Lives of the Artists: Keith Haring (4*)

Short, chatty and heartbreaking, Simon Doonan's present-tense account perfectly captures the force of nature that was Keith Haring perhaps because he lived within the man's glorious orbit.     

Disappearing Earth (4*)

 

Mystery novels aren't my thing but this one's exotic location kept me reading right through to the thrilling end.  My knowledge of the Kamchatka Peninsula was limited to the Risk game board, which may be a deliberate metaphor, but Phillips vividly describes a society eerily similar to ours where women and indigenous peoples are treated like second class citizens.  The dissolution of the Soviet Union adds an interesting frisson to the story of two missing girls because several of the protagonists, all females in some kind of trouble, are nostalgic for white Russian rule when life, while politically repressive, was more predictable.  This book certainly isn't.  Phillips weaves together a community of characters whose lives intersect in not always obvious ways over the course of the year.  It feels real, rather than exploitive.

Mr. Know It All by John Waters (2*)

 Sometimes less is more.  I really enjoyed hearing John Waters deliver a commencement address a few years back.  Stick with that.  Tone can't sustain an entire book, although I did love his parody of Andy Warhol's A. But mostly Mr. Know It All put me to sleep, like his last couple of movies.

Dream House

Thom took me to the West Palm Beach Kips Bay Show House at 4717 S Flagler to celebrate the deposit of his PPP loan.  If only it covered the purchase price of the property, which overlooks the Intracoastal.

Doesn't Thom look at home on the little porch above the pool?  On a clear day you can see Palm Beach (but NOT Mar a Lago).

Dining Room Wallpaper

Ice Bucket

Kitchen Lighting Fixture

Laundry Room

Laundry Room Stool (with a floor illuminated from below!)

Laundry Room Sink (where you bathe your pooch, too!)

Dog Leash & Collar Rack

Backyard Jigsaw Trellis

Living Room

Dried Flower Arrangement

Walk-In Closet Art

Master Bathtub

Hallway Mural

Painted Bedroom Wall (detail)

Embroidered Wallpaper Bee

Powder Room

Bathroom Sink

Shower Stall

Bedroom

Bedroom Flower Arrangement

Sitting Area

Sitting Area Knick Knacks

Sitting Area Wallpaper

Upstairs Back Porch

Outdoor Backgammon Table

Bedroom Upholstery

Upstairs Bedroom Sitting Area

Hanging Plate

Curtain Pattern

It wasn't all pretty. I couldn't resist a selfie in a dressing room mirror framed by pink gunk!

The Overstory (5*)

I'd been suspicious of a very long novel about . . . trees until Jane Fonda raved about it. Richard Powers isn't shy about his agenda, articulated by Adam, a psychologist and newly recruited eco warrior, when asked how people can be persuaded of the need to end deforestation:

The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind.  The only thing that can do that is a good story.

Later, an attorney who has dismissed fiction his entire life, experiences a post-stroke conversion and offers an equally compelling counterpoint:

He can't remember why fiction used to make him so impatient.  Nothing else has more power now to get him through the hours before lunch.  He hangs on the most ridiculous plot turns, as if the future of humanity depends on it.

The books diverge and radiate, as fluid as finches on isolated islands.  But they share a core so obvious it passes for given.  Every one imagines that fear and anger, violence and desire, rage laced with the surprise capacity to forgive--character--is all that matters in the end.  It's a child's creed, of course, just one small step up from the belief that the Creator of the Universe would care to dole out sentences like a judge in federal court.  To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs.  No:  life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.

Powers tells AND shows through a metaphorical structure that only becomes clear after identifying the "roots" of his story through a series of highly differentiated character studies, each packing an emotional wallop but also cleverly identified with a species of tree and loaded with historical and scientific details that had me shaking my head in wonder and amazement.  He also turns beautiful and resonant phrases, page after page:

 a new TV as big as Wyoming 

Then whiteout.  Gauze bandages across the windshield.

Chance, that comedian with the perfect timing.

Once you’ve bought a novel in your pajamas, there’s no turning back.

Perhaps I'm more susceptible to the powers of this book (pun intended) because nature IS god in my universe, a position I'm pretty certain the author shares although he leans Buddhist, too.  After an encounter with a wild bear in a national park ends well, a daughter asks her Chinese father if he was afraid.

He laughs, embarrassed. Not my time yet.  Not my story."

The words chill her.  How can he know his story, ahead of time?  But she doesn't ask him that.  Instead, she says, "What did you say to it?"

His brow crumples.  he shrugs.  What else is there to say, to a bear?  "Apologize.  I tell him, people very stupid.  They forget everything--where they come from, where they go.  Human being leaving this world, very soon. Then the bear get top bunk to himself again."

Less convincing is Powers's expectation that artificial intelligence will save the earth either by redeeming mankind with a video game or dispensing with people altogether.  Either fate is beyond my imagination, and my belief in the power of art to change things is too strong. How, for example, could AI write an epitaph such as this delivered after the first of two suicides that make perfect sense?

An old man,

I want only peace.

The things of this world

mean nothing.

I know no good way

to live and I can’t

stop getting lost in my

thoughts, my ancient forests.

The wind that waves the pines

loosens my belt.

The mountain moon lights me

as I play my lute.

You ask: how does a man rise or fall in this life?

The fisherman’s song flows deep under the river.' 

Read this powerful book!  You'll never look at trees the same way again.  You might even be galvanized to do something on behalf of them, to repay their favor.

Thanks, Jane.

Wear Your Mask!