America’s Sick Healthcare System: a personal story

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Violence – especially gun violence and murder –is inexcusable and must be punished fully according to the law. What’s also inexcusable is the absolutely sickening, disgusting state of healthcare in this country. It is immoral, unethical, and (if you are religious) sinful.

The **********s who run the healthcare companies in this country ought to be quaking in their boots now for the way they milk innocent citizens of their money and right to healthcare. My bill for the 2014 car accident—admitted to the trauma ER, and then one night in the trauma ward— was $38,000. That’s right, 38 thousand dollars. The cost of a very high-quality car or SUV, or even someone’s salary for a year. I saw the itemizations: $10 for a single pain reliever pill, $30 for the hospital gown, etc. Fortunately, the car insurance covered the whole bill. Not to mention all of the expenses that I have had to pay for healthcare over the decades, when I have had individual plans that denied or didn’t cover so many things that should be covered.

The state of healthcare in this country MUST change. Enough deaths and illnesses due to a lack of- or poor coverage!!

TWOL IS BACK!! Packing a Punch—Works that Deliver at the End

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Hello, dear readers and apologies for the unexpectedly-long hiatus. It’s good to be back and I hope you will enjoy this post. As always, thanks for reading! (SPOILER ALERT for the two works discussed, Lucy Gayheart and “Saltburn.”)

I had a conversation with a writer friend about my own novel revision and how I am trying to cut down on length. I told her that one solution I’m thinking of is to make the final part shorter but very impactful. And I cited two examples that did this. One is a novel, and one is a film; they both seem a bit slow in the beginning and don’t have so much dramatic tension throughout (especially the film). But toward the end, both hit you with surprises that put everything that came before in context.

This spring, I read a novel by my favorite author Willa Cather called Lucy Gayheart. Tripartite in structure, Book I addresses the developing romance between young pianist Lucy Gayheart and renowned opera singer Clement Sebastian. Briefly, we see Lucy spending time with her community in her Nebraska town, ice skating with a young man named Harry Gordon who likes her and that she seems to like as well, and then her departure for Chicago. We wonder why there is not so much background, and why certain details and characters are highlighted. A talented accompanist, she begins playing for Sebastian, and it is not long before she falls in love. Granted, there are some weaknesses in the first part of the novel, namely, the development of their love affair and Sebastian’s dialogue, which seems a bit stilted and formal. Harry Gordon comes to visit and proposes marriage, but she rejects him since she is in love with the opera singer. Sebastian dies in a tragic boating accident, leaving Lucy in utter devastation. This first section of the novel is 114 pages long.

Lucy returns to Nebraska in Book II (which is shorter than Book I). We see the connections with her community that got the short shrift in Book I. The seemingly minor characters that were mentioned in the beginning of part one play a more important role. Harry has married someone else on the rebound, and barely gives her the time of day when they see each other. Not a whole lot happens here, as Lucy is grieving and detached. However, after some time passes, Lucy decides to go back to Chicago and begin accompanying again. She has seen a visiting opera singer, and her love of music is rekindled. We assume she can emerge from her tragedy and build a happy life again. Lucy comes out of her shell slowly and in an echo of the opening of the novel, chooses to go ice skating on a bitterly cold day. She changes her mind. Harry Gordon happens to be driving by, and she begs him to stop and give her a ride, but he refuses, as he has an appointment out of town. Lucy proceeds to skate and drowns. All of this is accomplished in 48 pages, which is significantly shorter than Book I. We wonder how all this tragedy can ever be resolved: Sebastian’s death, Lucy’s death, and Harry’s guilt for marrying someone else and not having helped her in a time of need. What can really come of this, given that two of the protagonists are dead?

Book III is the shortest of all, clocking in at only 22 pages, and in it, Harry Gordon has tried to assuage his guilt by developing a decades-long friendship with Lucy’s father Jacob and bearing with a pleasant but loveless marriage. After Mr. Gayheart dies, the Gayhearts’ house goes to Harry, as he was the banker who had made loans to Jacob. The novel concludes with an extremely powerful, poignant scene where Harry enters the Gayhearts’ house, goes up to Lucy’s room, looks at all her things, and takes the small, framed photograph of Clement Sebastian with him. This small gesture hits the reader with such emotion and power that one can forgive Cather of some underdeveloped characters and prose. The structure of the novel has been building up to Book III and its conclusion, and it is completely powerful and unexpected. The chain of events that had led to both Lucy’s and Harry’s unhappiness had started with Clement Sebastian; it seems only fitting that the story come full circle with Sebastian and Harry “meeting” at the end, as they are the two men who were prominent in Lucy’s life.

Emerald Fennell’s brilliant film “Saltburn” seems superficially a modern take on Brideshead Revisited. The poor, socially awkward Oliver befriends the handsome, charismatic aristocrat Felix Catton. Felix invites Oliver to stay with him over the summer when Oliver explains that his home life is very dysfunctional. Oliver is a Dickensian waif: poor, outcast, getting by solely on his wits and talents. We believe this is going to be a story of pity, the handsome rich man and his impoverished, tagalong friend. The classic trope of the plucky young lower-class person who climbs their way up the social ladder.

And indeed, Oliver is a fish out of water, unfamiliar with upper class way and sensing the taint of condescension under the Cattons’ kindness. Slowly, we get small signs that something is not quite right with Oliver, such as a few sexual acts that aren’t quite motivated out of genuine desire, but a twisted form of resentment against the aristocratic Cattons and lust for Felix. (Of course, the bathtub scene!) However, as viewers, we chalk it up to class differences, and suppressed homosexuality. It is only when they go, upon Felix’s insistence, to visit Oliver’s parents that we find he is not a poor orphan but a young man from a stable, happy, middle-class family. Oliver is a liar! The dynamic shifts, for the film is not just about class differences, but about psychological disturbance–it is now more “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” After Felix dies (we begin to wonder if Oliver was involved, but the “can’t unsee it” masturbation scene on Felix’s grave still suggests a twisted, deep love that Oliver has for his friend), things rapidly become darker, as his sister Venetia apparently commits suicide in the bathtub. Oliver is asked to leave Saltburn.

Still, all of this is speculation; we don’t know if these deaths are causation or correlation, if Oliver is simply shady or a sociopath. We are near the end of the film, the ending has to pack a punch, or else this whole film is a waste, simmering but never coming to a climax. Emerald Fennell delivers. Oliver meets Felix’s mother Elspeth in a café and rekindles their connection. As she is dying, Oliver confesses he was responsible for the murders of her son and daughter, that he manipulated her and got her to bequeath Saltburn and all her money to him. As if this isn’t stunning enough, Fennell gives us the gut punch, jaw-dropping ending: Oliver kills Elspeth by taking her off life-support and celebrates by dancing naked around Saltburn. These confessions and the final murder bring everything to a dramatic, disturbing, and delicious conclusion.

Emerald Fennell has paced the film so that, just as in Willa Cather’s novel, the last act is the most compressed but the most dramatic. There are three acts, roughly, as in the novel related to time and place: Oxford as students, Saltburn in the summer, and Saltburn years later. Without knowing that Oliver is a horrific murderer, we might read the film as social commentary, the eternal English theme of class differences, albeit with a 21st century twist and more compassion.

In sum, these two works show that the conventional structure of a novel or film can be reconsidered; though the stakes are increasing throughout, it is the ending that makes the difference, due to the compression of emotional intensity and plot events. Having the last part be the briefest and most dramatic gives the reader or viewer something to reflect on, helps put what occurred before in perspective. It allows for a lack of development or backstory in the earlier part of the work. This is a very interesting strategy, structurally. It’s something that writers of any genre may like to incorporate in their future works.

Why We Need Poetry

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Excuse the hiatus, dear readers, but TWOL is happy to be back!

What is more poverty-inducing and arcane than fiction writing? If you guessed poetry, you might be right. In American society, the poet suffers even more greatly than fiction writer (although, ironically, we have a United States Poet Laureate, who is currently Ada Limón). Poetry is a shorter form, and therefore while it might be easier to publish a poem, there is such a slim market for chapbooks (=printed volumes usually for poetry that are not as long as a regular fiction book) that sustaining a career as a poet is a near impossibility without another profession such as teaching poetry in an academic setting or English, or another profession altogether. This is not unheard of for fiction writers; however, one can write commercial fiction and do quite well, or be a writer in a different capacity such as a tech writer or for an institution.

One might ask, why even write poetry at all? To which my response is, this is exactly why we need poetry. American society is overly practical, efficiency is one of the most lauded virtues, and language is used in a very straightforward fashion. Compare British and American English–you might find that the former is more flowery and ornate. Poetry gives us the opportunity to use language in a more unique, lyrical manner, and not be so logical. We can use it in a narrative fashion to tell a story in a less through-composed way, or in a confessional way to express our deepest sentiments. It can be used dramatically, onstage, though this has generally fallen out of fashion. However, actors will tell you that the best playwrights find the poetry in the language. Also, we do not speak in rhyme or alliteration, and poetry allows us to do this, to find the sense of play in how we phrase things.

Poetry also gives us continuity with the past. Countless cultures have used poetry to tell myths, epic sagas, religious tales, and to entertain. Poetry was favored in times of low literacy, for we were able to rely on our oral and aural skills to memorize the sounds and patterns of the words. Epics like the Hindu Mahabharata or the Finnish Kalevala are incredibly vital to their people and provide outsiders tremendous insight into the culture, linguistics, society, history, etc. of a culture.

Perhaps the phenomenon of bad poetry is what puts many people off. We’ve all seen the Morose Poet droning on and on in a café somewhere about her woes or read works that seem convoluted and inaccessible. Yes, those exist, but they are only part of the whole body of work. It was quite fascinating in my MFA program to have been required to attend lectures given by poets, and my undergrad coursework featured a couple of poetry courses (including two with Jonathan Wordsworth–William’s descendent–when studying abroad at Oxford University!) Poetry can inform fiction writers, because it teaches us about the richness of language and the precision and beauty of it. And this is not a phenomenon limited to the English language, for if you look at the Nobel laureates in literature, there are many poets among them, such as Szymborska, Tagore, Neruda, and yes, our own Bob Dylan.

Poetry is not esoteric; it is our most fundamental impulse with language. One of the earliest things that English speakers learn is the ABC song, which is set up to rhyme. And the basis of all popular songs is poetry–perhaps the most accessible, daily source of poetry that we have.

Children’s Book Recommendation: Paul Many’s My Breathing Earth

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Dear readers,

I wanted to recommend a book by a wonderful writer in my (literary fiction) writing group which is actually a children’s book! Called My Breathing Earth, it is absolutely poetic and lyrical. It follows a girl through a day where the wind or, as it is referred to throughout the book so beautifully, “Earth’s breath,” and its presence in the world. The wind provides a line of continuity throughout the book–interesting how a natural element is used for narrative!–and the child’s eye sees what the wind can do, like making chimes tinkle but also knocking over plants. It can transport soap bubbles or raise kites, waft the smell of dinner upstairs. It is there when we go to sleep at night and will be ready for our awakening the next morning.

            Kudos to the illustrator, Tisha Lee, who has done a great job of making very appealing drawings for children. She has a unique color scheme, and her choices complement the text perfectly. What is especially noteworthy is that she has depicted a biracial family, something so necessary when the children’s book industry has, up until recent times, been extremely lacking in diversity. Children need to feel included, and children also have a natural affinity for nature. This book does a good job of addressing both issues in a fun, readable, and beautiful way that even adults will enjoy.

Understanding the Violin

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I have recently returned to playing the violin after a long hiatus (in which, among other things, I have focused on opera singing and did an MFA). It is something as vital and fundamental to me as breathing, as I began when I was 4 ½. To those who don’t play, the violin can be a mysterious, seemingly inaccessible phenomenon, bizarre with its strings and bow and movements that look unnatural. There are those who may be off put by the sound of beginners, comparing it to a screeching cat or any other pejorative. And there are others who simply do not care for the sound, even when played by an Itzhak Perlman or Sarah Chang. Many parents hope to instill a love of music in their children through enrolling them in violin lessons and are often met with great resistance. But to those of us who played, the violin is neither mysterious nor resistible. Here are some points to help dispel any myths.

-The violin is indeed a difficult instrument to play. Let’s be honest. It involves setting the pitches oneself with the left hand on the strings, developing a keen sense of intonation. There are no buttons or valves or frets or keys. Everybody knows when a violin is played out of tune, and perhaps that is why people often express a dislike of the instrument. To get a sound out of the violin, the bow must be drawn in line across the strings, which is easier said than done. It takes a great deal of time to learn how to do this in the beginning, with just the right amount of pressure so that it doesn’t sound airy or–even worse–scratchy (this is probably another reason why people dislike the violin.)

-However, once this is accomplished, once there is a basic level of technique and the ability to play produce a decent sound, one can play nice songs. The violin is the instrument most frequently compared to the voice because there is a fluidity of sound much like in singing. Add vibrato, which is a vibrating movement of the left hand on the strings, and this becomes even more beautiful. Vibrato is not an easy thing to do for a violinist, because it requires the right amount of movement–it can’t be too fast, or else it sounds frenetic, but it can’t be too slow because that sounds more like wobbling between two pitches.

–The violin is very versatile once a certain level of mastery is attained. One can play in an orchestra, in a quartet or chamber music ensemble, in a string/chamber orchestra, as a soloist with an orchestra, and if one wants to branch out into other genres of music, there are jazz, tango, Romani music, rock, bluegrass, folk, etc. etc. (not to mention in South Indian classical violin and other non-western music.) 

-Each genre of violin playing requires different skills. In an orchestra, one must subsume one’s ego to the conductor’s musical vision. In a quartet or chamber music ensemble, each musician holds equal weight and can help lead the ensemble. As a soloist–like the artists who are highlighted on a symphony’s performance calendar–a violinist must have a clear vision of the concerto or piece, be able to perform the “pyrotechnics” written by the composer and indicate to- and communicate with the conductor nonverbally, so that the conductor can guide the orchestra appropriately.

-The violin demands practice. There are two hands that must work together, and yet will often be worked separately, or focused on one at a time during practice. There might be certain exercises that are meant for the left hand, and others for the bow hand. This is not unlike the piano. However, unlike the piano, one hand cannot play alone (except in the rare occasions of passages with left-hand pizzicato where the left hand plays the strings).

-The violin really is fun! There is nothing quite like drawing the rosin-coated bow hairs across the strings, hearing the sound right next to your head, seeing the motion and feeling it in your hands, moving your fingers percussively, doing various “tricks” with the bow to produce different sounds. It is an instrument that demands patience, but the results are worth it. Playing the violin ranks among the highest of cognitive tasks, so it will keep your brain active and engaged for a lifetime. It’s never too late to start. Though you may not end up a professional, you can enjoy the challenges of this unique, demanding, and ultimately stunning instrument.

The Traits of a Good Conductor

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I recently had a chance (but was not able) to go see Edo de Waart conduct John Adams’s “The Chairman Dances,” which is one of my desert island pieces. De Waart conducted the original recording that Adams himself uploaded to YouTube. However, I did get to see a live performance of the piece last weekend, as luck would have it, along with my beloved Sibelius No. 2 in D which I played in All-State Orchestra. It got me thinking about a childhood spent playing in orchestras, something I absolutely adored and was thrilled to get out of school for. What makes for a good conductor? What were some of the memorable experiences I remember? As an adult, I have sung in a few choruses and ensembles. I have also studied and done a bit of conducting, so this contributes to my understanding of the field.

A conductor is not supposed to be “nice.” Granted, s/he must not be abusive or inappropriate, and thank goodness for the changes that are being made to create safer musical environments. We do not need Levine’s behavior again or a fictitious Lydia Tár. But some musicians complain about conductors who are tough and not friendly while conducting, to which my answer is, they are not there to be your friend. A conductor should be demanding. His/her number one priority is to get the best sound possible out of the orchestra or chorus. Did the second violins not get that passage right? Well then, let’s do it again with that section until we get it right. Are the altos coming in too early? Then let’s try the entrance with all four voices. The conductor’s priority is the sound, and the various instruments/voices are the components that comprise that sound.

The popular opinion is that a conductor is simply beating time, but there is so much more to the art. How well does a conductor cue the instruments’ entrances? Indicate dynamics? How does the conductor beat time–with a baton or with hands, slightly ahead of- or right on the beat? Not even top-tier orchestra conductors do this well– there is one who comes to mind whom I dare not mention, but his conducting style was with his hands cupped and rather odd. Does the conductor emote in an over-the-top way, like a Bernstein, or is s/he more subdued, indicating only the minimum, trusting that the musicians are reading the score and having an internal sense of how to express the composer’s intentions? And on that last point, the style of conducting will vary based on the composer. A concerto grosso or Handel opera will require different demands than a Mahler symphony or a 20th century work by William Grant Still.

A good conductor knows what to highlight in the music. If conducting Dvořák, the strings are especially lyrical. Sibelius often features majestic, powerful brass, but it must not overpower the lighter instruments. The aforementioned “The Chairman Dances” requires razor-sharp, precision timing with absolutely no room for error. The conductor knows how to get the best tone color from each instrument, and what the musicians in each section are able to do. The woodwinds might be very strong in an orchestra, but the basses weak, for example, or there might be the proverbial problem of not enough tenors in a chorus, so the repertoire chosen must be suited to that issue.

Certain exercises can be very helpful even if the ensemble members find them unorthodox. When I was a senior in high school, during All-State Orchestra the conductor had each pair of stand partners sit in a different place in an orchestra, i.e., a pair of tubas might sit next to a pair of violins, etc. This was a wonderful and challenging exercise because it forced each instrument to be very aware of their part, their entrances, and to be able to maintain their own musical line while sitting next to a completely different instrument that was doing something else. When in junior high, I had a great privilege of attending a string orchestra camp where the gifted Robert Spano was conducting us (even at my young age, I knew he would be going places.) He made us play a line of Corelli over and over, looking to see that we were within 2 inches of the other violinists’ bows to maintain a consistency of sound. While some might call this exigent, fussy, or demanding, to me, it was a sign of a brilliant conductor who respected the music. The exercise has stuck with me all these years, and I suppose subconsciously I still observe how closely the violinists’ bow strokes are to each other in an orchestra.

Opera is a whole different beast which merits its own blog post, but an opera conductor must lead the orchestra as well as the singers on stage (who are at a whole different eye level). What makes this especially challenging is that the conductor must lead the orchestra according to the singers. Granted, singers must not take excessive liberties with the music, but the orchestra is there to serve the singer, not the other way around. If the singer is taking rubato, for example, the conductor must be aware of this and make sure that the orchestra is observing exactly what the singer is doing, even if they think the piece needs to resume a tempo. This sounds like an obvious thing to do, and yet I have observed countless professional performances where this does not happen.

Finally, there is the point of women conductors. Women make for excellent conductors, as we are often multitaskers. Often, we have to juggle many things at once–career, children, spouse–and these skills are a big asset to conducting. One could argue that women by nature are expressive and have a biology that allows us to be very much in touch with our emotions. We have strongly developed right and left brains. I was fortunate to be conducted by a Bowling Green State University named Emily Freeman Brown professor as a child, and a couple others along the way. However, it is quite disheartening to see the dearth of women conductors in the top tiers, though that is slowly changing, thanks to Marin Alsop and those who have come before and after her. And it is disheartening to think that there are fewer minority professional women conductors–I can’t think of one. This is something that must change, and women have to be encouraged and give us the opportunities to rise in the field of major professional conducting. There is no good reason why a woman isn’t as good of a conductor as a man, and precedent is no excuse.

Across the Divide: Intergenerational Friendships

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I am on a zoom writing session right now with two friends from my MFA program: one is a stylish, active grandmother who is decades older than me, the other is several years older than me with two grown children. Shortly before, a friend who is in her mid 20s texted me with career woes. And last night, I had dinner with friends who are the same age. Later today, I will drop off some food for a friend who is in her 80s. What does this tell me? That it is important to have friends across all age groups.

Our modern society is very compartmentalized and very individualistic. It can be very isolating, and utterly ignorant of those with different views, especially based on their age. We also have a lack of historicity in American society: people only know what people of their age group and generation believe in. I believe cancel culture relates to this, as well as the right-wing ideologies against teaching race, gender, etc. that are so pervasive now. When we don’t understand how ideas and values change over time, we are in danger. If a well-meaning older man in a shop says to a woman “Good morning, miss,” it might be because his mother told him never to address a woman directly by first name, and to be a gentleman. If a young person says that their ethnic group is targeted by the police at statistically proven rates, it is necessary to take them seriously, even if you are not personally racist. We really need to understand where people are coming from, and what the morés of the time in which they grew up were. If they are outdated and discriminatory, we need to question that and not continue the pattern. Both the right and left have a responsibility to understand history.

When it comes to books, as a writer I am naturally in support of reading everything. If there are racist or colonial themes, then read books and discuss them, understanding the context in which the book was written–the history, the culture, the economics, the views on race, religion, etc. etc. Don’t ban a work of literature that is otherwise magnificent just because there are painful things. We can learn from pain; in fact, we MUST learn from pain, because that is the only way not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Put those books from the past in dialogue with modern works. Ask questions about the author and try to understand if that author was perhaps progressive for their time, even though those views may not be acceptable now. Don’t cancel a writer event just because they said one thing that you disagree with, or that you in particular happen to find offensive, assuming that the author had malicious intent. Ask yourself what your own biases are, too. Alice Walker herself said (at a talk I attended) to read books from opposing points of view, books written by the enemy.

All cultural politics aside, there is something beautiful about cross-generational friendships and what we can learn about history and life from them. The octogenarian friend mentioned above grew up in the golden age of Hollywood, and I revel in hearing her stories about various cultural figures in classical music as well as in film. I seek life and home advice from a friend close in age who happened to become a mother and married very young. I talk about men and relationships and recipes with a friend who is a decade older than me. And the millennial mentioned above has much in common with me when I was the same age, trying to figure out what I wanted to do after college while working at a job I didn’t love, discovering opera, facing the challenges of learning how to sing, and marveling in the appeal of New York City. I love answering her questions, from the profound to mundane (dishwasher woes!), as she feels comfortable turning to me for guidance. We are all part of a chain as humans, with one hand reaching up for wisdom from others, and one hand reaching down to impart wisdom to others. In sum, we need each other, and the more we cross age divides, the richer our lives will be.

How to Become Global as a Writer

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One of the criticisms hurled at American writers is that they are too narrow-minded and know very little about writers elsewhere, past and present. I have written about this in other posts (https://thewomenofletters.com/2013/05/24/the-need-for-a-national-writer/), but it is a topic worth revisiting. In listening to “The World” on NPR a couple days ago, it struck me about the importance of being well-informed about world affairs in politics as a writer. I recently Zoomed with friends from the international polyglot conference, and it was fascinating as always to talk about different languages, sounds, and cultures. I have a background in international education, so the intersection of culture and literature is always of interest to me. So here are some thoughts and suggestions for writers to expand their horizons to become more global in their sensibility.

-Read Nobel laureates. Over the past decade plus, I have chosen to educate myself about literary figures who are titans overseas but often unknown here. I have gotten to know the work of Orhan Pamuk, J.M.G. Le Clezio, Shaw (who is known but considered old-fashioned), and others. A friend from my MFA program recently started a book group to women Nobel laureates in literature, and last month we read Grazia Deledda’s Reeds in the Wind. The excitement for the group was indeed palpable, and I am certainly looking forward to the next meeting. Why not create a book group of your own to read Nobel laureates, women only or both genders? 

-Inform yourself about world affairs. Don’t just rely on American news sources but read international newspapers/news sites such as the BBC or international newspapers’ English editions. Take an interest in what is going on in the world politically, socially, culturally, etc. You might find inspiration for your own work. Susan Minot, who is educated in that most American of institutions, a prep school, and whose great story “Lust” is quintessentially American, wrote Thirty Girls, which was based on her reporting for McSweeney’s on the kidnapping of girls by the Lord’s Resistance Army in sub-Saharan Africa.

-Learn other languages. Author Lydia Davis translates French literature, and Jhumpa Lahiri has studied and written in Italian. Read literature in other languages if you can, even if it is short stories, or even websites. As a polyglot, I can say that it will enrich your mind to understand how to speakers of other languages think and use language.

-Read literature in translation. There’s no question that something does indeed get “lost in translation” as the saying goes, but still, we get a different literary sensibility with literature in translation, and it transports us to different places. The Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic’ incorporates not only culture and history, but metafiction a work of literature that is mind-blowing.

Dictionary of the Khazars: Milorad Pavic’’s Brilliant Balkan Babbling
An Alternate Take on Dictionary of the Khazars

-Read other genres. Popular literature has a global appeal (think Harry Potter) as does fantasy (think Tolkien). There are certain universals that readers everywhere like. Myths abound all over the world, and in non-“People of the Book” religions.

-Read myths and creation stories and tales from other religions. Hinduism is based on two great epics, the Mahabharatha and the Ramayana which are quite spectacular and Tolstoyan in their scope and number of characters.

-Tie in history, culture, politics, or a larger social context to your work. This is self-explanatory. It makes your story or novel larger than what it is.

And there are many other ways that you can get to know the stories of others around the world. What will you discover? What is your advice?

A Tribute to Gurinder Chadha, British-Indian Director and Pioneer

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The film “Bend It Like Beckham” just turned 20 this year. It is my movie equivalent of mac and cheese, a movie I turn to when I want something warm and comforting and familiar. I can probably even recite most of the lines by heart! The near-perfect script is written by Gurinder Chadha, her husband Paul Mayeda Berges, and Guljit Bindra, and is directed by Chadha herself. The film set all kinds of box office records in the UK and was a hit around the world. Though my Indian background is quite different than Chadha’s, I have great admiration for her body of work and what she has done to pave the way for South Asian women in film.

Of Sikh descent but born in Nairobi, Chadha is British-Indian and quite an excellent representative of the community. A filmmaker beginning at a time when there were very few women filmmakers, let alone minority women filmmakers, she has addressed a variety of themes and subject matter that speak to the Indian community in Britain and in the diaspora as well as in India. But she takes things a step further, showing how these Indian communities relate to- and interact with the larger world.

Chadha usually puts women at the front of her films, and they hold key roles. Consider “Bhaji on the Beach,” which was Chadha’s breakout film as a feature film director. The ensemble cast features a group of women on a day trip to the beach–and not just women, but South Asian British women of all ages. This was a big deal in 1993, when it was released. “Bride and Prejudice,” a brilliantly fun and true-to-the original musical retelling of Austen’s classic novel, deals with marriage in a family of four daughters in the Punjab, with Bollywood megastar Aishwarya Rai as the Elizabeth Bennett character. Chadha shows an outspoken Indian character confronting a wealthy American man and his formidable mother; if we examine this more deeply, it is not just a tale of romance, but also a critique of colonialism and imperialism. And yet it is woven into an enjoyable story, complete with catchy songs to dance to. Chadha never loses her sense of fun as she gets a message across. 

Chadha is equally at ease with Indian characters as she is with non-Indian characters, making them all seem authentic. The Los Angeles families of different ethnicities in “What’s Cooking?” (a flawed but enjoyable Thanksgiving movie) are all different yet so similar in their humanity. They aren’t stereotypes created by a white director, but real families who are Latino, Vietnamese, Jewish, and Black. It doesn’t hurt that her husband Paul Mayeda Berges was a co-writer, and he is from California and of Basque and Japanese heritage. The Paxton family in “Bend It Like Beckham” come across like a typical lower-middle-class English family, with the mother’s highly conventional attitudes about gender roles and Indians. In “Quais de Seine,” Chadha’s contribution to the marvelous “Paris, je t’aime,” the lead character is a Muslim young woman (not even British Indian and Sikh or Hindu) who is befriended/romanced by a young Frenchman who resents her being bullied. It is two characters of completely different backgrounds to Chadha’s, in a different country, and of a different religion, and yet it is one of the strongest shorts in the film compilation. I believe this is because Chadha has a way of getting to the emotional heart of the situation and characters, in the way only a master director can. “Blinded by the Light” juxtaposes two seemingly unlikely things–a British Pakistani teenager and the music of Bruce Springsteen–that over the course of the film come together beautifully in a way that intertwines culture, racism, politics, economics, religion, and the power of music.

“Viceroy’s House” is her most serious film and one that has deep personal meaning to her. It addresses The Partition and Mountbatten’s departure from India. Naturally, the British characters are some of the lead roles; however, Nehru and Jinnah are equally important and there is a subplot that features Indian characters and deals with religion. There are some, especially historians, who criticized its lack of gravity and accuracy, and these criticisms maybe true. However, it is rare to find a film beautifully dramatizes and makes accessible a significant event in history that too few in the West know about.

Some might find Chadha’s films to be a little melodramatic or not serious enough. These criticisms are also valid, as tastes differ. Some also find her characters or even her film “Bend It Like Beckham” to be too predictable. This is also a valid criticism. Chadha’s primary goal is to entertain, and no one could ever accuse her films of not being entertaining. But she entertains in a way that is South Asian-focused, intelligent, multicultural, and socially relevant. One could also apply these adjectives to the filmmaker herself, who always comes across as jolly and friendly in interviews. There is no one really quite like Gurinder Chadha, who has an impressive body of work, and is truly a groundbreaker in the world of film.

Film Review: Tár [some spoilers]

/ The Women of Letters / Leave a comment

Being a classical musician, of course I was intrigued about the film “Tár” about a leading orchestral conductor who gets “canceled” after several inappropriate incidents. I am a Cate Blanchett fan, as she is an incredible, versatile actress who has the physicality to embody any character she plays (her Bob Dylan portrayal was the best in “I’m Not There,” better than any of the men!) Normally, I avoid films with a much higher critics’ rating than audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, as this usually means the films are frankly quite boring, “critics’ darlings” that are pretentious and hard to watch. Unfortunately, this was the case with “Tár.” It raises more questions than it has time to answer and doesn’t live up to its potential.

The film is too long. At nearly 2 hours and 40 minutes, the pace drags, and the film would have gained urgency had it been cut down by 45 minutes to an hour. Director Todd Field spends too much time exalting and glorifying the character of Lydia Tár at the beginning. Yes, we get it–she is one of the top conductors in the world, on par with Nézet-Séguin or MTT or Salonen. Yes, she is a woman conductor of top-tier orchestras, still a rarity these days, in the vein of Marin Alsop (whom the character seems to resemble in some ways) or JoAnn Falletta. Yes, the film needs to set her up at someone great so we can see her downfall and her abuse of power. But it all gets to be too much. As any writer knows, overdoing things and a lack of subtlety is a sign of a sophomoric work. It doesn’t trust the reader or viewer to grasp that Tár is great, and instead hits them over the head with the point. This is just one example of Field’s heavy-handed directing.

What is unique is the character herself, and a film that puts a strong woman at the center and shows that women can abuse power too, not just men: successful people of all orientations are guilty of sexual harassment and can have partners/spouses who enable their bad behavior, as is implied in this film with her wife Sharon, who never really speaks up till the end. Tár prefers young women whom she can mentor and then get involved with, as we can see with her sycophant assistant, Francesca and then the Russian cellist Olga. This is her pattern, and it keeps playing out through the film as we see from incidents both past and present. But some viewers might ask why feminism and power must be conflated with lesbianism. Does a woman have to go to a man’s tailor and wear suits to be taken seriously in a man’s world? Can she not be feminine and charismatic? Blanchett’s portrayal at times feels two-dimensional and a bit stereotyped, Murphy Brown 2.0.

The whole point is to set Tár up to be canceled for her misdeeds. But the director piles on too many themes that do not get to be explored in detail and ultimately get the short shrift. Each one is worthy of a whole film in and of itself. Tár makes insensitive remarks to a BIPOC, pangender conducting student in a masterclass and steamrollers over him when he protests what she has said. But the consequences are only returned to much later in the film. This is a very rich incident that raises so many complex questions. But perhaps the most interesting yet minimally-addressed incident in her past is the suicide of her former mentee, Krista Taylor, whom Tár was romantically involved with. She dumped Krista and viciously sabotaged her career. And she hires a new cellist in unprofessional ways and grants her opportunities that are clearly due to favoritism and romantic interest. Again, as above, this feels sophomoric because it is overdone and doesn’t trust the viewer to “get it.”

Blanchett is indeed a wonderful actress, with the dependable Nina Hoss as her long-suffering/enabling wife, as she has the charisma and gravitas to pull off the formidable lead role. The problems come when she is involved with music. Consider her interminable monologue with Adam Gopnik–it sounds rehearsed, orated, and not something introspective or spontaneous. A musician would likely go into an introverted place when talking about composers, but Blanchett makes the choice to give a speech that sounds formal. When conducting, her movements are almost comical, more like a caricature of how a conductor moves than how a conductor really moves (having played in orchestras and under conductors since childhood, this is something I’m familiar with). That a director would have not gotten a more accurate performance out of Blanchett, especially a director who has musical training, is surprising. 

I do give Field credit for the alternate reality world he has created in the film, and I’m willing to suspend disbelief for his having shown a conductor having more decision-making power than a conductor would in real life. But the execution is so poor in this film. It wasted a fantastic, formidable premise, featured a script that was all over the place, and kept a grim, distant tone that felt alienating and odd (especially when a film is about music and relationships, two of the most intimate, personal things in life). In all, a disappointment.