A Little Night Music by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler (Pasadena Playhouse 2023)

Now that Stephen Sondheim has passed, there has been a bit of a revival of his less-performed works. My wife and I enjoyed a local production of Sunday in the Park with George recently, and she caught a gender-swapped version of Company last summer in New York. Going further back, we have seen local productions of Assassins and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, while my wife also saw Into the Woods, Follies, and Sweeney Todd. 

 

I do not recall that A Little Night Music had been done locally, ever, and neither of us had seen ads for it anywhere else. Despite great commercial success when it came out in 1973, it seems to have faded in popularity. Maybe this is because of its more conventional happy ending. Or perhaps, as my wife pointed out, it really is best done with a real orchestra, and is demanding on the actors for voice and dancing. Whatever the case, we could not pass up the chance to see a top-shelf professional version of it, even if it meant Stacking a very late night onto an already vigorous weekend vacation. Work hard, play hard…

 

The Pasadena Playhouse is both a historically significant building, and a well-respected professional theater. We had never seen a show there, but probably will be planning to return in the future. 

 (Publicity Photo)

This show was, quite simply, amazing. A real orchestra backstage (we got to see them briefly at the entr'acte and at the end), an all-star stage cast that was excellent from top to bottom, and the delight that a smaller venue brings to live theater. 

 

The musical itself is based on, of all things, an Ingmar Bergman film, which explains its Swedish setting and characters. One might call it a love hexagon - there are three main couples with a complex set of relationships - or one might even expand it to an octagon, given the fourth pairing of the maid, Petra, and the manservant, Frid. 

 

So, the widowed lawyer, Fredrik, has recently married Anne, half his age (and about the age of Fredrik’s son, Henrik), but she is repulsed by him, and remains a virgin nearly a year later. Henrik is aiming for the ministry, but has the hots for Anne. But, since he can’t have her, he allows himself to be seduced by the worldly and horny Petra. 

 

Meanwhile, Fredrik and Anne go to see the famous touring actress Desiree, who Fredrik had an affair with years ago. They are still in love, even though Desiree dumped him. Desiree is currently the paramour of Count Carl-Magnus, a blustering dragoon. Carl-Magnus is married to Charlotte, an old friend of Anne’s. Carl-Magnus rubs his affairs in the face of his wife, and is pretty much a dick all around. 

 

So, got that? Fredrik, Anne, Henrik, Carl-Magnus, Charlotte, Desiree, Petra, and Frid. 

 

And then there are the members of the other generations: Madame Armfeldt, Desiree’s mother, a former courtesan who has slept with royalty - she gets a hilarious scene where she describes her past lovers - and what she got from them in return. Finally, there is Fredrika - Desiree’s daughter (a son in the original film), and the name is not a coincidence. 

 

Finally, there is a quintet of voices who serve as the chorus, commenting on the action, and serving up witty observations about male-female relationships. 

 

After the night at the theater, Fredrik sneaks out to see Desiree. Their tryst is interrupted by Carl-Magnus, who tells Charlotte to tell Anne of the infidelity. Meanwhile, Desiree convinces her mother to invite Fredrik and his entire family to the estate for the Midsummer Night celebration. But then Carl-Magnus and Charlotte decide to crash the party and…well, hilarity ensues. 

 

I won’t discuss the plot any further than that, other than to mention that there are a LOT of references to Ibsen and Chekhov in the play, including a loaded gun that has to be used, because Chekhov. 

 

The score is delicious - rather than the pop sounds that Sondheim often used, this one is pure orchestra, no rhythm section. Nearly all of the music is in waltz ¾ time, and endless fete of night music. Despite the title (drawn from Mozart’s most famous string serenade), the music is from a later era. While obviously the golden age grand waltzes of Johann Strauss Jr. can be heard, these lean more toward Ravel in harmony, and Richard Strauss - because of Die Rosenkavalier, another silly rom-com with partner swapping. (A bit of research indicates that Sondheim put a few brief quotes from that opera in the music, as well as some bits from Ravel’s Valses.) 

 

The vocal parts are quite demanding in terms of range and technical skill. Because of the operatic writing (it really is an operetta, not a true musical), the singers have to carry everything from the melody line to what is essentially important dialogue. There are the usual duets, but also rather complex polyphonic ensemble numbers. 

 

I should also mention that the whole thing is packed with witty jokes, razor-sharp satire, and endless double meanings. I mean, laugh out loud funny throughout. 

 

I’ll say a word about the cast. There were really no weak parts anywhere. Everyone was good. And by good, I mean excellent. This was a cast of true professionals doing what they do best. However, let me give particular call outs to a trio of women who particularly owned the scenes they were in. First, Makara Gamble as young Fredrika - it isn’t often you see a tween who can sing and act that well. Keep an eye on her in the future. Second, Jodi Long as Madam Armfeldt. Like most of the actors in this production, she has a long list of stage and screen roles. She played this role as somewhere between an ice queen and a benevolent (if intimidating) grandmother, and you could feel her stage presence throughout. 

 

And finally, Merle Dandridge, recently of The Last of Us (Marlene), as Desiree. From the first we see of her, it is clear why men cannot resist her. And it isn’t primarily sex appeal, although there is that. She just has that certain something - is it confidence? is it ability to turn on her personality at will? is it that she knows who she is and won’t apologize? - whatever it is, she has it, and you cannot keep your eyes off of her. 

 

Because of the original casting back in the day, Sondheim wrote Desiree’s part as less vocally demanding than the others. Which meant in this case that Dandridge had a bit less to work with as far as virtuosity. Instead, she got to make the signature song from this musical, “Send in the Clowns,” into a masterpiece of pathos and defeat. After it ended, I thought Oh My God. It was that good. So understated, never maudlin, but absolutely devastating. All that bravado, and she feels failure so deep it nearly kills her. I would have paid the ticket price just for that song. 

 

[It isn’t the same as with the full orchestra, and in the context of the play, but her stand-alone performance is pretty badass too.] 

 

This was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, and a truly delightful musical. I’m glad we were able to make it. It runs through the end of the month, so if you are a local(ish) sort, go get a ticket and enjoy. 

 

The Courtship of Miles Standish by Henry Wadworth Longfellow

Source of book: I own this

 

Longfellow occupies a strange position in American letters. One could say he was born at the wrong time, or that he tried to do the wrong thing at the wrong time, or that he failed to understand the future. Which, well, it happens to many of us. 

 

The thing is, Longfellow was a pretty good guy, progressive if not radical in his time. He was ardently in favor of the abolition of slavery, and gave a lot of his own money toward the cause. More than many writers of his generation, he saw Native Americans as fully human. 

 

So what went wrong for him? Why does his work feel so dated? 

 

Well, the problem stems, I think, from the way he approached his writing. The young nation of the United States of America had just had a fairly dizzying rise. The Civil War was still in the future, and many - Longfellow included - believed that there could be a peaceful abolition similar to that which had occurred in England. 

 

Longfellow set as his project to create the epic poetry of America, the grand mythology that would sing of its origins. I mean, every ancient country has this, from the Hebrew origin myths in the Bible, to the Homeric epics. It was natural that Longfellow would want to see similar works for his own native country. 

 

But how does one do that? I can’t find the quote now, but someone once said that every civilization was founded on a genocide. Which may or may not be true universally, but certainly was in the case of the European conquest of the Americas. Furthermore, our economy was built on the backs of the enslaved. Which was still happening at that time, for that matter. 

 

So what was Longfellow to do? How could he create epic paeans to the founding of America out of the messiness of the truth? He clearly had an impossible task, and despite his best efforts, he failed to create the truly timeless works he intended. 

 

Not that he did a shabby job. His poetry is still lyrical and reads well, and it is understandable why he was the best selling American poet of his time. 

 

I also want to point out again that he tried to rise above the prejudices of his time, which is admirable. He tried to humanize Native Americans. He worked to end enslavement of black Americans. While our modern ears find some of his lines to be some combination of patronizing and whitewashing, he was considered a dangerous radical by the racists of his day. 

 

With that preface, let’s look a bit at this longer narrative poem. I previously blogged about Evangeline, the story of the Acadians - French settlers expelled by the British from Nova Scotia, who were resettled in Louisiana and became the Cajuns. 

 

In this bit of mythology, Longfellow dramatizes a few of those who came over on the Mayflower, namely captain Miles Standish, his good friend John Alden, and the third member of the love triangle, Priscilla Mullins. 

 

Longfellow himself was, shall we say, interested in the story, because he was a descendent on his mother’s side from Alden and Mullins, and claimed that the poem related oral family history. 

 

There is some debate about whether this “family history” was based much in fact, other than the obvious one that Alden and Mullins married and had children, but it is pretty certain that Longfellow took plenty of poetic license even as he based the poem on real history. 

 

Like Evangeline, The Courtship of Miles Standish is written in dactylic hexameter - the same used by Homer in The Iliad and The Odyssey, and by Virgil in The Aeneid. Clearly, Longfellow was aiming for that epic vibe. 

 

The story itself is well enough known, so I assume there are no risks of spoilers. Miles Standish, brusque yet shy, has lost his first wife on the voyage, and wishes to court the beautiful young Priscilla. Who just happened to be the only unmarried woman of marriageable age left in Plymouth. Standish considers himself to be poor at courting, and asks his younger friend John to do the courting for him. 

 

John Alden is torn between his loyalty to his friend and his unspoken love for Priscilla. He mans up, and does the deed he feels he needs to do: he delivers Standish’s proposal as best he can. 

 

Priscilla is no fool, and thinks Standish is too much of a bloody soldier for her taste anyway. She rebuffs the secondhand proposal with one of the most famous lines in all of literature: 

 

“Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” 

 

Embarrassed by her refusal, Standish blows up on John, swears eternal enmity, and goes off to console himself by focusing on the ongoing war with the Native Americans. Things heat up fast, in no small part because of the hotheadedness of another soldier, and the facts get lost in the fog of battle. The rumor comes back that Standish has been killed. 

 

Later, the scene shifts to the wedding of John and Priscilla. At the height of the proceedings, a ghostly figure appears: Miles Standish. It turns out he is alive, and, rather than furious at John Alden, has forgiven all possible wrong, and comes to give him congratulations and the best of happiness. 

 

In addition to the most famous line, there are some others that I thought were fascinating. The first is when Standish, having lost his wife, looks at his shelf of books, trying to decide what is best to take his mind off his loss. 

 

Fixed to the opposite wall was a shelf of books, and among them

Prominent three, distinguished alike for bulk and for binding;

Bariffe’s Artillery Guide, and the Commentaries of Caesar

Out of the Latin translated by Arthur Goldinge of London,

And, as if guarded by these, between them was standing the Bible. 

Musing a moment before them, Miles Standish paused, as if doubtful

Which of the three he should choose for consolation and comfort,

Whether the wars of the Hebrews, the famous campaigns of the Romans,

Or the Artillery practice, designed for belligerent Christians. 

 

He chooses the Roman book, in case you wondered. This proclivity toward martial pursuits is his reasoning for asking the more literary Alden to do the wooing. 

 

“Go to the damsel Priscilla, the loveliest maiden of Plymouth,

Say that a blunt old Captain, a man not of words but of actions,

Offers his hand and his heart, the hand and heart of a soldier.

Not in these words, you know, but this in short is my meaning;

I am a maker of war, and not a maker of phrases.

You, who are bred as a scholar, can say it in elegant language,

Such as you read in your books of the pleadings and wooings of lovers,

Such as you think best adapted to win the heart of a maiden.” 

 

It should surprise no one that Priscilla isn’t having it. At all. 

 

“If the great Captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me,

Why does he not come himself, and take the trouble to woo me?

If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning!”

 

Then, she gives poor John a sick burn to take back to his friend. 

 

“That is the way with you men; you don’t understand us, you cannot.

When you have made up your minds, after thinking of this one and that one, 

Choosing, selecting, rejecting, comparing one with another,

Then you make known your desire, with abrupt and sudden avowal,

And are offended and hurt, and indignant perhaps, that a woman

Does not respond at once to a love that she never suspected,

Does not attain at a bound the height to which you have been climbing.

This is not right nor just: for surely a woman’s affection

Is not a thing to be asked for, and had for only asking.

When one is truly in love, one not only says it but shows it.”

 

Ah, the bumbling of men who fail to think of women as fully human. No, marriage isn’t a favor a man offers a woman, that she would be foolish to refuse. No matter how rich or powerful the man is. You want her? Put in the work. And be willing to take no if she isn’t interested. 

 

Later, Standish ends up part of a council about the upcoming war. He is still furious at his rebuff, and says some pretty horrifying things about violence being the only way to deal with “savages.” A sole voice opposes him, the Elder of Plymouth (perhaps referring to William Bradford?) with what were probably the sentiments of Longfellow himself, who was categorically opposed to war. 

 

Thereupon answered and said the excellent Elder of Plymouth,

Somewhat amazed and alarmed at this irreverent language;

“Not so thought St. Paul, nor yet the other apostles;

Not from the cannon’s mouth were the tongues of fire they spake with!” 

 

While Standish is off botching the battle, John and Priscilla manage to talk things out. They both apologize for saying harsh things. John explains that he wasn’t angry with her, but with himself, for making a mess of his task from Standish. Priscilla’s response is interesting:

 

“No; you were angry with me, for speaking so frankly and freely.

It was wrong, I acknowledge; for it is the fate of a woman

Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless,

Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. 

Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women

Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers

Running through caverns of darkness, unheard, unseen, and unfruitful,

Chafing their channels of stone, with endless and profitless murmurs.”

 

Damn. 

 

That is not an apology, is it? More like a bit of a shot across the bow. Longfellow, as I said, was pretty progressive. He understood the stultifying patriarchal culture that expects women to wait in silence, never expressing themselves directly. So, Priscilla, who actually likes John, wants to make clear that if he pursues her, she will not be the shy and silent maiden. As the conversation progresses, she deflects his flattery and insists that she wants his friendship - a friendship where they can both speak directly and openly and assertively. In other words, an egalitarian relationship. 

 Illustration of this scene, from 1903 - that's the one in my edition.

While John is a bit speechless, he is also clearly turned on, and eventually does pursue her the way she wants and needs to be pursued. 

 

Longfellow is just one of a number of men of his era who clearly understood that women were their equals. This idea that was force-fed in the subculture I grew up in - that the good old days were when men were men and women were subordinate doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. There have always been egalitarian marriages. And they have always been the good marriages. (See: Anne Bradstreet) I myself prefer an outspoken and forthright woman - that’s why I married one. 

 

I have chosen to highlight the best parts of the poem. As I said, the violence toward Native Americans is pretty horrifying, if true to the history, and even if Longfellow clearly disapproves of it. And there are some assumptions that go unchallenged. But on balance, Longfellow is aiming in the right direction. This longer poem is worth reading. 

 

***

 

Just a thought on national epics: 

 

To the extent national epics are even possible anymore, in a nation like the United States, it would have to be told, not by any single voice, but by a multicultural, multiracial, and multigendered choir of voices. To be true of any of us, it must be true of all of us. Whether this will ever be written is an open question, but it can be imagined. 

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Source of book: I own this

 

I picked this book up a few years ago, and kept intending to read it. I finally just put it on my list of books that I wanted to prioritize for the year. (Mostly, this is my selections for Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Pride Month, Banned Books Week, Native American Heritage Month, as well as classics of fiction and non-fiction from my collection.) So, count this as an outlier on the list - it isn’t old enough to be a classic yet. 

The Year of Magical Thinking is Joan Didion’s account of the death of her husband of 40 years, John Gregory Dunne and the year of grief and disorientation that followed. Dunne’s death of a massive heart attack right before dinner would have been traumatic enough, but it was combined with another trauma. Their adopted daughter, Quintana, who had struggled with years of mental health issues, contracted pneumonia which went septic and nearly killed her. It was while she was in an induced coma that Dunne died. After Quintana recovered, she collapsed due to a clot and hematoma, and again nearly died. Sadly, after this book was published, Quintana succumbed to yet another medical emergency. So quite the run of bad events for Didion. 

 

Didion’s account of this time is raw, emotional, and scattered. She captures the out-of-time-and-place feeling of loss and grief, with her thoughts triggered in familiar places. Everything triggers memories, and she tries to present them as they came to her. Honestly, while often difficult because of the obvious pain, this is really great writing. 

 

Both Dunne and Didion were professional writers, which appears to have made for an interesting partnership, one that grew closer with the years, until they were almost a part of not only each other, but their art. So, when he dies, she is left with the equivalent of an arm ripped off of her. The marriage is both inspiring for what it was, and the greater tragedy for Didion when it ended. 

 

There are a lot of literary references in the book, for obvious reasons. Literature was something Dunne and Didion shared, and also what comes most readily to mind for Didion to describe moments. The death of Sir Gawain gives the line “I have only two days to live,” while Gerard Manly Hopkins and other poets contribute passages throughout. 

 

The book opens with the lines that Didion wrote down a few days after the death. 

 

Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

The question of self-pity.

 

These lines will recur throughout the book. 

 

I also loved the description of their marriage - and the assumptions made by other people. 

 

I did not always think he was right nor did he always think I was right but we were the person the other trusted. There was no separation between our investments or interests in any given situation. Many people assumed that we must be, since one and sometimes the other would get the better review, the bigger advance, in some way “competitive,” that our private life must be a minefield of professional envies and resentments. This was so far from the case that the general insistence on it came to suggest certain lacunae in the popular understanding of our marriage. 

 

That is actually a great description of my own marriage. We are in different professions, but we have taken on different roles over time. For the first part, I out-earned my wife, while she spent more time on schooling the kids and keeping the house clean. Now, she works longer hours and out-earns me, and I have taken the “soccer mom” role in the family. But there is no minefield of resentments. 

 

When we married, a lot of people seemed surprised that we don’t really fight much. We are both strong personalities, but we are on the same team. 

 

Another line that fascinates me from the book is one that comes from Dunne. When Quintana was a child, she felt that bad news was unequally distributed. Her uncle committed suicide and a cousin was murdered. Dunne told her that “it all evens out in the end.”

 

Didion admits that she did not understand what Dunne was meaning, but Quintana did. It wasn’t that good news balances the bad. It is that we all experience loss in the end. It evens out. Grief comes for all of us. 

 

Also profound in the context of our current culture, is Didion’s observation that we are bombarded with the message that we can avert death. And also the punitive corollary: that if death catches us, we have only ourselves to blame. 

 

My wife and I have talked about this a lot lately - she is an ICU nurse, and has observed that the more religious a family member is, the less likely they are to be at peace with the death of a loved one. (It doesn’t matter which religion, either.) As in, “God is going to heal my 95-year-old mother who has terminal cancer” level denialism and disbelief that death will come for us all. 

 

This saddens me. I mean, I don’t exactly look forward to dying, but I know I will. I think I am at better peace with that than a lot of people I know, particularly the religious ones. That really puzzles me too. 

 

I read this book at a time in my own life when I am grieving the loss of my parents. Not the death of their physical bodies, but the loss of the good people they used to be once. As things stand now, we are estranged, and they have shown no interest whatsoever in trying to repair things. As it has been since my teens, when Bill Gothard told them that God speaks to children - even adult children - through their parents, an estrangement has probably been inevitable. 

 

What has ensued over the past 30 years is very much like what I see my clients experience. I work in elder law as part of my practice, particularly the issues that arise as an elderly person declines physically and mentally. For my parents, the change in them has been very much a form of dementia - not so much a loss of memory, but a moral and spiritual dementia combined with an increasing detachment from the reality that others have to live in. 

 

I have witnessed the erosion of the Christ-following values they raised me with, replaced by Fox News xenophobia and the fear that someone else is getting something they don’t deserve. The empathetic discussions we used to have when I was young started to become assertions of talking points and political slogans from the Reagan and Thatcher years. They made racist and sexist statements that would have gotten my mouth washed out with soap as a kid. And in the era of Covid, they went hard down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. As I said, it is a form of dementia. 

 

Like dementia, it has been both a gradual slope, yet a punctuated and variable path. There are times I have recognized the old them, but these moments have gotten more and more rare. Once in a while, we could talk and connect, but increasingly, we would bump up against the reality barrier - the ideology of the political and religious charlatans would shut down acknowledgment of empirical reality. 

 

One passage in particular haunted me in this regard. Didion keeps finding herself saying “I need to talk to John about…oh.” 

 

There is no one to hear this news, nowhere to go with the unmade plan, the uncompleted thought. There is no one to agree, disagree, talk back.

 

I feel this particularly about my dad. I keep finding myself thinking that I should talk about this with him, except I remember that the person I could do that with is gone, and has been for a while now. (My mom is more complicated - we haven’t been able to really talk since I hit puberty, something she didn’t take well. And, she has had an emotionally incestuous relationship with my narcissist sister for many, many years, which is a factor in why she rejected my wife.) Again, I am saying this not out of hate for my parents but out of profound grief at the loss of them. 

 

I guess I will end this with the fairly bleak reality of Didion’s experience. 

 

I look for resolution and find none.

 

This is the reality of grief. There is never a resolution because the loss cannot be fixed. Particularly when a relationship has been close - like it was between Dunne and Didion, or between me and the parents who raised me - the scar cannot ever truly heal. We can become functional again, but part of us is gone. That cannot be “resolved” in any meaningful way. 

 

I am curious to read more of Didion - probably her earlier journalistic work. She has a way with words, so I imagine less personal (and traumatic) subjects would be fascinating to read. 

 

Nation by Terry Pratchett

Source of book: Audiobook borrowed from my brother

 

We are, alas, running out of Terry Pratchett audiobooks we haven’t listened to. Fortunately, it looks like they are releasing new audio versions of the earlier books, which are fairly difficult to find on CD. 

Nation is not a Discworld novel, but rather one of his stand-alone books set in the Victorian Era, but in a parallel universe. In this case, what if the future Queen Victoria had become marooned on an island in Micronesia, helping to rebuild a nation after a devastating tsunami? 

 

That is the basic idea behind Nation. Mau, a boy on the cusp of manhood, is rowing back from his initiation ordeal (alone on an island for a week), when his boat is caught by the tsunami. He manages to stay afloat, but returns to find his village in ruins and everyone but him dead. 

 

This causes, to put it mildly, a spiritual crisis, during which Mau decides that the gods do not exist. 

 

Meanwhile, the thirteen year old eventual second in line heir of the crown of a country which isn’t England…but is England, is on her way back to the home country from where she has been staying at a colonial outpost, when the tsunami casts the boat high up on Mau’s island. The entire crew is killed, except, as it turns out much later, the cook, who has sealed himself in a coffin boat. Ermintrude finds herself alone on the island until Mau returns. She eventually helps him recover from the ordeal of disposing of all the bodies (they are sent back to the sea as a traditional internment), and they work to learn a bit of each other’s language. 

 

Soon afterward, survivors of the disaster start showing up at the island: an aged priest, a traumatized woman who cannot feed her newborn, a young couple and his brother, an old woman with a storehouse of cultural knowledge, and eventually a few dozen others. Mau, as the sole survivor of The Nation, is now the chief, and has to figure out how to rebuild society from what is left. This is what humans do after disasters – it isn’t the chaos conventional (western) wisdom claims – they rebuild.

 

And there are a lot of things to figure out. Ermintrude has decided she hates her name and tells Mau it is Daphne. They must figure out how to feed the infant. A baby must be delivered. And beer must be carefully made so that the toxic ingredient is rendered harmless. 

 

Oh, and Daphne’s ship had a mutiny, and those mutineers have now joined forces with cannibal raiders and are headed for the island. 

 

Mau is worried that he doesn’t have a soul, because of the failed manhood ordeal. Daphne is having to figure out how to live in a completely foreign culture with expectations she struggles to understand. And both of them hear voices in their heads - the voices of Mau’s ancestors. 

 

And then there is the question of religion. Mau does not believe in the gods anymore, but the voices of the grandfathers keep insisting he find and replace the “god anchors” - white stones that had to have been brought from thousands of miles away. And most of his people are religious, so he can’t merely dismiss religion, but has to work with it in a way that strengthens the nation. 

 

The book is very philosophical throughout, exploring the relationships between faith and doubt, the problem of evil, the connection humans have with their ancestors, and the tension between tradition and science. 

 

Pratchett wasn’t a particularly religious person, describing himself as an atheist for most of his life. At around the time Nation was published, however - after he had been diagnosed with the early onset dementia that would kill him in a half dozen years - he made a statement in an interview that parallels a line in the book. 

 

“I believe in the same God that Einstein did ... And it is just possible that once you have got past all the gods that we have created with big beards and many human traits, just beyond all that on the other side of physics, there just may be the ordered structure from which everything flows."

 

This is as good of an explanation of the mystic religious tradition, Christian or otherwise. To reduce God to a parody of human traits seems wrong even by the standards of religion itself. Throughout his books, Pratchett’s relationship to religion is fascinating. In Discworld, the gods are real, just like magic is real. He doesn’t spend time hating on religion, but does - correctly - identify certain fundamentalist strains to be a significant source of evil in the world, along with greed and lust for power. But Pratchett doesn’t disrespect religion, choosing instead to explore the more interesting questions where philosophy and science intersect. 

 

Like so many of Pratchett’s books, there are bad puns, cultural references, so many ways the fictional world resembles our own. Some of the parallels are more than parallels - real life scientists from Darwin to Carl Sagan make cameos in the epilogue - and the “god anchors” and the House of the Grandfathers might be based on Nan Madol. 

 

Perhaps as a final thought, Pratchett embodies how many thoughtful Brits have a complex relationship with the Empire. Just like many of us Americans have with our own empire. Pratchett clearly loves Great Britain, even as he criticizes her faults. He is less comfortable with the legacy of the Empire, and has no illusions about its atrocities. In this book, he gently looks at the way imperialists plant flags, backed by guns, to claim what was never theirs. He also looks at cultural chauvinism, and notes that many ancient and “primitive” civilizations, in the South Pacific as well as the Americas, were actually more scientifically developed than Europe in the past. The idea that we white folks were “civilizing” and uplifting indigenous peoples was always a bunch of shit, but even more so considering what we were too blind to see or understand. 

 

To that end, Pratchett envisions an alternative timeline in the case of the Nation. Rather than being exploited or isolated, the island is able to enter a mutually beneficial relationship, thanks to the foresight of Mau and Daphne. The Nation becomes a member of the Royal Society, that famous club of scientists back in the day. As such, the Nation embraces its prime location for astronomy (something Pratchett himself was a bit of a proficient at himself), and finds a unique blend of tradition and new knowledge. 

 

Honestly, that is what I wish for my own people - and for my former religious tribe. There is that balance between tradition and science, between mysticism and empiricism. There is much of beauty in tradition that can be retained, while jettisoning its more toxic elements. As the Nation embraces a more egalitarian approach to gender, for example, it can still retain the coming-of-age rituals. It can look to the stars with scientific knowledge, while still speculating about the meaning of the gods. 

 

Our audiobook was narrated by Stephen Briggs, who did most of the later Pratchett audiobooks, and is his usual fabulous self. The voices were good, easily distinguishable from each other, and suited to the characters. The pacing and mixing were also excellent. Also recommended for Pratchett audiobooks are Nigel Planer and Celia Imrie, who each narrate some of the older books. I have not yet experienced the newest recordings, but friends who have say positive things about them. Avoid the Tony Robinson ones, though, as those are abridged editions - which totally misses the point of Terry Pratchett, where the details of each sentence are part of the fun. 

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

Well, what to say about this book? Like most Franzen novels, it is pretty long (20 discs worth…), a bit sprawling, full of difficult and nuanced people, a good bit of psychological drama, a realistic feel, and a whole lot of things going on at once. 

 

It also hit close to home for me on several fronts, paralleling some past events in my life and also some current issues in my life. 

 

This isn’t my first experience of Franzen, but it is my first exposure to his fiction. I previously read How to Be Alone, which struck me at the time as a truly alien experience - the experience of the cranky old white liberal was a bit different from the cranky old retrogressive white people I grew up with. 

 

When I reviewed that book, in 2016, it was before Il Toupee went from being a punchline to being president to being the instigator of an attempt to overthrow democracy in America, so I still kinda identified as leaning right. (It is always interesting to re-read posts from years ago…) These days, I probably lean further to the left than I did back then, but also the American Right has taken such a strong lurch toward open fascism that I certainly have no wish to be associated with that movement. 

 

It is also interesting to read that post having read a Franzen novel. I am happy to report that some of my worries about his writing have turned out to have been groundless. For example, while Franzen is a Boomer, he isn’t the “white racist old man who votes liberal because he was on that side in the 1960s” sort at all - his grasp of bias and blind spots and the nuance of character are excellent, and it shows in his writing in the best possible way. (Particularly in this book.) Second, his writing feels natural and unpretentious, and quite effective. No “complex sentences to sound literary” stuff going on here, just good, solid plotting, characterization, and description. 

 

One thing that I did notice in one of the essays was the insistence that fiction was where our society has its discussion of nuance - where easy answers and ideology give way to complexity and humanity. And this book is full of this. 

 

I mentioned a bit in the previous post about Franzen’s unfortunate role as poster-person for the question of female and minority representation in publishing, but I thought I would expand just a bit on that in this post, because I think it does relate to the book. 

 

Franzen is white, male, grew up middle class, straight, and is a Boomer. It is entirely fair to point out that this demographic has been over-represented in fiction publishing for many decades. (And white males for centuries.) It is entirely appropriate to desire a more equal representation. Anyone who reads this blog knows that, although I do read plenty of old books, I make an effort to read books by women, minorities, and queer people as well. 

 

The problem as it relates to Franzen is that he has been targeted with the “see how much attention Franzen gets” as the example of what is wrong with publishing. I believe this is unfair. I am sure I could (if you forced me) come up with a list of undeserving white male authors who get published while others languish. But Franzen is plenty deserving - he is a really good writer - and he certainly hasn’t been the driver of the regressive movement in our culture. 

 

And yes, sometimes his writing is a bit of his generation and gender - just like contemporary writers will be recognized as being in a few decades. Alas, perfection did not peak at our present moment. All we can hope is to be part of the process of moving in the right direction. 

 

Okay, so let’s talk about the book. 

 

Crossroads is set in 1971 and 1972, mostly in Chicago, and centers around the Hildebrandt family. Throughout the book, the perspective changes from person to person as the plot unfolds (and as we learn the back stories for the older characters), with both parents and the three older kids having extended sections from their point of view. 

 

Russ Hildebrandt is an associate minister in his late 40s (hey, about my age, actually), married to Marian, with four kids. Clem is in college, Becky is about to graduate, Perry is in high school, and Judson is still just a kid. (He is the one who is just kind of there - his perspective isn’t given in this book.) 

 

But don’t let the “minister” title throw you off. Russ is an old-school hippie liberal - he marched with the Civil Rights movement, works in poverty relief with the Navajos, and was a conscientious objector during World War II - arguably the bravest time to do such a thing. 

 

Russ married Marian, a slightly older and far more experienced woman. She has a dark past which comes out during the book. 

 

Clem is off at college, discovers sex, and decides (for morally defensible reasons) to give up his draft deferment. He also has kind of a weirdly close relationship with Becky before he leaves for college - one might call it emotionally incestuous. 

 

Becky is tall, attractive, and popular, but finds herself questioning everything and ending up with a very different life than she envisioned. 

 

Perry is, well, he is perhaps the least likable character in the book. At least for me. In his defense, he has inherited some pretty heavy-duty mental illness from his mother. But he is still an amoral narcissist who gets addicted to drugs, starts selling them, and pretty much blows the family up. 

 

There are the back stories - Marian’s is the most interesting in my opinion, but Russ’s too involves estrangement from their respective families. (That’s one bit that resonated with me a lot.) And there is the subplot of Russ being forced out of Crossroads, the youth group he founded, after things go sideways on him. Rick Ambrose, the young and charming youth minister, takes it over, and the feud between Rick and Russ dominates the emotional landscape of the Hildebrandt family. 

 

That event was fascinating, not least because a lot of the book goes past before Franzen gradually reveals what happened - and does so from multiple perspectives. The core issue is that Russ is older, and not well in touch with younger people. Because of this, when faced with difficult situations, he tends to make bad decisions. From Clem’s point of view, Russ is trying too hard to be cool, and makes enemies. From Rick’s point of view, Russ was inappropriately revealing about his own marital troubles to the group. From Russ’s point of view, he switched assignments on the Navajo mission trip because he was asked to by the Navajos, something never adequately explained to anyone by Rick. The whole thing is really messy, and Franzen makes it clear that none of the perspectives is entirely correct. 

 

The fallout from this is significant. Russ loses his confidence, and feels humiliated. Marian is mostly supportive, but Russ experiences this too as humiliation. His wife has to go to bat for him. Clem has formerly worshiped his dad, but sees his image of him crumble, leading to a really vicious argument. Becky, already irritated at her dad for a number of reasons, decides he is just full of shit generally. 

 

Marian’s past comes back to haunt her too. She has never been honest with Russ about her past. Not that it helped - his Mennonite family disowned him when he married a woman who claimed to be divorced. In reality, Marian had an affair with a married man, became pregnant, got an abortion, and, in order to do so, ended up as practically the sex slave of a really creepy old man. This led to a mental breakdown and a stay in a mental institution. None of which she has ever told Russ. She ends up telling her therapist, who she is seeing on the sly, because the family can’t really afford it. 

 

Already, I have written a lot of plot, but this is just a start. About two thirds of the book take place on a single day, December 23, and can be described as a slow motion meltdown of everyone in the family in some way. The last third is primarily about the Easter break, but some threads are followed a couple of years after that. I hate to spoil too much from there.  I’ll just mention some important stuff and try not to ruin any surprises. 

 

First, and this is apparent early in the book, both Russ and Marian end up seeking out affairs. Marian with her old married flame, and Russ with a young widow at church. It is easy to see why. They are at that age when they feel old, flabby, and boring. To return to a place where someone ardently desires you, admires you, and so on, is very tempting. Franzen is correct, however, that the fantasy is usually a lot better than cold, hard reality. 

 

Second, one driver of the plot is an inheritance. Marian’s older sister (and there is a lot of unpleasant family dynamics here) takes Becky under her wing for a while, before dying of cancer. She leaves Becky her modest fortune, with the instructions to take a tour of Europe like Aunt Shirley had intended to do with her. 

 

Marian and Russ do the absolute worst thing about this they could possibly do: act like the money belongs to them, not Becky. And all the guilt trips and stuff that a teen should never have to endure. I won’t give away exactly what happens, other than to say that whatever Russ and Marian get financially, it comes at the cost of their relationship with Becky and her eventual child. Ouch. 

 

And yes, this is one bit that deeply affected me. The facts aren’t the same, of course. Nobody ever left me shit as an inheritance (and my parents will undoubtedly disinherit me.) And my estrangement with my parents didn’t become complete until my mid-40s. But there are some rhymes, so to speak.

 

Like Becky, I was expected to sacrifice for my parents. Their self-indulgence in joining Bill Gothard’s cult cost me a lot - meaningful access to a normal higher education, the ability to choose my career, and eventually acceptance of my wife and children. And, like Russ and Marian, my parents considered this sacrifice to be my duty to them, not generosity. 

 

Oh, and just like Perry gets coddled throughout the book, my sister got to go to regular college, do absolutely nothing with her degree, and get unconditional acceptance by my parents, something I have never experienced. 

 

Of course, I can tell you that I have a different personality than Becky. For one thing, I have never had the experience of popularity, so I had few actual options during my teens other than going along with whatever my parents decided for me. And also, I started out deeply religious, then deconstructed - Becky starts off atheist, then becomes increasingly Fundamentalist. I myself would likely have told my parents no if they wanted my money. But, again, never had that option. 

 

The thing about Becky’s eventual estrangement from her parents is that I can understand exactly why she ended up there. As horrible as it was to take the money, what was worst was that Russ and Marian completely disrespect Becky’s dreams, her desires, her personhood. I hesitate to say they do not understand her, because, although that is very true, the reason they do not understand her is that they do not really wish to. They have their picture of what and who she should be, and expect her to just be that person. Even though she clearly isn’t. I think Becky ends up making unwise choices, but I can see why she did - in significant part, she was proving to herself she wasn’t who her parents planned her to be. 

 

I feel a lot of the same feelings, although I didn’t choose to, for example, give up my education for parenthood. (That’s very gendered too, of course…) I am not who my parents fantasized I would be. And my wife is very definitely not the woman they fantasized I would marry. But no woman could ever have been that. And children are their own selves, not clay to be molded, or (god I hate this term!) “arrows in the quiver.” Children are not weapons to be turned against others, nor are they extensions of ourselves. They exist as themselves and do not owe us fealty. 

 

I want to circle back to the religious stuff in the book too. 

 

Franzen apparently spent his teens in a youth group like Crossroads. So did I - kind of. The early 1970s were different than the early 90s. 

 

It is nearly impossible to imagine now - particularly those of us of a certain age - but American Christianity wasn’t always a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party. It wasn’t always retrogressive culture wars, anti-LGBTQ hate, and xenophobia. 

 

There was a genuinely religious progressive movement back in the day. Russ’s church is active in poverty relief, leans liberal, preaches non-violence. And, in the context of Crossroads, is less a religious group than one practicing radical transparency and mutual vulnerability. 

 

Some of this was present in the youth group I was a part of from 8th through 10th grade. 

 

We were part of a multi-cultural church near where I lived in the San Fernando Valley. The founding pastor, the late Jack Stiles, literally built the place with his own hands back when the area still had orange groves. With time, the neighborhood changed from a white suburb to a mostly minority working-class neighborhood. Where others would have packed up and followed the white flight to the new exburbs, Pastor Stiles went with the changing demographics, embracing new music, new ideas, and multiculturalism. 

 

In the time I was there, the youth group was trying some of the things that are in Crossroads - relationships with inner city churches and drug recovery groups, service trips to the Navajo Reservation and Mexico, neighborhood block parties, and the sort of radical intimacy that was a breath of fresh air after the phony posturing that was encouraged when we went to John MacArthur’s church (and later a small clone church led by a Master’s Seminary graduate.) (Note: not everyone, obviously. Some of my most influential people were from that era.) 

 

In retrospect, that brief youth group experience affected me profoundly. The seeds of my eventual rejection of the Religious Right were planted then. Seeing others and listening to their experiences has a way of creating empathy in the right soil, and I feel that my frame of reference expanded dramatically during those years. 

 

Also in retrospect, it is interesting to see what happened later. I still have friends from that church, although a lot of us have moved away to other places. From those who still know those who stayed, I learned that the church went pretty hard toward Q Anon after Pastor Stiles died and the guy who took over for him retired. That makes me sad, because there was something real there. 

 

The youth minister who pushed the group to do all of those great things - with the personality of a Rick Ambrose - unfortunately got sideways with church leadership (in some cases, for good reason), and ended up leaving a year or so later. The sad thing to me is that he ended up getting into Christian Nationalism really heavily, went into politics, and last I saw had a minor role in the Trump administration, doing the “special privileges for christian organizations” thing. 

 

On the other hand, the worship leader for the group has remained a really good guy. We have reconnected online, and keep in touch. He, more than anyone else, made me who I am as a worship musician. I really wish it were possible to still be doing that, but the political state of American Christianity means I remain on the sidelines as a conscientious objector. 

 

Other stuff that was interesting: the Navajo trips. Russ’s formative experience was on the reservation as a young man. I too remember doing these trips, with building projects and stuff. And, like Russ, I had the unsolvable tension between doing the good you can and being in the role of white savior. While I would certainly not mistake Franzen’s perspective here with that of the Indigenous, he does capture white discomfort pretty well. That level of self-awareness isn’t always (or even often) seen in most church-based charity work. Particularly now, with the culture wars insisting that only the white perspective matters. 

 

There was another scene that really haunted me. Clem has come home for Christmas, in part to announce that he is quitting college and letting himself be drafted. He goes looking for Becky, who, as I mentioned, he has a really close relationship with, only to run into his dad, who is alone with the young widow. Clem pretty much tells him off in brutal fashion. It’s an ugly scene, and you even feel bad for Russ, who is in the wrong, because of how harsh Clem is. At one point, Clem asks Russ if he even realizes how embarrassing it is to be his son. 

 

Wow. 

 

But as much as I worry about losing the respect and love of my kids (and I think all parents do), I felt some definite emotions along with Clem. The thing is, like Clem, I used to love and admire my parents. A lot. And back in the day, just like Russ, they were good, well meaning, decent people. As I have said multiple times on this blog, if you had asked 16 year old me, I would have said they were the best parents in the world. But, well Gothard, and stuff, and I find myself 30 years later estranged from them, and unable to respect who they have chosen to become in their old age. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, and I sure didn’t expect to find myself the son of Archie Bunker and Sister Bertha-better-than-you. 

 

So, just like Clem, discovering his father is a hypocrite who is cheating on his mom, loses his respect; I, having discovered that the parents who taught me antiracist values have chosen to go down the white christian nationalism path. It’s disheartening and embarrassing. And there is nothing I can do about it. 

 

Although there is a lot of drama in the book, there is also plenty of humor. Poor Russ is in over his head when it comes to life. He was raised as a Mennonite, loses his relationship with his parents, has no idea how to fit in with normal culture, and gets blindsided by the blowup at Crossroads. He has no idea how to rekindle things with his wife, and doesn’t even know her history. He bumbles with his kids, saying the wrong things, and always making things worse. The obstacles he faces, while realistic, are a bit over the top sometimes, and you feel terrible for him, even though he isn’t that likable. 

 

Being inside Perry’s head is interesting too. The whole scene at the Christmas party where Perry gets drunk, and can’t filter what he says, is pretty hilarious. It is also about the last time that he even tries to be a decent person - by the end, his mental illness and raging cocaine addiction have made him unable to see much beyond the next hit. 

 

The best drawn character, in my opinion, is Marian. She isn’t anyone I would particularly like to be around - I don’t do well with people who are self-loathing in general, and particularly not with ones who are deeply religious. It is its own variety of narcissism, perhaps as self-medication. Her traumatic story is pretty engrossing, and definitely explains who she is and how she reacts. 

 

At the risk of spoilers, I thought that the scene near the end where she reunites with her old flame, only to realize that he doesn’t come close to matching the fantasy she had, was excellent. It didn’t feel contrived, either. I have seen enough in my law practice to realize that this is often the case. That’s the thing about fantasies - they can never really come true. If you realize that, and just enjoy the fantasy, then it can be a good thing. But expectations will disappoint us all. Never meet your heroes, and don’t expect an affair to measure up to the fantasy. 

 

In listening to the book, I thought of a whole lot more to say. It would be fun to discuss this book with others who have read it, so if you run across this post, feel free to chime in in the comments. There is a lot going on in the book, and so much to discuss. 

 

The audiobook was excellent. David Pittu was the narrator, and I thought he distinguished the voices really well. Perry in particular, with his faux English accent was spot on and unmistakable. 

 

There is an interview at the end with both Pittu and Franzen (it must have been over video, during the pandemic, judging from some audio artifacts) and that was quite enlightening. Hearing Franzen talk about the book is a real view into what he was trying to do with the book. And also the scenes he felt were a bit unrealistic (but necessary for the plot, so…) and which he felt he did best. Pittu had plenty of opinions about the book too, and it was fascinating to see where he and Franzen disagreed about how to interpret ambiguities. Franzen himself is surprised that the ambiguous ending has been interpreted multiple ways by different people. He thinks it is obvious what choice was made, but I myself could see it going either way. 

 

I would say that the audiobook is a good way to go for this book, just because it is excellently done, and adds to the experience. Franzen’s writing also lends itself to the audiobook form, because it doesn’t jump around much, and when it does, it is clear where we are in time and place. It is good old-fashioned linear writing, and I wish a few more modern authors would use it, rather than trying to be cute with the out-of-sequence narratives.