Category Visual Arts

Why I Quit Watching “The Sopranos”

When my daughter was four or five years old, we took her to a highly touted “children’s movie” animation having to do with the escapades of a pony finding its way through fraught circumstances. I remember neither the title nor anything else to do with the plot save this: at one point, the pony was tied to a stake and thrashing helplessly as foreboding music swelled and some evil force prepared to descend upon it.

The movie ended for us right then because my daughter began to sob uncontrollably, fear and sorrow etched full upon her face. After a few murmured soothings from her mother and me proved completely fruitless, we exited the theater.

I thought back to that episode recently when finally catching up to “The Sopranos,” the multi-award-winning television series that had critics of the time swooning, but which I completely missed during its 1999-2007 run...

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Maira Kalman’s “The Principles of Uncertainty”: Most Certainly a Gem

“If you are ever bored or blue, stand on the street corner for half an hour,” writes the visual artist and spare-time existential philosopher Maira Kalman in “The Principles of Uncertainty,” her wholly original, whimsical, disarmingly profound color-splash-of-a-book that caught my eye on a display table a few years ago in one of those small, impeccably curated bookshops in rural Maine, and which I finally got to reading this week. 

What you will see and experience on that corner, she says on a previous page that sets up her suggestion above, is “The People. Everyone looks so exalted, or so wretched, or so spiffy, so funny, so splendid.”

It is telling, in this literal celebration of the human pageant that Kalman illustrates so lavishly and in such quirky, loving, offbeat detail, that four out of the five adjectives she attaches to her fellow humans above stand as positive attributes.

And truth b...

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A Meditation on “Oppenheimer”

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First: the primeval fear and wonder, the fact of existence itself, the gaping at the savannas, the odd and menacing creatures abounding, the vast sprawl of the stars. Noting the deep growl of hunger, the insistent urge to sample tubers, mushrooms, fruit from the trees, the slow and hapless life forms crawling beneath our gaze.

The terror of being prey for stronger and faster life forms, with their shrieks and snarls and rumbles through the night.

Hearing the helpless wails of our mates being devoured.

The seeking for shelter and haven.

The cowering.

The thinking.

The gathering of stones.

The noting of friction.

The sharpening.

The fine point, primed to stab and gouge, to ward off predators and subdue prey.

The sight of sparks.

The collecting of leaves and twigs.

Combustion.

All of it the rudiments of inquiry and physics itself.

The staggering growth of reason, tools, language, culture.

The imagi...

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Break the Record, Die Trying? Free Diving With Laura McGann’s “The Deepest Breath”

In the long summer months—which in the generally sunny climes where I have lived I regard as May through at least September—I have long made a habit of swimming in as many backyard and club pools as their owners will abide. And since none of the pools are Olympic-sized, I’ve developed a ritual of dipping underwater upon entry, descending to just a few inches from the bottom, and breaststroking from one end to the other, holding my breath for the 15 to 30 seconds various pools might require.

It always feels invigorating to pop up to the surface with a nice exhalation at the end, ready to move some more water around in pursuit of just about the finest whole-body exercise humankind has ever devised.

Some of these pools can get to a depth of five to eight feet, which seems like small potatoes until, say, you dive down to snag fall leaves or a kid’s unfloatable toy off the bottom...

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A Pastor Grapples With Faith and the Future: Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed”

A young eco-activist confronts the massive evidence of humankind’s abuse of the earth, and he spirals downward in a doom loop of despair. The new life growing in his wife’s belly offers no solace. Quite the contrary—he’s not at all sure he wants to bear the responsibility of subjecting a child to the hellscape he is convinced life on earth is destined to become.

He can’t bear the thought, he confides, that his daughter might look accusingly into his eyes 20 years on and ask, “You knew this all along, didn’t you?”

His wife suggests counseling with the minister of a postcard-of-an-old-world church she occasionally frequents, which is long on history (soon to celebrate its 250th anniversary) but dismally short of people in the pews (maybe a half-dozen) on any given Sunday.

The encounter between minister and activist will prove fateful for both of them, in different ways.

A riveting 11-minute dialogue just m...

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