A non-literary moment:
If you have been feeling weary and worn and lacking in fizzy champagne feelings, then you should drop everything and ink into your calendars an appointment to see Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), designed by Julie Taymor, at the Metropolitan Opera. That is, an appointment next winter, because, unfortunately for you poor suckers, the run closed shortly after Mozart's birthday this season. Start saving your latte dollars now to spring for tickets as close to the stage as you can get, because if you buy a nosebleeder, you'll regret not having been closer. It is one of the very few 3-hour experiences for which I would be willing to spend over $500 for two orchestra seats, but I chose the cheapskate route and am now regretting it. Yes, I could have booked a vacation in Paris for the same price, or paid the rent. But it would have been worth every penny.
The Magic Flute doesn't bear plot analysis. In fact, the longer synopsis you read, the less you will understand, but the gorgeous visual spectacle supplies the deficiency of plot and then some. The story follows dream logic, the way dream logic goes on a really good night ("and then I was naked but not naked and in high school but not really high school and a whale flew out of a grapefruit..."--except that it's a birdcatcher who's naked, and a Masonic temple, and headless ostriches and charming bearded children and violent bald ladies and polar bears flying out of glass boxes). I'm sure it's the only opera with a song called "Hm! Hm! Hm! Hm!" and that begins with a man being chased by a dragon. And so there's the music.... I don't think I've seen or heard anything as beautiful on the stage as the first shimmering starlit winged appearance of the Queen of the Night singing "O Zittre Nicht" (Erika Miklósa, whose voice was achingly gorgeous and sweet. We haven't heard any recordings that can match her. Miklósa goes around playing Queen of the Night at different opera houses). Or charming as Papageno's delight in finally meeting his own Papagena. Or eerie as the Queen of the Night's famous rippling aria that hits a high F, whose lyrics consist pretty much of the words, "You must kill Sorastro, or be disowned! Ahahah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ahh!" over and over again. It is ravishing and funny and makes absolutely no sense at all.
Well, books, then.
I read Joyce Carol Oates' We Were the Mulvaneys (1996), because the BBC4 book club guy interviewed her, and I found out the novel takes place partly on a farm, and I hoped there would be some chicken lore. This is perhaps not the best reason to read a novel, especially when the farm in question is not a chicken farm. Ah well. The novel is about the dissolution of a family when it decides to sacrifice one of its members to preserve the rest. In this case, the sacrificed one is the only daughter, of whose rape at the prom the others are so ashamed that they banish her from the family. Oates' great imagination, ambition, and willingness to demand sympathy for hateful characters should have equipped her to handle a story like this. However, she hobbled herself by allowing all the members of the family to narrate. When four of the family members are inchoate, incoherent children, and one is an inchoate incoherent adult, and the last one likes to avoid things, you can't get very far into exploring ideas. The book doesn't even begin to be truly interesting until more than halfway through, when the children have grown up and begin to try to rebuild their senses of family and personal identity, and when Marianne, the pivotal figure, is really given her say. And sometimes, the prose is simply not very good, though when she's in form, it's intelligent and moving and sad. Overall, not dreadful, but disappointing.
David Leavitt's A Place I've Never Been (1991) is unfortunately not as good as the witty, charming, and hideously sad Arkansas (Review #60, 4/12/05). But that's okay, because he was a newer writer then. In this book, Leavitt was beginning to gear up his parodic powers ("Chips Is Here"), and beginning to be able to write good scenes about women ("Gravity" provides notable examples), and beginning to be a very good writer indeed. But he wasn't there yet! One story about upward mobility from a working class family of doubtful taste to hanging out with privileged polished richie types--in Italy--and feeling very alienated from them, is, maybe, okay. Two stories is pushing it. But three? Not recommended.
A film moment: I saw another movie that made me cry. Out and out bawl. King Kong. I cried for about 45 solid minutes. Not just misty. Tears streaming down my face, couldn't breathe. Brokeback made me cry too. But if it had been about two silverbacks who fell in love, I probably wouldn't have been able to walk home.
