Fiction: A Voice Stilled Too Soon - Wall Street Journal

Fiction: A Voice Stilled Too Soon - Wall Street Journal
The Fiction of American Democracy - The Wall Street Journal
What parents need to know about recent movies - Washington Post
The phantoms of Providence past, present, future - The Brown Daily Herald
Daniel Menaker, Book Editor Who Wrote With Wit, Dies at 79 - The New York Times

Posted: 30 Oct 2020 08:59 AM PDT

When Breece D'J Pancake took his life in 1979, at the age of 26, he had published six short stories, two of them in the Atlantic Monthly, and was on the cusp of wider literary renown. Pancake wrote about the mountainous region of southwest West Virginia, where he had grown up, and if his background made him defensive around the Southern bluebloods at the University of Virginia, where he went to graduate school, the stories he forged from it gave him an almost larger-than-life standing among his peers. Pancake was an exacting stylist with a ferocious, principled discipline for work, and his bone-deep knowledge of his setting...

The Fiction of American Democracy - The Wall Street Journal

Posted: 30 Oct 2020 08:56 AM PDT

America's independence was won on the battlefield, but American democracy was written into existence. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution created the country that America aspires to be, where all people are created equal and politics is a common effort to establish a more perfect union. This is the ideal democracy that Walt Whitman likened to "leaves of grass": "Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,/Growing among black folks as among white,/Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same,...

What parents need to know about recent movies - Washington Post

Posted: 30 Oct 2020 04:00 AM PDT

Once Upon a Snowman (PG-13)

Age 5+

Mild scares don't dampen joys of darling origin story.

"Once Upon a Snowman" is a short origin story in which Olaf of "Frozen" fame (voiced, as always, by Josh Gad) comes to life and rediscovers his identity. The story is geared toward viewers who've seen the original movie; without that context, little of how it reframes familiar scenes from Olaf's point of view will make sense. Olaf's journey is one of much peril, and sensitive viewers may worry at seeing him tumble from cliffs, break into his separate snowman parts, be chased by hungry wolves and so on. But his eventual success affirms the value of perseverance and of self-discovery and awareness. (8 minutes)

Available on Disney Plus.

The Craft: Legacy (PG-13)

Age 13+

Woke witches in liberal update with language, sexuality.

"The Craft: Legacy" is a follow-up to the 1996 teen witch cult classic "The Craft." While its story beats are similar to the original — a teen outsider finds friendship with three other outcasts, and they form a coven — it's much less violent than the first film, and it shapes the narrative with a more liberal, feminist take. For example, when one of the girls uses magic irresponsibly, instead of turning on one another, they take a break and encourage self-control. And in what is likely a (welcome) first for a studio-produced mainstream film, a popular teen boy ends up in tears while explaining how confusing and challenging it is to be bisexual in a society that connects masculinity with heteronormativity. His ability to open up and express his emotions has positive consequences. The girls and their high school are diverse in multiple ways. For example, one of the witches is a well-adjusted Latina transgender girl (as is the actress who plays her, Zoey Luna), and everyone is cool with that. The teens sit through a sex-ed video that says consent is a requirement, teens kiss passionately, and there's some crude sex talk and two moments of implied masturbation, one of which suggests a teen boy is watching porn. A mysterious death is ruled a suicide. Both teens and parents use profanity: "b----," "s---," etc.). A bong is seen in a teen's room. (97 minutes)

Available on various streaming platforms.

Us Kids (Unrated)

Age 13+

Powerful doc on Parkland activists has traumatic situations.

"Us Kids" offers a firsthand account of the stories of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivors, whose experience propelled them into national political and social activism. The teens profiled in the film face resistance from gun ownership proponents and NRA-backed lawmakers while inspiring others who support gun regulation. The documentary reveals how the activists' perseverance and teamwork helped turn the tide of the 2018 midterm elections. While the film is inspiring and empowering, it does include some swearing (including "f---"), minor drug (vaping) and alcohol use and overt focus on trauma and its mental health effects. Suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety and survivor's guilt are among the survivors' issues. There's also a quick moment regarding climate anxiety. Parents with teens who are struggling with anxiety and/or depression should discuss the themes in the film and any possible stress it could cause. (96 minutes)

Available via Alamo Drafthouse Virtual Cinema.

Common Sense Media helps families make smart media choices. Go to commonsensemedia.org for age-based and educational ratings and reviews for movies, games, apps, TV shows, websites and books.

The phantoms of Providence past, present, future - The Brown Daily Herald

Posted: 29 Oct 2020 08:59 PM PDT

Providence might just be the locus of hocus pocus; the spooky city boasts bounteous emblems of the ghastly and supernatural. These have served as the inspiration for many storytellers — from H.P. Lovecraft to Providence Ghost Tours, the fictional and historical narratives of the undead and otherworldly seem inseparable from the College Hill landscape.

In 2010, the Providence Ghost Tour's owner, Courtney Edge-Mattos, told The Herald that she "wholeheartedly" believes in the tales she tells on her tours. Some tour-goers have even cited an apparition outside of the H.P. Lovecraft house at 65 Prospect Street, Edge-Mattos recounts. Perhaps a spirit still resides in the shadows where the author wrote the famed short story "The Haunter of the Dark."

And it is through Lovecraft that the tradition of Halloween feels closely tied to Brown's campus as well. In a 2016 New York Times article, Noel Rubinton '77 (former editor-in-chief of The Herald) referenced the horror writer's fondness for Brown. "Lovecraft dropped out of high school, yet Brown was a center of his universe as he walked among its buildings most of his life," Rubinton writes. "His writing is infused with the results of his prodigious research in its libraries."

The sites where Lovecraft did his "prodigious research" have come to honor him too, as the John Hay Library now hosts an extensive collection of Lovecraft stories.

But the creepiness of the Hay extends beyond Providence-inspired fiction: The collection boasts three books bound in human skin. One of the books, "The Dance of Death," is a 19th century edition of a medieval tale that emphasizes death's inescapable pervasiveness. This apt creepiness is a frequent feature of skin-bound books, because "there was some tie-in with the content," Sam Streit, former director of the John Hay Library told the Los Angeles Times in 2006.

The question remains: what happens to Providence's phantasmic prowess during a pandemic? Do our superstitions and spidey-senses for the supernatural sublimate amidst social distancing? Or does the self-isolation incite a tangible tenor of terror?

It is true: Spooky, swarming and sweaty Halloweekend parties may be no more, but the culture of Halloween is far from dead this October season. Perhaps one could say that the creepy holiday has been zombified on campus — necromanced into a series of socially-distanced University "Halloweek" events.

On Saturday at 11:59 p.m., the yearly Midnight Halloween Organ Recital will be made available in a digital format so as to abide by pandemic guidelines. "Mark Steinbach, Brown University organist and senior lecturer in music, will perform the annual Midnight Halloween Organ Recital on the 1903 Hutchings-Votey pipe organ," wrote the University in an Instagram Story announcement.

Though audience members will watch the concert on Zoom rather than sprawled over the floors of Sayles Hall, the Halloween spirit will still mingle with the Providence air. The music will creep through the Hutchings-Votey Organ's "three manuals, with fifty-one speaking stops, more than three thousand pipes, wind reservoirs, and over one hundred miles of wiring," according to Encyclopedia Brunonia.

And, as Steinbach previously told The Herald, "In the 'vestiges of a daily chapel,' in a hall of ostentatious portraits, the organ usually assumes a foreboding air. But for Halloween night, with gaudy spider webs tangled around its pipes, the instrument becomes a symbol of unity on campus."

Some students long for the Brown Halloween experience that once was — the sort of unity incited by the organ concert in Sayles' Romanesque structure. Amelia Anthony '22 said her favorite Halloween memory on College Hill was at a house party last year, when she dressed as pop-singer Billie Eilish and her two friends as postmodernist writer David Foster Walllace and rapper Eminem. The trio, costumed as canonical creatives, "danced for three hours straight," she said. "We observed the ebbs and flows of the party while dancing and really felt the spirit of Halloween."

But Anthony's Halloween spirit has not dissipated in the midst of the pandemic, and she still remains optimistic for a spirited Oct. 31. Perhaps some sartorial splendor will be the medium that allows for the Halloween essence to persist.

"I usually brainstorm my Halloween costumes for the whole year," she said. Anthony, who plans to dress up as Amelia Earhart this year, suggests that the costumes might imbue the holiday with its usual vigor, even if dancing occurs alone in rooms rather than a crowd.

Another hopeful Halloween-lover, Hana Odson '21, is dressing up as 'for the love of god,' though she's not quite sure how the pun will materialize itself in costume yet.

All students are encouraged to submit their very best Halloween vestments virtually through the Instagram Halloween Costume Contest hosted by the Stephen Robert '62 Campus Center. The contest will take submissions until Sunday, and prizes will be awarded to the top three costumes.

"We hope to provide opportunities for virtual and in person community building during a week where students would typically have a lot of opportunities to come together in person," said Joie Steele, director of the Campus Center and student activities.

The Student Activities Office is not only sticking to virtual means of spooky socialization though, as there will be socially-distanced opportunities to get in the Halloween spirit on campus. "Some of the events were traditional things that were shifted to be virtual this year, and some events were planned to provide opportunities for students to come together in person on a smaller scale," Steele said.

These smaller, socially-distanced events include "Treats Under the Tents" and a Pumpkin Carving Contest, both of which are on Friday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The "Treats Under the Tents" serves as a "designated location for Grab & Go pumpkin spice cupcakes and apple cider donuts made from scratch by Christina Smith, bakeshop manager of Brown Dining Services," according to the event description.

According to Steele, all of the in-person events were structured specifically to abide by University social-distancing protocol: "Registration for the 'Treats under the Tents' event was designed to evenly distribute attendance across the five large tents that already existed on campus," she said. "All food offerings will be grab and go, and pumpkins will be picked up at multiple locations for students to carve at home."

At the Halloween-themed confection stands, registered students can also grab a pumpkin for the Pumpkin Carving Contest, which is to be returned to Sharpe Refectory by 2 p.m. Saturday for a virtual judging Halloween night.

And perhaps it is in these events that we might see hope for a future of Halloween celebrations at Brown.

"Halloweek provides a great way to group both new and existing events in one package. This might be something to build on even after we can return to a full in-person campus experience," Steele said.

It seems, then, that Providence's phantoms of Halloween are steadfast. Not even a pandemic can pause Halloween on College Hill, as the petrifying potions and spectral stories promise to persist through costume, community and chronicle.

Daniel Menaker, Book Editor Who Wrote With Wit, Dies at 79 - The New York Times

Posted: 27 Oct 2020 09:47 AM PDT

Daniel Menaker, who incubated literary celebrities as executive editor in chief of Random House and as a senior fiction editor of The New Yorker, and who, as a wry and discerning stylist, became a critically praised author himself, died on Monday at his home in New Marlborough, Mass. He was 79.

His wife, Katherine Bouton, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.

Mentored at The New Yorker by the storied editors William Shawn and William Maxwell, Mr. Menaker (pronounced MEN-uh-kur) oversaw mostly fiction at the magazine and edited reviews by the film critic Pauline Kael.

As a book editor, he helped polish the poetry and prose of Noah Baumbach, Michael Chabon, Billy Collins, Ted Conover, Mavis Gallant, Jonathan Kellerman, Colum McCann, Alice Munro, V.S. Pritchett, Salman Rushdie, Gary Shteyngart, Daniel Silva and Elizabeth Strout.

He also edited "Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics," the best-selling 1996 roman à clef inspired by Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. Its author, the columnist Joe Klein, was billed on the cover as "Anonymous" and was unknown even to Mr. Menaker and other Random House executives until after the book was published. (Mr. Menaker took credit for the title.)

With the author out of sight, that left Mr. Menaker — otherwise a faceless "paraliterary," as he put it — to be the book's public spokesman, a role, he told The New York Times, that gave him "the vicarious enjoyment of what it would be like to have a successful book of my own" and "the chance to glom onto someone else's success, in a somewhat shameless way."

His own half-dozen books were mostly critically acclaimed. They include "The Treatment" (1998), which The Times called his "engaging first novel," about a 32-year-old private-school teacher undergoing psychoanalysis (it was adapted for a film in 2006); "The Old Left and Other Stories" (1987) — Mr. Menaker twice won the O. Henry Award for his short stories — and "My Mistake" (2013), a bittersweet memoir.

Credit...Mariner Books

Credit...Random House

For "My Mistake," he opted for the conceit of writing it in the present tense. As he said in an interview with The Paris Review in 2014, "With a book that doesn't have anything truly remarkable in it — I wasn't captured and sexually violated for 10 years, I wasn't a jihadist, I didn't go into outer space — I had to figure out how I could make this more immediate."

In an acknowledgment that could pass for an epitaph, he marveled that he and his agent, Esther Newberg, had remained friends for so long.

"Just think of it — going on 50 years now," Mr. Menaker wrote. "Well, maybe don't think of it. As you told me recently, comfortingly and disturbingly, 'We can't die young anymore.'"

Robert Daniel Menaker was born on Sept. 17, 1941, in Manhattan to decidedly mixed lineage. His father, Robert Owen Menaker, who designed, sold and exported furniture to Mexico and South America, was the son of a Jewish immigrant from Russia whose rabbinical ancestry could supposedly be traced to King Solomon and who had been jailed in czarist Russia as a revolutionary. Mr. Menaker's mother, Mary R. Grace, the chief copy editor at Fortune magazine, was said to be a descendant of William the Conqueror.

A red-diaper baby, Mr. Menaker attended what he described as the "aptronymic" Little Red School House in Greenwich Village in the 1940s. His father was a Communist Party member who, on his travels to Mexico, spied on Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik revolutionary exiled by Stalin. (Daniel Menaker described his own politics as "anarcho-syndicalist.")

Daniel was 10 when his first contribution appeared in The New Yorker: a Talk of the Town item about a classmate who had identified Columbus's fleet as "the Atchison, the Topeka and the Santa Fe" railroads. Mr. Menaker told the arts journal The Brooklyn Rail in 2016: "Miraculously, they recast it a bit and published it. I guess it set me on the road to authorial vanity and perdition."

After attending Nyack High School in Rockland County, N.Y., he went to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where he majored in philosophy and poetry and was captain of the soccer team. While there, he said, he bought Bob Dylan's first album because he had mistaken Mr. Dylan for a Welsh folk singer. He was taught the guitar by Michael Meeropol, the older son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiring to spy for the Soviet Union and executed.

He graduated in 1963 and earned a master's in English at Johns Hopkins University.

Mr. Menaker married Ms. Bouton in 1980. A freelance writer at the time, she became an editor at The Times and is the author of books on hearing loss. In addition to her, he is survived by their son, Will, a founder and host of the political podcast Chapo Trap House; and a daughter, Elizabeth Menaker.

Mr. Menaker taught at the private Collegiate School in Manhattan (which provided fodder for "The Treatment") before he was hired by The New Yorker in 1968 as a fact checker. He was working as a copy editor when, by his account, Mr. Shawn dismissed him as a know-it-all, but not before telling him that he could stay on while taking as long as he needed to find another job.

It took 26 years, Mr. Menaker wrote.

He was redeemed when the magazine published a short story by him based on the death of his older brother at 29 — what Mr. Menaker would refer to as his biggest mistake. Though his brother had a frail knee, Mr. Menaker had dared him to play running back in a touch football game. His brother injured the knee, underwent surgery, contracted a blood infection during the operation and died of it in 1969.

"It has reaffirmed my belief that the past is the definition of inevitability," Mr. Menaker said in the Paris Review interview. "I had no choice but to do what I did with my brother during the touch football game, which was to goad him slightly. He had no choice but to take up the goad and to do what he did. And so I'm kind of at peace with it."

With The New Yorker focusing more on nonfiction, Mr. Menaker was eased out after Tina Brown took over as editor in the 1990s. Her husband, Harold Evans, the publisher of Random House, hired him to be a senior literary editor there in 1995. (Mr. Evans died in September.) After a brief hiatus as executive editor of HarperCollins, Mr. Menaker returned to Random House as executive editor in chief of the Random House Publishing Group in 2003. He left in 2007.

He was later the host of an online talk show about books called "TitlePage." Among his other books were "The Worst" (1979, with Charles McGrath), a ranking of objectionable items by category; and "A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation" (2010), which affirmed his bona fides as a grammarian. (He once praised the lawyer Joseph Welch's denunciation of Senator Joseph McCarthy — "Have you left no sense of decency?" — because he "ends up with 'decency' instead of 'left.'")

Just before he died, Mr. Menaker had completed a book of poems about cancer in a time of pandemic. Titled "Terminalia," the book is to be published this fall by Portal Press and distributed by n + 1 Foundation. Near the end of the volume, in a poem called "Last Will and Testament," he wrote that "to die lighter," he had made internal peace with four of those he had wronged and external peace with the rest. He added:

We are each of us a flotilla
of virtue, shame, honor, pride,
hatefulness — not the single barque we
think we are. And anyway, these four did no
more or less than what they had to do.
We believe we make our choices, but no —
they make us

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