Arguing With Zombies

Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future
by Paul Krugman  

Every so often in this mendacious world, someone will reveal what they really think. What really instigates tariffs?  Is the democracy we so widely praise really nothing more than anarchy?  Why do people really spend hundreds of millions of dollars to be elected to run a country? Those questions are less likely to be answered but when a political commentator comes clean, it is worth the read. For example, Paul Krugman's new book. It was reviewed recently in The Atlantic by Kelsey Dake and it is hard to believe his family let him publish it.

"What drives a dazzling academic—the winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics, no less—to turn his New York Times column into an undiscriminating guillotine for conservative foes?" Dake asks. Understand, Dake substantively agrees with Krugman; what he questions is his style, his sounding like "a bloodthirsty Robespierre." 
Dake argues that Krugman was an evenhanded commentator until he joined the NYT in 1998 when he began to realize 'Republicans lost respect for facts and data, turning politically neutral technocrats into involuntary foes. “In 21st-century America,” Krugman writes, “accepting what the evidence says about an economic question will be seen as a partisan act.” '

'Commentators in this post-evidence, post-truth environment find themselves “arguing with zombies,” to cite Krugman’s book title. They confront “ideas that should have been killed by contrary evidence, but instead keep shambling along, eating people’s brains.”

Faced with these alarming undead adversaries, Krugman has concluded that politically neutral truth-telling is not merely impossible. It is morally inadequate. He duly sets out four rules for engaged public intellectuals. First, they should “stay with the easy stuff,” meaning subjects on which experts have achieved consensus: This is where an authoritative commentator can improve public understanding by delivering a clear message. Second, they should communicate in plain English—no controversy there. Third, and a bit more edgily, Krugman insists that commentators should “be honest about dishonesty.” If politicians deny clear evidence, they should be called out for arguing in bad faith. Finally, Krugman proclaims a rule that flies in the face of traditional journalistic tradecraft: “Don’t be afraid to talk about motives.”'

Krugman offers, as an example, climate change. 'Republican leaders have repeatedly ignored the solid expert consensus on climate change. Given that this consensus has been clear for more than a decade, it is fair to conclude that Republican leaders are consciously making false statements—in other words, that they are liars. Guessing at their motives seems risky but not totally unreasonable. Conceivably, they might be lying because they don’t want to irk voters with the news that hamburgers and pickup trucks are cooking the planet. But Krugman is basically right that “almost all prominent climate deniers are on the fossil-fuel take.” To state the matter plainly, conservatives lie about this issue because they are paid to lie. Or, in Krugman’s broad and snarling formulation: “Republicans don’t just have bad ideas; at this point, they are, necessarily, bad people.”'

Note that Dake's criticism is not that Krugman is being simplistic, or bigoted, or inaccurate or demagogic. He is not saying that honest disagreement can be overwhelming when presented in the public field, and so good, honest, dissenting positions might be lost. Nor is he saying that the extreme responses that are offered might be equally dangerous to the species as a whole, too dangerous to be applied without absolute certainty in a very uncertain science. No. Dake's complaint is that Krugman's position is impractical: 'By branding Republicans as “bad people,” he reduces the chances of swaying them.'

But, presumably, this sacrifice is necessary as the dishonest are not open to argument. Thus the ferocity of Krugman's style. Krugman does not see himself as a commentator, he has become Jeremiah. He is not hoping to persuade; he is simply screaming. The discussion is over, the results handed down from on high. Krugman is as certain--and as liberated--as Torquemada. The opposition is no longer a dissenter or opponent, he is the enemy. And, the greatest wound of all, he deserves no say, no consideration, no hearing. He is not just wrong, he is tainted. Spoiled. Dissent is a pathology.

"Resistance is futile," as the Borg say.

Well, at least the democracy knows where it stands.

Families and Culture

Man In Critical Condition After Hearing Slightly Differing Viewpoint--Babylon Bee 


Exciting game last night. Pittsburgh is a tough team.

Jews have been awarded 40% of the Nobel Prizes in economics, 30% of those in medicine, 25% in physics, 20% in chemistry, 15% in literature and 10% of the Nobel Peace Prizes. Since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been just over 900 Nobel Prizes awarded. Since Jews are only 2% of the world's population, instead of having 22% of Nobel Prizes, 206, they should have won only two, according to the proportionality vision of justice. There's an even greater domestic violation of the proportionality vision. Jews are less than 3% of the U.S. population but 35% of American Nobel Prize winners. Are reparations appropriate? Penalties?

Krugman, in a calm, reflective op-ed:
"The only way that either American democracy or a livable planet can survive is if the Republican Party as it now exists is effectively dismantled and replaced with something better — maybe with a party that has the same name, but completely different values. This may sound like an impossible dream. But it’s the only hope we have."

The American government secretly expelled two Chinese Embassy officials this fall after they drove on to a sensitive military base in Virginia, according to people with knowledge of the episode. The expulsions appear to be the first of Chinese diplomats suspected of espionage in more than 30 years.

Don writes on a BBC story: 
...[The clip]... features kids from Bewsey Lodge Primary School imagining themselves in the role of Prince Henry, who wants to profess his love for and gay marry his manservant ‘Thomas’.
“This school teaches children about LGBT relationships from an early age,” explains the BBC, “This class of 6-year-olds is learning about gay marriage…all ages take part in LGBT lessons.”
Teacher Sarah Hopson explains how the children, “going to go out into that world and find this diversity around them, and they’ll find that at a young age as well. And the more they can be accepting at this age, you’re not going to face it further on because the children will be accepting now and will be accepting this diversity around them.”
The school has received numerous awards for its stance against “homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying” and follows the Personal, Social, and Health Education (PSHE) program, which lists “Diversity and equality (in all its forms)” as one of its key goals.

In 1700 when there were only 12,000 slaves in the United States, there were more than half a million in the Caribbean (517,000) and the Spanish Americas (553,000). By the early 1800s when the number of slaves brought to the United States peaked and stabilized at about 361,000, there were more than 4 million slaves in the Caribbean and nearly 2 million in Brazil. Between 1810 and before the Civil War started in 1861, fewer than 5,000 African slaves arrived in the United States.

On this day in 1773,  in Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded three British tea ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor.



                           Families and Culture

Emmanuel Todd has a book called Lineages of Modernity that tries to generalize about the relationship between family structure and cultural adaptability. It is one of those sprawling books built on an interesting and plausible idea without any documentation or real provability. A true coffee-house book, reminiscent of Sapien.

Todd suggests that the United States has a fairly “backward” and un-evolved family structure — exogamy (the custom of marrying outside a community, clan, or tribe) and individualism — not too different from that of hunter-gatherer societies.  But that makes us very flexible and also well-suited to handle the changing conditions of modernity.  Much of the Arab world, in contrast, has a highly complex and evolved and in some ways “more advanced” family structure, involving multiple alliances, overlapping networks, and often cousin marriages.  Those types of structures cannot  “loosen up with prosperity,” and allow their respective countries to enter modernity.  Rather they are stuck in place, and they will interact with the more physical features of globalization and liberalization in interesting and not always pleasant ways.  Many of those societies will end up in untenable corners with no full liberalization anywhere in sight.   

Todd describes Germany as having a complex, multi-tiered, somewhat authoritarian family structure, and one that does not mesh well with the norms of feminism and individualism that have been entering the country.  That family structure is also part of why Germany was, relative to its size, militarily so strong in the earlier part of the twentieth century.  He also argues that the countries that stayed communist longer have some common features to their family structure, Cuba being the Latin American outlier in this regard.
(This view of Germany is not new, it appeared often in Freudian-tainted analysis o the rise of Nazi Germany.)

Interestingly, Todd makes a strong case for Russia.  He reports that TFR (Total Fertility Rate) is back up to 1.8 after an enormous post-communist plunge, migration into the country is strongly positive, and Russia is very good at producing strong, productive women (again due to family structure).  If you think human capital matters, the positives here are significant. (adapted from Cowen)

"The Tempest" at The Public

The Bowdlers changed Shakespeare in the belief that his genius need pruning if it was to be enjoyed by women and children. We look at this--Bowdlerism--with distain. It is a distortion of art, a modification of its truth-- albeit for a good cause. You could argue that there is an obverse to this distortion: The effort to update the play to make it more relevant to the changing times. There is an undeniable parochial quality about this. Thus we have gangs in the New York streets where Romeo courts Juliet, a black actor plays the classic English King, Hamlet's father rules a commercial kingdom.

The poetic "Tempest" is an especially  malleable form and last weekend I saw a performance done where the play was a dream of a terminally ill woman, "Prospera," as she came to grips with old relationships. The play is twisted so that all the characters, even Caliban, are women--and the bridegroom Ferdinand is ambiguously, and confusingly, played by a woman. The burden on the audience is considerable and some of the drama, of course, makes no sense. If Caliban is a woman, how does she sexually threaten Miranda? What is actually happening with Ferdinand and Miranda? (That said, the Arial actress--a part which has been increasingly played by women--was terrific.) 

It is not uninteresting but, like all Bowdlerism, it is less than its original form and a paler version of the vison of a poet/playwright of exceptional quality. 

After all, his was a universal vision.

Tempest

The Tempest is a play of knowledge, power, authority, forgiveness and reconciliation--a large canvass--where, in the first scene, a storm-threatened ship's Master abandons the bridge. Those Paley-conscious members of the audience will worry for five acts whether he will ever return. But we can not make too much of it. After all, at the time, the ship is trapped in the grasp of an even higher power.

The Tempest is said to be Shakespeare's last play. Its first recorded performance was All Hallows Day, November 1611 and it was performed at court in 1613 during the marriage celebration of James I's daughter, Elizbeth, the future "Winter Queen" of Bavaria.

The play was first published in the First Folio of 1623. It is one of five plays whose particular characteristics in stage digestion, punctuation, speech prefixes and the like were held in common and believed to be characteristic of the work of Ralph Crane, a clerk, scrivener and minor poet. He worked for The King's Men, nee The Lord Chamberlain's men during Elizabeth's time, where Shakespeare appears in the royal commission in 1603 along with Fletcher and Burbage and where Shakespeare worked most of his life.

The play's the thing, of course, but there are some interesting sidelights to it. When The Tempest was released, England was captivated by the story of an incredible adventure involving a ship which broke up under a horrific storm off the coast of Bermuda in 1609, The story was recounted by one of the survivors, William Strachey, in True Reportory, the short-title of a 24,000 word narrative that describes an astonishing effort to survive and eventually to form the a pivotal event in the New World's success..

A 300-ton merchant ship, the Sea Venture, was the flagship of a fleet of nine ships that was to bring the largest group of colonists and cargo yet to Jamestown. Among those aboard were Christopher Newport, captain; Sir Thomas Gates, lieutenant governor of Virginia; Sir George Somers, admiral of the fleet; William Strachey, future secretary of the Virginia Company in Jamestown; John Rolfe who eventually became the first planter of tobacco. The fleet left England in June of 1609, the third resupply voyage to the Jamestown colony, and took a slightly different and faster route than the original 1607 voyage to avoid the Spanish in the West Indies. Only a week from Virginia, the fleet sailed into a  huge storm, probably a hurricane, which tossed the ships about on the open ocean. The Sea Venture became separated from the rest of the fleet; another ship was lost.  

Most of the passengers and crew alike believed they were doomed. Nevertheless, all the men on board worked hard to save the dying vessel, pumping out water and even throwing their possessions and cargo overboard. On July 28, 1609, the fourth day of the storm, Sir George Somers spied land. Captain Newport sailed the limping ship as close to the islands as possible and, as he was unable to anchor, wedged the ship between two large rocks. All of the men and women aboard, about 150 in total, survived the wreck and escaped to the shores of Bermuda, known to the English as “The Devil’s Islands.”

Such a disaster on Bermuda was not new. A Portuguese vessel had wrecked on the dangerous reefs in 1543 and a French vessel was grounded in 1594.

After salvaging all they could from the wreck, the group began to construct two small new ships, the Patience and the Deliverance, to carry the survivors the final distance to Jamestown. It took nine months. The Patience was slightly larger than the Godspeed, one of the three ships that brought English colonists to Virginia in 1607, and the Deliverance was slightly larger than the Discovery, smallest of the 1607 ships.  At last, on May 10, 1610, the two new ships set sail for Virginia, laden with supplies and all of the survivors but two, mutineers who remained on Bermuda and allowed the English to maintain a claim to the islands. Ten days later the ships sailed into the Chesapeake Bay and made their way toward Jamestown.

They arrived in Jamestown in May 1610 and found a disaster. Famine and Indian attacks had reduced the 600 colonists to fewer than 70. It is known as the “Starving Time.” The Bermuda survivors soon decided that the situation was futile and chose to abandon Jamestown along with the few surviving Jamestown settlers. On June 7, 1610, they fired a final salute and sailed down the James River to make their way home to England. Before they could make open water, they met the newly arrived military governor, Lord de la Warr, with his three ships of new settlers and supplies. With new hope, everyone returned to Jamestown. That sequence, initiated by the Sea Venture--then de la Warr, was the real start of the Jamestown experiment.

Strachey stayed in Virginia and wrote his memoirs of the trip. His narrative was not published until 1624 but a version was available in England in 1610, or so it is said. That version--and the story of the wreck--is said to have been part of the stimulus of "The Tempest."

The wreck and the Strachey story has another small but fun implication: The authorship debate. Over the years several arguments have been made offering, sometimes passionately, alternative authors for the Shakespeare plays. Bacon, Derby and Marlow have all been put foreword as candidates. But the most interesting, and the most intense, of the campaigns have been in favor of the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. But The Tempest is the rub: Oxford died in 1604.

The Oxfordians have claimed The Tempest was performed earlier under another name. One of their imaginative supporters, with the unfortunate name of Looney, gave up the argument and campaigned that Shakespeare did not write The Tempest at all. The commonest claim is that the Tempest's scenes are generic shipwreck accounts; some argue that Strachey plagiarized much of his description from earlier wreck stories

One adherent offered this outline from the description of a previous wreck narrative with:

1. A voyage to Italy within the Mediterranean.
2. Discord among the participants; the crew against the passengers.
3. The ship driven by a ‘tempest’.
4. Loss of hope.
5. A spirit visits the ship.
6. Desperate maneuvers to avoid the lee shore of an unknown island.
7. Detailed description of nautical techniques.
8. The ship runs aground and splits.
9. Passengers and crew swim ashore on loose or broken timbers; (versus Stephano coming ashore on a butt of sack.)
10. The island has barbarous inhabitants.
11. Supernatural involvement.
12. A seeming miracle.
13. A safe trip to Italy after a stay on the island.
(From St. Paul's shipwreck in the Acts)

Chatterton

"Chatterton" is a play adapted from the Ackroyd  book about Thomas Chatterton, a young writer revered by many and said to have been the stimulus and heart of the Romantic movement. He was  born posthumously in Bristol on Nov. 20, 1752. His education was attained at a charity-school but was profound. At the age of fifteen he began writing poetry--said to be stimulated by scraps of old manuscripts his mother found in the church--and he eventually developed an alter ego,  a 15th-century poet, Thomas Rowley--and mastered enough of the style and history of the time  to present these writings as Rowley's. (This fiction was not unusual for the time and was used by Horace Walpole, among many. Chatterton seemed to use this disguise with more intent, selling these writings as historical as well as literary documents.) He eventually moved from Bristol to London where his career foundered and he eventually committed suicide by swallowing arsenic on Aug. 24, 1770.

He was, at his death, astonishingly young for his learning and accomplishments, only eighteen.
While alive, no collection of his poetry had been published.

Keats wrote a sonnet to Chatterton - ''Dear child of sorrow - son of misery'' -and in ''Sleep and Poetry'' alluded clearly enough to Chatterton as one of those
''lone spirits who could proudly sing
Their youth away, and die.''

Keats also inscribed Endymion "to the memory of Thomas Chatterton."

​
In ''Resolution and Independence'' Wordsworth invoked the lives of Chatterton and Robert Burns to prove that
"We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness."

Coleridge wrote a poem to his memory.
​

Chatterton's genius and his death are commemorated by Percy Bysshe Shelley in Adonais (though its main emphasis is the commemoration of Keats),

​
Oscar Wilde's last lecture, in March 1888, was on Chatterton: ''He had the artist's yearning to represent, and if perfect representation seemed to him to demand forgery, he needs must forge: still, this forgery came from the desire of artistic self-effacement.''

But here Chatterton is not a symbol of artistic creation and pain, he is a means to an end. Ackroyd's book--and the play--involve identity, single and multiple, true and false. And reality, single and multiple, true and false. Further complicating the matter, there are four separate threads in the storyline that follow four separate but intersecting versions of the same theme: There is Chatterton himself with an alternative death explanation, an elderly failing plagiarist novelist, a dying unsuccessful poet who may have discovered evidence of a gigantic fraud involving a second alternative Chatterton story, and a question of a series of forged paintings. Any play including these complexities would be ambitious; this play presented by the innovative Quantum Theater in Pittsburgh further complicates the circumstances by dividing the audience into thirds and showing only one third of the play to each, with the separate groups and story lines brought together by occasionally intermixing. And it presents the play in the Trinity Cathedral, with scenes throughout the building which requires the audience to travel in and out, up and down as if the peripatetic had its own value and infused its practitioner with philosophy. (It certainly encouraged admiration; these multiple and mobile sets for three separate audiences was a logistical and timing nightmare that was managed remarkably well.)

And there is a lot of philosophy involved. Ackroyd is interested in the nature of truth and whether it is an absolute--or if it is even attainable. But he is also interested in quality. Why is the excellent forgery of lesser value? If Chatterton had actually written some of Blake's poems, would that detract from them? And, as might be a more current question, is the Western Canon a brand, a creation of time and circumstance--and nothing more?

So not only might our creations be arbitrary but the very standards by which we measure them might be so as well.

It is a difficult debate and the play manages it adequately with capable actors--including the always good Helena Ruoti--and sometimes lovely lines for Chatterton, played well by Jonathan Visser. Indeed the entire cast was very good; Gayle Pazerski in the roles of two young women was especially winning. But the play suffers with the fractional presentations which, while interesting, veils the multiple storylines, particularly for those who are new to it.
The Chatterton section, which I was in, was mostly poetic. The other segments when we intermixed were more plot development. While I did not see the other two segments except when there was a confluence, I do not really know how they were presented or what qualities they contained. While this might be a clever reflection of the play's themes, it was not comfortable. More, it seemed the structure of the play carried additional risks of trapping someone in a subset of the story when he might have been happier or more interested in another. 

The moving of the audience is perhaps best for a younger crowd--which this crowd was not. The Cathedral is lovely but roaming it was work. And, as is true for many churches, the acoustics are atrocious and vary widely depending upon where the speaker and the listener stand.

The dinner was well done, a nice meal by Black Radish Kitchen, and it was fun to talk about the play half way through.

An enjoyable and provocative, if challenging, evening about interesting and important topics, but not made easy by the presentation.

Straw Dogs and Apes, A Review

My love for trashy movies requires a couple of things: First, the movie must not terrify me with its concept or its action, two, it must have enough entertainment and coherence that it is not damaging. (As the Jesuits used to ask: If good art is good for you, can bad art be bad for you?) And, three, it must have some redeeming diversion value; some fun, less worry.

This week I watched both "Straw Dogs" and "War for the Planet of the Apes." Both of these films were clearly created to raise the audience's self esteem: "If this can get funding, maybe I can."

There are spoilers here but since they are so obvious and you probably can guess what they are,  I suppose they aren't really spoilers.

"Straw Dogs" is a remake. Remakes imply a certain level of success either artistically or commercially on the part of the first film but there is no evidence that is the case here. The original starred Dustin Hoffman and a pouty and occasionally naked Susan George and was created by the violence -ridden Sam Peckenpah, whose depiction of  savagery was always called "a study." In it an abstract writer and his gorgeous wife take a house in a tough rural area where he is not accepted, she is eventually raped and the husband is criticized by the wife and the script (despite his not knowing about the rape) for not doing anything about it. Eventually he fights the bad guys in an effort to protect the house, not the wife ("I will not tolerate violence against this house"). This was called by critics as a property obsession and a "Fascist Manifesto." We were all expected to take solace in the fact that revenge was taken, albeit for the wrong reason. 

The remake is similar, with an unfortunate caricature played by James Woods, a lovely Kate Bosworth playing George's role and a number of good other actors. As in the original, everybody is guilty--or really stupid. It has been said in reviews that this educated--rural, working-unemployed, atheist-Christian dichotomy provides an insight into divided America. They are too kind.

"War for the Planet of the Apes" is a continuation of the Rousseau-meets-PETA "Apes" saga, again implying something to build on. Again this might be a stretch. The story opens with the kindly, reflective apes--led by the ape philosopher-king Caesar--successfully defending themselves with sticks against a disciplined American military unit armed with automatic weapons, artillery and armor, led, apparently really ineptly, by a mildly Kurtz-ly psychopathic Woody Harrelson. The good ape leader's family is killed and the ape encounters his dark side as he seeks revenge. (You can see where this will lead; he becomes more human. Oh, the irony. The Horror.) Three Hairy Amigos set out on a journey of retribution. They encounter a mute girl, played by an enchanting Amiah Miller, who is not stupefied by the movie but whose muteness actually raises a surprisingly interesting question in the story. They move on and encounter slavemasters. Caesar offers himself for others and is crucified, crazy Harrelson admits to sacrificing his only son to increasingly confusing symbolism, the apes all escape to watch the humans kill each other off --clearly too stupid and vicious to survive--and the apes all wander the desert and find their home just as Caesar, Moses-like, dies. 

This is actually an entertaining franchise if you can overlook the silliness and pretentions. The ape acting and reconstructed movements is quite something to see. The guy who plays Caesar is astonishing. And Miller was terrific. But the interesting original disturbing premise has become more and more childlike in word and deed.

Superstar

I love "Superstar." I have loved it in all its iterations--play, movie, record--I love the music and the libretto. "Cash on the nail." And the new material is as good; "Start again, please" is terrific.
Each brings its own qualities, the album of course emphasizes the music, the movie demands some dynamic, especially from Christ whose music is ironically simply not as good as the others.  Following in the tradition of Milton, the bad guys always get the best lines.

The TV production on Easter Sunday was good but it would have been good with my eyes shut. It did bring some unique problems; one curiosity was that several guys on stage looked like they had new teeth. But the real problem is that, regardless of the setting, big topics need to be handled with care.

Dixon, from "Hamilton," played Judus and was terrific, the best I have seen. Everyone else plays him as a tortured, screaming guy; Dixon played him as thoughtful and worried. And he turned some elements: "You have murdered me" has always been angry; Dixon sang it with  ironic surprise: "You have murdered ...me."
Bareilles played Mary Magdalane and I liked her. Some could think her bland but I think that was the result of the show's main problem: The frenetic staging. There was so many people running around screaming, jumping and falling that when Mary showed up, there seemed to be an ebb in the flow. Some mob scenes worked. The mob scene with the reporters, (" Have your friends proved at all worthwhile?"), was quite good but generally they and their energy drew an inordinate amount of attention and often drowned people out. Pilate was particularly hard to hear and the lines and music should be the priority here. There was a "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" element here, where the main character was peripheral.

That said, the ancillaries who are so important, were very good: --I liked Ben Daniels as Pilate, Erik Gronwall was a good Simon Zealotes--another great part that was hard to hear, Jin Ha as Annas was particularly smarmy and Norm Lewis a threatening Caiaphas although he could not quite get to that malignant low note.
I was disappointed in Legend as Christ, who seemed a balladeer among rockers; the part needs some punch. Alice Cooper was surprisingly good as Herod...but it was a bit too cute for me.
The audience was a wild card and I thought they were distracting. The ending was very clever.
Generally I enjoyed the whole event.

"Dunkirk"

"Dunkirk:" A Review


"Dunkirk" is a high profile, high budget film about the retreat of British and French forces to the beaches of Dunkirk, France in the early days of World War Two. It was a pivotal several days in history with 450,000 British soldiers trapped against the sea as German troops slowly advanced to destroy the existing British army. The next step would be the British island itself with complete control of the Western Front. Hitler could then turn his attention to the East.

What prevented this logical sequence was astonishing, heroic and world-changing. The British dug in to await their fate; on the periphery vicious fighting, massacres of prisoners, incredible tactical decisions were routine. French forces were particularly heroic in holding the Germans at bay.
Eventually 330,000 British troops were rescued by fishing boats and private ships from the small ports all across England in one of the most astonishing defeats and rescues the world has ever seen. It kept the British army intact and completely changed the War.

The movie treats these events with a curious eye. It is less interested in the big picture of the story and seems to be sympathetic to the travails of individual soldiers teetering on the abyss. It opens  with several soldiers desperately fleeing the German advance and follows one of them throughout his several days escape. The face of the enemy is never seen but the effect of their long range war is brutal and devastating. Time and again soldiers come close to escape only to be denied and to try again. As the movie progresses one begins to feel as if you are watching "Into Thin Air" or "Revenant." It is a story of suffering, endurance and luck. One young man singled out as a hero by his hometown paper
was killed by accident by one of his fellows. A telling element is the British pilot who is involved in much of the action; his face is never seen until the very last moment of the story when he is revealed to be Tom Hardy.

In this story, even the stars are ciphers. And there is no Big Picture.

Up in the Old Ace Hotel

I am always happy when new ventures--restaurants and the like--appear in the neighborhood and city. The arrival of The Ace Hotel in the old East Liberty YMCA was especially exciting.  They have become a tech camp follower, opening in new and bustling areas of technological expansion, an its appearance here was complementary and promising. I have been through the hotel itself and eaten there several times and, I am embarrassed to say, I just do not get it.
I can understand the quirky, spare rooms. There is a clubby quality like an old style Harvard Club. But the restaurant is a complete mystery to me. To be fair, there are some limits here; after all, it is an old YMCA and protecting the old building was a real achievement. That said, the first floor is purposely informal, encompassing a rough dining area next to a rough bar with a number of mismatched seating areas and a camouflaged front desk. In the  back there is an old YMCA basketball court that yesterday was a Ping-Pong area but has been other things on previous visits. This area is cleverly separated from the restaurant-bar area with large cardboard boxes and some trash cans. The less random furniture in the dining room is hard wood and metal, the seats functional and uncomfortable--as are the employees. Everything about the experience is like an old speakeasy might have been except for the lack of conspiratorial camaraderie. The food and service is surprising and consistently bad. Yesterday I had simple bacon and eggs, got half of what I ordered; the bacon was incinerated and hard to chew without shard injury.
There is a strange, dytopic element to this place, as if the customers were having a last family meal out just before the governmental crackdown. The décor, food and service is reminiscent of a Catholic Church Lenten fish fry where some space is shanghaied into being a serving area, seats are taken from uncomplaining children and food served with the understanding that judgment should be withheld because there is a larger purpose involved. The success of the place--and it does seem to be a success--hinges on its buzz, the undeniable concentration of young people who crowd in and out. It is hard to imagine that will last unless there is a subtle generational lowering of expectations and dulling of taste.

"Peribañez" at the Quantum Theater: A Review

It was a lovely night at the Quantum Theater, the outdoor theater in Mellon Park. The weather warm, the night sky clear. The cast from the just performed play, "Peribañez" by Lope de Vega, walked onto the stage to take their bow. They were tight jawed to a man. Not the hint of a smile on the face of any of the actors.
Quantum is a theater group started in 1990 who stage plays "environmentally in places that aren’t theatres." This year, in addition to "Peribañez," they will do "The River," "The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," and "Collaborators." The actors are young; significant effort has gone into settings and costumes, much from CMU.
Lope de Vega is a major playwright, a contemporary of Cervantes and Shakespeare, who influenced theater profoundly. He was a lyrical writer and his talent was enhanced by volume; it is said he wrote hundreds of plays. His life was filled with violence and contradiction but his themes are broad but consistent, often involving love and honor. He had profound respect for rural life, the Church, and  the Crown.
In "Peribañez," a charming couple marries and, through a series of accidents, the wife becomes the target of an obsessed, love-struck nobleman. The opening scene of the wedding party returning from the wedding is wonderful, sincere and funny. Even the priest laughs at himself. As the story develops, the obsessed nobleman and his enablers develop an increasing but inept threat to the couple. The war against "the Infidels" provides an opportunity for the nobleman to draft the farmer into the conflict and expose his wife in his absence. And the play accelerates to its end.

The play itself has some remarkable qualities. The classic English plotting is absent; characters surprise the audience with understandable decisions but decisions that are not foreshadowed. And so it is with the action: A play that in its heart seems to be a comedy veers quickly into dangerous territory. Cousins turn on each other. The goofy nobleman becomes malevolent. None of this is unreasonable, only surprising, as the English generation of Spanish Tragedy becomes fulfilled.  

This was a completely enjoyable night, a well acted play under a lovely sky. The actors were good, the nobleman and the treasonous cousin excellent. The choice of the male lead was curious for, as a black man in old Spain, he likely would have been the enemy in the war against the "Infidel," but he was a credible and sympathetic lead, aside from an annoying mannerism he had rubbing his nose.

This kind of evening is hard to come by and should be supported by the community. I wish only that the actors seemed to enjoy it as much as I did.

Jason Bourne: A Review

The Bourne franchise has been fun and exciting; even the Renner substitution was entertaining. Identity. The strength of one individual. The organization that loses its soul. But the new Bourne with Matt Damon is a disappointment. Somehow all the same ingredients do not create the same taste and satiation.
There is the same frantic activity, the same savage combat, the same dark intensity--all of it well done. But there is something missing in this iteration. It opens as Bourne is staying alive in fight clubs while his old contact, Nicky Parsons (Julia Styles), gets wrapped up in an underground quasi-revolutionary group devoted to exposing the corruption of governments. She stumbles upon some information that might further explain Bourne's background, information that opens a new level of bad guys.
And they're off!
What develops is a weak and unbelievable plot line strung together with close-ups of violence, travel and a lot of walking around with surveillance. Some of the important motives are unclear even at the end and some allegiances are so uncertain they are simply ignored. One element is particularly difficult: There are virtually no good guys in this story. The entire government is a collection of misguided political fanatics or psychopaths. Their loosely organized opponents are cut from the same cloth. Even the clever Styles character has lost her warmth. The audience can not care much when the only smile is cynical. 
The technology is a problem as well. The audience is never sure of the capabilities of the gadgets in the story. One part of the story is a company with great surveillance possibilities. Are they real? Is the government using extraordinary real technologies or is it sci-fi? Bourne as a man in search for an identity is very different than a Bourne in a dystopic society.
The action scenes are good. The opening scene in a riot is terrific as are the mandatory chase scenes. But there is an element of repetition here, good but scenes we've seen before.
I have always liked Damon and this series and this movie was enjoyable. But there is a dissatisfaction in the mind of the audience when intensity is substituted for drama, drama I had grown to expect. Perhaps we already have had too many answers and the new questions were simply not enough to continue on. Perhaps, in true post-modern form, Bourne has become more important to himself than he is to us.
But it was good enough for a few hours in the afternoon.

"Weiner"

"Weiner" is a difficult film. Really a documentary from Showtime, it follows the strange Anthony Weiner in his efforts to win the nomination for N.Y. Mayor on the Democrat ticket, a campaign launched less than two years after the sexting scandal that forced his resignation from Congress. After a brief stint at the top of the polls--he was doing remarkably well-- the endeavor collapses under the fallout from a fresh round of revelations that Weiner had returned to his old ways, using the pseudonym “Carlos Danger.” It is certainly interesting, in a "I can't look away" manner, as Weiner shows the obsessive and exhibitionist cravings essential to politics and his perversity.
Somehow the documentary is haunted by American Politics, Hillary and her problems with Bill, forgiveness and bigotry, with just enough farce to prevent anyone in the audience from settling in. No one come out well, not even Huma who did approve of this and does gamely participate in the strangeness until the end. You walk away wondering how the system creates these people and how we can escape them.

It is not an enjoyable 90 minutes. But there is an enjoyable and entertaining speculative curiosity, one reminiscent of the obscene phone caller. He has a focal madness, a narrow perversion via the camera phone. Where does this perversion come from? We have ancient genes molded by ancient encounters and pressures. Those pressures did not include electronics. Electronics are a late circumstance for us; it never shaped us. So what genetic predisposition does Weiner's weirdness--or the obscene phone caller--tap into?  It must be an extension of something ancient. What? Or is it some epigenetic creation, a screwy diversion of some genetic open-mindedness?

"The Last Match" A Review

It walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening. What is it?

 

"The Last Match" is a play at City Theatre by Anna Ziegler. It is recent but she is serious, with a play on Broadway this year starring Kidman. It is a four person play centering on a tennis match in the American Open Semifinals between an established and fading American star and a rising, young Russian who has not yet fulfilled his promise. The two battle each other (and their wives in flashbacks) in what is a very enjoyable story about competition, sacrifice and aging. It suffers somewhat from sport's over-exposure and the minute public dissection of competition; the story line is familiar. But it is an enjoyable time.

It is more a narrative than a true play with external rather than internal struggle--an element I clearly over-translated in my initial assessment of the story as really a story of age and development of a single individual--rather than the more narrative competitive story between two athletes. A review states:

"For a moment, forget what the actors look like and forget the backstories created for them by playwright Anna Ziegler. Sergei Sergeyev clearly is patterned after the world’s No. 1 player, Novak Djokovic, and Tim Porter just as clearly is channeling the No. 3 player at age 34, Roger Federer.
Watching the play now at City Theatre, you can make the comparison right down to Tim wearing Federer’s familiar Nike swoosh and Sergei in Adidas, the brand that sponsored Djokovic when he was on the rise."

Well, I didn't think that at all. I never conceived of Federer as a self-satisfied and privileged guy nor did I think of the wise-cracking Djokovic as ever short or troubled. (I did, however, see both players as Agassi at different stages of his life.) Nor did I insightfully see the ads on the shirts. I saw two different ages view competition and sacrifice with hunger and regret.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed it thoroughly. There were some quibbles. I thought the emphasis on the parents' absence on both sides artificial, added, I think, to salt the drama. And I think the peripheral female leads were a bit too strong; the Russian girlfriend played by Robin Abramson came dangerously close to swamping her extravagant male counterpart and the American wife, Daina Michelle Griffith, played her character with such isolated complexity that she threatened to absorb the story when she was on stage.

J. D. Taylor was very good in a terrific part as the Russian, Danny Binstock was a bit thick for such a refined athlete but did well in a more difficult part that did not inherently have the audience sympathy.

All in all, a fun time regardless of how many characters you thought were on stage.
 

Albert's Bridge: A Review

"I can't help it. I'm forced up and coaxed down. I'm a victim of perspective." So says Frazier in a neat summation of Stoppard's radio play, "Albert's Bridge." Frazier is a potential suicide who periodically climbs up on the bridge to jump in his despair over the circumstances he faces in the world only to find his despair dissipates once he is far above the circumstances of his life. He then climbs down, only to have his despair return when life's pressures are again close at hand. So he is constantly ascending and descending the bridge.

 

The main character is Albert, a scholar who has become a bridge painter. And, of course, when he is done the job, it is time to start again. He prefers the job and its distance to his real life with his wife and child which is too messy and complicated. The geometry and structure of the bridge is soothing and intellectually appealing to him, the distance of the rest of the world makes it distinct and manageable.

 

That world is, of course, impossible for his wife Kate and their child whose experience of life is active and demanding. 

Kate: I saw you today ... coming out of the hairdressers. Six and six, I had it cut.

Albert: Just goes to show - if you get far enough away, six and sixpence doesn't show, and nor does anything, at a distance.

Kate: Well, life is all close up isn't it?

Albert: Yes, it hits you when you come back down.

 

In the background is the logic of the economic world, which has its own perspective. The town council thinks it is terribly inefficient for one worker to work forever on a bridge when many could do it all at once. This would increase employment and efficiency. So they bring hundreds of painters out to do the job--and inadvertently collapse the bridge.

 

These oppositional perspectives have, each one, their own value. But, like The Cave, none are complete and thus are inaccurate. The dialectic approach so prized by philosophy implies a resolution of debate, often with the destruction of the losing position. But assessing life by one of these single parameters is like assessing a baseball game with a single score. 

Mr. Holmes: A Review

There is always a danger in reclaiming icons for new uses. "Robin and Marion" was a well done but discouraging story of Robin Hood and Maid Marion in decline, their heroism on the run. "Hook" showed Peter Pan beset by adulthood without any of the charm of youth. "Mr. Holmes" shows Sherlock Holmes in two older phases of his life, in his 60s and his 90s, filled with regret and beset by forgetfulness and confusion.

Perhaps there is some study to be made when a culture revisits and reassesses its heroes.

 

“Mr. Holmes” tells three separate stories. The 90 year old Holmes (Ian McKellen) is living in seclusion in a small cottage with his housekeeper, Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney), a war widow, and her young son, Roger (Milo Parker). He recalls two stories in flashback.  One, in London just after World War I, Holmes investigates the suspicious behavior of a woman (Hattie Morahan) at the request of her husband (Patrick Kennedy).  In the other, in Japan after the second war, he meets with an amateur herbalist (Hiroyuki Sanada) under insincere circumstances. The fabric of the story is Holmes' struggles with his old age, his declining memory and his regrets.

This is a well done period piece with terrific scenery and performances. McKellen is extremely good, as is Linney (from "John Adams") who for some reason not easily discernible got some criticism for this role. There is some awkward and inexplicable plotting--perhaps to make this less a mystery and more a character study. And its resolution is quite lovely, if small.

 

It is a clever idea, this take on Holmes. Time has, despite his failing, made him more specific, more real and accurate. But unless you are Shakespeare, there is little that redeems the mistake of senescence close up.

“The Price of Inequality:” A Review

Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel laureate and a professor of economics at Columbia. His book, “The Price of Inequality,” has been called "the single most comprehensive counter­argument to both Democratic neoliberalism and Republican laissez-faire theories." (NYT) It is not uncontrollable technological and social change that has produced a two-tier society, Stiglitz argues, but the exercise of political power by moneyed interests over legislative and regulatory processes. “While there may be underlying economic forces at play,” he writes, “politics have shaped the market, and shaped it in ways that advantage the top at the expense of the rest.” But politics, he insists, is subject to change.

The argument--not limited to Stiglitz--is that inequality not only violates moral values, it also interacts with a money-driven political system to grant excessive power to the most affluent. In short, those with power use it to insulate themselves from competitive forces by winning favorable tax treatment, government-­protected market share and other forms of what economists call “rent seeking.” Power trumps the market.

Stiglitz points to four reasons why inequality is slowing economic growth: America’s middle class is too weak to support the kind of consumer spending required for a robust recovery, the middle class is too weak to invest in its future, the weak middle class means a smaller tax base and income inequality causes more intense boom and bust cycles. 

“Inequality leads to lower growth and less efficiency. Lack of opportunity means that its most valuable asset — its people — is not being fully used. Many at the bottom, or even in the middle, are not living up to their potential, because the rich, needing few public services and worried that a strong government might redistribute income, use their political influence to cut taxes and curtail government spending. This leads to underinvestment in infrastructure, education and technology, impeding the engines of growth. . . . Most importantly, America’s inequality is undermining its values and identity. With inequality reaching such extremes, it is not surprising that its effects are manifest in every public decision, from the conduct of monetary policy to budgetary allocations. America has become a country not ‘with justice for all,’ but rather with favoritism for the rich and justice for those who can afford it — so evident in the foreclosure crisis, in which the big banks believed that they were too big not only to fail, but also to be held accountable.”

This argument, regardless of its merits, might well redefine the question of inequality, but is it important? The kernel of the position, it seems to me, is not the inherent evil of inequality but rather the inherent evil of government (and financial elite) corruption. And the problem with focusing on corruption is that leaders, in thought or politics, always see themselves as the solution when, if corruption in leadership is the problem, they are not, in fact, the logical solution.

The Councelor: A Review

Cormac McCarthy is, in my opinion, America's greatest writer, peaking with the staggeringly brilliant Blood Meridian (note: not for all readers). While a number of his books have become successful movies (The Road, No Country for Old Men, Child of God, All the Pretty Horses)  several scripts exclusively for film have, in various stages, died on the vine. "The Councelor" made it.

The film has some of the intricacy, intensity and savagery of many of his successful efforts, has a very strong cast including  Michael Fassbender (the Counselor), Penélope Cruz (Laura), Cameron Diaz (Malkina), Javier Bardem (Reiner) and Brad Pitt (Westray), was directed by Ridley Scott and is riveting. But there is something very wrong with this film, despite its obvious credentials.

The main character is a lawyer who has gone bad--just once. He conspires with Reiner and Westray to bring in cocaine for sale to distributors. His wife, Laura, is the embodiment of everything good, beautiful and optimistic in life; virtually everything else is corrupt, cynical, predatory and savage. Slowly other predators circle the shipment, people are betrayed, ambushed and brutalized. Suspicions arise and the retaliation starts. Some run, some hide, all are stalked by the worst of the worst. It is chaos on the savanna; ancient angry Man, better motivated and better armed.

This is not really about good and evil; only Laura--charmingly done by Cruz--is good. This is mostly evil, de Sade and Hobbes and Thomas Kyd and Mr. Hyde all elegantly dressed and handsome and wealthy. And it is not without some success. Life is very hard; power and lust and greed often get out of control and end badly. Nor is it simple; One character escapes with a plan to go to Hong Kong where she will do well because "I am a quick study." You want to yell at her, "Don't you see? You can not prepare, you can not learn enough."

There is a moment--actually a dangerously long soliloquy--where a drug boss is explaining life to the Councilor. He talks about the unpredictability of life, how it mutates and twists, how every moment opens each to the unimaginable and sometime--often times--the unspeakable . It is actually like "No one steps into the same river twice" but suggests more piranhas and alligators than mystery. It is all true but inadequate. Somehow the drama needs more reason. As well written and dramatic The Duchess of Malfi is, it is simply too far from its audience to be internalized.

McCarthy seems more fluid in times other than the present: His wonderful Border Trilogy, the futuristic The Road. Perhaps this grim view is too hyperbolic when placed in the current time when the audience is trying only to get to work on time, to find a good date--maybe a nice dinner. Perhaps his lessons are better taught when the audience has less concrete moorings.

In a way "The Counselor" is a movie that proves itself: A genius writer, a talented cast, a renowned director all create something quite unexpected. But at least they didn't torture Penélope Cruz on screen.

Coriolanus: A Review

Great art is great because of its universality; its essence it is seen to be true. (Part and parcel of this is the notion that man has universal qualities, constant and basic. This might be offensive to some modern views of man as random and behavioral.) If it needs to be updated or made more relevant, the art might be good or of an interesting template but it is, inherently, not great. Something universally true is by nature relevant.

That said, great art can be undermined.  It takes some arrogance to fine-tune great art but it can be done. One might try to make it more commercial, more friendly to a larger audience, but such showmanship should not be confused with art. (At another, less forgiving time, it might have been called bowdlerized.)

Enter Coriolanus, a play by Shakespeare made famous by an aside by T.S. Eliot in his analysis of Hamlet in which he claimed that Coriolanus was a superior tragedy, indeed Shakespeare's best. It takes a curious seat among Shakespeare's creations because it is quite clean, straightforward and direct but, as such, plain and unbeautiful. One could argue it was martial and masculine but such characteristics did not stay Shakespeare's hand on Antony. In Coriolanus, a superior man recognizes his superiority, refuses to compromise his position, will not bow to people he thinks inferior and dies because of it. Coriolanus is simply a perfect idea of a tragedy, almost tragedy 101.

The story comes from a Roman legend. Gnaeus Marcius, a military hero who, in the early times of Italian city-states, receives his cognomen (surname), Coriolanus, after capturing the town of Corioli in 493 BCE from the ancient Italian people known as the Volsci. He returns to great acclaim but is opposed in Rome over his handling of corn supplies, found to be a tyrant opposed to the plebeians and is banished. He returns leading an army of Volsci against the city in 491 BCE. After his wife and his mother plead with him, he spares Rome and consequently is killed by the Volsci. This is what Eliot admires (in opposition to the multiple dramatic lines in Hamlet.)

Shakespeare's spare play is a tragedian mannequin waiting for new clothes and everyone has tried to dress it. In the Hunger Games, the unscrupulous national leader is President Coriolanus Snow. In the 1930s a  French production of Coriolanus at the Comédie-Française sparked murderous riots outside the theater between  Fascist and Communist sympathizers, each arguing that the play was propaganda for the other side. Ralph Fiennes’s recent cinematic adaptation actually makes Coriolanus himself a fascist attended by brownshirts. The National Theater in London has a new production at the Donmar directed by Josie Rourke and starring Tom Hiddleston which presents the play with more confidence. While filled with jarring pandaring anachronisms--women would never have been tribunes in ancient Rome--it is well done, the acting terrific and Hiddleston surprising effective.

It opens as distress among the common people over food shortages is superseded by the military threat of the Volsci, led by Aufidius, an old enemy to Coliolanus. Coriolanus rescues Rome by defeating the Volsci--and Aufidius personally--and returns a hero. The people (plebeians) want to make him consul but Coriolanus struggles in his efforts to appeal to the plebeians.

"His nature is too noble for the world:
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for's power to thunder. His heart's his mouth:
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent;"

He is none-the-less elected but, after some distasteful maneuvering by the tribunes, his election is reversed.

MENENIUS: Repent what you have spoke.

CORIOLANUS: For them! I cannot do it to the gods;
                          Must I then do't to them?

But, of course, he can not yield or compromise and he is banished. Angrily he approaches the Volsci and their leader, Aufidius. After some debate, the Volsci accept him to lead them against Rome.

AUFIDIUS:
I think he'll be to Rome As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it
By sovereignty of nature.

This "sovereignty of nature" is the rub. There is conflict between the common people and their leaders but this is not politics, this is personal. What is at stake is conflict between a better man and his inferiors, a battle that can be fought between people at any level of the culture, in any office, in any house. And, as always, a jackal is available to clean up after lions. When Coriolanus, yielding to his mother and his wife,  decides to spare Rome, setting mercy above his revenge, Aufidius rubs his hands with glee. Now he can retake his army.

AUFIDIUS:
 [Aside] I am glad thou hast set thy mercy and
thy honour
At difference in thee: out of that I'll work
Myself a former fortune.

Coriolanus, unwilling to compromise the view of his hierarchy, is slain, a victim of his own unyielding inner hierarchy. Perfect.

The Lunchbox: A Review

"The Lunchbox" is a movie built around the lunchbox delivery men in Mumbai. There are about 5,000 of them called the dabbawallahs who, without any technology, run arguably India's most efficient and trusted business. Every working day, for more than 125 years, they have transported hundreds of thousands of midday lunches back and forth from home kitchens and restaurants to office workers in the world's fourth most densely populated city. The lunches come in from all over by train, bus and bicycle into central clearing areas and are magically dispersed, like a low tech illiterate FedEx. Harvard Business School commissioned a six-month study of the service in 2010 that showed only one in a million deliveries go awry.

 

In "The Lunchbox" one goes awry. An unhappy, yearning housewife makes a special lunch to stimulate her passive husband's interest and it  goes to the wrong man, an older man in his declining years. Like a message in a bottle, two total strangers connect and a gentle, sweet relationship of mystery and fantasy develops. The lunchbox goes back and forth with increasingly personal messages as the difficult realities of their lives conflict more and more with their hopes and dreams mediated by the lunchbox. There is nothing innovative or surprising about the story; it follows a very predictable pattern (until its annoying ending, which is a surprise) but it is a thoroughly enjoyable study of two attractive, sincere people struggling with their problems in isolation with the growing, joining influence of the errant lunchbox. Some minor characters complement the basic story nicely. The male lead, Irrfan Khan, was in Slumdog and played the adult Pi; he is quite good. The female lead, Nimrat Kaur, is the stable focal point for the story that has a lot of personal distractions pulling at the attentions of the other characters. It is her first real film and she is terrific.

 

It is somewhat surprising as an Indian film, restrained and clean. There are a number of subtle overtones, religious and social, that are unavoidable but never intrude. This is a thoughtful, enjoyable film with admittedly limited aims and is well worth the time.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: A Review

Annawadi is an Indian slum of 3000 people living in 335 huts on a one-half acre of filth, trash and refuse bordering a lake of sewage and separated by a wall from the modern Mumbai Airport. The journalist Katherine Boo spent years interviewing, videotaping and recording Annawadi residents in their struggle to survive. The result is "Behind the Beautiful Forevers."  It is generally presented as a closer look at poverty in an emerging modern India where an expanding GDP does not show the full story.
It is a lot more.

The nonfiction narrative is loosely hung on a court case involving the entrepreneurial Husain family who has been accused of instigating the self immolation suicide of their neighbor, Fatima, a one legged prostitute and virago. The case is merit-less but the shameless graft and corruption of everyone involved in the so-called justice system is beyond imagination. And the injustice and horrors of the case more than blends with equal horrors in the everyday lives of the Annawadians. The main income sources of the slum is trash-picking as everyone sifts through the refuse of the airport. Metal--a nail or a pin--is prized but anything that can be recycled is of value. Occasionally someone will hit the jackpot, a job at the airport, but usually the graft involved prevents any meaningful income from being earned. The less successful scavengers--if brave--will steal, risking fatal retribution from the guards. The most successful are the middlemen, like the Husains, who buy the scrap for resale. Starvation, illness, drunkenness, despair, envy and suicide are endemic. Every child is rat-bitten and rats are a normal part of the local diet.

The other affliction is corruption, which seems to be the only true quality that is spread equally among the citizenry. It is appalling. The courts, the police, the commissioners, the politicians, the businessmen, the non-profits--everything with any organizing principle is a lie. Graft underlies every transaction. The only schooling are scams to defraud the government. "Corruption was one of the genuine opportunities that remained."

Yet in spite of this depressing life, the Annawadians have distinctive and admirable qualities. (Admittedly, being constantly scrutinized by a Western journalist might distort your appearance.) And many are upbeat. There is a faith that hard work will be rewarded, that progress can be made. (There is actually no evidence of this progress in the book.) And the people have real individual lives, are defined as individual people. The poor in the U.S. often seem to generalize themselves--or allow themselves to be generalized--and become one of a group; the Annawandians do not. Some of this is the Threepenny Opera quality about them. A major character is, indeed, a one-legged prostitute. A girl, Manju, actually goes to college--the only one from the slum who ever has--and wanders, saint like, through the slum holding little classes for the children. The thief Sunil develops a skill: He is a thief who is unafraid of heights. A man owns some horses and he whimsically paints them like zebras.

There is a tension that develops between the people and their circumstance, a frisson that is echoed by the author's style. She never scolds or preaches. Somehow Boo allows the reader to escape being drowned in trash and excrement with a curious mixture of the specific and distance that elevates the struggle with the pointed ambivalence practiced by legal-conscious reporters. Like the Coen Brothers, she makes the sordid dramatic and not personal. With understatement, litotes and restraint the story becomes less horrible. A deaf-mute candidate for local leadership is "ideal for keeping secrets, less so for campaigning." Regarding the graft in the municipality, "the distribution of opportunity was typically an insider trade." A hut was "painted a color of green no longer known in the fields." A prisoner is "beaten in the name of an interrogation." A court stenographer does not know the language the defendant is speaking. On a sham school, "[t]he schools Asha and Manju were pretending to run made the income derived from a real school unnecessary." Perhaps as a result of constant practice skirting American libel law, she is always indirect, wry without being snide. She walks the difficult line between tragedy and comedy and spares the reader without torturing the subjects.

This book is often placed in the "inequality" debate and has encouraged the growth of India's economy to be seen in its context, like a social work problem. But, unlike its topic, this book seems to have accidentally outgrown its aspiration. Historically art's great topics have required the struggles of great men. In the last several hundred years topics and their actors have been freed but it takes poignancy and fine writing to make Rosencrantz interesting. Even more is required when your scene is a graft-ridden cesspool. Somehow Boo and her subjects make it all worthwhile.