Sun Fails to Illuminate Tragedy: Does It Matter?

Now that the auction of The Senator Theatre has been over for a while, I think it's time to reflect on some of the media coverage of the event. This is not to fight about the outcome, but just to raise the question of whether cultural literacy about symbolism matters in today's press.

On the day of the auction, the folks at The Senator had set up the auditorium, where the auctioneer had previously requested the auction to take place, with a Tragedy mask on the podium. I wouldn't have thought I had to explain to anyone with a basic education what this might look like, but it seems that I do. It looked like this:



The Baltimore Sun described it as [Kiefaber] "had hoped the proceedings would take place in the 900-seat auditorium, where he had set up a rostrum adorned with a giant frowning mask."

Now, I ask you. Is it really too much to expect that reporters for a major newspaper who are reporting on the auction sale of a theatre would understand that this "frowning mask" is called Tragedy and represents the concept of Tragedy and, together with its counterpart and opposite, Comedy, has adorned theatres since Ancient Greece? If so, I expect it's way too much of a stretch for them to also understand the symbolism, or the concept of Tragedy itself as defined in Aristotle's Poetics.

In classical tragedy, a noble hero who you'd think has a lot going for him is always brought low by one fatal flaw. In a more general, non-classical definition of tragedy, the requirement for it to be some grandly important downfall of a hero is gone, and a tragedy can become any story with an unfortunate ending.

Now, in this instance I don't care what side of the issue you find yourself on with regards to The Senator, whether you think, as I do, that Baltimore City has manipulated the situation inappropriately to seize control of something they don't fully understand, or whether you think, as the BDC and most of the media seems to, that it's all Tom's fault because he's a bad businessman. I think we can ALL agree that the fact that The Senator had to go to auction is a Tragedy.

So does it matter that the Sun completely missed the symbolism here? Or am I being a snob to think the reporters should have understood a concept I learned in junior high school drama class?

The People's Job is to Hold Government Accountable

I just want to respond briefly to some attitudes I have been seeing a lot lately among fellow Democrats. I'm talking about "don't criticize Obama, especially before he gets into office," and "we need to move forward, not punish the Bush administration." I believe both these attitudes are wrong.

I haven't been blogging a lot, but whenever I do, I keep seeing people expressing one or both of these sentiments. Most recently, I saw it in some of the comments on a piece written by actor John Cusack on Huffington Post. Mr. Cusack proposes two questions to be asked of AG nominee Eric Holder during his confirmation process: 1. Is waterboarding torture? 2. (Paraphrasing here) Given that the correct response to question number 1 is Yes, what is Mr. Holder going to do to see that the parties responsible for condoning torture in the Bush administration are prosecuted? I heartily agree with his essay. We do need to stop torture, and the war criminals in the Bush administration need to be punished.

Now, many of the commenters on that piece gave variations of the two attitudes I described: "don't criticize Obama" or "we need to move forward." Here's why I think they're wrong:

Punishing members of the Bush administration for their crimes isn't really about looking backwards or being punitive. There are elements of that, but it's really about upholding justice and the rule of law. If Bush and Cheney get away with their crimes, what will prevent the next leader who thinks he or she is above the law from doing the same or worse? The founding fathers of the United States envisioned a government that was accountable to the people. What's more, they envisioned the people taking an active role in holding the government accountable. It's the only way our system works. Without that, a crucial piece of our system of government is missing. The people are supposed to be the ultimate check on abuse of power.

Here's where the second attitude that I'm objecting to comes in: "Fellow Democrats shouldn't criticize Obama." Say what? This is the same attitude Republicans tried to enforce about Bush. Don't criticize the President. Baloney. Democrats that have this "party loyalty uber alles" attitude have been objecting to progressives trying to push Obama to the left, or basically anyone who expects him to do anything that might inconvenience him. Again, I say baloney. Being President isn't supposed to be easy or convenient. He is supposed to be answerable to the people. We the people are supposed to be telling him what we expect of him and holding him accountable.

If he's not doing enough to investigate and prosecute Bush administration crimes, we need to let him know. If he's not doing enough to fight off economic depression by working from the bottom up, we need to let him know that too --- as some members of the Senate, such as Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, did recently (and were criticized for it by Obama loyalists). Democrats, progressives, liberals, our job to hold government accountable doesn't stop when people we elected are in power. Kudos to those who know this. To those who don't: get used to it.

Book Review: The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie

There is no question that Salman Rushdie is a gifted storyteller. The mysterious fairy tale he weaves in his new novel, The Enchantress of Florence, certainly kept my attention right up until the end. The language used here is beautiful and lush. Consider the wonderful image conveyed in the opening passage:

“In the day’s last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold. A traveler coming this way at sunset – this traveler, coming this way, now, along the lakeshore road – might believe himself to be approaching the throne of a monarch so fabulously wealthy that he could allow a portion of his treasure to be poured into a giant hollow in the earth to dazzle and awe his guests.”

Throughout the book, there is a fascinating structure created by echoes of similar (often magical) events reverberating through time and space. The book consists of stories within stories within stories, and at times seems to be more about the storyteller’s art than anything else.

“All men needed to hear their stories told. He was a man, but if he died without telling the story he would be something less than that, an albino cockroach, a louse.”

That this passage mentions all MEN may be more telling than Rushdie would wish it to be, especially for a novel purporting to center on the story of a woman.

The titular enchantress is a Mughal princess who disappears from her own land and eventually makes her way to Florence, Italy. The story is never truly and directly told from her perspective, however, and the second major focal point is the odd Western man calling himself the Mogor dell’Amore who arrives years later at the court of the Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great to tell her story as it concerns him.

Throughout all the multiple layers of story are women, mostly courtesans and prostitutes, who are described mostly from a male perspective and consequently never seem quite real. The author seems to know this, at least subconsciously, since one of these women is actually an imaginary bride the Emperor invents for himself. The women in this novel are male fantasies, for the most part, or in a few cases male nightmares, but not real women. In fact, many of the female characters even carry the names of objects: Skeleton, Mattress, Mirror, and even Palace of Memories.

Rushdie does make an effort to describe a more complex character in a few of the female characters, specifically the “enchantress,” but they remain two-dimensional. They are beautiful and (fill in the blank), but usually only one or two other characteristics.

That the women in the book seem unreal to the last is a factor that lessened my enjoyment of the story. At times I felt that Rushdie was not just describing sexist cultures of the past, but was in fact being sexist himself. Perhaps, however, the Emperor’s fantasy wife is an indication that Rushdie does not mean these women to be real, but only to describe men’s reactions to women.

I saw a second major flaw in the ending, which I will not describe. I’ll just say it’s problematic. The general nature of the problem is that in a book that has been a magical fantasy all along, the author suddenly gets over-concerned for believability at the end; he creates a “logical” explanation for one of the book’s major mysteries, and the logic simply doesn’t bear much examination. The book would have remained more internally consistent, in my opinion, if the sense of wonder and magic were simply allowed to carry the day.

This book has been getting a lot of attention, with two reviews and one other article in the New York Times alone. Though some other reviewers have also been less than impressed with the book, it’s interesting that there seems to be no consensus on why it doesn’t quite work. The criticisms I have offered here differ greatly from what I read in the New York Times from other reviewers.

David Gates finds that it’s the magical or supernatural aspects themselves that are the problem. After quoting from the opening passage, as I have also done, he states:

“And sure enough, that’s where he began to lose me. I’m probably not Rushdie’s target audience: in literature, at least, I find the marvelous tedious, and the tedious — as rendered by a Beckett or a Raymond Carver or even a Kafka — marvelous.”

I can’t agree with this perspective. I experience quite enough of mundane reality in real life. I want magic in my fiction. I do find that it has to be grounded in reality, however, at least by characters that seem like real people thrust into extraordinary circumstances. For me, it’s not the magical aspects of the book that fail, but those that are supposed to touch base with reality and don’t.

Michiko Katukani calls the construction of the book “conventional” and “academic” and concludes that the book is “devoid of magic.” He also thinks “the novel gains narrative momentum in its final chapters.”

I can’t agree with this, either. I do think the book has a strongly magical quality, but I think it falls apart toward the end.

I can’t truthfully say that I didn’t enjoy reading this book. I just wish it had been better. In spite of its flaws, you may enjoy it, if you want a reading experience that will transport you to exotic locales and a world of magic.