/New
Films series this spring (And will be
The English lyric soprano Kate Maira Kalman, artist
Royal has had her Beatles moment: The Jewish Museum
She sang for Paul McCartney (on March 11 to July 31
the recording of his “Ecce Cor
Meum”). But now she’s getting Ms. Kalman has already been
her New York moment with quite successful, in some arenas. Her
her Metropolitan Opera de- covers for The New Yorker magazine
but as Euridice in the beauti- and her line of bags and rain gear
ful Gluck opera Orfeo ed for Kate Spade have made her style
Euridice. Although the more recognizable than her name.
opera stage—in particu- This survey may change that. The
lar, the Met—marks the Israeli-born “narrative illustrator” shown April 2 there). It’s the story of
big leagues for rising sing- presents 100 original paintings, fea- an ill architect who’s come home to
ers, Royal is also keeping turing her trademark quizzical peo- a dismal industrial town to die, and
her schedule busy with ple and pets, plus her magazine cov- his daughter, who is busy exploring
recitals. She dedicates ers (“Reading, Riting and Ritalin” her sexual orientation. The film has
about five months a year and “NewYorkistan,” among them), been controversial in the director’s
to the more intimate in an installation that includes piles native Greece for its frank discus-
performance form, and of objects she collects. It’s titled sion of sex, death and parenthood.
Kate Royal.
reOrder
An Architectural Environment by Situ Studio
open in the Great Hall of the Brooklyn Museum in 2011
Situ Studio. Rendering of reOrder, an installation to
A space-altering, site-specific architectural
installation that reimagines the newly
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March 14, 2011 7
spring arts preview
TOP
RT
A 10
What we’re most looking forward
to in art this season B y D a n i e l D ’Add a r i o
Watermill Quintet, Guggenheim
Museum, March 13
Robert Wilson, the mind behind
Einstein on the Beach and that ill-
conceived Brad Pitt Vanity Fair cov-
er a few years back, takes a break
from his peripatetic opera-director
lifestyle to present Watermill Quin-
tet. Assembled by five less-well-
known directors and choreogra-
phers, the work was subject to Mr.
Wilson’s mentorship and curation.
Though it’s difficult to say what
that means, sight unseen, the work
promises to integrate performance
art with video and musical elements
and was assembled last summer at
Mr. Wilson’s Long Island colony, the
Watermill Center—hence the name.
Mr. Wilson may be single-handedly
responsible for ensuring Long Is-
land produces great art besides the
music of Billy Joel.
“Color Moves: Art and Fashion
by Sonia Delaunay,” Cooper-Hewitt,
opens March 18
Sonia Delaunay, who died in 1979,
was widely noted for her use of vivid
color in painting and textile design.
This exhibit eschews the former to
focus on Delaunay’s fashion work
from the 1920s and textiles from the
1930s. Art connoisseurs may well
flock to the design museum to check
out Ms. Delaunay’s work, much of
which is on loan from European col-
Gary Hill’s Beauty Is in the Eye (detail), 2011.
8 March 14, 2011
l Art
lections, but the show may most
appeal to the fashion set. Even the
swatches of brightly colored fabric
that the museum is using to advertise
the show look like they’d make great
swatches for a kicky shirt-dress.
Gary Hill, “Of surf, death, tropes,
& tableaux: The Psychedelic
Gedankenexperiment,” Barbara
Gladstone Gallery, opens March 18
Gary Hill has presented his work
at Barbara Gladstone four times be-
fore, and this exhibition reiterates
Mr. Hill’s concerns and interests, in-
cluding, per the gallery, “an increas-
ingly homogenized visual culture”
and “the primary communicative
function of electronic media.” In the
absence of Matthew Barney, Mr. Hill
will be the top video artist showing
in New York this spring—fans of text
(and we ask those who are not why
and how they are reading this) will
continue to be delighted at the art-
ist’s introduction of words into his
videos. Those who remain uncon-
vinced should look at Mr. Hill’s Web
site: The home page has individual
sections for “Right brain” and “Left
brain.” “Right brain” is still under
construction.
The Andy Monument, Rob Pruitt,
opens March 30
New York artist Rob Pruitt—
the man behind the Guggenheim’s
.tongue-slightly-in-cheekArtAwards
—is to erect a bronze monument to
Pop Art’s papa in Union Square, out-
side the final location of Warhol’s
Factory. The sculpture is to be al-
most 10 feet tall, and is only the sec-
ond Union Square placement by the
Public Art Fund—after 1993’s femi-
nist bronze series Woman’s Work.
The Warhol sculpture, says the Pub-
lic Art Fund, will “celebrate War-
hol’s artistic and cultural legacy in
the neighborhood and city he helped
define.” Warhol would have appreci-
ated the epic scale of the monument
and Art in America called him a ma-
jor influence upon Mr. Pruitt in a De-
cember 2010 review. Still, wasn’t an
awards ceremony for art already the
best memorial for Warhol?
“Alexander McQueen: Savage
Beauty,” Costume Institute of the
Met, opens May 4
It’s not merely the McQueen ob-
sessives who will enjoy this show.
Fashion exhibitions can feel fusty:
fancy 20th-century clothes, away
from the human context, sometimes
make the museum feel like a vintage
shop. Would one rush to look at Mi-
chael Kors’ sportswear, for instance,
no matter how well constructed?
But McQueen’s garments at their
best took the human element out of
the equation. The designer’s most
notable recent wearer, Lady Gaga,
has emphasized the alien dimen-
sions of the designer’s avant-garde
work. Merely to understand the
points between what most wear
now and our luxurious, directional
science-fiction future, McQueen’s
the one designer worth curating.
Robert Mapplethorpe,
50 Americans, Sean Kelly Gallery,
opens May 6
Don’t expect a culture war to erupt
over this show at Sean Kelly Gallery,
which represents the Mapplethorpe
Francis Alÿs’s Rehearsal I (Ensayo I), 1999-2001.
estate. The portraits here are neck-
up—but their lack of private parts
hardly affects their power and ability
to move the viewer. Mapplethorpe’s
interest in people, broadly, comes
out in this series of a broad swath of
Americans, not solely the perceived
obscenity for which the right wing
made sure he became known. The
portrait of a black-jacketed youth
that Sean Kelly Gallery uses to adver-
tise the show bears, though, all the
best of Mapplethorpe’s hallmarks: a
striking contrast between black and
white, an emphasis on slightly dan-
gerous beauty. Perhaps the old Re-
publican guard should be on notice,
just in case.
Martin Kippenberger,
Luhring Augustine, opens May 7
The German artist, who died in
1997, is remembered for his ability
to shock. His best-known work may
be a series of frogs on crucifixes,
which evoked the ire of the Catho-
lic Church. When the work was dis-
played in Italy, museum curators
described the frog-on-the-cross
as a self-portrait of the artist “in a
state of profound crisis.” Perhaps.
Though the new show is not just
self-portraits, it never wavers too
far from an image of Kippenberger’s
persona—either “bad boy” or “in
crisis,” depending on one’s angle of
approach.
“Francis Alÿs: A Story of
Deception,” MoMA, opens May 8
How does a museum follow up
Marina Abramović? That may be
impossible—but MoMA is giving a
similar push to Francis Alÿs. Klaus
Biesenbach, who once confessed his
love to Ms. Abramović, is curating
the Belgian artist’s project. While
Mr. Alÿs may be less lovable for Mr.
Biesenbach or less known to casu-
al museumgoers, he’s a spectacle-
maker: 2002’s When Faith Moves
observer.com | the new york observer
Mountains, included in the exhibi-
tion, entailed the movement of a Pe-
ruvian sand dune by enlisting vol-
unteers with shovels. Whoever said
the artist had to be present?
“Apichatpong Weerasethakul:
Primitive,” New Museum,
opens May 19
The Thai artist and filmmaker is
having a busy spring: on March 2,
two months before his art debut, Mr.
Weerasethakul’s 2010 Cannes Palme
d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who
Can Recall His Past Lives opened
at the Film Forum. “Primitive” is
thematically connected to the film,
(scheduled to close at Film Forum
March 15), which tells the story of
a dying man in rural Thailand. The
exhibition focuses closely on the vil-
lage of Nabua, using videos to con-
vey the area’s history of clashes be-
tween the military and Communist
farmers. If only “Primitive” and Un-
cle Boonmee were running simulta-
neously, art lovers might get the full
Apichatpong Weerasethakul experi-
ence—but happily, the director’s less
likely to suffer a backlash this way.
“Ryan Trecartin: Any Ever,”
MoMA/P.S.1, opens June 19
How long must an art figure be a
“rising star” before we can just call
him a star? This question (Mr. Trecar-
tin was born in 1981) and many more
may be resolved by Mr. Trecartin’s
P.S.1 show, comprised of work from
2007 to 2010, with contributions
from a number of other young art-
ist’s, who P.S.1 refers to as “working
child actors.” The Main Gallery will
be given over to two video works, a
2009 trilogy and a 2009-10 quartet,
each “interconnected spatially” with
a warren of rooms. Charles Saatchi
already collects Mr. Trecartin. Could
things get any sweeter? That’s an-
other question that this show and fu-
ture ones stand to answer.
 Season 2010–2011
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 spring arts preview l Art

Judy Chicago and

The Dinner Party.

MAD Woman
of New York
Feminist, political artist Judy Chicago is thriving at
a time when feminism and political art aren’t

By Phoebe Hoban being seriously impeded by wailing

O
children, chiding relatives and a
huge globe of the world. “I often
n an evening last say about this image that in all my
all photos © Judy Chicago & Donald Woodman

week at the Museum years of working with women, I

of Art and Design,
Judy Chicago, vivid
and flamboyant in
a white silk bolero
embellished with black lace, pointed
to a boldly graphic tapestry titled
Paddle Your Own Boat, and laughed.
“People never get that there is
humor in my work, but I think this is
funny.” The piece depicts a woman
manning a canoe, whose progress is
have never actually seen a situation
where somebody set off to paddle
a canoe and didn’t get grief from
somebody—whether it’s the church,
the community or their family.”
Ms. Chicago has had her share lation of a giant triangular table, and its museum tour was canceled “The Dinner Party went into
of grief. Her infamous 1970s piece including the names of 1,038 fe- amid Congressional debate over storage and I went into shock,” said
The Dinner Party drew standing- male innovators—39 of whom funding for the institutions that Ms. Chicago, a small, passionate
room-only crowds at the San have their own place settings showed it. The Dinner Party itself fireplug of a woman with short red
Francisco Museum of Art, where with plates depicting vulvas.) But was banished to storage for nearly curls and rose-tinted glasses. “It
it opened in 1979. (It’s an instal- some critics eviscerated the work, three decades. was the piece everyone wanted

observer.com | the new york observer March 14, 2011 11

spring arts preview
to see, and nobody wanted to
show.”
This is not a problem Ms. Chi-
cago suffers from much these
days. The artist was included in
three New York exhibitions last
year: at ACA Galleries; at the He-
brew Union College Museum; and
in a Jewish Museum show. This
month, a show of her tapestries,
done in collaboration with weav-
er Audrey Cowan, opened at the
Museum of Art and Design and
runs through June 19.
As for The Dinner Party, the piece
is now on permanent view at the
Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A.
Sackler Center for Feminist Art.
That’s a vindication for the artist,
considering that it was widely and
publicly panned—conservative
Congressman Robert Dorman,
dubbed it “ceramic 3-D pornogra-
phy” on the floor of the House of
Representatives, and The New York
Times pronounced it “very bad art.”
(“It reiterates its theme … with in-
sistence and vulgarity,” argued
the paper’s Hilton Kramer.) Today,
nearly one-third of all the visitors to
the museum view her artwork, ac-
cording to the institution.
At first glance, the tapestries
in the MAD show appear to be
among the more decorous of Ms.
Chicago’s works, which tend more
12 March 14, 2011
l Art
Ever the radical, in her new Museum of Art and Design show,
Judy Chicago has subverted pretty much everything
about both the medium and its message.
toward painting and sculpture.
But, the woven works, along with
the black-and-white and color im-
ages, “cartoons” and woodcuts
Ms. Chicago created as patterns
for Ms. Cowan (who first worked
with her when she did the stitch
work on the Dinner Party Eleanor
of Aquitaine table runner), they
forcefully weave together many
of the artist’s central—and reso-
lutely political—themes.
Ever the radical, she’s
subverted pretty much every-
thing about both the medium
and its message. She has used
the ancient Aubusson high-warp
weaving technique, employed to
make the famed medieval Uni-
corn Tapestries, which pregnant
women were barred from practic-
ing in the Middle Ages. They were
told they might fall off the looms
and miscarry, she explained.
“Any excuse would do,” Ms. Chi-
cago snorted. “The idea of using
Aubusson [named for the city in
France] was particularly deli-
cious to me because it originally
prohibited women because of
their fecundity and capacity for
birth.”
Ms. Chicago also reinvented
the process of this ancient tech-
nique for her own purposes. Tap-
estries were traditionally woven
from the back, so the weaver
never saw the design. In Ms. Chi-
cago’s update of the process, the
artist’s patterns are attached
to the piece so that the weaver
can see each section as she com-
pletes it, giving her the right-
Judy Chicago working on Grand
Toby Head with Copper Eye.
ful “agency” previously denied,
she explained. There is also her
offbeat subject matter, which
ranges from the striking details
of Creation,(part of “The Birth
Project” shown at the Hebrew
Union College Museum last year )
to the pigs hung for meatpacking
in The Fall (from her “The Holo-
caust Project: From Darkness to
Light”). Powerheadache depicts
a male head grimacing in much
the way Bernie Madoff must have
when his Ponzi scheme toppled.
Ms. Chicago, whose name is
virtually synonymous with femi-
nist art, acknowledges that there
has been some progress toward
equity in the art world (and in
general) since she began her
work. But she’s also aware that
to many of the current genera-
tion of women, feminism is con-
sidered an F-word, a label to be
avoided.
She continues on a crusade to
change that. “Women’s history
and women’s art needs to become
part of our cultural and intellec-
tual heritage,” Ms. Chicago de-
clared. “If we all learn that, then
women will learn pride in the
history of women—and they will
want to claim their history as
feminists, instead of disassociat-
ing themselves,” she said. “The
observer.com | the new york observer
degree to which young people
are unaware of the history of the
feminist art movement is an indi-
cation of the failure of our institu-
tions to keep up with changes in
consciousness. The key is institu-
tional change.” The artist added:
“When I was working on The Din-
ner Party, I believed the story of
erasure that I had uncovered and
was attempting to recount was
in the past. As we see the battles
in Congress over reproductive
rights, it becomes clear that era-
sure is still a danger.”
That erasure of women is clear
from the continuing lack of avail-
able literature on women and
their historical place in art. “You
want to know the figures on pub-
lications about women 10 years
ago? One point seven percent.
Today it is 2.5 percent.” To help
combat the deplorable literacy
level when it comes to women’s
history, Ms. Chicago developed
“The Dinner Party Curriculum,” a
program for classes K-12. (It, like
the titular artwork, references
female pioneers from Sappho to
Saint Bridget to Sacagawea to
Georgia O’Keeffe as a teaching
tool.) She also recently co-pub-
lished, with art historian Fran-
ces Borzello, Frida Kahlo, Face to
Face, which, she said, “provided a

4 Part Temporal Connection.
vehicle of exploration of a lot of ideas be-
yond Kahlo herself—such as that women
aren’t one-trick ponies. She did a lot
more than just self-portraiture.”
As for the artist herself, and
her best-known piece: “My abiding hope,”
said Ms. Chicago, “is that before I die, The
Dinner Party will be seen as one work in a
huge body of work.”
But Ms. Chicago is the first to ac-
knowledge that her seminal (no pun in-
tended) work has “opened up many aes-
thetic paths,” including the tapestries
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Ms. Chicago’s next big project is
perhaps a good fit. As part of a multi-
institutional $14 million Getty Trust art
initiative called “Standard Pacific Time”
OFFICIAL SPONSORS
that will premiere in Los Angeles in the PLAYING AT
fall, the artist will create a smoke-and-
fireworks extravaganza, Atmospheres.
It comes as no surprise that Ms. Chicago
has a license to use pyrotechnics.
March 14, 2011 13
spring arts preview
Alexander McQueen, Suddenly
B y R A C H E L C o rbe t t
T
he Metropolitan
Museum of Art’s
Costume Institute
Gala is perhaps the
institution’s most
famous and most
glamorous event, New York’s ver-
sion of the Oscars. The event, a mil-
lion-dollar fund-raiser for the Met,
is planned out months, sometimes
more than a year, in advance.
But when 40-year-old British
designer Alexander McQueen com-
mitted suicide last February, the
Met began to scramble furiously.
They scrapped plans for the sched-
uled exhibition and got to work on
the upcoming retrospective “Alex-
ander McQueen: Savage Beauty,”
that opens May 4.
Costume Institute curator-in-
charge Harold Koda and exhibition
curator Andrew Bolton reasoned
they had to act quickly—there
might not be another chance, since
McQueen’s body of work would dis-
perse and deteriorate over time. “If
you leave a show too long, there’s
a lot of revision that goes on,” said
Mr. Bolton—revisions in history,
both personal and couturatorial. At
Vogue, whose editor in chief, Anna
Wintour, serves as annual co-chair
of the event, there was “a resound-
ing desire, both publicly and within
the fashion industry, to pay hom-
age to Alexander McQueen,” said
Vogue’s director of special events,
Sylvana Ward Durrett, in an email.
“This year’s Costume Institute Gala,
she said, was “an opportunity to sa-
lute his legacy.” Met director Thom-
as Campbell, who’s had experience
curating shows of textiles, was
already familiar with McQueen’s
work from the Met’s 2006 “Anglo-
Mania” exhibit, and gave the show
the go-ahead swiftly.
14 March 14, 2011
l Art
After his suicide, the Met scrambled to salute the Brit designer swiftly
No doubt the drama of Mc-
Queen’s death led to some of the
early urgency in the fashion com-
munity. “It was sort of like Marilyn
Monroe dying right at her peak,”
said Tiffany Dubin, founder of the
Sotheby’s couture department and
author of Vintage Fashion.
Mr. Bolton and Mr. Koda recog-
nized that the theme had the for-
mula for success—it was timely; he
was popular; and McQueen was a
natural provocateur: He once hired
a double amputee to model a pair of
hand-crafted wooden legs. He made
a name for himself by parading bat-
tered models down the runway for a
“Highland Rape” collection.
Still, many samples of Mc-
Queen’s most notable pieces, like
his famously low-rise “bumster”
Within the fashion world, ‘it was sort of like Marilyn
Monroe dying right at her peak,’ said Tiffany Dubin.
trousers, were missing. The house
would have to track down the far-
flung “club kids,” as Koda put it, who
had purchased much of McQueen’s
early work when he still needed the
cash to pay rent.
In the main gallery of the Met-
ropolitan, Mr. Bolton is refashion-
ing McQueen’s “very raw, hard-
scrabble” London studio, laying
wood-planked floors and showing
a selection of his earliest pieces. As
viewers move throughout the rest
of the exhibit, they will encounter
hand-crafted wooden wings, Vic-
torian corsets, ghostly projections
of Karen Elson and Kate Moss, ac-
cessories from McQueen’s jewelry
and hat collaborations and about a
hundred pieces of clothing, rang-
ing from his postgraduate designs
at Central St. Martins in 1992 to his
posthumous “Angels and Demons”
collection. Judging by the hype al-
ready surrounding the McQueen
show, the switch was a prescient
one. There’s already a wait list lon-
ger than usual for the $10,000 tick-
ets to the Institute’s annual gala, on
May 2, co-chaired by Stella McCa-
rtney, Colin Firth and Ms. Wintour.
At a Council of Fashion Designers
of America tribute to McQueen
last year, executive director Steven
Kolb remembered how “the audi-
ence was so, so touched. What’s
going to happen at the Met will be
moving because he’s still part of a
generation of young designers.”
Chimed in New York stylist and
fashion commentator Mary Alice
Stephenson, who will be dressing
Hilary Rhoda and Joan Smalls for
this year’s gala, “It will be a par-
ticularly emotional night because
of what’s happening with John Gal-
liano,” the recently deposed Dior
designer. “There’s an amplification
of attention to designers who have
personal histories.”
Poor Charles James. Before Mc-
Queen’s death, the curators were
planning a show for this spring ti-
tled “Against Nature,” which would
have featured five houses helmed
by “designers that dealt with the
body in an interesting way,” said
Mr. Koda. McQueen was already
on that list, and Koda floated the
names of Christian Dior and Mr.
James as possible others. New York
couturier James has been the sub-
ject of retrospectives at the Brook-
lyn Museum and F.I.T., but he has
yet to receive his Met moment, and
it was delayed again.
As for the McQueen show, the
Met curators originally worried
there wouldn’t be enough material
available for the kind of in-depth
retrospective they had in mind.
When they called London, though,
they found that McQueen had kept
extensive archives throughout his
entire career. It was all “stuffed in a
tiny closet,” and the designer used
it primarily for his own research,
often “cannibalizing” old pieces
to design new ones, Mr. Koda said.
There were still some 5,000 pieces
and a repository of McQueen works
at Givenchy from his tenure there.
It was a daunting task, but no
doubt worth it to Sarah Bolton, Mc-
Queen’s longtime assistant and the
label’s current head, and the compa-
ny. “This will cement him in fashion
history,” Ms. Dubin said. “Going for-
ward, it means more awareness of
the brand because exhibits produce
catalogs and press. It will maybe
extend his reach and create oppor-
tunities for future licensing—Mc-
Queen is not a mass-market brand
and does not, as far as I know, have
a huge amount of licenses.”
The clothes and accessories were
mailed to the Met by late Septem-
ber, and Mr. Bolton began editing
them down into a few main themes.
The production designers, Sam
Gainsbury and Joseph Bennett,
took inspiration, for instance, from
McQueen’s 2001 “Insane Asylum”
collection, in which the audience
sat around a mirrored cube that lit
up to reveal deranged models in-
side. They reinterpreted this “box
within a box” leitmotif in one of
the galleries with a display of Mc-
Queen’s signature romantic gothic
observer.com | the new york observer
costumes, and within that room, in
a box, will be a mini-collection of
deconstructed pieces.
In a technical section of the
exhibit, the recovered bumsters,
kimono jackets, skirts and other
trousers will make up a “study” of
McQueen’s tailoring skills. But Mr.
Koda didn’t want to focus too much
on technique because McQueen “re-
ally is about a spirit,” he said, “an
approach to creativity that is the
romantic hero, me against all, and
making the unexpected beautiful—
and that’s Andrew’s take on it.”
The ball is the Costume Insti-
tute’s main fund-raiser, generat-
ing “gobs” of money, according to
Rogues’ Gallery author (and gadfly
to the Met) Michael Gross. “It also
has a halo effect, for both good and
ill. It raises consciousness of the
museum around the world, and
the institute’s exhibits draw huge
crowds who do contribute to the
bottom line, but the party and its
denizens—the fashion crowd and
the skin puppets and rock stars
who love playing dress-up for the
cameras—also lower the museum’s
image, turning it into one more
mass-market circus.”
The exhibit will end July 31, but
next year’s show is already in the
works. Mr. Koda hinted that it will
likely present one of the short-listed
designers in the original “Against
Nature” show. Could it be Dior, or
perhaps feature Mr. James? His
pieces are notoriously hard to find,
but since the Costume Institute
acquired the Brooklyn Museum’s
archives two years ago—home
to about 200 Charles James gar-
ments—it now seems possible.
In the meantime, one thing is
certain: We can expect to see ce-
lebrities in “a parade of McQueen’s
greatest hits” in May, Ms. Stephen-
son said. “The whole fashion world
will be peacocking.”
 spring arts preview
TOP
E R
H E AT What we’re most looking forward
T 10 to in theater this season
B y D a n i e l D ’Add a r i o
Arcadia, Ethel Barrymore Theatre,
opens March 17
Tom Stoppard’s mid-career masterpiece
returns to Broadway. The cast and crew is
stocked with veterans of the British play-
wright’s work: Billy Crudup appeared in
the 1995 production of the show and di-
rector David Leveaux put on Jumpers and
The Real Thing on Broadway. Arcadia is
something of a mind-bender, dealing with
pastoral gardening, Lord Byron, math-
ematics and the relationship between past
and present. It is a production that could
all too easily become a muddle, though its
success in London suggests that the vet-
eran approach may just work.
The Book of Mormon, Eugene O’Neill
Theatre, opens March 24
South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt
Stone have always seemed eager to write
for Broadway—recall the South Park
“Blame Canada” production number at
the 2000 Oscars. They finally did it with
The Book of Mormon, about missionar-
ies in Uganda. The Scott Rudin–produced
musical has already attracted an official
response from the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-Day Saints and healthy buzz
about the show’s blasphemy. Mr. Rudin’s
imprimatur may draw in audiences unim-
pressed by the South Park pedigree or the
appearance of hype for its own sake. Ei-
ther way, this is the biggest and most con-
troversial musical that will likely open on
time this spring.
How to Succeed in Business Without
Really Trying, Al Hirschfeld Theatre,
opens March 27
The iconic star of a tween-mania fran-
chise returns to Broadway. We’re refer-
ring, of course, to Night Court star John
Larroquette. He’s joined by some British
guy from those movies about warlocks—
we kid, Daniel Radcliffe! As his co-stars
have gone to college or set out on fledgling
film careers, Mr. Radcliffe has been striving
toward a stage career. Who can forget his
alternately revelatory and revealing turn in
Equus? This How to Succeed is referred to
as a 50th-anniversary production—who’d
have guessed that a story about a window-
washer who rises to the top of his company
has aged a day? Business success today is
certainly not contingent on all manner of
intangibles and connections and climbing
in an opaque, vaguely malevolent system.
Either way, Harry Potter!
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,
Richard Rodgers Theatre, opens March 31
Though he’s done his manic comedy-of-
three-characters (look out for the mincing
gay man! It’s still fresh!), Robin Williams
has rarely acted on Broadway (though he
16 March 14, 2011
l Theater
did star in Mike Nichols’ Waiting for Godot
in the late ’80s). The star will add to that
meager résumé this spring with a turn in
last year’s Pulitzer finalist. It’s a meaty
role; Mr. Williams is the tiger (no meta-
phors in that title!) living through the Iraq
war. When it opened in Los Angeles, The
New York Times praised the show’s sympa-
thy for man and beast alike. Playwright Ra-
jiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries
is playing Off Broadway now. Expect this,
though, to be a splashy coming-out party
for Mr. Joseph, alongside Mr. Williams,
who may begin preparing his trophy shelf
for the “T” in “EGOT.”
Catch Me if You Can,
Neil Simon Theatre, opens April 10
Who’d have guessed we’d need a musi-
cal adaptation of a Spielberg movie from
the early 2000s—or that it would look
better, even, than simply watchable? The
team of Terrence McNally (book), Marc
Shaiman (music and lyrics) and Scott
Wittman (lyrics) unites for the glamor-
ous story of a high-flying con artist. The
movie was aesthetically splendid—and
the Shaiman/Wittman team has dealt
with 1960s nostalgia before, in Hairspray.
The only pause the production gives The
Observer is the detail that the show is
constructed a bit like a jukebox musical,
with the Beatles and Aretha Franklin as
inspiration. Is Frank Abagnale’s associat-
ing his life story with go-go ’60s fetishism
the greatest con of all?
The Motherfucker With the Hat,
Schoenfeld Theatre, opens April 11
Chris Rock makes his Broadway debut
in this profanely titled opus about drug
addiction—this is no comedy! Mr. Rock
may be feeling the need to stretch rarely
used dramatic muscles after years of on-
screen diminishing returns. Working
with Adam Sandler in Grown Ups is hardly
comparable to being directed by Anna D.
Shapiro (fresh off August: Osage County).
As for that title—it may offend those with
the funds to actually attend the theater
frequently, but the giddy coverage since
the production’s inception (“gloriously
titled,” said New York) should continue to
guarantee Cee-Lo–vian levels of buzz.
High, Booth Theatre, opens April 19
Many great movie actresses flee to tele-
vision: Glenn Close, Holly Hunter and Sally
Field among them. The cathode path is
not for Kathleen Turner, who toured with
the new play High in repertory companies
across America before arriving on Broad-
way. Ms. Turner plays a nun seeking to
aid a drug addict, finding her faith chal-
lenged. (Will she have such doubts?, The
Observer wonders.) Ms. Turner’s become
something of a familiar face—and voice!—
observer.com | the new york observer
 onstage, having been Tony-nominated for
2005’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Matthew Lombardo, the play’s author, last
wrote Looped with Valerie Harper as Tal-
lulah Bankhead: surely he, like his audi-
ence, admires a strong leading lady.
Born Yesterday, Cort Theatre,
opens April 24
There’s stunt-casting, and there’s Jim
Belushi. The musical Born Yesterday, first
performed in 1946 with Judy Holliday
(who won an Oscar for the film adaptation),
comes to 2011’s post-Chicago Broadway
with as big a star as could get time off from
a CBS crime procedural. Nina Arianda,
recently profiled in The Times for her role
in David Ives’ Venus in Fur, co-stars; as the
paper wrote then, “If Ms. Arianda … seems
like an overnight success, it doesn’t feel
that way to her.” Ms. Arianda took the con-
ventional route to Broadway—training,
Tisch—while Mr. Belushi starred in an ABC
sitcom from 2001 to 2009. The pair’s inter-
play promises to evoke the Black Swan–ian
eternal debate between training and intu-
ition, or at least provide some laughs.
The House of Blue Leaves,
Walter Kerr Theatre, opens April 25
Director David Cromer won the MacAr-
thur “genius” grant in 2010, about a year
after his star-free Brighton Beach Memoirs
closed early. Unshaken by defeat or em-
d
nd frien
Tweit a u Can.
Aaron if Yo
h Me
in Catc
Photo by Curt Doughty
observer.com | the new york observer
boldened by acclaim, Mr. Cromer is mount-
ing John Guare’s play with Ben Stiller and
Edie Falco in leading roles. The production
seems tailored for success: Mr. Guare was
just produced on Broadway (last fall’s hot-
ly debated A Free Man of Color).
The House of Blue Leaves, Mr. Guare’s
first play, is by now a classic; Mr. Cromer is
a still-rising star. So expect the same level
of hype that met A Free Man of Color, but
with far more raves and a box office akin to
Mr. Stiller’s Little Fockers, if not Meet the
Parents.
The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to
Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to
the Scriptures, Public Theater,
opens May 5
Tony Kushner is the self-renewing
voice of a generation. Just as memories of
his talent flag, a new and ever-more elabo-
rately conceived production comes down
the pike. This play has been the subject
of particularly loud buzz since its debut
in Minneapolis in 2009. Its erudition be-
gins with the title, inspired by the work
of both George Bernard Shaw and Mary
Baker Eddy—stop, Tony, you’re killing us!
Mr. Kushner’s work is most exciting not
for its sweeping statements but for how
those statements resurface in small in-
trapersonal moments, and the plot, about
a Brooklyn longshoreman who hosts a
family gathering at home, has plenty of
promise.
March 14, 2011 17
spring arts preview
Raul Esparza’s Formula
The actor has the brains to play Stoppard
By Jesse Oxfeld
R
aúl Esparza was
waiting for fried
chicken and talk-
ing about the mys-
tery of existence.
“The most beauti-
ful thing about the play, and what
moves me every night, has to do
with humanity’s search for some-
thing greater than themselves,”
he said. “Some sense of fitting in,
whether it’s in time, whether it’s a
sense of history.”
He was discussing Tom Stop-
pard’s Arcadia on a day off from re-
hearsal for the David Leveaux–di-
rected revival of the play, in which
he’s starring along with Billy Crudup.
That night would be the fourth pre-
view performance.
“That we exist beyond ourselves,”
he continued, picking at a multigrain
roll at 44 & X, a restaurant on 10th
Avenue he’d suggested because he
was craving its chicken. “That it goes
on beyond us, further away than we
can imagine. And that we’ve only
just scratched the surface of what
we’re capable of and the way the
world or the universe or anything
works. Even love. That everything
is full of mystery, and that mystery
is worth exploring, even if you fail at
it. Because your contribution lasts.
The fact that you were here is a per-
manent sort of experience, of energy,
etched in the world. And I love that
about the play.”
Mr. Stoppard is a demandingly
intellectual playwright; his Coast of
Utopia, which Lincoln Center The-
ater presented four seasons ago,
spent nine hours over three evenings
considering philosophical debates
in pre-revolutionary Russia. Mr. Es-
parza is an actor who likes to grap-
ple with ideas. His most memorable
performance was as Bobby, the mag-
netic cipher at the center of Compa-
ny, Stephen Sondheim and George
Furth’s cerebral musical about love
and life among neurotic New York-
ers; he has since played in Pinter and
Mamet and Shakespeare.
Arcadia, which debuted in Lon-
don in 1993 and premiered here two
years later, takes place at a grand
English country house and inter-
weaves a story about its 1809 inhab-
itants with one in the present day,
about a historian and an academic
researching the earlier period. It is
about the relationships between past
and present and order and disorder,
about the limits of knowledge and
the entropic reality that things fall
apart. Mr. Esparza plays Valentine,
the modern-day scion of the aristo-
cratic family that owns the house, a
graduate student studying the fam-
ily’s century-old hunting records in
an attempt to devise a formula that
18 March 14, 2011
l Theater
describes population growth among
grouse. (The play is also about math.
And Newtonian physics and Byron
and the history of English gardening,
among other things.) When Mr. Le-
veaux directed a London revival two
years ago, the Independent labeled
Arcadia “perhaps the greatest play
of its time.”
“There’s something that art can
do that cannot happen, which is
time travel,” Mr. Esparza said. “The
I don’t fit into any of the boxes
that so many petty-minded little
motherfuckers love to put me
in, and I don’t really care.
Esparza.
play proposes that these things all
exist at once, and we can see it hap-
pen. I find that very beautiful.” The
chicken had arrived, a deep-fried
boneless breast served, faux-South-
ernly, with a wedge of waffle and a
small mound of collard greens. “I
never thought about the play in the
sense of any search for God, of look-
ing for something so much greater
than you are. But it struck me one
day in rehearsals.”
He quoted a bit of dialogue from
the 1809 part of the play, an exchange
between Thomasina, the precocious
daughter of the house, and Septi-
mus, her tutor: “Thomasina says to
Septimus something like, ‘You know
all your equations, but Newton’s
equations only make arcs and angles.
Armed thus, God could only make a
cabinet.’ Septimus says, ‘Well, he has
mastery of equations which we can-
not follow.’ And she says, ‘What a
faint heart. We must work outward
from the beginning of the maze.’”
“I was suddenly so moved by
that,” Mr. Esparza continued. “Be-
cause I never really heard that before
in the play. That everybody is look-
ing for some version of God. It’s man
chasing the ultimate meaning of why
we’re here and what exists beyond
us. And then everybody has some
version of that in the story. Every-
body. And Chloe”—the modern-era
daughter—“says, ‘Actually, the thing
that drives us all is sex,’ which is the
bottom line of the whole story.”
He was methodically working his
way through his food while speak-
ing intently and deliberately, lean-
ing forward and focusing his green
eyes on his interlocutor. Mr. Esparza
is an excellent interview subject; he
speaks thoughtfully, articulately and
openly. He completes sentences and
returns to conversational threads
after tangential detours. He consid-
ers questions and thinks about his
answers; he’s not just another actor
mouthing platitudes. (On the other
hand, he is also an excellent actor, so
perhaps he’s just good at playing the
interviewee.)
“Sex is a huge factor because the
play is proposing that every random
encounter that you have with an-
other human being can change your
life,” he said. “You just don’t know
how it will happen. It’s all about at-
traction. Mathematical attraction.
Magnetic attraction. Physical at-
traction. Sexual attraction. In the
second act, when everything’s go-
ing really fast, the two eras are sort
of banging against each other, and
David”—Mr. Leveaux, the director—
“kept talking about, ‘This is actually
an example of the math that we’re
talking about: atoms in motion, bod-
ies bouncing off walls and space and
lines going at once.’”
I’ll pause here to note that it
had become frustrating to listen
to Mr. Esparza talk about these
things—sexual attraction, simulta-
neity, a search for meaning—when
I had previously promised his press
representatives that I would under
no circumstances ask him about his
personal life. His personal life now
seemed relevant.
In late 2006, just before the open-
ing of Company, Mr. Esparza told
The New York Times that while he
observer.com | the new york observer
was still married to his wife, his
high-school sweetheart, whom he
married at 23 and whom he called in
that interview his best friend, he was
also separated from her and roman-
tically involved with a man. It was a
surprisingly frank revelation, and he
discussed it with his characteristic
thoughtfulness, puzzling through
his sexual identity on the front page
of the Arts & Leisure section. Mr.
Esparza and his wife are still sepa-
rated, and they are apparently still
close, photographed together as re-
cently as last month.
But I try to be a man of my word,
which means I did not ask about his
personal life. (This may also mean
I’m bad at playing the reporter.) I
asked if he regretted giving that in-
terview four years ago.
“What I regret about the inter-
view with The Times is that I ended
up hurting people, people who had
absolutely no business having their
names in the paper or being put in
that position,” he said. This, pre-
sumably, is why such matters are
now forbidden. “I regret that. I re-
gret the feeling that I owed expla-
nations about myself to people who
didn’t know me.” His empty plate
had been cleared, and Mr. Esparza
was playing with the wrapper from
his soft-drink straw, rolling it up be-
tween his fingers.
“I do not regret being who I am,
being as open as I’ve been,” he con-
tinued. He was actually being si-
multaneously—Arcadianly?—open
and, via his publicist, closed. “And
I am proud of myself for not apolo-
gizing for it. I don’t fit into any of
the boxes that so many petty-mind-
ed little motherfuckers love to put
me in, and I don’t really care.” He
did not talk about his current ro-
mantic life.
But Mr. Esparza kept talking
about other things, thinking about
the ideas in the play, thinking about
the theater, discussing ideas. He
was lingering over coffee, relishing
a day off. He condemned the con-
temporary fascination with actors’
personal lives. He worried about the
state of Broadway, with high ticket
prices and the reliance on big names
and the difficulty of getting good
new work produced.
He talked about seeing the initial
New York production of Arcadia 15
years ago, and how clearly he re-
called Robert Sean Leonard’s per-
formance in the role Mr. Esparza is
now playing.
“I remember him so vividly that
what I’m conscious of is trying not
to repeat what he did,” Mr. Esparza
said. “But I remember—I think he
was on the floor at one point, which
has led me to want to be on the floor.
Because I also like that quotation.”
Of course he does. These things—
so many things—all exist at once.
 WINNER!
2010 TONY AWARD
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spring arts preview
Directed
Suicide
At the Public, Michael Greif
helms Tony Kushner’s newest play
B y R o b e r t J. H u g h e s
D
irector Michael Greif’s
works have addressed
AIDS, mental illness, pov-
erty and self-delusion.
And those are just the musicals.
Brooklyn-born, Mr. Greif has
directed Rent, Grey Gardens and
Next to Normal on Broadway, to
considerable acclaim—Tony nom-
inations for each—and, in the case
of Rent, a robust 13-year run. He’s
A NEW MUSICAL from the team that brought you HAIRSPRAY
ILLUSTRATIONS BY BO LUNDBERG
Previews begin Friday
Neil Simon Theatre, 250 W. 52nd St. · CatchMeTheMusical.com
20 March 14, 2011
l Theater
also the director of the current
revival at the Signature Theater
of Tony Kushner’s epic Angels
in America, And now Mr. Greif
is staging Mr. Kushner’s newest
play, The Intelligent Homosexual’s
Guide to Capitalism and Socialism
With a Key to the Scriptures. Per-
formances begin March 22, and
it’s set to run through June 12 at
the Public Theater.
The Intelligent Homosexual’s
Guide treats a dark subject, too—
it concerns a retired longshore-
· or 877-250-2929
man in Brooklyn, Gus Marcanto-
nio, who asks his three children,
an academic, a labor lawyer and
a laborer, and his sister, a nun, to
come home (some of their part-
ners in tow) to discuss his deci-
sion to end his life. One suicide
attempt, in the brownstone’s
upstairs bath, has already gone
awry.
The family fights and roars,
negotiates and accuses; all their
skeletons, and some cast mem-
bers, come out of the closet. Sui-
cide is a major theme in the time-
ly show, but so is the sorry state
observer.com | the new york observer
Playwright Tony Kushner (left)
and director Michael Greif.
of America, the prospects for
continuing social revolution, the
institution of marriage, the al-
lure of prostitution, parenthood,
sex, the real estate bubble and
more.
But Mr. Greif stressed that, as
with all of Mr. Kushner’s work,
it’s not gloom and doom. “There’s
a lot of humor, dark humor, gal-
lows humor, surrounding the
subject.” It’s not a “morose or
somber” play. It’s also a play
that’s very much in the Ameri-
can realist tradition, he said, ref-
erencing Eugene O’Neill, Ten-
nessee Williams, Clifford Odets
Andy Kropa/Getty Images
and other great dramatists. (The
show’s title is a riff on George
Bernard Shaw’s The Intelligent
Woman’s Guide to Socialism and
Capitalism, and the main charac-
ter dubs himself a communist.)

“While this is an extremely
dark subject matter, there’s an
extraordinary vitality in these
characters,” he said. “They’re ex-
ceedingly intelligent, very artic-
ulate, and they take big issues on,
throughout the play. So there’s a
real life force here, certainly fore-
most in the man who’s consider-
ing ending his life … and in that
negotiation with his family.”
He compared the show in some
aspects to Grey Gardens, the mu-
sical about the lives of the trou-
bled mother and daughter (and
Jacqueline Onassis relatives)
Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (“Big
Edie”) and Edith Bouvier Beale
(“Little Edie”). “Edie’s life force
is perhaps askew, but what makes
her so extraordinarily appeal-
ing is that optimism, or that in-
credible survivor’s instinct,” Mr.
Greif said. “We see her knocked
down in that musical, and it’s tre-
mendously moving; it’s so out of
character. It’s that intensity, that
vitality, that struggle, that ex-
citement, that hunger these plays
and musicals all share.”
The play premiered at the
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‘There’s a lot of humor, dark humor,
gallows humor, surrounding the
subject’—a Brooklyn father’s decision
to end his life, pending a family chat.
Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in
the spring of 2009 but is far from
set in stone. “We’re still getting
new pages and changes as we go
into our fifth week of rehearsal,”
said the director. “It’s undergo-
ing a real refining process. Tony
keeps writing. It’s both clarify-
ing, in this draft, [what] didn’t
quite land before, both in terms
of what things mean and how
things feel. Some things land
with a little more clarity and ef-
fect in this draft.” Most of the
cast is also new in the Public The-
ater production.
By and large, reviews in Min-
neapolis were positive. Variety
said: “The resulting three-act
drama is a success—sprawling,
yearning, at times emotional-
ly violent, it is also packed with
a level of complexity, sophisti-
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cation and understanding that
distinguishes it as a potentially
important new American work.”
But the show, performed with
two intermissions, is still run-
ning at about two hours and 40
minutes.
Mr. Greif first came to wide-
spread attention, on this coast
at least (he ran the respected
La Jolla Playhouse in California
for much of the 1990s), with his
1996 production of Rent, a mu-
sical that dealt with a variety
of struggles among young New
Yorkers. A loose adaptation of La
Bohème, set in New York among
young bohemians, it takes place
in the shadow of the AIDS epi-
demic. The show’s creator, Jon-
athan Larson, died just before
the premiere Off Broadway, and
didn’t see what a success the in-
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fluential show was to become.
His unexpected passing fo-
cused attention on the produc-
tion and “gave us all a real sense
of purpose, and joy, in being able
to keep his voice alive.”
Mr. Greif added: “It was al-
most unthinkable that Jonathan
couldn’t share that moment—
and see the effect that his work
was having on the world. Jona-
than wrote the piece in honor of
friends of his who were strug-
gling with their own mortality
issues, circling with their H.I.V.
status at a time when it was
merely a death sentence. The
irony is in the confluences; they
mounted up in tragic ways.”
All the works he’s directed
have something in common,
Mr. Greif noted. “I’m drawn to
material with theatrical chal-
lenges, whether that means we
move from reality to fantasy like
we do in Angels in America, or a
play like this play, The Intelligent
Homosexual’s Guide, which shifts
gears and turns so quickly and
excitingly.”
Just as he’s aware of the spe-
cific dramatic sense that he
wants to find in a musical—treat-
ing songs as soliloquies, for ex-
ample, or duets as scenes—he’s
aware of the musicality in plays,
too. “Certainly, Tony’s language
is almost written as a score,” Mr.
Greif said. “The language is very
specifically written, and it’s im-
portant to follow the specifics of
his language. It’s very telling—in
the same way that musical notes
can be telling in terms of emo-
tional states. A very thorough in-
vestigation and a very thorough
commitment to his language is
like the commitment to music.”
Throughout his career in the-
ater, though, Mr. Greif has found
that audiences are looking for the
same things. “People like to be
surprised, and they also like to
be able to believe in the charac-
ters they’re seeing onstage,” he
says. “They want to be able to be-
lieve in something, and they also
want to be completely surprised
and taken someplace they’d nev-
er imagined they’d go. That was
true at the beginning of my ca-
reer, and it seems true now.”

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observer.com | the new york observer March 14, 2011 21

 spring arts preview
TOP
S
The Shirelles She MADE
M
MADE THE HEADLINES... THE SHIRELLES.
F IL What we’re most looking forward
10
to in film this season
B y D a n i e l D ’Add a r i o & U NA LA M AR C H E
Desert Flower
National Geographic
March 18
Aside from George Michael’s “Free-
dom ’90” video and its vamping super-
models, the model-turned-actress con-
cept does not have an illustrious history.
Naomi Campbell played a phone-sex op-
erator in Girl 6, Tyra Banks a bartender
in Coyote Ugly, Cindy Crawford—of all
things!—a lawyer in the thriller Fair
Game. It looked as though a model
might never make good onscreen, until
Liya Kebede had the bright idea of play-
ing another onetime model, the Somali
activist Waris Dirie. Ms. Dirie’s story
is an inspiring if challenging one—she
was sold into marriage before fleeing
Somalia, then gained catwalk fame
before becoming a U.N. spokeswoman
against female circumcision. It’s good
to see a model like Ms. Kebede playing
to her strengths, and doing something
slightly more consequential than Coy-
ote Ugly.
Arthur
Warner Bros.
April 8
The resistible rise of Russell Brand
continues apace with yet another com-
edy built around his gifts of “saying
mindlessly provocative things” and
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Mirren and Brand in Arthur.
22 March 14, 2011
l Film
“having an accent.” (No American star
can do both at once, it’s true!) In this re-
make of the 1981 film, Mr. Brand takes
Dudley Moore’s title role, as a wealthy
heir about to be cut off from his family’s
fortune; in the movie’s one lateral move,
Helen Mirren replaces John Gielgud as
Arthur’s stern caretaker. This film will
be an interesting test of Mr. Brand’s
stardom—his previous comedies were
successful enough because of the Judd
Apatow brand, but here Mr. Brand
stands on his own. Hopefully he, too,
won’t get disinherited.
Meek’s Cutoff
April 8
Oscilloscope
The stars of Meek’s Cutoff—Michelle
Williams, Bruce Greenwood and Paul
Dano among them—are barely recog-
nizable under shrouds of Oregon Trail
dirt or (in Ms. Williams’ case) puffy
bonnets. The film drags Ms. Williams’
wagon-train party on a mad journey
through the desert, led by real-life trap-
per Stephen Meek (Mr. Greenwood). Ms.
Williams’ last collaboration with direc-
tor Kelly Reichardt was the dry wom-
an-in-trouble yarn Wendy and Lucy,
and this production is a chance for the
pair to expand their palette to include
shades beyond Ms. Williams swallow-
ing hard and veiling deep sadness—or
observer.com | the new york observer

else to do more of the same in a
different setting.
Your Highness
Universal
April 8
Natalie Portman can’t retro-
actively change her mind, post-
Oscars, about starring in Your
Highness, though she might
wish she could—the stoner com-
edy, set in medieval times, seems
the quintessential post-Oscar
stinker, taken directly from the
Gwyneth Paltrow–flight-atten-
dant–romantic-comedy mold.
The person here with the most
to gain post-Oscars, though, is
James Franco, who needs the
opportunity to prove he’s funny
again after a squinting, dazed
performance as co-host. Here, as
Mr. Franco reteams with Pineap-
ple Express director David Gor-
don Green, his squinting dazed-
ness is the point. The title, you
see, has a double meaning. Who’d
have guessed that Ms. Portman’s
“It’s my turn!” outburst at the
end of Black Swan would mean
that it was her turn to cash in on
a stoner comedy?
Midnight in Paris
Sony Pictures Classics
May 20
Woody Allen’s past half-decade
is comparable to a prolonged se-
mester abroad—he’s had some
great experiences (Vicky Cristina
Barcelona), some fun nights out
early on that seem lamer in ret-
observer.com | the new york observer
rospect (Match Point) and some
travesties where Mr. Allen must
have just felt lost and confused
and ready to go home (last fall’s
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Strang-
er). Midnight in Paris sends the
director over the Chunnel to Par-
is, where Rachel McAdams and
Owen Wilson perform in what is
being billed as a romantic com-
edy. As with all of Mr. Allen’s
films, pre-release details are
scarce, but Carla Bruni-Sarkozy
has a cameo in the film (she’s this
year’s Marshall McLuhan!). The
casting of Ms. Bruni-Sarkozy
proves it yet again: As with all
students overseas, Mr. Allen’s in-
fatuation with his surroundings
outstrips its interest to friends
back at home.
Red Riding Hood
Warner Bros.
March 11
Who’s afraid of the big bad
wolf? Not Catherine Hardwicke,
the director who launched a
thousand Twi-hards with her
big-screen adaptation of Ste-
phenie Meyer’s lusty YA jug-
gernaut. With Red Riding Hood,
Ms. Hardwicke ventures once
again into dark, mythical terri-
tory, but don’t expect something
as pedestrian as a simple trip to
grandmother’s house (especially
when Grandma is played by a
69-year-old Julie Christie). With
a cast led by Amanda Seyfried as
a medieval beauty whose village
is terrorized by a werewolf, and
Gary Oldman as the mysterious
TOP
V I ES
MO 10
Hanna Thor
Focus Features Paramount
April 8 May 6
Saoirse Ronan (The Those of us who remember
Lovely Bones) stars as Vincent D’Onofrio’s smoldering,
the titular character pre-bloat turn as “Thor,” an auto
in this thriller, di- mechanic who ignites a little girl’s
rected by Joe Wright, imagination in the ’80s kidnapping
about a young girl caper—and Elisabeth Shue vehi-
raised by her ex- cle—Adventures in Babysitting, may
C.I.A. agent father not feel the need for a new version of
(Eric Bana) to become the Marvel superhero with the un-
an expert assassin. wieldy weapon. But it’s May, which
When Hanna embarks means the summer blockbusters
on a mission across are coming, with Thor leading the
Europe, trailed by an pack. Aussie newcomer Chris Hem-
intelligence opera- sworth takes on the mantle of the
tive (Cate Blanchett, Norse god with the magic hammer,
in what is hopefully a and Anthony Hopkins tries to re-
role more subtle than deem himself after The Rite in the
her ludicrous K.G.B. role of King Odin—with a golden
agent from the last eye patch, no less! Oh, and guess
Indiana Jones install- who plays Thor’s scientist lady love?
ment), she grapples Natalie Portman. Thank God—it’s
with the existential been forever since we’ve seen her in
angst that comes with anything.
being a teenage hit-
Dano in Meek’s Cutoff. woman. We have high Bridesmaids
hopes that Ms. Ronan, May 13
who’s been a riveting Universal
screen presence ever
witch hunter summoned to put since her breakthrough perfor- Runaway Bride. Father of the
an end to the bloodshed, this mance under Mr. Wright’s direc- Bride. The Princess Bride. Bride of
grown-up fairy tale is poised to tion in Atonement, will make the Frankenstein. We could go on, but
dominate the market for high- most chilling assassin since Anton everyone knows that in Hollywood,
brow horror. Chigurh (but with better hair). bridesmaids have been, well, always
the bridesmaid. No more. Director
Paul Feig and producer Judd Apa-
tow, creative collaborators since
Freaks and Geeks, team up again
on Bridesmaids, a raunchy comedy
led by Maya Rudolph and Kristen
Wiig (who also co-wrote the screen-
play). The early buzz is that this is
a sort of Hangover for the ladies—
an attempt to make the boy’s club
of gross-out humor coed. The last
movie that attempted this feat was
2002’s cringe-worthy The Sweetest
Thing. Let’s hope Ms. Wiig and Co.
raise the (open) bar.
The Tree of Life
May 27
Fox Searchlight
Details about Terrence Malick’s
fantasy-drama The Tree of Life (the
famously unprolific director’s first
film in more than five years) have
been murky so far, but here’s what
we know for sure: It starts in the
Midwest of the 1950s. Brad Pitt plays
Sean Penn’s dad, but he doesn’t have
Benjamin Button disease again—
Mr. Penn is his son in the future. Mr.
Penn’s character is a “lost soul,” and
the film will explore themes of truth,
beauty, faith and other vague but
admirable virtues. The poster that’s
been released shows a newborn’s
foot, which suggests that the tree
Portman, McBride and Franco of life might be like the circle of life.
in Your Highness. So, like The Lion King, but live action
and without Elton John songs.
March 14, 2011 23
spring arts preview
Messina, in Monogamy.
When Nice
Becomes Vice
The hardening of Chris Messina
B y D a n i e l D ’Add a r i o
W
“
hen I was
doing Vicky
Cristina
Barcelona,”
said Chris
Messina, “and Rebecca Hall was,
like, giving me the side of her lips
to kiss, because she wasn’t into
me, you go home with that, you go
home feeling unwanted.”
Mr. Messina is a nice guy known
for playing “nice guys,” with all
that the phrase implies—shiny
congeniality, a blandly accom-
modating personality, unthreat-
ening smirks. His characters in
Six Feet Under (supportive, con-
servative boyfriend), Vicky Cris-
tina Barcelona (supportive, dull
fiancé), Julie & Julia (supportive,
24 March 14, 2011
l Film
hungry husband) and Away We
Go (supportive, secretly sad hus-
band) weren’t all the same man,
but they could all have been in the
same frat together, about a de-
cade ago.
Mr. Messina wants to blow that
image up, or at least nudge it off
track, with his new film, Monog-
amy (to be released March 11 by
Oscilloscope Pictures), the fea-
ture-filmmaking debut of Mur-
derball documentarian Dana
Adam Shapiro. His character, en-
gaged to an appealing Rashida
Jones, becomes obsessed with
a woman he’s paid to follow and
photograph. For long portions of
the film, Ms. Jones’ character is
in the hospital, and Mr. Messina’s
character, on a frolic of his own,
neglects her.
His character in Julie & Julia,
on the other hand, indulges his
girlfriend’s French-chef fantasies
for far longer than any audience
member was willing to. He was in
the film to make Amy Adams look
winning because she was dating
a nice guy. His characters tend to
be overshadowed by women with
more intriguing struggles. There
are no small roles, though, as the
saying goes, and Mr. Messina has
refused to be a small actor, inhab-
iting the boyfriend-of persona
with a barely visible effort.
So will Mr. Messina always be
stuck playing boyfriend parts?
“It’s funny. I come from New
York theater and did a bunch of
really interesting, complicated
characters here. When I went to
Los Angeles, I got Six Feet Under,
and I played a Republican lawyer
who marries Lauren Ambrose’s
character. And everybody in New
York was like, ‘Oh, that’s such a
crazy character for you, because
you’ve played these drug addicts
and gang leaders.’ And it was kind
of a blessing and a curse.” Six Feet
Under, in which Mr. Messina sta-
bilizes Ms. Ambrose’s manic-art-
ist character, begot Vicky Cristina
Barcelona; Mr. Messina says he
was cast in Woody Allen’s Cata-
lan romp because of the TV show.
Interviewers began asking, “Are
you really that nice?” It was time
for a change.
A drug dealer or a gang mem-
ber Mr. Messina is not in Monog-
amy, but he’s also not the epitome
of a supportive husband. Indeed,
the entire movie is about his at-
tempts to avoid the sort of fate
that some of the actor’s other
observer.com | the new york observer
characters have reveled in—sub-
ordinate codependence. “This
kind of, for me, was the first step
away from those nice-guy roles.
Because I am a nice guy, I can be
an O.K. guy, but I’m also a compli-
cated guy, like everybody else,”
said Mr. Messina.
The complications of Mr. Mes-
sina’s Theo drive the entire mov-
ie: He and Ms. Jones’ Nat have a
functional relationship that Theo
torpedoes out of boredom or lust
or angst. The role is somewhat
underplayed—there’s no moment
of bellowing à la Ryan Gosling in
Blue Valentine. But not every mov-
ie needs a Stanley Kowalski. Mr.
Messina and Ms. Jones (who, per-
haps uncoincidentally, has played
a nice girl in The Office and Parks
and Recreation on television) drift
apart slowly, and convincingly.

“I love the chameleon aspect
of it,” Mr. Messina said of play-
ing a character removed from
what has been his wheelhouse. If
Theo is defined by his relation-
ship, he’s also the far more erratic
and dramatically complex charac-
ter, whose seeming sleepy enthu-
siasm masks chasms of discon-
tent. Mr. Messina considers Gary
Oldman a paragon of this chame-
leonic style of acting. While Mr.
Messina may still, at 36, be too
good-looking for what he terms
“the long marathon of a character
actor’s career” (character actors
tend to look more like, well, Mr.
Oldman) or too unambiguously
nice and unthreatening to pull off
an Oldmanian disappearance into
a role, the tests are beginning in
earnest. One of his next roles is as
a street performer in silver body
paint who falls in love—an eccen-
tric turn and a chance to prove his
range.
But Mr. Messina’s best mo-
“
A GRAND, GLORIOUS & GORGEOUS
ILLUSTRATION BY MACIEJ HAJNRICH
PHOTO BY CYLLA VON TIEDEMANN
TICKETMASTER.COM OR 877-250-2929 PRISCILLAONBROADWAY.COM
observer.com | the new york observer
When interviewers began asking,
‘Are you really that nice?’
it was time for a change.
ments in Monogamy—among
them a tough conversation with
Ms. Jones and wordless mo-
ments of contemplation in which
Mr. Messina’s chemistry with ac-
tresses isn’t available to him—
resemble the acting of Mark Ruf-
falo. Mr. Ruffalo is an actor who
can play only a limited array of
roles: His career has been a gal-
lery of impossible-to-pin-down
aging free spirits. But within that
framework he can evoke unex-
pected emotions, and new com-
binations of emotions with each
film. That Theo starts the film as a
basically uxorious boyfriend (and
PIECE OF MUSICAL THEATRE! ”
•
diverges, afterward, from that)
sets the film within the Nice-Guy
Chris Messina canon; the varia-
tions here are intra–Nice Guy. Mr.
Messina didn’t have to learn an
accent or train for years to prove
his range for this movie, but he
proved his range anyhow.
But there are other actors
out there to idolize. Mr. Messina,
who named one of his two chil-
dren after Montgomery Clift, can
scarcely believe that he worked
with Javier Bardem on Vicky Cris-
tina Barcelona. (The pair shared
but a scene.) When he saw Mr.
Bardem at the junket for the film,
Mr. Messina said, “my hair was
longer and I had facial hair, and
I was like, ‘We gonna get fucked
up tonight?’ This was the pre-
miere. And I was like, ‘We gotta
get fucked up tonight! We’re gon-
na get drunk tonight, right?’ And
he was looking at me like I had 10
heads, and it was because I want-
ed him to know, ‘I’m not that guy!
PALACE THEATRE, B’WAY & 47TH ST.
Messina, with his Monogamy
costar Rashida Jones.
I’m not that guy!’”—i.e., the cuck-
olded boyfriend of the film.
Mr. Messina has been re-
searching post-traumatic stress
syndrome in soldiers for an arc
as a veteran on the next season
of Damages, which is current-
ly shooting. He grew a beard for
the role, and is wearing a red-
and-black flannel shirt; although
he’s sitting in a posh-ish Manhat-
tan hotel, he looks as though he’s
back in Brooklyn, where he shot
Monogamy in just 18 days and
shot Damages yesterday. It’s a far
cry from the preppy look he wore
in Vicky Cristina Barcelona or Six
Feet Under: He looks like his Mo-
nogamy character, or himself.
“I’d love to move my whole fam-
ily out here,” he said. He got the
role in Damages based on scenes
from Monogamy, in a nice rever-
sal of his last big television role,
one that made him famous in just
one way.
ddaddario@observer.com
- Toronto Star
March 14, 2011 25
spring arts preview l Opera

TOP
RA
O PE 10
What we’re most looking forward
to in opera this season
B y D a n i e l D ’Add a r i o

The Queen of Spades, and Tony winner South Pacific).

Metropolitan Opera, begins March 11
The Finnish soprano Karita
Mattila shows up for Tchaik-
ovsky’s penultimate opera, based
on a Pushkin short story. The
whole affair is suitably black Rus-
sian: The opera’s title refers not
merely to a femme fatale but to
the card encountered while gam-
bling. The opera itself deals with
the card combination needed to
win a pivotal match. (It isn’t card-
counting if a friendly ghost tells
you!) The—yes, Russian—tenor
Vladimir Galouzine takes an un-
usually demanding lead role in
this opera, which boasts a libretto
written by Pyotr Ilyich’s brother,
Modest Tchaikovsky. Don’t mind
the name: With a cast this stellar,
the show is sure to be no modest
achievement!
Bluebeard’s Castle,
Avery Fisher Hall, begins March 18
The Finnish conductor Esa-
Pekka Salonen continues his se-
ries on Hungarian-inflected music,
called “Hungarian Echoes.” The
“echoes” are no louder because
two of the composers—Haydn
and Ligeti—were not Hungarian
citizens (Haydn was Austrian and
worked for Hungarian aristocrats;
Ligeti was ethnically Hungar-
ian but was an Austrian citizen).
Austria is amply represented in
the opera world, though, and this
concert presentation of Bartók’s
opera is the most Hungarian-
flavored (tastes like sour cream!)
music event in the series. Mr. Sa-
lonen is to be joined by mezzo-so-
prano Michelle DeYoung and bass
Gábor Bretz. A post on Ms. DeY-
Mr. Sher called Le Comte Ory “a
place where love is dangerous.
People get hurt.” (Funny—we’d
describe every opera that way!)
Mr. Flórez’s appearance on the
stage is something of an event,
though—the actor is placed op-
posite Joyce DiDonato in the op-
era equivalent of a Franco-Hath-
away team-up of young stars.
Given the pair’s reputation (and
good looks), this should be one of
the Met’s HD simulcasts for the
season, despite the show’s lack
of fame.
Monodramas,
New York City Opera, begins March 25
Like opera, but hate that fusty
feeling? That what you’re watch-
ing is, how do you say, antique?
New York City Opera has you cov-
ered with a trilogy of 20th-centu-
ry one-acts, each featuring a sin-
gle soprano. Making the most of
its smaller-stage reputation, the
City Opera is taking its perfor-
mances alternative, with work by
video artist Jennifer Steinkamp
and motionographer Ada Whit-
ney spangling the performances.
Good news, too, for opera fans Aleksandrs Antonenko as Otello.
who also love Pink Floyd—to bet-
ter represent the forward-looking
obsessions of the 20th century
and the dubious artistic obses- Fleming’s character in Capriccio paretns’ attention than by forc- semble performing has quite so
sions of the 21st, a laser art “hom- loves music to a degree that per- ing them to stare at their child’s boldface a name as Muti conduct-
age” to the artist Hiro Yamagata, plexes and blinds her when it comes artwork for hours during a family ing. Rising Met star Aleksandrs
will be included. Why spotlight to making decisions. For the opera event. The guilt that forced parents Antonenko is to perform the role
one, or three, opera pioneers, singer who covered Death Cab for to introduce opera to their child of the Moor: Some things, like op-
when there’s modern art of all Cutie last spring, it’s the role she while that child was still at an age era stars, one can’t import from
stripes to be thrown in, too? was born to play! to read Maurice Sendak’s book will Chicago.
certainly kick into high gear.
Capriccio, Where the Wild Things Are, Séance on a Wet Afternoon,
Metropolitan Opera, begins March 28 New York City Opera, April 9 Otello, New York City Opera, begins April 19
Carnegie Hall, April l5 Micaela Rossato/Metropolitan Opera; TOP, K.JOSCH/AFP/Getty Images

oung’s blog reveals an infectious
enthusiasm, “Esa Pekka guides
Michelle through the 7 doors of
the castle. Don’t miss it NYC!!!!!!”
We could hardly resist.
Le Comte Ory,
Metropolitan Opera, begins March 24
Bel canto star Juan Diego Flórez
takes on Rossini’s infrequently per-
formed opera—perhaps even more
notable for another bounce back to
opera from Met and Broadway di-
rector Bartlett Sher (the man be-
hind the Met’s Barbiere di Siviglia
Renée Fleming is recovering
from last spring’s Armida at the
Met—a role that, many said, sim-
ply didn’t suit her. “The magic
wasn’t there,” said the Post,
dwelling on a cracked note. She
was not “terribly believable as a
villain,” said The Wall Street Jour-
nal. (The New York Times liked it,
but seemed amused and perplexed
by Ms. Fleming’s spring 2010 pop-
rock album, Dark Hope.) Thankful-
ly, there’s always a second chance
for a star of Ms. Fleming’s stature,
and she returns to a role she has
performed with great success. Ms.
The best path to money may be
through the patrons’ children—or
at least through the patrons’ belief
and desire that opera is the best
thing for their children. The New
York City Opera’s Family Benefit
is to revive Oliver Knussen’s opera
Where the Wild Things Are—which
significantly predates the film by
Spike Jonze. Another difference
between film and opera: the film
reflected Mr. Jonze’s darkly adult
aesthetic. The opera is to have
artwork created by children in the
City Opera’s education programs.
There may be no better way to get
How does one get from Chicago
to Carnegie Hall? Have Riccardo
Muti on one’s side. The star Ital-
ian conductor brings the Chicago
Symphony to New York for a per-
formance of the Shakespeare-
inspired opera, more than a year
after Mr. Muti’s Met debut with
another Verdi show, Attila. Car-
negie Hall’s second Great Ameri-
can Symphonies series—which
gives viewers the sense of hav-
ing traveled to Boston, Atlanta
or Cleveland—will end with this
performance, and no other en-
This production comes from a
new name in opera familiar to New
Yorkers interested in theater. Ste-
phen Schwartz composed Wicked
(and Godspell, and Pippin) before
taking a shine to the 1964 film
Séance on a Wet Afternoon, the
story of a “psychic” who concocts
a kidnapping scheme in order to
manipulate the kidnapped child’s
parents into paying her money.
(Sounds great! But isn’t this also
the first half of Ghost, kind of?)
The line between musical the-
ater and opera may be blurred if
the production is as well received

26 March 14, 2011 observer.com | the new york observer


in New York as it was in its Los Angeles
debut. Mr. Schwartz, though, may see
theater and opera as not terribly differ-
ent: He produced a cabaret act in West
Hollywood combining Séance with some
of his show tunes before the show came
to New York.
Die Walküre,
Metropolitan Opera, begins April 22
Good luck getting in: The hottest
ticket this side of LCD Soundsystem is
the second stage of the Ring cycle di-
rected by Robert Lepage, whose first in-
stallment bowed last fall. The New York
Times’ coverage, in September 2010,
focused on the show’s challenging ele-
ments—a mezzo-soprano comes close
to being crushed by a stage element,
and singers complain about having to
sing while flying. (This was before New
York’s threshold for theatrical danger
was raised when the dark was turned
off.) It also indicated that the show’s
here to stay, thanks to a tradition of
Juan Diego
Flórez in Le
Comte Ory.
observer.com | the new york observer
The Great American Comedy
is BORN AGAIN!
Ring longevity. Perhaps as the produc-
tion ages, details of gigantism—a 45-
ton set!—will diminish in the imagina-
tion. But even if it’s just the hubbub of
Ring fiends who’ll travel the globe for
their next hit, they haven’t yet.
Stupenda! A Loving Tribute to Dame
Joan Sutherland, Town Hall, May 17
Dame Joan Sutherland, who died
last year, was termed “La Stupenda” in
Venice; she is to be feted at a gathering
of opera singers and the ticket-buying
public. Video selections of Sutherland’s
work (also available on YouTube) will
be played, and performers will present
tributes—though those performers were
nearly all born in the 1930s. Perhaps the
deficiency of young blood is unsurpris-
ing: Sutherland, in 2002, noted that she
no longer wanted “anything to do with
opera anymore.” A person seeking to
meet moneyed and graying opera pa-
trons could do worse than dropping by
this event.
BOX OFFICE OPENS TOMORROW.
Previews begin March 31. Opens April 24.
Telecharge.com or 212.239.6200 O Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street
BornYesterdayOnBroadway.com
Photo by Justin Stephens. Belushi photo by Jim Wright/Cigar Aficionado
March 14, 2011 27
spring arts preview
Deborah Voigt in Robert Lepage’s
new production of Wagner’s
Die Walküre at the Met.
Anxiety Takes the Stage
Labor pains and other problems will plague the spring
By Zachary Woolfe
I
t is a time of uncertain-
ty in the New York opera
world. Well, not really,
but in an art form as sta-
ble and tradition-bound,
not to mention as dra-
matic, as opera, any glimmers of
unease are magnified into cataclys-
mic anxiety.
Everyone, of course, is talking
about the Met’s music director,
James Levine, who just resigned his
other directorship, of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, due to the
health problems that have made
him cancellation-prone in recent
years. This move might stabilize
him at the Met, or—or!—it might
be the prelude to Mr. Levine’s deci-
sion to move toward an emeritus-
type position here, too.
While that situation plays itself
out, there’s another one brewing
more quietly. The Met’s contracts
28 March 14, 2011
l Opera
with its labor unions expire this
spring, and for more than a year,
each side has been carefully stak-
ing out its position. General man-
ager Peter Gelb hired Joseph Volpe,
his predecessor, to lead the Met’s
negotiating team, and the unions
have been studying media trends
to try and predict where the op-
era’s high-definition-broadcast ini-
tiatives might go next.
Much of the Met’s workforce
is unionized, and just as in strug-
gling state governments, those
employees’ salaries and benefits
account for an enormous part of
the company’s budget. Arts audi-
ences aren’t used to thinking very
hard about the unions behind the
scenes of the performances they
enjoy, even though there’s been no
moment in the recent past when
something as generally overlooked
as union negotiations was as prom-
inent as it is right now. The levels
of news coverage and budget sizes
may vary from the NFL to Wiscon-
sin to the Metropolitan Opera, but
the issues at stake in discussions
between management and employ-
ees are largely similar: salary in-
creases, health benefits, pension-
plan structures, workplace safety.
As in state governments, the Met
would like to shift employee pen-
sions from a defined benefit plan,
whereby employees receive a cer-
tain amount regardless of econom-
ic conditions, to a defined contri-
bution plan, like a 401(k), whereby
payouts are invested and therefore
contingent on the economy. De-
fined benefit plans are increasingly
things of the past—the private sec-
tor has almost completely elimi-
nated them—but the Met’s unions
have insisted that the current pen-
sion structure is nonnegotiable.
Earlier in the season, union of-
ficials had projected that negotia-
tions would begin in the spring and
be concluded during the Met’s tour
of Japan in June. While the orches-
tra union, widely believed to be
the most problematic for manage-
ment, has reportedly already be-
gun formal negotiations, the oth-
er unions, including the American
Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA),
which represents the Met’s princi-
pal singers, choristers, dancers, di-
rectors and production personnel,
will not begin until the end of the
opera season.
“Negotiations will begin some-
time in the middle of May,” said
Alan Gordon, the executive direc-
tor of AGMA, in a phone interview.
“That’s later than usual, but a little
earlier than we expected. Nobody
wanted to negotiate in Japan, so
we thought we’d start in August,
but the Met wanted to have the first
few sessions in May, before the sea-
son’s over.”
Not coincidentally, that late
start puts increased pressure on
the Met to make a deal and avoid
a strike that could threaten open-
ing night, on Sept. 26. While both
sides prepare to meet, there’s still
observer.com | the new york observer
At the Met
any glimmers
of unease
are magnified
into cataclysmic
anxiety.
the ostensible reason for all these
machinations and stresses: There’s
a spring season to attend to. The
soprano Karita Mattila is now
starring in a run of Tchaikovsky’s
Queen of Spades. The tenor Vladi-
mir Galouzine sings Ghermann,
and the performances are led by
the promising young conductor
Andris Nelsons, whose name al-
ways pops up during conversations
about potential successors to Mr.
Levine. The mezzo Dolora Zajick, in
a campy turn, will be the demented
Old Countess.
Renée Fleming sings a rath-
er younger countess in Strauss’
Capriccio (opening March 28), a
role far better suited to her voice
and temperament than Rossini’s
Armida. And speaking of Rossini,
the Met continues its forays deep-
er into early-19th-century “bel
canto” opera with that composer’s
Le Comte Ory (opening March 24).
The director, Bartlett Sher, was re-
sponsible for a glumly uncreative
Tales of Hoffmann last season,
but his Barber of Seville in 2006
was livelier, and he’ll be joined for
Comte by two of his original Barber
stars—Diana Damrau and Juan Di-
ego Florez—as well as Joyce DiDo-
nato and Stéphane Degout.
We’re at least assured good sing-
ing there, which is not certain to be
the case in Wagner’s Die Walküre
(opening April 22), the second in-
stallment in Robert Lepage’s new
Ring cycle. The singers were good
if listless in Das Rheingold, but
Walküre adds the wild card of Deb-
orah Voigt’s first Brünnhilde. There
was a time in her career when it
seemed that Ms. Voigt’s big, gleam-
Brigitte Lacombe/Metropolitan Opera
ing, impulsive voice would transi-
tion smoothly to the touchstones
of the dramatic soprano repertory.
But whether it’s a result of gastric
bypass surgery in 2004 or just nor-
mal wear and tear, her voice has
gotten edgier, paler and more tired
in the past few years. Her run of
Puccini’s Fanciulla del West wasn’t

pretty, and in Walküre she’ll be in
a cast with some blazing singers—
Eva Maria Westbroek and Jonas
Kaufmann—in their vocal prime.
Whether Ms. Voigt can pull it off;
whether James Levine, who adores
her, will be on the podium; and
whether Mr. Lepage can bring to
the opera a theatricality that was
utterly missing from Rheingold are
the questions here.
Meanwhile, across the Lin-
coln Center plaza, New York City
Opera is still struggling to find an
audience despite doing generally
excellent work since George Steel
took over last season. It’s hard, in a
crowded New York cultural scene,
David Bazemore
to build in five productions a year
the kind of momentum and vis-
ibility needed to consistently fill a
2,600-seat theater. The spring sea-
observer.com | the new york observer
son has variety and great singers:
a boldly creative evening of 20th-
century monodramas, featuring
works by Arnold Schoenberg, Mor-
ton Feldman and John Zorn (open-
ing March 25); Jonathan Miller’s
wannabe–Peter Sellars production
of L’Elisir d’Amore, set in a ’50s din-
er and starring the talented young
soprano Stefania Dovhan (open-
ing March 22); and the first opera
by Godspell and Wicked composer
Stephen Schwartz, a noir mystery
opening April 19 and featuring a
crazed medium played by City Op-
era’s veteran house diva Lauren
Flanigan.
It hasn’t made it easier for City
Opera that the New York Philhar-
monic has lately gotten into the
opera game with the kind of exper-
imental productions of 20th-cen-
?flij1Dfe%$=i`%($-gd2JXk%Jle%($,gd
tury masterpieces that used to be
City Opera’s bread and butter. This
season they’ll be featuring two: a
concert version of Bartok’s Blue-
beard’s Castle (opening March 18),
starring mezzo-soprano Michelle
DeYoung and conducted by Esa-
Pekka Salonen; and Janáček’s Cun-
ning Little Vixen (opening June 22),
in a full production by Doug Fitch,
the director of last season’s bril-
8eelXcD\dY\ijË
<o_`Y`k`fe)'((
DXiZ_)'$8gi`c(#)'((
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K_\JXcdX^le[`8ik:clY
+.=`]k_8m\#EP:
City Opera’s Séance
on a Wet Afternoon.
liant Grand Macabre.
The scrappy Chelsea Opera per-
forms Lee Hoiby’s charming This Is
the Rill Speaking starting June 9.
Two recitals at Carnegie Hall look
a little further back in the past,
but the singing will be superb.
On April 3, the soprano Dorothea
Röschmann and the countertenor
David Daniels sing an all-Handel
program, the repertory at which
these two are among the best in the
world. And on April 25, the sopra-
no Sylvia Schwartz, the mezzo-so-
prano Bernarda Fink, the tenor Mi-
chael Schade and the bass-baritone
Thomas Quasthoff team up for a
program of Schumann and Brahms.
The city’s opera scene may feel un-
certain these days, but these recit-
als are about as sure as sure things
can get.
March 14, 2011 29
spring arts preview l Music

TOP S I C
M10 U What we’re most looking forward
PO P to in pop music this season
B y D a n i e l D ’Add a r i o

The Strokes The Mountain Goats.

Angles
March 22, RCA

And we thought a career

based upon ripping off Televi-
sion couldn’t last. The saviors of
New York rock—or of New York
trust-fund-kid hauteur—faded
away after their little-loved First
Impressions of Earth in 2006. In
the interim, Julian Casablancas
made a solo record; Albert Ham-
mond Jr. made two; Fabrizio
Moretti started a new band and
finally ended things with Drew
Barrymore. It’s impossible to
guess what public opinion will do
with Angles, but the album’s over-
stuffed first single, “Under Cover
of Darkness,” sounds like the band
at its best and its worst. There are
moments of tight yearning and
moments of loose, what-goes-
here decompression—less angu-
lar than flabby.

The Mountain Goats

All Eternals Deck
March 29, Merge

John Darnielle’s rotating

troupe’s 18th album—its first on
Merge Records—sounds grim,
and not merely because four
tracks were produced by death
metal icon Erik Rutan. Mr. Darn-
ielle compared the album to
scenes in a 1970s “occult-scare
movie” and cited influences like
fake drug memoir Go Ask Alice
and cult gang-war classic The
Warriors. With such spooky in-
spiration, we’re beginning to un-
derstand just why Mr. Darnielle
tends to pick up and shed band-
mates.
Britney Spears
Femme Fatale
March 29, Jive
The long, strange trip of Britney
Spears continues, with her new al-
bum, Femme Fatale. Ms. Spears has
had Forrest Gumpian success in the
pop music industry; without ex-
erting any effort, she emerged (or
was forcibly dragged) from pink-
wigged mania back onto the charts
just as dance music was returning
to the mainstream. It’s hard not to
miss the utter lack of persona in
Ms. Spears’s 2007-era output when
hearing her 2011 single “Hold It
Against Me,” in which a humorless
singer attempts to recite a raun-
chy pun. And yet longtime Britney
fans—are there any other kind?—
shall be sated until the star’s next
flickering emergence in two years.
Wiz Khalifa
Rolling Papers,
March 29, Atlantic
The Pittsburgh rapper says his
album title doesn’t—at least not
release of his last album, in 2009),
it’s exciting to consider what Mr.
Khalifa could do with a record label
behind him. That is, if he can find
another single with as much stay-
ing power as the Steelers–themed
“Black and Yellow.” Maybe a Pitts-
burgh Pirates single?
Low
C’Mon
April 12, Sub Pop
The nearly un-Google-able Du-
luth, Minn., band is nearing the
start of their third decade—they
got started in 1993, when their soft,
slow melodies in the age of grunge
inadvertently kicked off the mini-
movement “slowcore.” They haven’t
wandered too far from their roots:
What’s available online sounds me-
TV on the Radio
Nine Types of Light
April 12, Interscope
Dear Science, TV on the Radio’s
last album, came in at No. 1 on The
Village Voice’s year-end Pazz and
Jop poll. The band broke through
with audiences, too, even get-
ting a poorly sound-mixed spot on
Saturday Night Live. What’s left
for them to achieve? Post-stardom,
it would seem: Their new album’s
cover doesn’t feature the band’s
name. They’re now so distinctive—
though early tracks lack the weird
blats of sound that made Dear
Science so much like itself—that
they don’t need your simple-mind-
ed conventions!
Paul Simon
SEAN Pecknold; TOP, D.L. Anderson

solely—refer to marijuana. “I sort
of got my ‘rolling papers’” from
Warner Bros., Mr. Khalifa has
joked. While his memory is sur-
prisingly long for someone who so
Fleet Foxes. chronically uses … Twitter (War-
ner Bros. dropped him before the
thodical and quiet as ever, though
devoid of the explicit political reso-
nances from the band’s last record,
Drums and Guns. Apolitical, per-
haps, but still willfully out-there—
the record was made in a Catholic
Church in Duluth.
So Beautiful or So What
April 12, Concord
The venerable guitarist returns
with his first album since 2006,
and is presumably feeling, well,
his venerability: The first single is

30 March 14, 2011 observer.com | the new york observer


titled “The Afterlife.” Simon’s been popu-
lar, cyclically, but has he ever been hip?
His flirtations with world music (no word
yet on what country inspired this album)
are earnest, his depiction of a double helix
on the So Beautiful album cover daddishly
nerdy. The apocryphal reports that Mr. Si-
mon had asked cool older brother of rock
Bob Dylan to guest on the album are en-
couraging. Adopting some of Mr. Dylan’s
swagger (while still singing more compre-
hensibly) can only help Mr. Simon.
Panda Bear
Tomboy
April 12, Paw Tracks
Opining on this delayed release from
Animal Collective mainstay Panda Bear
(née Noah Lennox), the music blog Ste-
reogum said the album’s cover “would
make a decent tattoo.” While covering a


t
5&-&$)"3(&$0.
record-listening party for Tomboy, The
Village Voice wrote, “Panda Bear fans are
the Justin Bieber fans of the indie uni-


verse.” His songs “kind of have this weath-
ering the storm attitude to them,” Panda
Bear told Rolling Stone. To what storm is
he referring?
Fleet Foxes
Helplessness Blues
sara kiesling
May 3, Sub Pop
Fleet Foxes seemed like they’d tire ev-
observer.com | the new york observer
The New York Observer | September 7, 2010 | 31
Low.
eryone out quickly. The Seattle band’s
blend of folk and choralish harmonies just
barely works artistically, and does not
spell sales bonanza (hark, the lessons of
pop choir the Polyphonic Spree!). Some-
how, the band has thrived and is about
to release a second album that frontman
Robin Pecknold has said is inspired by Van
Morrison and Roy Harper. Changes come
all at once sometimes: The band also has a
new member taken from the wreckage of
two post-punk bands. Fleet Foxes’ vision of
itself is apparently as capacious as any of
the band’s songs.
Lady Gaga
Born This Way
May 23, Interscope
The chattering classes were scan-
dalized by Lady Gaga’s anxiety-of-in-
fluence rip-offs of Madonna’s “Express

Yourself.” What matters, though, is that )064&0'#-6&-&"7&4$0.
Ms. Gaga hasn’t forgotten how to grab
attention. It’s tough to criticize Ms. (30614

Gaga—she preempts all criticism not by
8"-5&3
,&33
5)&"53&
being self-aware, but by constantly up-
ping the ante with her crass stunt art- 
8&45
5)
453&&5
istry. Who knows what other “surpris-
es” this album cycle will hold? Give her
credit for this—it took Madonna seven
albums to get into weird extraplanetary
spirituality, on Ray of Light. With Ms.
Gaga’s birth-of-an-alien “Born This
Way” video, she got there in three.
March 14, 2011 31
spring arts preview
By Guelda Voien
I
t’s a famous image. Mer-
ce Cunningham, chair
strapped to his back, sus-
pended in the air, some-
how peaceful, not a hair
out of place, effortless. His
signature: the eerily calm upper
torso. The image is from a dance
called Antic Meet. It’s a 1958 col-
laboration between Cunningham
and his close friend, artist Robert
Rauschenberg, staged to the music
of Cunningham’s longtime lover,
John Cage. It will be performed in
New York by the Joyce Theater this
month for the first time since 1969,
and, in some ways, for the last.
The Cunningham company, hew-
ing to Cunningham’s wishes that
the troupe not become a “museum”
to his work (he passed away in
2009), will be disbanded at the end
of the year. The first of their final
hometown performances is March
22 through March 27 at the Joyce,
and the company is looking forward
to it in a bittersweet way. Some of
the last dancers to be trained by
Cunningham himself will perform.
“It is especially rewarding to per-
form for audiences in the city he
called home,” said Trevor Carlson,
executive director of the Cunning-
ham company.
Within the dance world, the re-
appearance of the historic work is
keenly awaited. Wendy Perron, edi-
tor of Dance magazine, has looked
forward to seeing Antic Meet
for years, she said. The idea that
“‘anything is possible’—that was
the original flavor of the stuff that
Merce did.”
Indeed, looking back, Cunning-
ham created the first postmodern
dance. His performers’ bodies were
toned to perfection as in ballet, but
they moved in a vacuum, without
meaning, symbols or overt theme.
In Antic Meet and other pieces, they
danced around Rauschenberg’s
“combines” to the non-music of
John Cage. The trio’s alliance was
among the great collaborations of
20th-century art.
Cunningham met Cage in 1938
when the latter was playing piano
accompaniment for the dance class-
es at a Seattle school. Cunningham
was married at the time, but the
two men eventually came to live to-
gether in New York. Rauschenberg
worked with both of them at Black
32 March 14, 2011
l Dance
The Last Dance
The Merce Cunningham troupe,
on a farewell tour at the Joyce, unearths a rare work
Mountain College (a now legend-
ary mid-century artistic cauldron)
in North Carolina in 1953, and he
introduced them to Jasper Johns,
who was his downstairs neighbor,
lover and sometimes collaborator.
Johns went on to serve as an artistic
advisor of the Cunningham dance
The alliance, and friendship, of
Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg
suffered when the artist was quoted
as saying the dance company
was ‘his greatest canvas.’
troupe. The four lived in New York
in the 1950s at a time when the new
arts scene was undergoing a revo-
lution. Hanging out at Greenwich
Village bars, casting the I Ching
and drinking together, they formed
a clique of artists and intellectuals
that overthrew the status quo.
Antic Meet, when it was created
in 1958, was something of an inside
joke. With costumes (described as
“zany”) by Rauschenberg, Antic
Meet attempted “to satirize the
more foolish mannerisms of the
Graham dance theater,” wrote New
York Times critic Alistair Macaulay
at the time. This was what Cun-
ningham represented to dance:
the departure from Martha Gra-
ham, the departure from narrative,
lyricism and gesture. All this was
replaced by “chance operations,”
as Cunningham called them, and
collaboration between movement,
music, visual art and design,
But few artistic partnerships
last forever. There was a falling-
out: Rauschenberg’s comment that
the Merce Cunningham Dance
Company was “his biggest can-
vas” reportedly offended Cage, and
other clashes over everything from
punctuality (the artist was appar-
ently always late) to more weighty
matters led to their separation for
some years. During those years,
Rauschenberg “cheated,” design-
ing sets and costumes for Paul
Taylor and Trisha Brown. But the
men would collaborate again in
their later years on such works as
Interscape, Travelogue and, lastly,
XOVER (crossover), a 2007 work
Rauschenberg designed the sets
for, a collage of photographs and
blood-red arcs and slashes of paint.
In conjunction with the An-
tic Meet performance, original
Rauschenberg costumes and art-
work and archival footage from
many Cunningham-Rauschenberg
collaborations will be exhibited at
the Rauschenberg Foundation’s
new West 19th Street space, open-
ing March 21. The John Cage Trust
has provided sound from Mr. Cage’s
Essay (1987) as well.
“It will almost be a snow globe,”
Christy MacLear, executive direc-
tor of the Robert Rauschenberg
Foundation, said of the show. “We
want to celebrate the range of his
work.” Many people do not real-
ize that Rauschenberg did his own
experimental performances, says
Ms. MacLear, including pieces
featuring turtles with flashlights
strapped to their backs. The exhibit
will feature archival film of many
of Rauschenberg’s “performance-
related works,” and the original
costumes from Antic Meet. “It’s not
something you can sell in a gallery,”
said Ms. MacLear.
Rauschenberg, artistic adviser to
Cunningham’s company from 1954
observer.com | the new york observer
Antic Meet, Merce
Cunningham Dance Company.
to 1964, arguably contributed more
to dance than any other visual art-
ist (Antic Meet’s “parachute dress-
es” will be included at the exhibit).
When Cunningham first began to
tour, fresh out of Black Mountain,
Rauschenberg stage-managed his
performances. The pair collaborat-
ed on numerous works, including
Minutiae, for which Rauschenberg’s
first “combine” was created, as well
as pieces central to the develop-
ment of postmodern dance, such as
Summerspace and Crises.
Cunningham worked with other
visual artists as well, hiring Johns
in 1964 and later English artist
Mark Lancaster. CRWDSPCR (1993),
also set for the performance at the
Joyce, was made in collaboration
with Lancaster and with the aid of
a computer program. Cunningham,
never set in his ways, began using
a computer in 1991 and employed
it for all of his choreography after
1991. The program in its earliest
forms presented an interesting
challenge for Cunningham (and
his dancers): It did not understand
physical constraints. The result
is a frenetic, mechanical-looking
dance, one that absolutely requires
the precision and technical prow-
ess for which Cunningham danc-
ers are known. Quartet (1986), a
dance for five, with a score by Da-
vid Tudor, is also on the program.
The dance evokes isolation and es-
trangement, and Mr. Cunningham
himself originated the role of the
alienated central figure.
The Joyce, a stalwart dance or-
ganization which has nurtured
“downtown” dance—smaller, less
established companies doing work
closer to the margins—for the last
30 years may also be in its twilight.
Its lease, under the terms of which
it currently pays $1 a year, is up in
2016, and a planned move to the
World Trade Center area is look-
ing increasingly untenable due to
stalls in fund-raising and build-
ing. Talks between Eliot Feld, the
Eighth Avenue theater’s owner,
and the Joyce Theater Founda-
tion over who will retain the Joyce
name continue. Mr. Feld rejected
offers from the nonprofit to buy
the space.
So this season is the last time
MCDC performs at the Joyce, and
Anna Finke, 2010
the last time any of these works will
be performed in New York City by
MCDC. “It’s the end of an era,” said
Ms. Perron.
 spring arts preview
Filling Out Your Dance Card
From Merce to Martha to Morris, the spring performances you won’t want to miss
By Robert Gottlieb
O
kay, dance people,
buckle up—March
is going to be a
bumpy month. It’s
a modern-dance
invasion. (Paul
Taylor’s come and gone; everyone
else is on his/her way.) Start figur-
ing out your priorities now … next
week will be too late.
To begin with: You’re going to be
spending a lot of time at the Joyce.
First up, Larry Keigwin, from the
8th through the 13th, with a full-
evening work called Dark Habits.
Keigwin is always smart, witty,
New Yorky. Not everyone likes him
as much as I do, but here’s your
chance to judge for yourself. (He’s
Phil Knott
also a charming dancer.)
Next, from the 15th through the
observer.com | the new york observer
l Dance
20th: One of my favorite choreog-
raphers, Doug Varone, also with a
full-evening work, Chapters From
a Broken Novel. Six years ago, I
wrote here that his new work,
Castles, was the best new dance
piece I’d seen in a long time, and
nothing that’s come along since
has changed my mind. What’s so
special? His unusual gift for com-
bining kinetic excitement with
humanity and highly charged
emotion. I guess you could call it
expressive excitement.
And then, from the 22nd though
the 27th, the return of the Merce
Cunningham Company, deep into its
Legacy Tour—everything’s moving
inexorably to its self-imposed dis-
solution at the end of the year. This
is absolutely required seeing for ad-
mirers of the late, great Merce; soon
his work will be solely in the hands
(feet?) of other companies.
And let’s not forget the Foundress:
The Martha Graham company is go-
ing to be at the Rose from March 15
to March 20. The novelties will be a
revival of the Robert Wilson Snow
on the Mesa (1995) and a new piece
by Bulareyaung Pagarlava, but the
most emotional program for many
of us will be the one on the 17th
celebrating Martha’s collaboration
with Isamu Noguchi: Appalachian
Spring, Cave of the Heart and
Embattled Garden.
Mark Morris? Yes, March 17 to
March 27, at the Morris Dance Cen-
ter, his studio across from BAM,
with its intimate theater that can
only accommodate under 200 peo-
ple. He’s bringing us a world pre-
miere—Festival Dance, to a Hummel
trio—and two New York Premieres:
The Muir, to a group of Beethoven’s
arrangements of Scottish and Irish
songs, and Petrichor, to a Villa-Lo-
bos string quartet. Small pieces in
a small space, but with big expecta-
tions. This, of course, is a must.
Trisha Brown? At the Dance The-
ater Workshop, on and off from the
15th to the 26th.
Yvonne Rainer? At the Barysh-
nikov Arts Center from the 16th to
the 19th.
After all this, I give you permis-
sion to relax for a little while, to gear
up for the return of New York City
Ballet (May 4) and ABT (May 16).
At NYCB, a new version of the
Weill-Brecht The Seven Deadly Sins,
choreographed by Lynne Taylor-
Corbett and featuring Patti LuPone.
(Not, alas, Allegra Kent and Lotte
Lenya, who starred in Balanchine’s
1958 version.) Also Vienna Waltzes,
La Sonnambula and Jewels. To be
avoided if possible: Peter Martins’
Thou Swell and Susan Stroman’s
For the Love of Duke.
Doug Varone dancers.
At ABT: Don’t miss the company
premiere of Ratmansky’s brilliant
and hilarious The Bright Stream (a
triumph when the Bolshoi brought
it here several years ago). Also new
works by Ratmansky and Wheeldon
(oh yes, and by Benjamin Millepied).
Plus an important revival: Tudor’s
Shadowplay.
As for the full-evening specta-
cles, it would be hard to say which is
the bigger yawn, James Kudelka’s
Cinderella or John Neumeier’s The
Lady of the Camelias. Avoid both.
But the old standbys will be up and
running: Giselle, Swan Lake, Don
Quixote, Coppélia, The Sleeping
Beauty. Try to see Cojocaru in Don
Q, Giselle or Beauty, Osipova in
Coppélia or Beauty. And Murphy
and/or Hallberg in just about any-
thing—except Cinderella. Don’t
say I didn’t warn you!
 rgottlieb@observer.com
March 14, 2011 33
spring arts preview l Books

TOP S
K
O What we’re most looking forward
BO 10 to in books this season
B y D a n i e l D’Add a r i o

The Free World:

A Novel
by David
Bezmozgis
(FSG, $26),
March 29

A stalwart of
The New York-
er’s “20 Under
40” fiction writers, David Bezmoz-
gis has produced a collection of
short stories—the well-reviewed
Natasha—but is debuting as a nov-
elist with The Free World, the sto-
ry of three generations of Russian
Jews headed west and stopping in
Rome. Whoever said the ambitious
young male novelist was dead? The
expatriates-in-glorious-Roma yarn
has always been a convenient and
appealing one for novelists, but
Mr. Bezmozgis’s perspective on the
scene (the author emigrated from
Latvia as a child) should provide a
tale far longer on actual emotion,
and shorter on so-called “white
whines,” than, say, Tom Rachman’s
hit Italian-expat novel of last year,
The Imperfectionists. The imperfec-
tions faced by characters in The Free
World stand to be actually problem-
atic, not merely convenient story-
telling avenues.

Art and
Madness: A
Memoir of Lust
Without Reason
by Anne Roiphe
(Nan A. Talese,
$24.95), March 15
The first-wave
feminist Anne
Roiphe takes her reader back to
New York at the turn of the 1960s,
the era of Mad Men and Joan Did-
ion’s “Goodbye to All That.” Ms.
Roiphe, a former writer for The
Observer, traces her marriage
and affairs—including one with
George Plimpton—for the purpos-
es of reframing her own story, not
merely dishing dirt. Ms. Roiphe’s
story is told in relation to the sto-
ries of successful or unsuccess-
ful men she encountered: It was a
man’s world, one Ms. Roiphe had
to endure so that she might have
the last word.
Day of the
Oprichnik: A Novel
by Vladimir Sorokin;
translated by Jamey
Gambrell
(trans.) (FSG, $23),
March 15
It was less than a year ago that the
last Russian-infused dystopian nov-
el landed on The Observer’s door-
step, in the form of Gary Shteyn-
gart’s Facebook fever dream Super
Sad True Love Story. Vladimir So-
rokin imagines a future overtaken
by antisocial, not social, network-
ing. The protagonist is a member of
the New Russia’s elite—overseeing
both executions and meetings with
czarinas. The future will always
have its lurid elements (here, it’s fish
genetically modified for one’s con-
sumption with psychotropic drugs),
yet a novel of Russian cruelty in the
technocratic age feels more strictly
contemporary than it should.
Rawhide Down:
The Near
Assassination of
Ronald Reagan
by Del Quentin
Wilber
(Henry Holt, $27),
March 15
It’s been a good
year so far for Ronald Reagan fe-
tishists—the centennial of his
birth brought all manner of trib-
utes and fond memories of the
1980s. In death as in life, Reagan
is an empty vessel, waiting to be
filled with whatever meaning the
gazer imputes. Washington Post
reporter Del Quentin Wilber looks
at the early days of the presiden-
cy—and how “Rawhide” (Reagan’s
Secret Service handle) inspired
his acolytes even after being shot
in early 1981. Bill O’Reilly has al-
ready weighed in with a positive
review.
Piaf.
No Regrets: The
Life of Edith Piaf
by Carolyn Burke
(Knopf, $27.95),
March 22
Is the Edith Piaf
moment still going?
The actress Marion
Cotillard, in two movies—the biopic
La Vie en Rose and the Piaf-scented
Inception—has kept the legend alive,
and now passes the torch of Piafo-
philia to Carolyn Burke. Ms. Burke,
who’s written biographies of poet
Mina Loy and photographer Lee
Miller, has to face down a far more
(over-?) exposed subject in this vol-
ume. Early reviews, though, indicate
that Ms. Burke debunks Piaf’s self-
created myths and reveals some un-
told stories. Anything fresher than
that familiar origin story, or with
more subtlety and shades of possible
meaning than a performance by Ms.
Cotillard, will be welcome.
Iphigenia in
Forest Hills:
Anatomy of a
Murder Trial
by Janet Malcolm
(Yale University
Press, $25),
March 29
All those who
were boggled at the length of the re-
cent New Yorker Scientology piece
weren’t paying attention a year
ago, when Janet Malcolm dropped
a ream on a Queens murder trial
and its dissection among the bor-
ough’s Jewish community and the
courtroom press corps. Ms. Mal-
colm’s piece, less heralded than re-
cent New Yorker feats now, became
a work of stunt journalism when
Ms. Malcolm inserted herself into
the trial by providing evidence. The
blend of attempted precision and
emotional involvement—and the
uneasiness with their merger—is
what turned Ms. Malcolm’s Jour-
nalist and the Murderer into leg-
end. The target here, one specific
trial, is smaller than the sprawl of
the previous work, but who knows
what Ms. Malcolm added on the
way to hard cover.

34 March 14, 2011 observer.com | the new york observer


William and
Alexandra Styron.
In the Basement of the
Ivory Tower: Confessions
of an Accidental
Academic
by Professor X
(Viking Adult, $25.95),
March 31
Professor X, the author of
a 2008 Atlantic essay describing his expe-
rience teaching college “in the northeast-
ern United States” and condemning the cul-
ture of widespread college attendance, has
published a book-length rambling on simi-
lar subjects. The author, whose essay is not
so very dissimilar from a 2005–08 series
of dispatches by adjunct professor “Oron-
te Churm” at McSweeney’s, seeks to tell—
without any too-revealing specifics!—just
what financial contingencies drove him to
the horror of teaching English to students
who don’t belong in his classroom, and how,
precisely, the education system works. (Fin-
gers crossed for a “vampire squid”–level-
of-hyperbole metaphor!) Not everyone de-
serves an education, you see. But everyone,
even the anonymous Professor X, deserves
a book deal.
Beautiful & Pointless: A
Guide to Modern Poetry
by David Orr
(Harper, $25.99), April 5
David Orr knows how to get
that rare thing for poetry:
public attention. In 2007, he
penned for The Times a sav-
aging of Dana Goodyear’s reporting on the
Poetry Foundation for The New Yorker, and
the way the magazine uses poetry to begin
with: “as a brand-enhancing commodity.”
Readers will judge for themselves wheth-
er Mr. Orr’s new book, “a tour through the
world of poetry” seemingly aimed at infre-
quent readers as well as devotees, is meant
to enhance Mr. Orr’s brand—or whether Mr.
Orr’s doing his best to enhance poetry’s.
observer.com | the new york observer
ELVIS CARL JOHNNY
JERRY LEE
PRESLEY LEWIS PERKINS CASH
The Pale King
by David Foster Wallace
(Little, Brown, $27.99),
April 15
The novel was unfin-
ished at the time of
Wallace’s suicide, but
still lands as a 560-
page doorstop. If past
posthumous works like James Agee’s A
Photo by Joan Marcus
Death in the Family or Roberto Bolaño’s
2666 serve as indicators, The Pale King
will sell wonderfully; booksellers are al-
ways wishing they could dig up more un-
finished apocrypha, and Wallace’s work
never rested, entirely, on narrative.
Whether the prose is good or bad—or
impossible to discern in the noisy haze
of hype—it will be the literary event of
the spring. Surely Wallace would have a
footnote to place under its success.
Reading My Father:
A Memoir
by Alexandra Styron
(Scribner, $25),
April 19
You’re no one until
your children write
INSPIRE D BY THE TRUE S TORY
a memoir about you.
William Styron joins
Anatole Broyard
and Auberon Waugh
in the elite circle of subjects for the mus-
ings of grown children seeking a topic.
It should come as no surprise that Sty-
ron was a complicated man—he wrote a
memoir of his depression—and young
Alexandra Styron was, by her own tell-
ing, witness to his best and worst selves.
William Styron remains such a stagger-
INSPIRED BY THE TRUE STORY
ing, and staggeringly interesting, talent
that this book may transcend score-set-
tling. But if we see a memoir from one Ticketmaster.com or 877-250-2929
of Tom Wolfe’s kids, we’re giving up al-
together. Nederlander Theatre, 208 West 41st Street • MillionDollarQuartetLive.com
March 14, 2011 35
spring arts preview l Books

Half an
Orphan
A poet loses her mother
By Anne Diebel

N
ine months af-
ter his mother’s
death, Roland Bar-
thes made a brief
entry to his di-
ary of mourning:
“Each of us has his own rhythm of
suffering.” In the notes that make
up his Mourning Diary, Barthes
reflected on the particularity of
an individual’s experience of loss,
lamenting at once the “egoism”
separating the mourner from oth-
ers and the absence of social ritu-
als that could lift the mourner out
of his solitude and make his suf-
fering more comprehensible. Even
in his frustration with French so-
ciety for its failure to externalize
O’Rourke.
mourning, as “all judicious societ-
ies” have done, Barthes was able
to endure his sorrow by putting
it into words: “My suffering is in- fool, I fell in love with you,” Ms. longed or complicated sadness. reads clinical literature on grief, more special than anyone else’s.”
expressible but all the same utter- O’Rourke thinks, after her diag- Friends are presumptuously sym- but uses its terms warily. She Her voice wavers between star-
able, speakable.” Suffering at one’s nosis. “But you were always likely pathetic or awkwardly evasive; points out that we don’t have a tlingly beautiful turns of phrase
own rhythm does not mean suffer- to die first.” lovers are inexplicably distant word for having lost a parent, and aggressive repetition, estab-
ing silently. For all her mother’s vividness, or inconveniently needy. But, Ms. only “orphan” for having lost lishing a vocabulary for loss that
In her searching, elegant the book is not about her life; it’s O’Rourke suggests, it’s not re- both. She surveys great works is at once idiosyncratic and pre-
memoir The Long Goodbye (Riv- about Ms. O’Rourke’s own strug- ally their fault; the inadequacy of dealing with death, from Shake- scriptive.
erhead, 320 pages, $25.95), out gle to make her way through ex- their support is symptomatic of a speare to Tolstoy to Proust to For Ms. O’Rourke, the problem
next month, the poet Meghan treme and lasting sadness. This cultural uneasiness with death, Woolf, and incorporates poetry with communicating grief is not
O’Rourke describes just the same struggle is deeply personal, but with total loss. with great facility. just that the intensity of emo-
tension between outer and in- Ms. O’Rourke insists that her dif- In the year after her mother’s Ms. O’Rourke’s relationship to tion exceeds the language that
ner inherent in the experience of ficulty is also the result of our death, Ms. O’Rourke finds that language throughout the book serves as its vehicle. It’s also that
loss. Confronting the problem of culture treating grief as a private nothing has prepared her for her reflects her ambivalence about seeing or hearing our feelings
suffering being inexpressible yet psychological process, leaving grief, least of all language. She communicating her experience in in language makes us feel guilty
utterable, she gives an emphati- us without language and social feels “heartsickness, like the sad- the first place. As strongly as she for having expressed them at all.
cally public account of her grief rituals to guide us. Asserting ness you feel after a breakup, but calls for a shared language and Opening up a cut on her arm with
after her mother’s death at 55. that “in our culture of display, many times stronger and more shared rituals to work against an “ivory-handled dinner knife”
Ms. O’Rourke tells the story of the sadness of death is largely si- desperate.” She seeks a new vo- the idea that grief is private, or one night, Ms. O’Rourke realizes
her mother’s battle against can- lent,” Ms. O’Rourke moves deftly cabulary, turning to metaphors that it’s universally surmount- that she wants “to create some
cer, crafting an intimate portrait between recording her particu- to capture her specific loss: Her able, she refuses to portray her embodiment of the heartbreak
of a family in its greatest joy and lar experience of disorientation mother is the wind, her loss is an grief as representative, as any- eating me up.” But while self-muti-
worst agony. Barbara O’Rourke and loneliness and analyzing our amputation, her mourning is a thing but hers. “I am writing lation is obviously not the solution
Sarah Shatz

emerges as an extraordinarily general cultural obsession with tree growing around an obstruc- about my grief, of course,” she to the incommunicability of her
strong and loving mother, mag- accepting loss—letting go, mov- tion, but she finds such substitu- says, not “because I think it was grief, what this graphic episode
netic and demanding. “Like a ing on—and intolerance for pro- tions unsatisfying. She dutifully more extreme, more unusual, illustrates is the particular expe-

36 March 14, 2011 observer.com | the new york observer

 rience of wanting emotions that
feel too intense for language. Ms.
O’Rourke finds this incident “clar-
ifying,” but leaves it to the reader
to understand how grief and self-
punishment relate to each other
in the mind of the writer.
Ms. O’Rourke is not alone in
wanting to connect grief and guilt.
Just weeks after his mother’s sui-
cide, Austrian writer Peter Hand-
ke declares in A Sorrow Beyond
Dreams that the worst thing for
him would be sympathy: “I need
the feeling that what I am going
through is incomprehensible and
incommunicable; only then does
the horror seem meaningful and
real.” What moves Mr. Handke to
write is an almost physiological
desperation: He has experienced
moments of “dull speechlessness”
and needs to “formulate” them,
to let the horror startle him out
of insensibility and into speech,
even if it contains or reduces his
suffering. Ms. O’Rourke does not
Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 256 W. 47th St.
Ticketmaster.com t 877-250-2929 t RainTribute.com
observer.com | the new york observer
venture to this level of reflection
on the violence involved in turn-
ing the inexpressible into some-
thing utterable.
As an act of communication
that is at times resistant to the
idea of communicating, The Long
Goodbye is caught between two
impulses: arguing that we lack a
social structure for dealing with
loss, and telling a story about loss
that reveals a rich European and
American cultural inheritance for
talking about death and mourn-
ing. Ms. O’Rourke is better when
telling her own story, which is
itself a story of confronting a cul-
tural lack, than when comment-
ing directly on a “silence” that,
given the plenitude of sources
she cites, including Joan Didion’s
and Barthes’ recent books, isn’t as
pervasive as she suggests.
While Ms. O’Rourke may ar-
gue that America’s silence and
uneasiness around the sadness
A TRIBUTE TO THE BEATLES
ON BROADWAY
O’Rourke points out that we don’t
have a word for having lost a parent,
only ‘orphan’ for having lost both.
of death makes grief an unneces-
sarily long and painful process
for many, she is surprisingly reti-
cent on the subject of another loss
she suffers: divorce. Ms. O’Rourke
and her longtime boyfriend mar-
ry shortly after her mother’s di-
agnosis, but they separate only
eight months later. “It is impos-
sible for me to know whether—or
to what degree—the separation
was an expression of my grief,”
she writes early in the book. She
dates other men before and after
her mother’s death, struggling to
form intimacy in a time of isola-
tion.
“
THE BEATLES”
ARE BACK!
It is only when she sees an at-
tractive young woman, married
and with children, visiting her
own dying mother in the hospi-
tal, and feels “a flicker of envy,
of what-might-have-been,” that
she admits her loss: “Your grief is
not like mine, I thought spitefully.
You’re going home to your family. I
am newly divorced. I have no fam-
ily. All I have is this.” Ms. O’Rourke
suffers a double loss, divorce and
death, but her focus on death and
her project of cultural analysis
prevent her from attempting any
comparison between the two
kinds of loss, even though she de-
- Variety
scribes both forms of attachment
with the same words. By privileg-
ing death as the only real loss and
treating the pain of breaking up
as a mere byproduct, she misses
the chance to explore the relation-
ship between absence and loss,
between social death and death
itself.
Ms. O’Rourke writes passion-
ately and intelligently about
losing and feeling lost, and she
argues convincingly for making
mourning a more formally public
process. But The Long Goodbye is
split in two, a memoir trying to
be cultural criticism, and cultur-
al criticism excusing itself from
depth in the name of individual
experience. It wrenches the heart,
and it raises urgent questions
about death in a secular, thera-
peutic culture, but it leaves its
fundamental assumptions about
loss—how it feels, what to do
about it, which kinds matter—
unexamined.
Photo by Joan Marcus
March 14, 2011 37
spring arts preview
Virtual
Literary
Colossus
Blake Butler and what happens
when a novelist lives on the Internet
By Michael H. Miller
I
“
am going to see how
fast I can write a
novel,” Blake Butler
wrote on his blog,
gillesanddeleuze-
committedsuicide-
andsowilldrphil.com, on April 14,
2008. “I am going to write non-
stop on it until I am done. I start-
ed today at 12:30 p.m. and now
have 4,500 words at 8:18. I hope
to have a draft of a 30,000-word
novel in 10-15 days. I am going to
try to blog about it while doing it
as a form of motivation. I am go-
ing to minimize my eating and
only drink coffee/water. Tonight
I am going to watch INLAND EM-
PIRE again if I stop writing long
enough.”
That night Mr. Butler re-
watched David Lynch’s script-
less, surrealist epic (he saw it four
times in one week) until the scene
when Laura Dern goes through a
window in Los Angeles and ends
up in Poland. He did not sleep for
several hours after that, though
it was very late. Eight days later,
38 March 14, 2011
l Books
still writing, Mr. Butler—a chron-
ic insomniac—found time to move
apartments and watch both Fun-
ny Games and Crumb, the docu-
mentary. He had written 34,689
words. That day, an email arrived
in his in-box from Gene Morgan
in Houston with the subject line
“Project.”
It read: “I know you’re into a lot
of different projects in the imme-
diate future, so this may be more
of a burden than a question, but
I’ve got an idea for a site that I’ve
been thinking about for a while,
and I wanted to run it by you.” The
email explained that on the Inter-
net literature suffers from lack of
exposure and a concern over its
legitimacy.
“I think the best way to combat
that is through being professional
as fuck, and classing-up what we
do,” Mr. Morgan wrote. “I think if
it’s fleshed-out correctly, it could
serve as a hub for the communi-
ty. Here is the url I’ve got on hold:
http//htmlgiant.com.”
The next day at 9:30 p.m.,
40,000 words later, six pounds
lighter and exhausted from lack of
sleep, Mr. Butler finished the first
draft of his novel. He’d get to the
email later.
“The day Gene asked me to
take part, it was like we’d both
been thinking with the same brain
apart and then suddenly bumped
them back together,” said Mr. But-
ler, whose then untitled first draft
is now called There Is No Year and
will be published by HarperPe-
rennial in April. “I was trying to
push my own stuff rather than get
an agent to do it, and there was
kind of a scene developing online
where all these people were do-
ing the same thing in their own
town, blogging about it, starting
their own little magazines. Gene
and I were thinking the exact
same thing: We need to get some
of these people who are doing it
in their bedrooms to all talk in the
same place.”
HTML Giant has become the
blog for writers by writers. It was
something new when it came out,
less an aggregator of book chat
or reviews of small presses—like
Bookslut or The Millions—than
a kind of round-table discussion
among writers about fiction in the
comments section. It has spawned
a slew of imitators, such as Big
Other, We Who Are About to Die
and Trick with a Knife. A few
weeks ago it reached its peak traf-
fic: 40,000 unique visitors over
the span of a couple hours.
“What books have actually got-
ten you wet or given you an erec-
tion?” asked Mr. Butler in a one-
line post titled “Hornbook.” The
answers ranged from William S.
Burroughs’ Naked Lunch to Nich-
olson Baker’s Vox to the first
Sweet Valley High book. “Who
is the horniest writer?” he asked
in another. Mary Gaitskill, Mi-
chel Houellebecq, Philip Roth and
Michael Crichton were all men-
tioned, as was Helen Keller.
Longer posts can take on the
quality of manifestos or rants, as
when Mr. Butler enumerated doz-
ens of items under the heading
“Shit I Don’t Like About Writers
& Writing”: “Stories,” read one
point, “involving relationships,
sex, dialogue, magical animals,
magic at all really that presents it-
self as magic, metaphor that pres-
ents itself as metaphor, metaphor
at all really, party scenes, band
scenes, scenes that connect the
observer.com | the new york observer
Butler.
dots, scenes that pretend like they
aren’t connecting the dots, expo-
sition I could have figured out on
my own, stories about illness that
are actually about the illness and
don’t have shit in them, dick jokes
that don’t involve the dick being
slathered or crushed.”
Mr. Butler calls the site a
“ball of energy” and his novel a
“connective field.” It opens with
an image of an “ageless eye of
light” suffusing the air above the
Earth. That the rhetoric Mr. Butler
uses to describe his life online is
so similar to There Is No Year is no
coincidence. The book’s structure
recalls the stacking of informa-
tion and ephemera of a Web site.
The novel is a series of images
stemming out of the book’s open-
ing sentence: “The father and the
mother sat close together with-
out touching.” To say the book is
“about” something would be as
futile as a plot summary of Inland
Empire. Like that movie, there is
Morgan Kendall
no script, so to speak. The novel
lacks dialogue. Characters have no
names nor are they developed in
any conventional sense of facing

a problem, overcoming that prob-
lem or failing to, and then coming
out changed for better or worse.
There Is No Year is a rickety sculp-
ture of images piled atop one an-
other, all centered on a family in
a house that resembles the set-
ting from another of Mr. Lynch’s
films—Lost Highway. A lot of ink
is spent on characters walking
down dark hallways, falling into
giant anthills beneath boards in
the floor, discovering their bodies
to be entombed in piles of hair.
At the climax, a character dis-
covers a box filled with sheets of
paper and a stack of photos of 43
deceased artists: Antonin Artaud,
Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Bruce Lee, end-
ing with David Foster Wallace.
The names are arranged on the
novel’s pages into a column, each
with a footnote containing the de-
observer.com | the new york observer
‘What books have actually gotten you wet
or given you an erection?’ asked Butler.
tails of the person’s death, their
meaning crushed beneath the
weight of such finality (“Antonin
Artaud died alone, seated at the
foot of his bed, holding his shoe”;
“David Foster Wallace died with a
massive and uncompleted manu-
script found bathed under light in
his garage”). The images frighten
and blister, moving forward reck-
lessly but never once suggesting a
beginning, middle or end.
“A lot of books and movies,
people want to know an answer,”
Mr. Butler said. “But as soon as
you answer that question, who
cares?”
The novel could only come
out of the mind of someone whose
full-time job is to be on the Inter-
net, another collection of words
and images with no conceivable
beginning or end (and definitely
no answers). Mr. Butler, who earns
his living as a freelancer, mostly
writing about poker online, said
he’s “basically been in front of the
computer for 10 years.” He broad-
casts himself through a variety
of mediums, from his personal
blog to his hilarious, often un-
comfortable Twitter feed, which
sometimes recalls the hazy, night-
marish sentences of his fiction
(“Burped so slow & deep just now
it was like vomiting into a cave full
of vomit, which is what a day is”).
Like Mr. Butler, his contributors
have been experts at sharing and
over-sharing their thoughts pub-
licly for years, creating their own
communities of followers, which
helps explain HTML Giant’s quick
rise since Mr. Morgan’s email less
than three years ago.
“I was on LiveJournal!” said
Roxane Gay, who has written for
HTML Giant since the beginning
and chronicles on her personal
blog everything from trying to
lose weight to being interviewed
about over-sharing by The Ob-
server. “To be honest, I’m com-
pletely delusional. I pretend no-
body is reading what I write on
the Internet. But with HTML Gi-
ant, I blog about things I’d like to
talk about with a larger group of
people. It’s basically a love story.
It’s all these really smart people
trying to show off for other really
smart people, but not in an obnox-
ious way. It’s just a bunch of word
nerds. It fills a really big void.”
It is hard not to look at Mr. But-
ler as a new kind of fiction writer,
one who defies the archetype of
the guarded figure alone with a
manuscript in a room filled with
books. It’s not just that talented
writers can be open about screw-
ing around on the Internet like ev-
eryone else, but that his blog, his
Twitter, his novel and HTML Giant
are all continuous with his perso-
na as a writer, all working toward
a single style. They cannot be sep-
arated.
“The idea of the writer at all
has become overrated,” Mr. But-
ler said. “To think that you’re this
orchestrating wizard and that you
have to have this story to tell and
you have to have lived and seen
crazy shit to be able to put it out
there is absurd. To me it’s just as
crazy or scary or fucked up to go
outside to the grocery store. You
know? I feel like going out into the
world, you just never know. You
never know anything.”
March 14, 2011 39
spring arts preview l Books

The David Foster Wallace Industry

Dead author breeds big business by david freedlander
40 March 14, 2011 observer.com | the new york observer
 W
hen David Foster
Wallace hanged
himself with a
black belt and
his arms bound
by duct tape on
the patio of his
home in Claremont, Calif., on Sept. 12, 2008,
he had published a history of the concept of
infinity, three collections of short stories,
two books of essays and two novels. The last
of the novels—the towering, 1,088-page Infi-
nite Jest—came out in 1996.
More than a decade after the magnum
opus was published, Wallace devotees
voiced worries that their hero’s reputa-
tion was on the wane. They noted that for
the 10th-anniversary of Infinite Jest, the
publishers chose Dave Eggers to write a
new introduction—a sign, they feared,
that Wallace needed the imprimatur of
a broadly popular figure (though Mr. Eg-
gers had called the novel “extravagantly
self-indulgent” upon its first appearance)
in order to make him palatable to the next
generation of readers.
The death of the author, it would seem,
has changed all that. Next month will see
the publication of The Pale King, the un-
finished novel Wallace left stacked in a
pile in his garage. This comes on the heels
of two other posthumous books in the 30
months since his passing: This Is Water,
a 4,000-word commencement address
he delivered at Kenyon College in 2005,
which was stretched to book length by
the neat trick (one critic termed it “un-
Wallace-like”) of printing only one sen-
tence per page; and Fate, Time, and Lan-
guage: An Essay on Free Will, Wallace’s
undergraduate philosophy thesis, padded
with a number of essays by distinguished
philosophers.
We have not heard the last of him. In-
deed, the 34 document boxes and eight
oversize folders of Wallace’s drafts, let-
ters and juvenilia deposited at the Harry
Ransom Center at the University of Tex-
as, along with 300 books from his per-
sonal library, promise a posthumous flow
that will be, if not infinite, then certainly
robust. There may be another book of un-
published fiction soon in the offing, and
one of uncollected nonfiction, as well as
potentially two books of Wallace’s letters,
one of which is said to be devoted almost
entirely to his correspondence about the
art of writing.
Then there are Wallace’s Boswells. Da-
vid Lipsky, who was commissioned by
Rolling Stone to shadow the author on
the Infinite Jest book tour (the piece was
killed), last year re-purposed his tran-
scripts of their road trip into a 300-page
book, And of Course You End Up Becom-
ing Yourself. D.T. Max, who wrote a fea-
ture-length obituary of Wallace for The
New Yorker framing Wallace’s suicide as
the end of a long struggle against both
depression and avant-garde tendencies,
is expanding his efforts into a full-blown
literary biography slated to appear later
this year.
The critics, too, must have their say.
One volume of critical essays, Consid-
er David Foster Wallace, came out on a
small press last year, and another, The
Legacy of David Foster Wallace, includ-
ing appraisals by icons like Don DeLillo
and contemporaries like Jonathan Fran-
zen, has been promised by the University
of Iowa Press.
observer.com | the new york observer
“I think what we are looking at is some-
thing like the beginnings of the David
Foster Wallace industry,” said Matt Buch-
er, a Houghton Mifflin Harcourt textbook
editor, an independent Wallace scholar
and the administrator of Wallace-L, a
1,000-subscriber strong Wallace listserv.
“I think it will be big, on par with James
Joyce or Walt Whitman. Look at all the
stuff there is out there about them. Peo-
ple gobble that stuff up. Look how many
books there are on Kennedy.”
So far no conspiracy theories have
emerged around Wallace’s life or death,
but since 2008 there have been at least
a dozen Ph.D. dissertations entirely or
partly devoted to Wallace’s work. And
where there are academics, there are
soon enough academic conferences. A
panel about Wallace’s legacy was staged
at the Modern Language Association con-
ference in 2009, a year that also saw en-
tire conferences about his work at the
University of Liverpool and at the City
University of New York. A conference on
The Pale King is scheduled for September
at the University of Antwerp, in Belgium,
and next week the urge to discuss him in
public leaks out of the academic world
and into the South by Southwest festival,
where a panel next week will consider
“David Foster Wallace and the Internet.”
P
art of the newfound fascination
with Wallace has to do with the ur-
gency of his subject matter and the
kind of readers it attracts. Wallace’s ear-
ly fiction arrived just as Internet culture
was forming, and his work anticipated a
world where people think it worthwhile
to broadcast in 140 characters the con-
tents of their sushi lunches.
“He connects very strongly with men,
especially young men, and especially IT
men, the kind of guys who would be into
sci-fi and that kind of thing,” said Mr.
Max. “These guys need writers, they need
cultural figures and they need guys who
help them understand their role in the
culture.”
Publishers and scholars say that the
Internet fans who flocked to Wallace were
able to create an instant online archive in
the wake of his death. Instead of uncov-
ering a slow trickle of uncollected or lost
pieces, fans tracked down, for example,
Wallace’s undergraduate thesis (now a
© LITTLESTAR
book) and the story “The Planet Trilla-
TM
phon as It Stands in Relation to the Bad
Thing,” which Wallace published as an
undergraduate in a 1984 issue of Amherst
Review (and which would appear after its
rediscovery in the journal Tin House), and
MARCH 9TH THROUGH APRIL 30TH
posted these writings online for immedi-
ate inspection and debate. It is like the
long tail, only in reverse, where a small
coterie of fans keep the work alive online
$
82 All orch./front mezz. seats
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long enough for the rest of the culture
to discover it. A clearinghouse for this
phenomenon was The Howling Fantods!,
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icled Wallace’s career since 1997. It has VISIT BroadwayOffers.com and use code MMOBSVR
reported receiving nearly 280,000 hits
per month in 2011, up from 110,000 in the BRING this ad to the O Winter Garden Theatre
months leading up to Wallace’s death. (1634 Broadway & 50th Street)
In his recent essay “David Foster Wal-
lace: The Death of the Author and the
Birth of a Discipline,” the Irish scholar
Adam Kelly wrote that Wallace criticism
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March 14, 2011 41
spring arts preview
‘Wallace,’ said Max, ‘was deeply, scrotum-
tighteningly ambivalent about fame.’
ing of Wallace’s texts, tradition-
ally the preserve of academic en-
gagement, has in great part been
carried out by skillful and commit-
ted non-professional readers, who
publish their findings in the public
domain of the web.”
“It’s all sped up now,” said Mau-
reen Eckert, a professor at UMASS-
Dartmouth who edited Fate, Time,
and Language and describes her-
self as a “head-over-heels fan” of
Wallace. “You think about people
finding a lost manuscript of Hem-
ingway or a Sylvia Plath poem; it’s
a moment of celebration. In the
case of Wallace, we have the tech-
nology, and so there are a lot of
PDFs just floating around online.”
Last week a blogger at lazenby.
tumblr.com posted a document
comparing word by word the ex-
cerpt of The Pale King that ap-
peared in The New Yorker and a
transcription of the same pas-
sage that Wallace read at the Lan-
nan Foundation in New Mexico in
2000.
Scott Esposito, writing on his
blog Conversational Reading,
posted a quick reaction: “What we
see,” he wrote, “is a vision of what
The Pale King might have looked
like, if its editors had chosen to
leave it in the disarrayed state
it was discovered in. Surely this
would have been a book with less
mass appeal than the ‘completed’
Pale King that will be published
on April 15, but would it have been
truer to Wallace the writer?”
Asked about the editing process
that has brought The Pale King to
the public, Michael Pietsch, Wal-
lace’s longtime editor at Little,
Brown, told The Observer, “I am
going to save that for another time.
I am not sure how much I want to
talk about that at this time.”
B
onnie Nadell, the Los Ange-
les–based literary agent who
discovered Wallace when he
sent her a chapter of his first novel,
The Broom of the System, told The
Observer that at least once a week
she receives a query from someone
writing a thesis about Wallace or
hoping to appropriate some por-
42 March 14, 2011
l Books
tion of his work for their own proj-
ect. So long as the petitioners seek
to violate neither good taste nor
copyright, the Wallace estate has
been open, Ms. Nadell said, and
added that she has been pleasantly
surprised at the demand.
“I am not doing anything [to
promote Wallace],” said Ms. Na-
dell. “If anything, they are coming
to me. We have other authors we
represent who have died, and we
deal with their estates, but David’s
work continues to touch people.
It’s like nothing I’ve seen.”
Beyond academia and the Inter-
net, a legion of artists, filmmakers
and playwrights have been moved
to re-interpret or pay homage to
Wallace. A video-art exhibition, “A
Failed Entertainment: Selections
from the Filmography of James O.
Incandenza,” inspired by a foot-
note from Infinite Jest, has gone
up at Columbia and Virginia Com-
monwealth universities. Wallace’s
story collection Brief Interviews
with Hideous Men, which was
made into a film with his blessing,
has now also been adapted for the
stage. The Mountain Goats, of in-
die rock fame, honored the author
with a song on a recent album.
S
ome grumbling about exploi-
tation has been heard from
the Fantods, especially when
the work is widely available on
the Internet, like when the Kenyon
speech that became This Is Water
becomes copyrighted and avail-
able for $14.99 by the checkout
desk of the local bookstore.
“Clearly, anything else pub-
lished under his name will be just
scraping money out of his coffin,”
Mr. Bucher said.
But mostly the faithful are
pleased that after poring over
footnote placements in Infinite
Jest among themselves for 10
years, they have now been joined
by a culture at large that suddenly
seems extremely interested in the
life and work of a self-deprecating
writer who once described himself
as being about as famous as the lo-
cal weatherman.
Scholars and Fantods have a
few theories about the surge of
interest. Part of it is simply that,
like James Dean, John Lennon or
Kurt Cobain, Wallace died young,
46 years old and still in his prime.
With no more new work to look
forward to, readers are left to fill in
the gaps and pounce on any shred
of lost writing that surfaces. In
2007, few would have thought that
Wallace would stand to be men-
tioned in the same breath as liter-
ary giants like Norman Mailer and
John Updike, whose “senescence”
Wallace announced in a 1997 criti-
cal essay in The Observer. Mailer
died 10 months before Wallace,
and Updike five months after. Be-
yond the requisite appreciations in
newspapers and literary journals,
their afterlife has acquired noth-
ing like the interest that has sur-
rounded Wallace.
The tragedy of Wallace’s suicide
and depression has played a part in
heightening attention to his work
and changed the way readers think
about him. During his lifetime,
Wallace was perceived as a diffi-
cult high postmodernist who chal-
lenged readers’ attention spans
with sentences that branched off
in several directions, abounded in
neologisms and might spawn sev-
eral discursive footnotes. In one of
his earliest and most famous ex-
perimental gestures, the 467-page
Broom of the System ends in mid-
sentence. But all that perplexity
was really a way for Wallace to de-
pict what a mind is like in the pro-
cess of thinking. The knowledge
that he endured an epic struggle
with depression allows readers an-
other window to see the human-
ness in his prose.
“There are some readers who
approach him now as almost like
a secular saint, as someone who
was too good for this world,” said
James Ryerson, an editor at The
New York Times Magazine who
wrote the introduction to Fate,
Time, and Language. “By all ac-
counts he was someone who strug-
gled intensely and openly in his
writing with his attempt to live a
life of moral integrity. There seems
to be some kind of truth to him.”
“I couldn’t even take it when he
died,” said Ms. Eckert. “It was like
our reality failed him.”
A
ll of this activity has helped
move Wallace from the ec-
centric periphery of Ameri-
can letters to the center. In their
recent book All Things Shining:
Reading the Western Classics to
Find Meaning in a Secular Age,
Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dor-
rance Kelly casually refer to Wal-
lace as “the greatest writer of his
generation”—a reckoning many
would have thought incomplete,
like declaring the winner of a ten-
nis match after one set.
Mr. Lipsky, who won a National
Magazine Award for his postmor-
tem feature on Wallace in Rolling
Stone, believes Wallace altered the
landscape of the American liter-
ary vernacular toward a maximal-
ist aesthetic—though one that still
accommodated emotional depth—
in much the same way that after
Hemingway, most American writ-
ers wrote minimalist prose; and
Salinger begot a generation of
chatty adolescent narrators; and
after Carver the literary journals
were filled with Kmart realism.
“Let me put it this way,” Mr.
Lipsky told The Observer, “I don’t
think a week goes by that the editor
of Rolling Stone doesn’t get a pitch
from a writer who says, ‘I would
like to do a David Foster Wallace
kind of take on X.’ He is the young
writer who did the most change to
how young writers write.”
“It’s kind of amazing when you
think about it that The Corrections
won the National Book Award when
it came out and Infinite Jest wasn’t
even nominated,” said Mr. Bucher,
the administrator of the Wallace-
L listserv. “But you are calling me.
How many other writers out there
writing now have fan sites devoted
to them? How many are getting the
kind of critical reception that Wal-
lace is getting?”
Mr. Franzen, 51, the author of
The Corrections and a longtime
friend of Wallace’s, declined to
comment for this article because
he is writing his own essay about
observer.com | the new york observer
Wallace for The New Yorker. In his
recent interview with The Paris
Review, Mr. Franzen compared his
own career to Wallace’s: “I per-
ceived, rightly or wrongly, that
our friendship was haunted by a
competition between the writ-
er who was pursuing art for art’s
sake [Wallace] and the writer who
was trying to be out in the world.
The art-for-art’s-sake writer gets
a certain kind of cult credibility,
gets books written about his or
her work, whereas the writer out
in the world gets public attention
and money. Like I say, I perceived
this as a competition, but I don’t
know for a fact that Dave perceived
it that way.”
In other words, Mr. Franzen may
be selling books and appearing on
television, but the Mountain Goats
have yet to write a song for him.
It is hardly worth speculat-
ing what would have happened
to Wallace’s work and reputation
had he continued publishing. Peo-
ple who have read parts of The
Pale King say that Wallace’s fic-
tion was becoming more humane,
addressing the moral questions
he was laying out in the Kenyon
commencement speech. There
may have been more novels, more
stories, more debate.
And how would Wallace have
reacted to his undergraduate the-
sis being published by a universi-
ty press, his teenage poems avail-
able to the public in an archive in
Texas?
“He was deeply, scrotum-tight-
eningly ambivalent about fame,”
said Mr. Max. “He left Pale King
to be published. But did he want
to become a cultural icon? I don’t
think he would have been so sur-
prised.”
“[H]e was a troubled person and
was tormented by the possibil-
ity of people misperceiving him,”
Mr. Franzen told The Paris Review.
“His instinct was to keep people at
a distance and let the work speak
for itself, and I do know that he en-
joyed the status he’d attained. He
might have denied it, but he denied
all sorts of obviously true things at
different moments.”
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