Lately I’ve been remembering only snippets or ideas from dreams rather than details. In one last week, I was shocked to learn that my brother is James Bond, but I couldn’t ask him because it didn’t seem natural to ask a spy if he’s a spay and because in the back of my mind I thought I was James Bond. He also seemed more like a stranger to me than my brother, although I would experience moments of familiarity.
In another dream, I was a passenger on a bus where odd things were happening and which seemed to go nowhere even as it traveled. Although it was a tour bus, it would stop regularly at bus stop signs like any municipal bus. I wondered why I was in it.
Sunday I was the leader or part of a team delivering lawn furniture and ornaments to a family. Their house was familiar to me; I had been in it before, I recalled, and it was not what it appeared to be, but was a place of space and time shifts. Our lawn furniture and ornaments were not what they appeared to be, either, and one of us, perhaps me, apologized to the man of the house for the lateness of their delivery and tried to convince him of their normalcy by selling him on their superiority. “Look,” we told him, “You wouldn’t expect something like this to reflect and shine [this seemed to be an important property], but it’s made of a special material that has the reflective qualities of metal.”
They looked to me for proof, and I searched frantically for a flat reflective surface among the pieces in my load. There was a crescent of one on some kind of tray or ornament with a Christmas theme. I became fascinated and never learned if any of this fooled the man, or what the stuff really was or why we needed him to accept it.
It seems I dreamed a week of intrigue and subterfuge.
For someone who jokingly calls herself a pretentious dilettante, I’m not very good at being one. Despite my appreciation of music, I have never liked ballet or opera. If pressed to articulate why not, I might say that both seem to me to be very artificial forms of expression. I like music, I like dance, and I like song, but when music is combined with song or dance and a story, it loses its connection to life as I know it and becomes a pretense, like much of the modern art that holds no appeal for me, either.
That can’t be the full explanation, however, as I do love a good stage or movie musical, and seven mountain men dancing at a barn raising or a silent film star singing and dancing with his umbrella partner aren’t realism, either. I’m also fond of symbolism, allegory, myth, and things that go bump in the night, that is, I’m not limited to the realism category.
There’s also the troublesome fact that I’ve seen one ballet (The Nutcracker, many years ago, when my employer provided us with free tickets) and no opera except for brief bits on TV, so my dislike has been based more on theory than on experience.
A friend who is an opera fan and Lyric season ticket holder had bought these tickets in addition to her subscription series. She thought that her husband might like a break from the opera, especially since Doctor Atomic is a modern opera, which generally is not to his taste.
Who am I to turn down a $176 ticket that I couldn’t afford to see something I’ve never seen?
I liked it. I would have liked an hour or so less of it better, I admit. Nearly three and one-half hours of sitting, with one break, tests my powers of physical endurance. Still, I liked it.
Doctor Atomic is the story of the race to build and test the “Gadget,” a discordantly innocuous name for the A-bomb. With a few exceptions, Peter Sellars adapted his libretto from the quotations and writings of the participants, as well as excerpts from poetry.
The scientists are headed by Renaissance man J. Robert Oppenheimer (Gerald Finley, baritone), who loves and quotes the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, while General Leslie Groves (Eric Owens, bass-baritone) leads the military. They were an odd pair in more than the obvious ways; during the project Oppenheimer’s weight dropped to less than 100 pounds, while General Groves’ photos reveal a distinct portliness that stretches his uniform to its limits. In Doctor Atomic, the testy general, concerned that Oppenheimer is going to have a breakdown, sings ruefully about his lifelong weight issues and his diet journal, in which he records transgressions such as two brownies and three pieces of chocolate cake.
Oppenheimer’s foil is Hungarian scientist Edward Teller (Richard Paul Fink, baritone), a cynic whose humor is black (before the test, he offers the team suntan lotion) and whose position is ambivalent. Pacifist Robert Wilson (Thomas Glenn, tenor) anticipates the 1960s activist, with his petition demanding that at the least Japan be warned of what is being planned.
On the principle that behind every good man is a woman, and behind every good opera is a soprano, Kitty Oppenheimer (Jessica Rivera) brings a human counterpoint to her husband’s outwardly stoic determination to complete the Gadget and the test. Meredith Arwady (contralto) plays Pasqualita, the Oppenheimer’s Indian nurse whose deepest tones seem wrenched from the heart of the earth mother herself. Military meteorologist Jack Hubbard (James Maddalena, baritone) offers most of the little comic relief as General Groves demands better weather conditions and threatens the junior officer with insubordination for refusing to promise to provide it.
Absurd as the general’s orders are, they are no more so than the very concept of an opera based on the development of the A-bomb seems to be. On the other hand, what better or bigger subject for an American opera? Like Frankenstein and other stories of man’s exploration of god-like powers, Doctor Atomic hovers between the genius of creation and the ethics of destruction. Oppenheimer understands the awesome power of the idea that he must make concrete, but disingenuously leaves it to the “men in Washington” and their wisdom to decide whether to unleash the bomb’s powers. These are enormous themes, carried over from the nineteenth century’s fascination with science; defining much of twentieth century life with its Cold War fears and anxieties; and seeping into the twenty-first century, when it is no longer just “men in Washington” and their communist counterparts but mad tyrants and terrorists whose fingers may hover over the nuclear button.
Oppenheimer, who dubs the test “Trinity,” calls upon the three-personed God of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV:
BATTER my heart, three person’d God; for, you As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’and bend Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new. ***** Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free, Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
It takes poetry from throughout the ages, from the Bhagavad Gita to John Donne to Muriel Rukeyser, to address the timelessness and power of creation and destruction and man’s responsibility for both. Even as Oppenheimer, Teller, and Wilson grapple with ethics and expediency, targets are being identified for the “psychological impact” their destruction will have on the Japanese people — and on the watching world. Even as the team waits for the weather to clear, they cannot be certain that Trinity won’t burn off the Earth’s entire atmosphere. Somehow it is a risk that must be taken.
In the opera’s only romantic scene, Kitty Oppenheimer seems to represent the creative (and neglected) power of sex, while in Act II she seems driven to near-madness by visions of destruction (Rukeyser: “In the flame-brilliant midnight, promises arrive, singing to each of use with tongues of flame . . .”), even as Pasqualita, an Indian Gaia, nurtures her and her children — the future. Kitty quotes Rukeyser:
Those who most long for peace now pour their lives on war Our conflics carry creation and its guilt . . .
Pasqualita, quoting Rukeyser, is prophetic:
The winter dawned, but the dead did not come back. News came on the frost, “The dead are on the march!”
Doctor Atomic ends on what appears to be an anticlimax. The ensemble stretches out in self-defensive positions, much as children of the 1960s were taught do during air raid drills, save for two technicians who monitor the instruments. The test goes off quietly, leaving in its wake an intact atmosphere and a woman’s voice speaking in Japanese. We know what happened. Or do we? The history of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy is not yet over, and their legacy is not yet known.
As might be expected, the staging is stark, and so is the music. There are no lush orchestral moments, and little soprano and tenor brightness. The music is arrhythmic, somewhat discordant in places, and thoroughly modern. Various instruments are used as voices, and the singers are used as instruments, occasionally struggling a bit with what John Adams’ composition calls upon their voices to do. Conductor Robert Spano, whose intense face I could see clearly from my fourth-row seat, holds the orchestra together nicely throughout the nearly three and one-half hours.
I am not sure that Doctor Atomic has made me love opera, especially as it suffers from two faults that I associate with the art form — it is overly long and it is overwrought. I liked it, however, and to be fair in my judgment I will need to experience a more traditional production — one whose music and arias may stir my emotions as Doctor Atomic stimulated my intellect and interest in the fate of humanity.
Doctor Atomic Music: John Adams Libretto and direction: Peter Sellars
Site A, where the world’s first nuclear reactor is buried August 23, 2020
See the third shadow from your right? J. pointed to it and told me that it resembles Hodge. His pointing seemed to confuse the puppets — they kept bending down to see what we were looking at! Here, they ham it up for his cell phone camera.
I feel like I have lived in three or four climates in the past few days.
On Sunday, I left Regenstein Library at about 4:30 p.m. It was warm enough to walk the 1.3 mile comfortably, which would give me an opportunity to stop at Parker’s Pets. Hodge needs more toys like I need more cat bite scars, but I wanted to see the store, and every moment he spends biting toys is a moment not spent biting me.
As I looked around the sky seemed odd. It wasn’t right. Something about the feeling that it gave me reminded me of my dreams in which I’m at home, in my bedroom, looking out over the sunlit woods and field, and yet I am disturbed to find that this post-dawn light is shining at 10 p.m. A sensation that an apocalypse is night come over me, yet I convince myself that this is normal, that this is the way things are meant to be.
It was about the time of sunset, and the western sky was completely obscured by a very black, low-hanging cloud that seemed disingenuously ominous. To the east, the sky was as weirdly white and bright. At a time when the western sky should be filled with light and the eastern sky should be darkening, the reverse was true, and I felt odd and disoriented in time and space as I walked away from western darkness to eastern brightness, away from the sun and toward the light.
After the 0 degree F temperatures of last week, thermometers here hit 60 degrees F Monday. There was lightning when I left work, which has happened before in January but is disconcerting at this time of year. It seemed to be a distant storm, with very little thunder. For hours, sheets of lightning sporadically lit the sky over Indiana and Lake Michigan. On the bus and later, after midnight, I saw the lightning mainly from the corner of my eye, which sometimes made me wonder if I had seen it at all.
Tuesday morning was cooler, but still warm, with wind and rain. When I first looked out the window, I could see little through the rain and fog. It was clear when I poured coffee. It was foggy when I took the empty cup to the kitchen. It was clear when I got dressed. When I finally stepped outside, it was foggy again despite the wind.
By the time I arrived at Hyatt Center, there was a brief, faint hint of sunlight in the southern sky. After months of unbroken clouds and oppressive skies, even diffuse sunshine seemed as alien to me as the dream of 10 p.m. light. It also reminded me that spring must return someday, with its own varieties of disturbing weather — snow, rain, cold, heat, wind, storms, floods, and the soft sunshine of happiness, the light that puts life into perspective.
I’ll be waiting.
Note added 10 January 2008: The sun was spotted briefly at sunrise today, although the clouds quickly consumed it. It is reassuring to know that it is still there in its many-splendored glory.
After dinner at Pizzeria Due on a snowy New Year’s Eve, J. and I came home to my place at The Flamingo, where I subjected him to one of my favorite movies — Precious Bane, originally shown on PBS in 1989 and gone missing since. Based on the novel by Mary Webb, Precious Bane is not an ideal holiday movie, but somehow I was in the mood to see it and to share it.
For J., who has not read the book or heard of the movie, it was difficult to follow, partly because of the dialect. He did not understand why the characters believed in witchcraft and curses at such a late date. When Gideon tells Prue, “You’ll never wed,” he seemed to think it might be because the harelip marred her looks, but Gideon meant that no one would marry a woman with so evident a curse upon her.
I remember that I too had difficulty at first following the story when it was new to me; so much of it is alien to contemporary experience. Because it is so well told, however, it soon sweeps you into its world of isolation, ignorance, and superstition.
Underneath the ugliest elements — the superstition and narrowness of the villagers, the brutality of the Sarn men, Gideon’s greed and ironic self-righteousness, Beguildy’s abuse of his perceived powers — Precious Bane is a magnificent love-wish fulfillment story. After surviving all the suffering that life and human frailty create, two odd, deserving people ride off to what we are sure will be a life of love and contentment in each other, for they are kindred spirits. There’s no more satisfying — or unlikely — ending. Even the change of heart among the villagers seems surreal as they egg on the ringleaders, then turn against them. Whether we feel cursed or not (I sometimes do), it’s the denouement to a satisfying drama that anyone could wish for.
What most struck me, then and now, and when I read the book, was Prue’s passion for learning how to read and write. It’s an ability we take for granted because we don’t know what it’s like not to have it. We don’t always understand that the ability to read and write contributes to independence and helps us to stay connected socially and emotionally. For Prue, trapped on her farm by her obligation to her brother, poverty, and superstition, reading and writing are her lifeline to something greater than herself, to a life beyond the narrow one she knows. It is also the only way she has to open her heart, however obliquely, to the one person she knows to be a kindred spirit — the one person who sees past the curse into her blessed heart.
Today, when most of us can read and write, how do we use this powerful ability? Parents and teachers are thrilled that children read the Harry Potter books, because otherwise they might not read at all on their own. We send e-mails and messages that fulfill certain obligations but that do not communicate much beyond facts — certainly not feelings. “Thanks for your e-mail. School starts on the 10th. We’re not ready for it yet. Suzy outgrew another pair of shoes.” Expressing genuine emotion, which provide so much relief to Prue and took away the power of the curse forever (“No more sad talk! I’ve chosen my bit of Paradise. ‘Tis on your breast, my dear acquaintance!”) seems to be unacceptable, even vaguely subversive, now that we have the means to do it easily, even beautifully. To do so is to take a risk, that of revealing too much and of embarrassing ourselves in an irrevocable way. Even expressing gratitude to a persona who helped to shape our live and our perspective, is a terrible risk. What if they don’t remember us or don’t care?
The Collected Stories by Paul Theroux. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1998. 660 pages. ISBN 0140274944. Recommended.
From troubled marriages (“World’s End,” “You Make Me Mad”) and families (“After the War”), from Africa to Malaysia to London, The Collected Stories by Paul Theroux covers a lot of physical, political, social, and emotional territory. Whether he is writing about the past, present, or future (“Warm Dogs”) or as the first-person or omniscient narrator, Theroux describes places, people, and events colorfully yet coolly, as though as a writer he is not part of the world or life portrayed.
Parts I, II, and III are mostly discrete, unrelated stories covering a wide range of places, people, and themes. Unhappy marriages and relationships, also found in Parts IV and V, are the topic of many Theroux stories. “World’s End” begins with, “Robarge was a happy man . . .” and ends with, “. . . he knew now they were all lost,” with a subtle revelation of disloyalty and the realization of distrust in between. In “A Political Romance,” love and life come full circle; bloom, discontent and stagnation (“. . . in thirty years he would be — this hurt him — the same man, if not a paler version”), and renewal (“Lepska, I love you”). “What Have You Done to Our Leo?” uncovers a woman’s perfidy and a man’s naivete, assumptions, and developing understanding (“Her laughter was coarse, that stranger’s laugh that fitted the new image that Leo had of her.”). A rarity in fiction, the older couple of “You Make Me Mad” knows each other too well, yet clearly not well enough. “Sinning with Annie” takes a quirky look at an arranged marriage between two children from the perspective of the adult, prudishly westernized husband. “Words Are Deeds” starts with what appears to be a potentially exciting and risky erotic adventure that resolves quickly into bitter reality (“I hate that tie”).
Set in the recent past, “The Imperial Icehouse” is an agonizing story about time that evokes its slow movement along with its decisive moments. “The sounds of the horses chewing, the dripping of the wagon in the heat; it was regular, like time leaking away” ties the preceding procession of the melting ice to the denouement, when “Mr. Hand raised his whip and rushed at John Paul . . . The ice was not larger than a man, and bleeding in the same way.” In “After the War,” the teenaged stranger masters the master of the house, opening the door for the man’s unhappy family; ” . . . the child . . . without warning arched his back in instinctive struggle and tried to get free of the hard arms which held him” — perhaps an allegory for what happened to colonial nations after the war. In the future of “Warm Dogs,” a couple finds that is the children who possess them.
The stories in Parts IV and V are narrated by a fictional career Foreign Service officer who serves in Ayer Hitam, a backwater Malaysian village, and then London. A memorable exception is “Fury,” the story of an expatriate American woman in which the narrator does not appear until after the shocking if not surprising climax.
These stories reveal Theroux’s skill as a storyteller. They are recounted so vividly and objectively that they seem to be memoir, not fiction. The reader feels both the narrator’s fascination and boredom with his surroundings and acquaintances and senses his emotional detachment and occasional rebelliousness. In particular, small and remote as it is, Ayer Hitam becomes a bottomless well of characters and stories, from the somewhat senile Sultan, the proud Japanese businessman who turns hatred to his advantage, the shaman who commands the tiger, and the anthropologist who gets too close to her subject to the feverish American who sees the ghosts of a local man’s relatives. The narrator indulges in a few stories about his own lovers, but these are among the weakest tales. In these stories, Theroux is at his best when the voice he uses is most detached from the characters and their stories and at his weakest when his narrator loses his detachment by associating himself too closely with the group. For example, when he writes, “We rather disliked children; we had none of our own,” his narrator loses the outsider status that gives these stories their believability, interest, and even poignancy. At times, however, this objective perspective is too observational and cold, for example, “She saw me and sat forward to let me kiss her, and she lingered a fraction as if posing a question with that pressure.” The narrator’s point of view is that of a raconteur rather than that of the person experiencing people and events; he writes about what he observed, not about what he felt or feels. Even during his erotic encounters, the narrator is ever the Foreign Service official, ready to observe and report.
As with any short story anthology, some of The Collected Stories are haunting and memorable, while others are almost instantly forgettable. Generally, I prefer the earlier stories to Diplomatic Relations (i): The Consul’s File and Diplomatic Relations (ii): The London Embassy because they are less constrained, more inventive, and yet more real. While not a great short story writer like John Cheever, Paul Theroux is certainly a master storyteller who conceives stories worth telling.
