Italics are mine

"Hey! Hey! LBJ!"

(Picture credit: LBJ Presidential Library, Public Domain.) The title of today's post happens to be the title of a recent Lexington column in the Economist, echoing both the chants of Vietnam protesters ("Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today!") and what the columnist calls the "current fascination for Lyndon Johnson", which he uses to discuss what it means for "Barack Obama's America".

The column resonated with me because I do find myself much more interested by LBJ than by JFK (another topic of current fascination due to the upcoming 50th anniversary of his death) - I've read Volume 1 of LBJ's biography by Robert Caro, skipped ahead to listen the entirety of Volume 4 as an audiobook during my drives (I plan to get Volumes 2 and 3 as audiobooks too), bought the abridged version of LBJ's biography, Portrait of a President, by Robert Dallek in the the meantime (because sometimes I just want to know the main facts without having to read 2,000 pages about someone), enjoyed the description of his leadership regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in Ronald Heifetz's Leadership without easy answers, and generally speaking find LBJ someone of enormous complexity, with his moments of grace (the Great Society) and unforgivable failings (Vietnam) - the sort of multidimensional character that interests me a lot more than young pseudo-stars that, in the end, don't know how to make things happen and so don't achieve much. 

The Lexington columnist has the following words for JFK: "like Mr Obama an aloof and cerebral global celebrity who rushed through a stint in the Senate, then promised more change than he could deliver into law." The article comes at a time when journalists are beginning to write about Hillary Clinton's possible presidential run, and one can't help but draw possible parallels between the "cerebral global celebrity" JFK/Obama and the experienced politician who knew how to use the system LBJ/Clinton (although this is more true of Bill Clinton than of his wife).

The Economist article was also about a play, "All the Way", by Robert Schenkkan, which recently finished a sold-out run at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA and will move to Broadway later this season, in spite of a lukewarm New York Times review ("Mr Schenkkan comes down firmly on the side of complexity, which may be the honorable path but not necessarily the most rewarding one for the audience") counterbalanced by glowing words by WBUR, Boston's NPR station (" 'All the Way' is a sensational night of theater"). The Cambridge run supposedly sold out before opening night. The play focuses on LBJ's first year in the Oval Office and is said to show the contradictions of the man who is about to pass landmark civil right legislation as well as become enmired in the Vietnam war. Needless to say, I'll be buying my ticket for the Broadway run as soon as the dates are announced. 

"The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit"

This 1882 work by John Singer Sargent, which he painted at age 26 in Paris, remains my very favorite painting in all of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, 14 years after I first discovered it. Sargent was friend with the girls' parents, Edward Darley Boit and Mary Louisa Cushing Boit. According to the MFA website, linked above, they lived abroad thanks to Mary Louisa's inheritance, her family having made its fortune in the China trade (hence the two vases, which MFA visitors can admire in real life on each side of the painting at the museum). They had settled down in the eighth arrondissement of Paris, a neighborhood prized by wealthy American expatriates, and as far as the viewer can judge from the painting, set in the foyer of the family's apartment on the avenue de Friedland, they enjoyed a prosperous lifestyle and the girls lacked nothing. They should've been happy. Yet an ominous feeling lingers in the portrait, with most of the space taken by shadows, that lets the viewer know that all is not what it seems.

I love this painting for two reasons. First, because the setup is so unusual for a group portrait (especially because of the extent of the dark space, and the two girls almost disappearing in it), which has been written about at length by every art commentator. Second, because none of the girls married and both sisters in the shadows ended up afflicted by severe, isolating mental illness. And you look at that painting and wonder whether Sargent had detected something unusual in their behavior, a coolness perhaps, idiosyncrasies, or something in the family dynamics that would prevent even the mentally healthy daughters to start their own families and leave the nest. Something that he would've translated in the distance of the two "sane" girls with each other and their elder siblings, and the shadows around the two elder daughters who would later be swallowed by mental illness. Or perhaps he was simply referring to the isolation of the girls in age and in place - Paris for expatriates speaking a different language, four girls aged four, eight, twelve and fourteen. Perhaps he just got lucky in his interpretation of the family. But he struck a chord with those of us who have had difficult families, relatives who became mentally ill, people who tried to buy the right things - vases, Persian rugs, other tokens of wealth - and ultimately failed at establishing themselves in the upper-class circles they had aspired at getting into. But at least the Boit daughters were left with Sargent's painting, which they donated to the MFA in March 1919.

Nabucco at Opera Philadelphia

Last week I saw Nabucco at Opera Philadelphia - a fantastic production about opera as a politically engaged act in Verdi's times. While the story is purportedly about the Israelites oppressed by the King of Assyria, it is really about the people of northern Italy increasingly suffering under Austrian domination at the time when Verdi was composing the score, and the staging by Thaddeus Strassberger - in his Opera Philadelphia debut - utilized a "play within a play" scheme to much more powerful effect than the rather saccharine (sorry) Magic Flute I saw at Opera Philadelphia in the spring. Throughout the opera, we see people dressed in costumes of Verdi's era and clearly part of the dominating class (uniforms, gowns, waltzes), either on stage or in the boxes on either side of the stage; their role only becomes clear at the moment of the curtain calls, right after a few very busy retirees and other elderly people with many plans for the evening rushed to the exits, thinking the performance over. The lady who had sung Abigaille (Csilla Boross) came back on stage, seemingly for a curtain call, only to throw back the white roses the people dressed as the Austrians had thrown onto the stage from their boxes. Then she paused and began to sing "Va, pensiero" (with no music) while the rest of the cast was gathered behind her, and slowly joined her in singing the aria. You could see something was being unfurled in the back - it turned out to be an enormous version of the Italian flag, which of course infuriated the Austrians. Stage lights were turned off right when the Austrian soldiers pointed their rifles at the cast playing the Italians playing the Israelites. I just loved it. Nowadays it is easy to believe opera is only a "stuffy" pastime for wealthy people, but the composers - like any other artists - did strive, a lot of the time, to step off the beaten path, stand their ground, express a controversial message, break new ground. Limiting opera's reach to elderly socialites and retired businessmen isn't doing the art form justice (although someone has to foot the bill for all these large, expensive productions, and the elderly socialites and retired businessmen do play a role in the affordability of opera today.)

I also loved how visual the staging was. (I am a very visual person. I need colors and contrasts, not just beautifully sung arias.) The sets, also designed by Strassberger, were absolutely gorgeous, with stunning lights, backdrops and costumes. I particularly enjoyed the use of light and shadows, and the wide range of colors used - for instance, very rich reds that looked like sunsets and some honey-colored costumes. This is a new co-production presented in partnership with Washington National Opera (where it was shown in the spring of 2012, in a modified version, since some of the things a certain WaPo opera reviewer objected to back then have disappeared from what I saw) and Minnesota Opera (where it was shown in the fall of 2012). I'll definitely see it again if I can. Here's to hoping for a revival soon.

"Tristan und Isolde" at WNO

(Picture credit: Washington National Opera/Kennedy Center.) In September I saw Tristan und Isolde at the Washington National Opera and to say I was disappointed is an understatement. Deborah Voigt was supposed to sing but cancelled at the eleventh hour (she was replaced by Wagnerian Irene Theorin), apparently because her voice wasn't cooperating and the new artistic director, Francesca Zambello, wanted an outstanding performance for her first production in the house. Fair enough - I wish Voigt had sung but with Ian Storey confirmed as Tristan and a well-known Wagnerian as Isolde, the cast would still be first-rate, and since this opera plays a key role in my book "Isolde 1939", I really wanted to see the WNO production.

Well, the cast was first-rate, but the production (from Opera Australia) wasn't. And frankly, although the performance I attended got a good review in the Washington Post from a notoriously difficult reviewer, who took pains to emphasize the singing, I was left with the feeling that her good words have more to do with wishing Zambello a warm welcome in DC than giving an accurate assessment of what happened on stage. As much as I agree the playing of the Washington National Opera was stupendous - it is time people stopped viewing DC as a second-rate-music town - it is difficult to find words to describe how lackluster the staging was. It could've been worse - at least it eschewed gratuitous controversy and provocation and whatever directors do nowadays to get the media to talk about their brainchildren. But it most definitely was not worth me driving down from B'lem to see it.

To give you an example of how awful the staging was: the decor looked like bedsheets students would hang around in some (broke) high school theater production - actually, it *was* white bedsheet-like drapery, and it was set up in such a way that bedsheets seemed to be hanging along a clotheline too in the back, which the characters would pull around when needed to use as a curtain. The use of lights to color them in the second and third acts mitigated that unfortunate impression a little, but the visuals in the first act were terrible.

I heard other people at intermission who were confused by what was clearly water on stage in Act 1, when the action takes place in the ship. (Water *inside* the ship? How much sense does that make?) I was glad the water part actually had a purpose when the soldiers invaded the castle in Act 3 (in that act it represents the water surrounding the castle), but in my opinion it wasn't worth the trouble and the visual stasis of never changing the sets. It also meant the left and right 25% of the stage were never used (except by the soldiers in the castle scene, and that doesn't last long), which I thought was a poor use of the space. But yes, the orchestra gave a magnificent performance and I thoroughly enjoyed the singing of all involved.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to Forza del destino, which opened this weekend. (It got savaged by that same reviewer, by the way.) I loved the account of the conversation between Voigt and Zambello in the earlier WaPo article, as well as this one between Voigt and a Huffington Post journalist a few days ago, and I think Zambello has the character and the talent to make DC an opera destination.

From the Fall Issue of Tricycle Magazine

 My favorite article in the Fall 2013 issue of Tricycle Magazine: The Buddhist Review was "It's just who we are", an interview of Somaly Mam - a Buddhist like 90 percent of her fellow Cambodians - who suffered horrific abuse and exploitation when she was a teenager and discusses the work of her foundation (the Somaly Mam Foundation), dedicated to rescuing young Cambodian girls from similar fates.

I had never heard of the foundation before (perhaps I've been spending too much time researching France around World War II for my book Isolde 1939, and California right after the war for my new project, more on that another day), so if you haven't heard about it either, you might be interested in the following video. It gives a brief glimpse of the terrible situation in Cambodia and of the tireless work Somaly Mam is doing along with doctors and social workers from AFESIP, a NGO Mam co-founded in 1996 (the initials AFESIP come from the French words for "Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances"):

I liked the article in Tricycle Magazine for two reasons:

1. Mam has been able to channel the senseless horrors she was exposed to toward the greater good instead of letting other people's monstruosity destroy her, but she comes across as very authentic and committed, and doesn't present her story in a feel-good, made-for-TV sort of way, and
2. she is very honest in her assessment of the people around her (hence the title of the article, about the passivity of the Buddhist community in Cambodge faced with the well-documented sexual abuse of children), including her simmering anger and her clear-sightedness regarding the not-so-savory sides of certain spiritual leaders ("there's one temple in Phnom Penh that never has space for the poor kids who come to the pagoda").

I liked her openness and the way she focuses on the well-being of the children she rescues, without being all "I-have-forgiven-them-because-that-is-the-only-way-toward-freedom" when she talks about the people and the system that have caused her such incredible suffering. It's too easy for the people who haven't been subjected to systematic abuse and exploitation, whether it is to the scale Mam endured or not, to point out that it's all in the past now and what matters is to look forward. They don't have the slightest understanding of the anger and the pain - not that it prevents them from playing the know-it-alls. Mam came across as a dedicated woman whose foundation is her life's work, and who has been able to help many girls learn skills after being rescued and ultimately lead productive lives. 

In a way she reminds me of Seane Corn, a well-known yoga teacher and activist who co-founded Off the Mat, Into the World and was herself subject to childhood sexual abuse, which she mentions occasionally in interviews but has chosen not to put to the forefront. Ana Forrest, another yoga teacher, has talked more openly of her experience of childhood sexual abuse but channeled her energies into teaching her particular style of yoga - Forrest Yoga - instead of launching a charity. I very much enjoyed her book, Fierce Medicine, which I view more as a memoir with some yoga exercises than a yoga book. And of course I look up to both of them, to make up for the mother I had. It's a pity Forrest hasn't made DVDs easily available for purchase in conjunction with the publication of Fierce Medicine - her DVDs are sold-out on Amazon. There seems to be some copies left at her online store, but she'd have much greater sales and impact if her DVDs were sold on Amazon. On the other hand, given Amazon's business model, I wonder if she'd make any money out of it. So perhaps she's better off selling her DVDs only to the people who care enough to her website.

Mam was featured in Half the Sky, the movie based on Nicholas Kristof's and Sheryl WuDunn's book. Kristof wrote about Mam here. In 2009 Mam published a memoir, The Road of Lost Innocence, which describes her ordeal and ultimately her story of hope. She was named a TIME 100 (one of the world's 100 most influential people according to TIME) that same year, and deservedly so.

Mediocrity in the Spotlight

 I loved this piece called "Cry Me a River: the Rise of the Failure Memoir" by Giles Harvey in the March 23 issue of the New Yorker (and for once I don't even write about it so late because I didn't have time before, but because the March 23 issue stayed in a pile of unread magazines I didn't browse through until early summer.)

It used to be that only people who had achieved something vaguely noteworthy wrote memoirs - their example, and often their own struggles, encouraged us on our own path. We took virtual lessons in resilience from others who had walked a similar path before us and reached a similar destination, or simply inspired us by their character and their fortitude.

In those days of celebrity deals with reality TV stars and publishers puffing up into books human-interest stories that should have remained magazine pieces, the idea of waiting to have proved oneself before one imposes a memoir on people who are neither our friends nor our relatives seems apparently terribly quaint in the world of self-centered, fame-obsessed pseudo-writers who muse about their failure because they have nothing else to monetize.

The New Yorker gives two examples of decidedly unlikeable writers - one, after two books with modest sales, thinks it is time to quit his day job (can you say delusional?) and, "gaining the wrong kind of momentum... was unable to find an American publisher for his next book", which would simply be sad if the narcissistic author, apparently distraught by the world's failure to recognize his brilliance, didn't cheat on his fiancee, who takes him back and marries him but, shortly after the wedding and pregnant with his child, leaves him for another man. At which point the reader will be forgiven for concluding that said fiancee/wife wasn't completely stupid after all.

I'll spare you the rest. Instead, here are a few lines by Harvey (the author), whom I don't remember reading in the New Yorker before but will be looking forward to reading in the future.

• "[The memoir] is less an embodiment of its author's gifts than an expression of the widespread belief that candor will do the work of talent."
• "For these prepared to pay the cost in personal exposure, failing up has become a reliable model of literary advancement."
• Of the second failed author mentioned in the article, "You often feel that he is getting into trouble just so he can write about it afterward." (His marriage disintegrates too. Yet another smart woman.)
• "Even more emphatically than [Author 1], [Author 2] propounds a doctrine of writing that values "honesty" and "truth" above the supposedly adulterating qualities of craft and composition."

Harvey goes on discussing "the wild presumptuousness of literary ambition - the writer is self-recruited; he goes looking for a job that isn't there" as well as the new publishing model, where publishers no longer allow novelists time to find their audience. And he points out that, although Authors 1 & 2 certainly haven't scaled any literary heights, they're not the first ones to use an account of their failure to get themselves into the spotlight of the literary world - none other than Francis Scott Fitzgerald, with The Crack-up, used a similar trick, and was hired as a screenwriter by Hollywood executives as a result. Sadly, that story didn't end well.