Month / April 2007

by Edward Champion

Central Arbiter, My Ass

Robert Brustein: “I realize the changes at the Times are part of its effort to keep financially afloat when the print media are failing to attract enough readers. And yet, despite its abject bow to cultural illiteracy, The New York Times continues to regard itself as the maker of theatrical standards. The New York Post recently reported an angry encounter between the playwright David Hare (whose The Vertical Hour was recently backhanded by the Times) and the paper’s managing director, Jill Abramson. Hare accused the Times (correctly in my opinion) of having little interest in theatre, and even less in plays. Ms. Abramson allegedly replied, “Listen, it is not our obligation to like or care about the theater. It is our obligation to arbitrate it. We are the central arbiter of taste and culture in the city of New York.”

Much as Sam Tanenhaus corrupted the idea of the New York Times Book Review as a “central arbiter of taste and culture” and litblogs have, to some degree, picked up the slack (although the recent “Fiction in Translation” issue was a welcome aberration), perhaps theatre blogs might do the same for New York. I must confess that I’m not entirely familiar with the Broadway blog scene (this will change soon), but Terry Teachout’s theatrical riffs at About Last Night, Broadway Abridged, Broadway and Me and Off, Off Blogway are some blogs I’ve encountered that come to mind. And, of course, here in my town, nobody can touch Michael Rice’s Cool as Hell Theatre, recently picked up by KQED, for in-depth theatrical coverage (116 podcasts!) of the Bay Area theatre scene.

Some newspapers seem to be going well out of their way to make their positions as arbiter…well, less central.

by Edward Champion

Apocalyptic Lifeblood

Ellen Heltzel of The Book Babes raises an interesting point about Cormac McCarthy’s The Road:

Crace is among my favorite contemporary novelists (“Being Dead” is amazing and rightly won the National Book Critics Circle prize). “The Pesthouse,” while by no means surpassing “The Road,” is worthy in its own right. For one thing, it actually has a FEMALE character. For another, the ending seems to evolve more naturally from the story. In “The Road,” it feels as if McCarthy couldn’t sustain his hopeless vision and flinched.

While I don’t agree that McCarthy’s novel is about sustaining a “hopeless vision” (if anything, its purpose seems to me just the opposite), I am also troubled by the double standard in apocalyptic novels, where the protagonists are often men.

But it’s not just the “man’s man” quality of McCarthy that sets him apart from his peers, but the literary vs. genre divide. Much as Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America wasn’t the first novel to explore an alternate universe (although I do recall hoary-haired highbrows scratching their pates in wonder over Roth’s “innovations”), the apocalyptic novel was laid down before by writers as diverse as Robert A. Heinlein (Farnham’s Freehold), H.G. Wells (The Shape of Things to Come), Octavia Butler (the Parable books), David Brin (The Postman), Kurt Vonnegut (Cat’s Cradle) — too many quite frankly to list.

For those critics and enthusiasts now in the practice of declaring genre lesser or worthless, one must ask why top contemporary writers like Roth and McCarthy are using genre to sustain their literary worth.

by Edward Champion

An Effigy and a Gentleman

BBC: “Actress Shilpa Shetty has defended Richard Gere after the Hollywood actor sparked protests by kissing her at an Aids awareness rally in New Delhi. Public displays of affection are still largely taboo in India, and protestors in Mumbai (Bombay) set fire to effigies of Gere following the incident.”

The Mumbai protesters have an interesting idea, but they’re doing this for the wrong reason. They should be setting fire to Gere effigies for American Gigolo, Autumn in New York, Pretty Woman, and the remakes of Shall We Dance, Breathless and The Jackal.