#76: Brief Encounter

(originally published Feb. 18, 2011)

Washington, D.C.: You were a regular at the Georgetown Barnes & Noble, where I worked. You favored the second-floor café, past the political science section frequented by the grumpy and bow-tied George Will. You must have noticed my staring, my rushing downstairs to take your special order, my clearing of magazines around your table. So when you brought your girlfriend in, I knew that was for me too. I saw you in the Metro, standing like a foraging crane, as the train pulled in with a pneumatic sigh, and you got on.

Washington, D.C.: I met you at JR’s running the ‘bachelor auction’ for the Whitman-Walker clinic. I was covering the event for the Washington Blade. I swear you winked even before I interviewed you. During the auction, I caught you shill bidding, trying (and failing) to raise porn star Ty Fox’s price above $20. We met afterwards and made out. In Brief Encounter, Laura Jesson imagines herself in Paris, in Venice, on tropical shores with her newfound beau. I asked my editor if there’d be a conflict of interest dating you, but the answer was moot when I learned, later, that you were moving to L.A.

Chicago: I was helping my friend June move into her apartment on the outskirts of Boys Town. I was walking down Halstead, or to Halstead, or back from Halstead, I can’t remember, and the L rattled overhead like an angry prayer. As I passed, we made eye contact. I counted my steps—two, three—and, in the time-honored tradition, turned my head to see you looking back as well. I continued walking. I looked back again, and you looked back too. Watching you, I nearly ran into lamp posts, off the curb, into traffic. But we kept walking forward into our respective futures, all the while looking back. At the end of Brief Encounter, Laura’s near-abandoned husband says, “Whatever your dream was, it wasn’t a very happy one, was it?”

Denver: Barnes & Noble again. You came in slightly frazzled, and I radioed for my co-worker to check you out. She signaled her approval, and I went up and asked, Can I help you find anything, and you said, No, I can find what I’m looking for myself, and, though rebuffed, I offered future help, should you need it. But I kept an eye on you from around corners, over rows of bookcases. I ran into you again standing in the main aisle. What do you know about this? you asked, holding a book on comparative genocide. I faked an answer, even though I’d looked through that book at a different Barnes & Noble, in a different city. You gave me the upper left corner of a check, where your name and number were printed, as a down payment on the future. We still see each other occasionally—as you wake me in the morning, as we drive to work, a nighttime nudge—and each meeting stitches our worlds closer together, like the individual threads holding a button in place.

#32: Oliver Twist

(originally published May 8, 2010)

Problematic Jews: Shylock; Bernie Madoff; Charles Krauthammer; Matt Drudge; Henry Kissinger; Ayn Rand; Rabbi Yehuda Levin; Dracula; Ariel Sharon; Bill Kristol; Watto from Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace; Richard Perle; Michael Savage; Barabas; Kyle Broslofski; the woman at the deli who makes you pay for her fat thumb every time she weighs out a pound of brisket; Caspar Weinberger; Bernie Goldberg; Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Norman Podhoretz; militant West Bank settlers; David Horowitz; Geraldo Rivera; Ahasver; the international cabal of bankers and entertainment executives planning the takeover of the world financial system; Douglas Feith; that scruffy haired Jesus of Nazarene fellow.

And, of course, Fagin.

I approach Oliver Twist with trepidation, because I have difficulty processing racist stereotypes. And while Alec Guinness doesn’t overtly identify Fagin as a Jew, he does have an unfortunate habit of pronouncing Oliver “Oy-iver.” Plus: the fakest nose in the history of cinema, only recently surpassed by Nicole Kidman’s proboscis in The Hours. (Describing a Jew as having a “hook-nose” is one thing, but attaching a wedge of Brie to their face is another. Also worth noting: Fagin runs a gang of young boys living together—sort of how I imagine the goings-on in the Bel Ami house. But with fewer rags. And no artful dodging.)

I’m of two minds on how to engage with literature and films with racist depictions. On the one hand, you can’t ignore the real damage that these stereotypes have done. The Shylock and Fagin-type figures, in particular, have been used to perpetrate systemic discrimination—and worse, obviously—against Jews. (Yes, some Jews do have those sharp hawk noses, but that just means that you have to tilt your head more to kiss them properly.) On the other hand, you want to forgive one element in otherwise engaging and important works. I adore Breakfast at Tiffany’s, for instance, despite the feeling that Mickey Rooney is going to hell for his portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi.

This is a long-winded and roundabout way, I suppose, of cautioning myself not to ingest my media blindly.  Given that art is already an imperfect medium, it doesn’t hurt to attach an asterisk. Thus:  Triumph of the Will is a stunning film.* Listening to Wagner will stir your soul.** Middlemarch is a really long book.***

So, as my huge asterisk in talking about Oliver Twist, I duly note that Dickens, in later revisions of the novel, removed references to Fagin as “the Jew.” He also later took pains to include positive portrayals of Jews in Our Mutual Friends. I haven’t seen the Roman Polanski’s recent version of Oliver Twist, I understand that Ben Kingsley did his best to make a full character out of Fagin. Also, I have never seen any iterations of Oliver!—but this is less my avoidance of Fagin-related materials and more that I don’t really like musicals. Hey, we all have to resist our stereotypes and caricatures somehow.

*if you don’t mind all the dancing Nazis.

**especially if you blot out the anti-Semitic elements.

***written by a woman in drag!

#31: Great Expectations

(originally published May 5, 2010)

A friend recently remarked to me, apropos of me making little headway on my novel, “Why, didn’t you know that Charles Dickens wrote [x number of words] in [y number of days]?”

To which, I replied: “Yes, but Charles Dickens didn’t have to teach freshman composition.”

“Touché,” said my friend.

Great Expectations was the assigned book for my 10th grade English class. Every year, the high school English curriculum consisted of one canonical novel and one Shakespeare play—regular as running laps in the gym. Our teacher, Mrs. Francis, was about 50. She had the round eyes and cheeks of a goldfish—a pet one tries to pretend is fun and entertaining even though it isn’t. I remember once she wore a white polyester shirt with a 70s-bold, geometric print—angular slashes of red and brown blocks. She had a head full of tight gray curls kept in a round, meringue-shaped mass.

I say this not to mock Mrs. Francis, but to acknowledge how years of teaching 10th grade English—a thankless task if ever there was one—may have worn her enthusiasm for the material down to a nub. For 10th grade, Romeo and Juliet was the Shakespeare of choice, and the class watched the Franco Zeffirelli film version. During the post-coital scene, when Romeo stood at the window, his buns bathed in golden sunshine, Mrs. Francis fumbled with the remote of the VCR, but quickly gave up. “Oh, well,” she said. And the next thing we knew, Juliet’s breasts flashed on screen. The class tittered.

There’s no boob shot in Great Expectations—though if there had been one, I’m not entirely sure it would have kept our adolescent attentions any better. The closest we get is a shirtless John Mills punching Alec Guinness, who does his best to keep his loafers from becoming airborne. (He generally fails.)

I dutifully read for about two weeks, but once Pip left for London, my attention flagged and waned. Oh, I know the novel is an insightful look into class mobility, but, dammit, I just couldn’t be bothered. I passed by getting daily updates from my friends, and briefly opened the book to read Ms. Haversham’s fiery death before putting it down again. Dickens, I fear, will remain a literary blind spot for me, but I’m reminded that David Lean himself hadn’t read Great Expectations when he set out to make the film. Vindicated by liner notes!

If nothing else, Great Expectations at least helped me solved an eternal mystery of cat food etymology: what the hell is a ‘Tender Vittle’? Early in the book, Magwitch demands “vittles” from Pip, which, according to the handy-dandy glossary, is a bastardization of ‘victuals.’ At the time, this was not a clarification, since we didn’t know what ‘victuals’ were either. As I’ve learned, ‘victual’ has a verb form too, which means ‘to feed,’ but no similar debased version (if I say I’m going to ‘vittle’ my cat, this sounds like I’m traveling to Germany to shave him). Ah, the transformation of language: an actual word falls out of favor and gets consigned to a footnote, while its spawn becomes famous for its semi-moist consistency and slight nutritional content.

#22: Summertime

(originally published Apr. 12, 2010)

In the first half of Summertime, Katherine Hepburn experiences Venice through the viewfinder of her movie camera, changing lenses, popping in new film as the previous reel runs out. Ah, the age-old tourist stereotype.

This is not to say that I don’t snap pictures myself when traveling. I’m the type who waits for the shot to be perfect once all the damn people move out of the way. But, as Susan Sontag argues in On Photography, taking pictures don’t merely capture an event—it becomes an event in and of itself. “Most tourists,” she writes, “feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter.” So it’s no surprise that when Hepburn finally forgets her camera, she falls in love with an Italian silver fox.

So, yes, I have a pictures of the winged lion above St. Mark’s Square, as well as ones of green canal water gnawing away the bottom of wooden doors or stenciled piece of graffiti agitprop. But I haven’t looked at those pictures since I took them almost two years ago. Maybe Sontag is onto something: photographs are slices of life cut free from context. Photographs are memento mori.

I never saw someone throw rubbish into the water like Hepburn does, but I did  see the empty plastic cups in the street, the remnant of revelry. And if, for Hepburn, the streets were filled with Italian love songs sung from every rooftop, I instead was treated to ABBA’s “The Winner Takes it All” blaring out of a window as I made my way through winding alleyways.

Still, two years later on, I struggle to remember everything that happened in Venice. I remember crossing a bridge several times, in both directions, because I had gotten turned around. I remember having prosciutto e melone for lunch (though this could have been any random day in Italy). And I remember the brightness of the sun on the lagoon surface, black boats darting back and forth like water striders.

The photographs I have don’t help me remember my trip more vividly. Aside from the must-see checklist (The Bridge of Sighs, The Doge’s Palace, the Rialto Bridge), most of the pictures I have are of people—men, to be specific. The pictures are somewhat artless and less surreptitious that I would like: a tanned gentleman adjusting the ropes on his boat; a souvenir hawker listening to his iPod while waiting for customers to approach; an artist with a sketch pad on his lap, a pencil dangling from his fingers, waiting for the proper inspiration to strike. In some, the subject looks straight at me, as if to say, Hey, what the hell are you doing?

But for me, these images become, as Sontag writes, “invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy.” (A boatman off to see his lover; an artist in the agonizing pangs of creation.) If images bring the imagination to life, can one describe them as memento vivere? I click through the pictures and see two policemen, frozen in place mid-conversation, white slashes of belts across the chests, endlessly circling the arcades of St. Mark’s Square. The policemen don’t move, but, just outside of the frame, the pigeons cooing on the ground rise in unison, a feathered curtain, and the sky overhead flutters away.