Guilty pleasures and other recent manias

Sorry there hasn't been time for coffee lately. Or blogging or generally gadding about. I've been ... reading. Yes, that's right. One of my favorite things about working with Wordstock -- the literary and book fest that starts in just 36 days -- is that I get to indulge my mania for reading to the max and still feel like I’m working. Here are just a very few of the books I’ve recently read as “research” for October, when I meet their authors in person.

All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, by Lan Samantha Chang. This somber, affecting novel by the director of the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop starts like it’s going to be a scathing satire of grad school writing programs, and then goes on to span decades in the lives of several poets to show what they sacrifice and what they gain back from their lives as scribblers. Wonderful.

The Big Burn, by Timothy Egan. Ordinarily I’m not a big nonfiction guy, but this book -- about the nation's largest forest fire, which burned more than three million acres in 1910 and has affected conservation policy to this day -- had me spellbound in the introduction, well before it gets to its actual subject. Suffice it to say that Mr. Egan can write.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender. Don’t be put off by the title. This book’s intriguing premise -- about a girl who discovers she can taste the feelings cooked into food by their emotive preparers -- beguiles you with humor and then takes you to disturbing places.

Chronic City, by Jonathan Lethem. This is my first foray into the notoriously genre-busting work of Mr. Lethem, and let me tell you, it’s heady stuff. Clearly the heir apparent to territories blazed by Thomas Pynchon, this novel envisions a dystopian Manhattan so deliriously colorful that I want to move there this minute.

Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It, by Maile Meloy. Awesome. Majestic. The sheer austerity of this writer’s prose provides a series of canvases you get to project yourself into. Many of these stories are haunting in their spare portraits of people on the horns or moral dilemmas. You want to judge them, then realize that would be an act of self-criticism. I now want to read every word this writer’s ever written. Oh, and Portland connection: how endearing is it that she’s Colin’s big sister?

More to come. Moremoremore.

Summer 2010 -- that's a wrap!

Though it’s not (quite) September yet, I’m going to go ahead and exult. It’s a dank, dark and wuthering day here in Portland, Oregon; the drizzle is sifting down through pines; and word has it that it’s snowing on Mt. Bachelor right now. Leaves of dogwood trees and shrubs have already begun changing color! So although there’s still plenty of time left in the season for a heat snap, I’m proceeding to herald autumn’s arrival, which never fails to cheer my gothic soul.

What is it about the fall that summons nostalgia and reminiscence? Maybe because summer already seems like a memory? I think of Lewis Carroll’s introduction to Alice in Wonderland:

A tale begun in other days,
When summer suns were glowing—
A simple chime, that served in time
The rhythm of our rowing—
Whose echoes live in memory yet,
Though envious years would say “forget.”

Autumn’s onset always prompts me to haul out all my ancient Incredible String Band’s albums, whose music reeks of autumn. Here’s a taste:



Some say autumn saddens them because it represents a corridor to winter, which they associate with death and negation. But I think of both seasons as just doors into other incarnations, ones where we occupy the same space as our ancestors and the veil between us is thinner.

However we regard it, we wouldn’t be human beings if we didn’t simultaneously resist and revel in these annual changes. That’s how contrary we are. Which reminds me that Carroll’s poem continues with this poignant couplet:

We are but older children, dear,
Who fret to find our bedtime near.

Happy Autumn.

The play everyone’s afraid of

Sydney Theatre Company’s coming to town, and that’s a big deal. As a world-class company that has shared its stage with the likes of Complicite, Cheek by Jowl, Out-of-Joint and the National, STC itself has toured to prominent American venues including BAM and the Kennedy Center. Plus its co-artistic director is Cate Blanchett, whose early career was fostered by this theater. So forgive me if I’m just a wee bit IMPRESSED that Cate and STC are coming to Portland for a co-pro with our very own Artists Repertory Theatre.

And that ain’t all. The play in question is a towering classic of American drama: none other than O’Neill’s masterpiece, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Long Day’s Journey into Night. This is a play that is rarely performed, and for good reason. It is a horror show; it starts out with a sense of grim foreboding and gets more and more harrowing as it progresses.

When I saw the Broadway revival many years ago, starring Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards as the fractious parents (Mr. Robards originated the role of the elder son in the play’s premiere production in 1956) and Jamey Sheridan and Campbell Scott as the sons, I was also struck by the way the script produced its meaning through its very setting. The story starts at 8:30 in the morning, and concludes at midnight of the same day. As the ghosts of the past press in on the characters, so too does the house fill with literal gloom, as first shadows and eventually total darkness engulf the family.

So why would you submit yourself to an evening with four people going from bad to worse? Because not only is the script excellent, it’s also a tour de force for every actor in it. Taking on the role of patriarch James Tyrone, a magnificent ruin of a man, is akin to playing an American King Lear; it’s that devastating. In this production, ART perennial favorite William Hurt assays the role, repeating the performance that garnered him great reviews in Australia.

All the other actors can be no less superb; a weak link in this quadrille would cause the whole thing to collapse. This cast includes one of Portland’s finest actors, Todd Van Voris, playing elder son Jamie; from all accounts, he’s been holding his own admirably.

Long Day’s Journey into Night begins this Friday the 13th at the mammoth Newmark Theatre (tip: do not purchase seats closer than the sixth row unless you enjoy exercising your neck’s flexor muscles). Gawker alert: Saturday is the opening night, and Cate is rumored to be attending! You have until September 5 to see the show, but I wouldn’t wait; this is a production everyone will be talking about.

That most wonderful time of the year

Many thanks to Madame Z for sharing this image with me!

Shall we dance?

Going to the fab Willamette Writers Conference, by any chance? If so, please look me up. For the next three days, from 8:30 am till noon, I’ll be holding down the Manuscript ER there — a fun gig where you can simply show up, writing sample in hand, and get my refreshing and perhaps even bracingly frank response to it.

Bring your actual prose, or one of its exponents, such as query letter or a book proposal. Or simply bring your questions. Wondering why anyone would want to read your new memoir about your family, Lives of the Obscure? I'll be honest) Is the supernatural thriller past its prime? Depends. What exactly is a writer’s platform? E-Z! All will be revealed.

Plus -- special for you! -- it’s free free free, as a perk of being a conferencee. Though if you brought me a latte, I wouldn’t hold it against you. No sugar, but a sprinkle of nutmeg on the top if you have it.

Corny as Kansas in August? NOT.

So last night I showed up at South Pacific’s opening at the Keller with interest and trepidation. It’s kind of where I came in, as musicals go — with the movie version, anyway, I’m not that old. I was too little to appreciate the story at the time, which I remember as being long and slow. But I grew up hearing the Broadway cast album and knew all the songs by heart, even if I couldn’t quite puzzle out the story. What was going on over on Bali Ha’i, I asked? My parent claimed they didn’t know either.

Come to find out: it’s a terrific story. That’s right, South Pacific actually works as theater, which is amazingly rare with musicals. Debuting in the middle of Rogers and Hammerstein’s incredibly fecund collaboration, it must have been bracing stuff in 1949; it starts out as a love story, and beguiles you into assuming things will develop along certain lines. But just about when you’ve gotten totally comfortable, it has a reversal just before the close of Act I that drew audible gasps throughout the audience last night — from a Portland audience of 2010.

The clip I have here is from the 2008 Tony Awards, with the original Lincoln Center cast, but the touring company I saw last night was top-notch, especially Carmen Cusack as Nellie Forbush, the “high as the Fourth of July” heroine with feet of clay. The voices, the dancing, the production values — particularly Michael Yeargan’s clever set, with its bamboo blinds that morph into sun-dappled water and even manage to suggest time passing — are all superb. (The photo above, by Peter Coombs, is from the tour I saw last night.)



This is the first offering in Broadway Across America’s new season, which has some genuinely thrilling shows in store, most notably In the Heights. But South Pacific, as a perfect extension of Bart Sher’s celebrated production, is the absolute must-see. And you only have through this Sunday, August 8, to catch it, so hurry up. This is one show where it's worth popping for the expensive seats.

Sam Gregory is coming soon to a theater near YOU

Beloved Portland playwriting icon William S. Gregory’s latest play, Necessity, is in the midst of a week’s rehearsal at Portland Center Stage — a workshop that culminates this Saturday with a public reading, as part of JAW: A Playwrights Festival. Here’s what the playwright has to say about the upcoming event.


Sam, a lot of people here associate your writing with elegance, crackling wit, smart badinage. Not necessarily the visceral. Would you say that Necessity is a departure from what you usually explore in writing?

Thank you for asking this, Mead. Necessity is set in the rural American South in 1919. This is an aural culture that places a premium on skill in what we might call linguistic performance: the sermon, the storyteller, the gossip. A good performance in any of these was judged on elegance in delivery, elements of wit and humor, and a passionate need to communicate. The visceral, passionate language found in Necessity, salted with humor, is a natural outgrowth of my body of work.


What was the play’s impetus?

I was inspired to write Necessity by my desire to create theater of tremendous power that has a visceral effect on the audience. Theater today must be astounding: hit the heights of human experience, plumb the depths of our souls and situations. I looked to the Greeks and to the glorious and terrible experience of Americans in the First World War as fertile ground for stories and situations of extreme passion that can move and touch the audience.


Contemporary political correctness dictates that white people don’t get to write about people of color. And unwritten guidelines for producibility suggest that writers craft small-cast scripts. Did you have qualms about flying in the face of both these notions?

I thought on these very things for quite a while. Eventually I realized I had no choice. This play was in my head begging to come out and for my own sanity I needed to put secondary considerations aside and write it. There are times when the muse speaks and the artist must create or risk losing his connection to art.

……………………………

William S. Gregory’s Necessity will be read this coming Saturday, July 24, at 4pm, at the Gerding Theater in the Portland Armory, with an outstanding cast including Crystal Fox, Vin Shambry, Heather Simms, Wendell Wright, Kevin Jones, Gary Yates, Gavin Gregory and Rachael Ferrera, directed by Chris Coleman.

Stick around afterward for the Theater Fair and for Famished, a site-specific piece written by Eugenia Woods and directed by Megan Ward, presented with the considerable talents of Jessica Wallenfels, Steve Brian, Courtney Freed, Isaac Lamb, Lori Ferraro, Sharonlee McLean, Michael Fisher Welsh, Tanner Ward and Tim Stapleton.