Book Review: Snow Hunters

Paul Yoon's novel Snow Hunters: A Novelis a gem—perfectly cut and exquisite. Employing minimalistic writing it nonetheless conveys an entire rich and nuanced world. It lies somewhere between the realm of prose and poetry, each sentence is a distillation of language, and as such it is powerfully evocative.

The book has the feeling of a fable, images and events evoke universal experiences, yet it manages to tell a complete and coherent story. As I read I felt like I was immersed in an impressionistic piece, but in recounting the story to someone else, I realized that by the end of the narrative every detail had been filled in. Names, dates, events...it is a story of war, displacement, loss, and love and at times was so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes.

This is not a cheap read, but nor is it overly intellectual. Utterly approachable and every member of my book club seems to have loved and appreciated it equally - so much so that we are reading Paul Yoon's short story collection for next month.

It is great to live in a world where there are so many forms of genius to astound and delight!

Recent Reads: April

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After seeing it come up on every "Best Books of 2013" list in the world, I suggested Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch: (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) to my book group. We all loved it, and we often don't agree on books.

The book has incredible range. Sprawling comes to mind. It gets a bit sloggy in the middle but I never thought about putting it down.

How does one author know so much? About art, about childhood, about high schools in Las Vegas? About PTSD, and addiction, and anxiety, crime and guilt? About the rich AND the poor, the intelligentsia and the underdogs and the rarified worlds of antique and art collectors? About Russians and oil and Europeans and art?

The book manages to be a Dickensian story of childhood, an Edith Wharton novel of the modern New York drawing room, a crime noir book and an action thriller all at once. And throughout it we have the single voice of Theo Decker to guide us. Though sometimes we even discover that Theo is an unreliable narrator, in moments when others correct his perceptions of the past with their own. Somehow the reader sticks with Theo, and comes to love some of the amazing characters who make their way into his life. I would give anything to meet Boris if he were real!

As with her earlier work, The Secret History the end of the book is in the opening, so we know Theo makes it to adulthood...but the narrative keeps us reaching to see how he gets there.
There is so much pain and anxiety in the book, but it is worth the pay-off at the end, a lush philosphical treatise that ties up all the ends, of the narrative, and of everything you have ever wondered about.  A really rich read! And apparently the Pulitzer committee agrees as the book is this year's fiction first prize winner.

 Because we had a lot of time and I was curious about Donna Tartt's work after reading so much about her I decided to read her other fairly famous book first, The Secret History in order to have more context about this Tartt phenomena.

Combination of Dostoevsky's  Crime and Punishment (Penguin Classics)
and campus novel, it is a very well done rumination on the nature of morality and the danger of attenuated intellectualism, the power of narcissists and psychopaths, the cult-like following and dangers of charismatic teachers, (something I've witnessed myself, but that is another story) and the effects of class in America. And not one likeable character to boot. But the novel holds together and exhibits the same writerly brilliance. Again, the depiction of addiction rings true, and I am reminded of how much drugs and drinking were on campus.


And now for something completely different! Light, charming yet not superficial, The Rosie Project: A Novel is the kind of book you can read in one night or on a plane and it will make you laugh, move you, and leave you rejoicing. A perfect read with pitch perfect writing. Another great book for the ever-growing cannon on Aspergers and Autism. IF I were creating a mini-class, I would pair this with the wonderful Autism novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Timeby Mark Haddon.





By the way, I finally bailed on the Patricia Cromwell series with The Last Precinct (A Scarpetta Novel) which got too maudlin, morbid, depressive and obsessively psychoanalytic about a character who isn't even me, so why would I spent that kind of time in that level of analysis?

Just finished  Paul Yoon's Snow Hunters: A Novel but can't blog about it yet because it is on the dock for my next Book Club meeting and that wouldn't be fair...but highly recommended. More later.

Seder at My House

 Every home has their own traditions for seder. And each family has their own methods of preparing for this major psycho-drama re-enactment of the Exodus story; done through food, story-telling, song, and ritual. Here is something of how it goes at our house. Since many members of my family are vegan, we do a vegan-with-eggs seder, (since egg is one of the traditional foods).

The set-up MUST be done the day before, otherwise it is too crazy. We were seating 19 people this year, so the day before, Irad and I carried our kitchen table into the dining room as well as two kinds of folding chairs and spent two hours debating on the best way to set them up. I was for squishing everyone at one massive table configuration, and Irad voted for a separate "teen" table to the side. We went with his suggestion.

Passover has four names: chag hapesach, chag hamatzot, chag ha'aviv, and zman cheruteinu. (Holiday of Passover, of matza, of spring, and time of freedom.) I like to emphasize the "spring" holiday, especially after the harsh winter we experienced. So lots of flowers!

I spread the flowers out in tall narrow glasses so that there would a spring-like atmosphere to our spring holiday.

Next we had a long discussion as to the choice of haggadahs, the book used to guide the seder and tell the story. We have tried many different haggadot over the years, but in the end decided to go with the good ol' Maxwell House Haggadah, simply because it was the only one of which we had 19 copies!

We supplemented with a few pages from the Family Haggadah, a wonderful English-friendly version with lots of commentary appropriate for children and teens.










I will buy more of these for next year in the new edition.


We needed an English-friendly version because we had several non-Jewish friends in attendance, including friends from Korea, Vietnam, China, Ukraine and Lebanon.

In addition to the Haggadahs at the table, are the Haggadahs we take out and show:

The two on top are the ones we used, and the bottom row, from right to left (thinking in Hebrew) is a beautifully illustrated haggadah in the shape of the chamsa (hand), a children's haggadah from a kibbutz, a 1932 illustrated version of the famous Passover song Chag Gadya by Zeev Raban from the Bezalel School of Art, and finally, on the far left, a family Haggadah from Irad's family that was printed in 1893 in Vilna and made its way to Palestine in 1904.

The other artifact of great pride in each family is the seder plate. We have three and coincidentally had three tables set, so each table had its own plate. One inherited from my grandmother, one that was a gift from Irad's parents, and one that was a farewell gift to me from a congregation I served in New Jersey.

 This is a seder plate we don't own, but isn't it gorgeous?

Seder Plate from museum near the Great Synagogue in Budapest

Before it all begins the guest trickle in and of course they hang out in the kitchen!

Here is the seder checklist:
Seder plate set with—
Shank bone (paper depiction for our vegan household) to recall the lamb's blood on the doorposts
parsley - for spring and rebirth
maror - lettuce - bitterness of slavery
chazeret - home-made horseradish that Irad always makes with the kids wearing goggles) - tears for the bitterness of slavery
charoset - a "mortar" like mixture of apples, nuts, honey, sweet wine, and in our house, dates.
hard-boiled egg - life and renewal

Three ceremonial matzas on a plate or special matza envelope. The middle one is broken in half, and the leader hides one half for children to find later.

Elijahs' cup - Elijah comes to every seder and drinks from the cup. He will only come back "full-time" in the Messianic Age, when we have fixed all the crappy problems on Earth.

Salt water distributed around the table for the dipping of the celery, and later for the egg.

The best part of the pre-meal ceremony is eating the Hillel sandwich - a combination of the "mortar" for the bricks and the chazeret, or horseradish, on matza.

And now, the menu:
APPETIZERS
Hard-boiled eggs with salt water

Mock chopped liver (made by my mother)

Persian vegetable soup with matza balls (made by Yuval)

MAIN COURSES

Full plate of main courses

 Quinoa tabouli (quinoa is kosher for pesach, as it is not actually a grain, but a botanical member of the "goosefoot" family. which also includes beets and spinach.)

Flat lima beans slow cooked all day with beet greens. (We eat beans, though most Ashkenazi Jews don't)

Beet salad with cumin and onions (recipe I learned when we lived in Jerusalem)

Beet salad with apples and walnuts (recipe from my mother-in-law)

Nut Loaf (made by Yuval)

Sweet potato kugel (made by Irad)

Roasted butternut squash and kale (made by Julie)





DESSERT

Plum and Apricot Compote

Apple Pear Crumble (made with matza meal)

Macaroons-to-die-for (made by JoAnne)

One other private tradition I have instituted is to hide chocolate "passover" eggs (one of the symbols, right?) for the kids to find as they hunt for the afikomen (hidden matza)

 

Dance Cleveland: The Jessica Lang Company

For our very last concert in this season's Dance Cleveland subscription series we went to see the Jessica Lang Company. The previous concert we saw in our series (which I did not blog about) was the final season of a company that is closing after 44 years. In contrast, this was a brand new company which began performing in 2011.

And what a contrast! The energy and dynamism, innovation and technique of this new company had the audience out of their seats. The young artistic director brought in many streams of inspiration from other media: architecture, interior design, new compositions, textiles and video. I loved the interplay of so many mediums and the way they formed a powerful, coherent interstitial experience.

 Lines Cubed (photo from http://www.jessicalangdance.com)

 The first piece, Lines Cubed, was an amazing architectural piece divided into movements by color: black, red, yellow, blue. The background is a direct quote from Mondrian's color block painting, and the dancers interact with movable sets by molo; softblock modular paper accordioned installations which can create vertical and horizontal walls. The dancers interact with these installations with geometric and architectural precision, sometimes dancing in free space, sometimes around the installations. Each movement has a different color and completely different mood, with differently cut costumes colored according to the title of the movement. The pop electronica music by John Metcalfe and Thomas Metcalf perfectly blended with the clockwork like dancing of the dancers. The audience stood up in admiration at the end of the piece. I was there with Irad and Yuval, and we felt uplifted and inspired—the work was imaginative and wholly original. It was a cross-genre pollination with every element representing the highest form of that art's expression.

Mendelssohn/Incomplete (photo from http://www.jessicalangdance.com)

Next was a single movement from a Mendelssohn piano trio. The set was minimal, the dancers wore dusky blue and grape, and the over all effect was lyrical and soothing.

Among the Stars (photo from http://www.jessicalangdance.com)

And the third dance in the first half was an astoundingly beautiful and moving couple's dance with music by Ryuichi Sakamoto ("Snowy Village & The Girl"). The dance is constructed around a long sheet of silk which begins as a train for the woman's dress, and then drops to the floor to form a river, a bridge, a cloak...as it is integrated into a breathtakingly beautiful dance set to dreamy piano and violin music.

During the intermission we had the usual DANCECleveland fun of posting our post-its on the wall with our "take-aways" (Mondrian, architectural, clockwork), eating chocolate kisses and picking up new DanceCleveland buttons.

DANCECleveland makes a new button for each performance

The second half:

The Calling (photo from http://www.jessicalangdance.com)

Irad and I couldn't imagine how they could follow such a stellar first half at the same level, but they did it. The very first dance was stunning; a woman emerges out of an enormous white dress, bare backed with an ocean of skirt surrounding her, with her back to the audience, and performs the entire dance without moving from the spot, bending and swaying, at one point sinking into the dress as if she is sinking into the ground à la wicked witch "I'm melting" to the audible oohs of the entire audience. The musical setting  "o Maria, stella maris" performed by Trio Mediaeval, to a solo woman's a capella chanting, very straight tone and haunting. The dancer herself, Kana Kimura, a beautiful Japanese woman,  embodied the silent feminine grace of the dance perfectly. We realized she was the same dancer we had seen last year in the Metropolitan Opera production of Nixon and China.

This was followed by a video created by Lang with Shinchini Maruyama (the Japanese presence in the show—composer, videographer and dancer—was indirectly explained in the Q & A following the show when Lang mentioned that her husband is a Japanese dancer). It was set to Grieg piano music (4 movements from Lyric Pieces Op. 12, nos. 1, 4, were the ones we succeeded in picking out, since they weren't credited,)  and featured sequences of dancers shown at different film speeds, sometimes doubling themselves, yet perfectly coordinated to the music, and very playful. Though not as strong an experience as seeing the live dancers, we learned afterwards in the Q & A that this passive performance component was strategic in keeping the dancers fresh and allowing them time for costume changes, since there are only 9 dancers in the entire company and it is quite taxing on a small cast to sustain an evening's show.

i.n.k. (photo from http://www.jessicalangdance.com)

With the screen still up, the finale began—another collaboration with Maruyama, his video art KUSHO as backdrop, showing blobs of ink thrown up into the air. The dancers appear in inky black costumes and themselves perform different shapes and contortions, sometimes in relation to the backdrop of liquid ink shapes, and sometimes independently. All the while an original score by Jakub Ciupinski played, with lots of watery droplet sounds, making for a complete visual and auditory rorschach fest.

Excerpts from all the dances in the show are available on Lang's website. 

As usual there was a Q & A afterwards in which we learned some of the director's story of how she got there, the thrill of seeing her own name before the Dance Company, and how she finds her ideas, dancers and collaborations. I liked how she phrased catching the "wink of an idea" here or there, and how she lays her nets to catch her collaborators. (Which is basically how she described several of her collaborations, she doesn't seem to just ask people outright to collaborate.) All the dancers knew each other from Julliard or Twyla Tharp, and I was struck by her statement that she needed dancers who could take care of themselves and their bodies so she could stick to the business of being artistic director. (As if that is not always the case in a touring company.) We noticed that many of the dancers also have staff positions.

We are lucky to have a very perspicacious and talented curator in Pam Young, Executive Director of DANCECleveland. This company was such a great find, and to have caught on to them so early in their career takes a special knowledge of the dance world and a talent for the hunt. She always gives a light, joyful and short introduction to each performance and one can tell she loves her work and the world of dance. There are pieces to the program that we do not see, which is that each dance company does workshops and masterclasses with local students, as well as performing for us. 

My reflection as I left was that we are now getting to meet the new generation of great artists and thinkers who will influence the next 50 years of culture. Life will continue after we are gone with wonderful new talent and genius continuing to build and innovate on everything that has come before them and imagining a future that we are lucky enough to glimpse. As the poet Kahlil Gibran wrote about the next generation:

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

Yet we did indeed visit the house of tomorrow, and it was a dream!