Adjusted: The Adjustment Bureau

The Adjustment Bureau is not your ordinary mess of a movie. Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, the plot deals with material pretty familiar from much of science-fiction. It delves into the idea of fate versus free will and whether or not our destiny is our own. But what looked from the trailers to be your typical paranoid thriller turns out to be essentially a romantic story. But the many styles at work in this film ultimately cancels the movie out. The Adjustment Bureau is too busy adjusting itself.

Matt Damon plays David Norris, a young rising star running for the Senate in New York, who keeps finding ways to mess up his career ambitions. On the night he loses the election, he happens upon Elise (Emily Blunt) in the men's room (hiding from security) while he's practicing his concession speech. Within seconds, he believes he's met the love of his life. Unfortunately, their brief tryst is interrupted by aides whisking him to the podium. But one day, he meets Elise again on a bus heading to work and he seeks to hook up with her. The problem however is that he soon encounters a bureau of men dressed in fedoras who work for "the Chairman." These dapper business folks zap people's memories to keep them on their destined path in life. Apparently, Norris and Elise were never supposed to meet again after that first encounter. The rest of the film features David trying to outwit the Bureau while the fedora brigade keeps trying to throw roadblocks in his path.

Fifty-Two Years and Countless Cats: Good-Bye, My Friend

Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo, January 1963.

Someone very close to me died last week. Suze Rotolo, whom I met in 1958, had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer shortly before publication of her book A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties (Broadway, 2008). The autobiography includes details of her several years with Bob Dylan. She was known around the globe as the pretty girl on the iconic cover of his second album, 1963’s A Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. To me, Suze was a politically savvy, artistically inventive, thoroughly unpretentious, loyal, smart, warm, witty, whimsical, mischievous kindred spirit. And we shared an unbridled passion for kitties, many of which found homes with us over the decades.

           

We met when she was 14 and, 11 months older, I already had turned 15, both of us counselors-in-training at the leftie Camp Kinderland in Upstate New York. Every Sunday afternoon in the fall, we would head for the Village together to rendezvous with our like-minded pals at Washington Square Park, where young bohemians gathered by the hundreds to sing and play folk music. As high school seniors in 1960, Suze and I spent our Saturdays picketing Woolworth stores in Manhattan to support the sit-ins by black college students at segregated lunch counters in North Carolina. We’d find sympathetic passersby willing to boycott the retail chain, take our leaflets and sign petitions provided by the Congress of Racial Equality. On May 19 that year, we volunteered as ushers at a Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy rally in Madison Square Garden. Before it even started, someone invited us backstage to shake hands with one of the speakers, Eleanor Roosevelt – a photo op and unforgettable moment of personal history.

Camp Kinderland: Suze, next to Susan, on the far right.

A Poet's Touch: Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists

Memories. They can provide refuge or anguish. But they can also protect or betray their owners. Memories can spark nostalgic laughter between friends, or can be so sad they make one want hide carefully away from it all. Johanna Skibsrud’s Scotiabank Gillar Prize winning novel The Sentimentalists (Douglas & McIntyre, 2010), beautifully examines the profound affect memories can have not only an individual, but all those close to him.

The novel is guided by an unnamed narrator who, following a personal crisis, returns to the stay with her father, Napoleon Haskell, a Vietnam War veteran living in the fictional town of Casablanca, Ontario. Napoleon shares a house owned by Henry, the father of Owen, a fellow soldier who served beside Napoleon, who was mysteriously killed on an evening in October 1967. The town itself serves as a backdrop for ghosts, sitting by the shores of a man-made lake, and what lies beneath is the former town, where houses rest like sunken ships. The story moves between the present and the past, between Fargo, ND, the fictional Casablanca, ON, and the battlefield. The first half of the novel is a series of reflections presented by Napoleon's daughter. The narrator reminiscences over her childhood, her sister Helen, their mother and their travels between Fargo and Casablanca. There are bittersweet motifs of a loving, but distracted father; once a simple man who was complicated by the horrors of war. But those memories create a tribute of misunderstandings and misgivings that eventually lead to the demise of his relationships with others and himself.

When Criticism Backfires: I Spit On Your Grave (1978/2010)

Roger Ebert’s review of Meir Zarchi's 1978 film I Spit On Your Grave (aka, Day of the Woman) in 1980 created both the controversy and the reputation this film holds to this day. How does a critic do that? One, by either giving the micro-budgeted film a rave review and the film finds its audience from there. Or two, he rips it to shreds, calling it, “A vile bag of garbage.” He then goes on to tear the film to such ribbons that over the years a certain type of film-goer thinks, “Let me see that for myself.”

Guess what? Scenario two is the one that occurred. In fact, this film would never have been remade in 2010 without Ebert's eviscerating review of the original. In hindsight, he would have been better off ignoring it entirely. The problem with Ebert's review (it's available online) is that what he was really reviewing was the vile audience he saw it with, not the film. Briefly, both versions of I Spit On Your Grave tell the story of a young woman, Jennifer Hill (Camille Keaton, in the 1978 version; Sarah Butler, in the 2010 version), who rents a cottage on a river outside of very small town. She's a writer seeking privacy to write; she doesn't get it. Instead, she attracts the attention of four losers in the town who at first taunt and then rape her repeatedly. After they fail to kill her, she recovers and enacts a brutal revenge on all of them. In early February, Anchor Bay released both versions of the film, with commentary tracks and short documentaries, on DVD and Blu-ray.

Master Shot: Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer

While most of the hubbub at last night's Oscars concentrated on such worthy pictures as The King's Speech (which won Best Picture) and The Social Network, one of the best movies from last year actually didn't get a nod of recognition from the Academy. Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer, based on Robert Harris's best-selling political thriller, The Ghost (2010), is a shrewd suspense drama which demonstrates that Polanski still has some clever tricks up his sleeve. And he's having a ball unveiling them. The fact that the film barely caught the imagination of the Academy, or the audience (except for a number of critics), just adds to the irony of the story itself.

The plot revolves around a British ghost writer (Ewan McGregor), whose name we never know, who has been given the assignment of completing the memoirs of his country's former Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan). Although his agent tells him it's the opportunity of a lifetime, the previous ghost, a former aide to the PM, recently turned up mysteriously dead on the beach. Hence, the current job opening. Making matters worse, on the day the new ghost arrives, Rycart (Robert Pugh), a former British foreign minister, accuses Lang of authorizing the illegal seizure of suspected terrorists and handing them over for torture by the CIA (which, according to Rycart, leaves the former leader open to charges of war crimes). While Lang seeks refuge to avoid the reach of the International Criminal Court (which turns out to be the U.S.), his ghost writer begins to uncover clues in the memoir left by his predecessor that might possibly implicate Lang.

On Good Terms with the Muse: Bruce Cockburn’s Small Source of Comfort

Bruce Cockburn’s 30th album is called Small Source of Comfort. It’s an interesting title taken from the song “Five Fifty-One” by a musician and songwriter who’s been making consistent, high quality music since the late 1960s. But Cockburn is a rather nomadic artist keen to challenge himself as much as he challenges his fans. Consequently, this new album, his first in five years, is a mix of familiar sounds while simultaneously looking forward. It features poignant songs about love, loss, and what you could call introspective instrumentals. (As usual for a Cockburn release, it also features printed lyrics in English and French, plus the date and geographic location of each song.)

Not typical of a Cockburn release, though, is humour. It’s to be found on the song “Call Me Rose” which is about Richard Nixon being re-incarnated as a single mother. Written in Montreal in 2009, it’s a track that speaks about Karma in a most original way. Who would have thought that Richard Nixon would ever be re-incarnated, let alone as a single mother with two kids? Well, Cockburn did. According to his notes, it came easily to him. Which begs another question, after 30 years, how does he keep coming up with new songs? Perhaps he’s on good terms with his muse or, to be more practical, he’s constantly thinking, dreaming and writing it down, as is the case with “Call Me Rose” as a fully- formed song.

A Counterculture Chick: Melissa Leo's Half-Century

Ever since her first bona-fide professional acting gig on All My Children, an urban myth has dogged the 1984 casting of Melissa Leo: that she got the part during an audition process in which Julia Roberts was a fellow contender. The untruth has been repeated over the years on any number of celebrity web sites.

“It’s a bogus story,” Leo said during a February telephone interview from New York City, where she had gone to find a gown for Sunday night’s Academy Awards. ”While I was working on the show, I had the same manager as Eric Roberts, her brother. She was 15 then and visiting from Georgia. He asked if I’d take Jules to the set. She was a delightful, wacky teen who had no idea what to do with her life, except meet Sting.”

Leo’s progression from a one-year stint on the ABC soap opera to a best supporting actress Oscar nomination – for playing the feisty mother of two sons with prizefighting dreams and their many sisters in The Fighter – has followed a sometimes rocky road. After more than 70 films and TV programs, at 50 she is finally on the Hollywood A-list.

Off the Shelf: Laurent Cantet's The Class (2008)

Most movies about idealistic teachers who inspire their charges are usually sappy (To Sir, With Love and Dead Poet’s Society), brutal (Lean On Me), or sometimes self-consciously instructive (Freedom Writers). In short, they remain painfully predictable. Rarely do they delve into the dynamics of the educational process, but instead fall back on the more inspirational side of learning life’s "important lessons." Put another way: People don’t learn in these pictures; they get ennobled. Entre les Murs (The Class) is that rare exception. It examines the complex dynamic that develops between an inspired teacher and a motley group of students.

LA's Rashomon: Graham Yost's Boomtown

Growing up in small-town Ontario north of Toronto, I didn't have much to do when it came to the arts. In the 1960s and 1970s, except for some regional theatre, the only way to gain exposure to the arts was through movies or television. In my early years, most of my 'education' came from the movies because in Parry Sound in the 1960s we received only one television station (the CBC affiliate in Barrie, now part of CTV). That education was rather slight: Disney flicks, James Bond double-bills, the latest Don Knotts comedy, plus the occasional interesting picture, such as Patton (1970) and Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run (1969). By the time my family moved to the nearby town of Bracebridge I had yet to see any of Hollywood's great films from the so-called Golden Era. When we finally got cable in Bracebridge (about six months after we moved there), I began to discover the history of Hollywood films. My education really began thanks to TV Ontario (aka, TVO, a Canadian version of the US's PBS) and the shows Magic Shadows and Saturday Night At the Movies. Hosted by Elwy Yost, Magic Shadows was a Monday through Friday show that presented classic movies, uncut, broken into thirty minute chunks. In this pre-video/PVR era you either made sure you were in front of the set by 7:30 or you would miss a segment.

Orson Welles in Citizen Kane

On Saturday nights, Elwy returned with a two-complete-movies theme night. Again showing the films uncut, Yost would offer two movies connected by theme or director or actor. Between each film, he would offer interviews he'd conducted about these films with the stars or directors or critics. To say that Yost was an enthusiast was an understatement. His questions were often simple, never probing, but I didn't care. I was filling my head, finally, with some of the great films of Hollywood and seeing interviews with the people who had made them. I know that thanks to Elwy Yost my appreciation of films developed. At first, I reacted like he did: a fan grooving on Hollywood. It was only later that I understood movies were an art form and I began to develop a critical voice. Yost turned his son, Graham, into a film fanatic too. Elwy told the story on more than one occasion that he let his son stay up late to watch Citizen Kane (1941) for the first time. Elwy even let Graham skip school. The day after, Graham showed up at school with a note explaining that Graham had missed school because Elwy kept him up way past his bedtime watching what many still consider the greatest film ever made.

Acting Heaven: Blue Valentine

For a movie to succeed, usually all its most important elements, from the direction to the screenplay to the acting have to gel. A weak screenplay can sink a good concept, indifferent direction can undermine a strong story and problematic or bad acting can ruin a movie that might otherwise have been a fine effort. Yet sometimes superb performances can either enhance an otherwise mediocre film or occasionally bring an ordinary movie to heights that it would otherwise not scale. In the former category, Lucy Punch’s work in both Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and in Dinner for Schmucks, the American remake of the French film Le Diner de Cons, is an exemplar of that dictum. As an avaricious British prostitute in Allen’s lame film and as Steve Carrell's crazy American stalker in the uninspired remake, Punch, who is English, ran the gamut from drama to comedy and did it successfully and memorably in two accents. (The same compliment can be laid at the foot of James Franco for his diverse performances in 127 Hours and Howl; he’s the only reason to check out 127 Hours, the slight but fact based tale of a man driven to a desperate act when pinned under a rock in a deserted mountain area and he commands the screen in Howl, an otherwise uneven recreation of the 1950s obscenity trial of avant garde poet Allen Ginsberg.) In the latter category, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are so amazing in Blue Valentine that they elevate the film to many moments of greatness, particularly in the half dozen or so scenes where they’re at their rawest or most vulnerable.

Blue Valentine, the second film from writer – director Derek Cianfrance (his debut was Brother Tied (1998), which I have not seen) tells the story, jumping back and forth from the present to the past, of a married couple, Dean Pereira (Gosling) and Cindy Heller (Williams). As the film begins, it’s apparent that their relationship is collapsing, despite their having a little girl who will be affected by their divorcing. In a bid to save their marriage, Dean convinces Cindy to leave their daughter with her father and check into a motel for a romantic idyll, which does not come off as expected. In the sequences set in the past, five years or so earlier, we see the genesis of their marriage, when they were still in love and where everything seemed promising vis a vis a happy future for the couple.

Smoke Without Fire: Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953 & 1966)

Books used to scare me. Ray Bradbury’s famed science-fiction masterpiece Fahrenheit 451 recently reminded me of why. Books are highly influential especially when you let them fester. I remember nights in elementary school spent past my bedtime re-reading line after line of Mark Twain, or Robert Lewis Stevenson, to the point where Long John Silver and “Injun Joe” would chase me in my sleep. These works were brimming with creativity and adventure and sparked a curiosity that was bewildering, but their painted words also had the misfortune of scaring me stiff. Bradbury’s novel was set in a future where firemen reek of kerosene and burn books rather than cherish their beauty. Upon reading it, for the first time, I, too, re-discovered my worn out love for the printed page. I also discovered, quite accidentally, that a film adaptation made in 1966 existed. Initially I thought the film’s existence alone was contradictory to the book’s divine message. But after watching the film, I realized I was both right and wrong.

Poignant Stoicism: Amos Lee's Mission Bell

If only everyone could articulate their heartaches and breakdowns like Amos Lee. Mission Bell, the fourth album from this former elementary school teacher, offers a polished blend of country, blues, folk, gospel and soul all wrapped up and presented with the upmost poignant stoicism. In this sombre memoir, Amos offers twelve introspective reviews of everyday life, loss and learning. He also confirms his diverse and prolific abilities to cascade musical genres.

Mission Bell’s lead off tracks, with the brooding “El Camino” and “Violin,” displays Lee’s talents in contemporary folk and country. “El Camino” – yes, what would a country singer be without an automobile reference – radiates images of memory, moving on and spiritual cleansing. Lee revisits this tune, arguably the best one on the album, later with idol Willie Nelson. “Violin” visits the pain of living in the moment, surrounded by the pressures of the world while hoping for someone to pull you through. He admits that, “Lately I have been heading for a breakdown,” while watching a number of (all too common) heartbreaking scenes such as “lovers using words as ammunition.” All the while, the musician never loses his composure, or delivery, assuring the listener that Amos is never going to lose it himself. Lee continues to explore various sounds and styles through the haunted folk ballad “Out in the Cold.” He even explores his Bill Withers side as he belts out “Jesus,” and applies his bluegrass, gospel abilities with “Cup of Sorrow.”

Mirror Man - Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune

Kenneth Bowser's absorbing documentary, Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune, examines the life and tragic death of a political troubadour whose music perfectly mirrored the rise and fall of the sixties counter-culture. He does so by suggesting that Ochs, whose songs included "I Ain't Marching Anymore," "Draft Dodger Rag," "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" and "There But For Fortune," helped define the protest song movement. But the movie also shows how Ochs was undone by his affliction of manic depression that only escalated with the collapse of the left-wing idealism of the sixties. Bowser's view isn't wrong, exactly, but there's an even larger theme that lies unexplored (even though it's touched on) throughout the movie. In telling the story of a mirror man, Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune also suggests that, by being a mirror who reflects, Phil Ochs was more a reflection of his times rather than a man who could help define and shape them. When those times were over, the personality - and the man - disappeared.

Phil Ochs

The topical song culture of the sixties, in which Ochs became an integral part, grew out of the Civil Rights and anti-war movement. The music of Dave Van Ronk, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary and Odetta was literally ripped from the headlines of the daily news. Their songs, which spoke of injustice, racism and inequality, also carried the hope of building a new nation, one they felt lived up to the democratic principles that laid within the country's founding documents. Building on the spirit of Kennedy's New Frontier in 1960, the folk music movement, that percolated in the bohemian enclave of New York's Greenwich Village, dedicated itself to the idea that songs could actually change society. By drawing on the socialist realist legacy of the old left that included Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, they believed that the songs themselves took prominence not the singers. To this community of activists, the performer was merely an instrument who brought forth both change and political awareness through their music. In true socialist realist fashion, the artist was defined more by the composition rather than the other way around. While some folk artists, like Joan Baez and Dave Van Ronk, had strong enough personalities to prevent themselves from disappearing into their topical music (and Dylan simply cut himself loose from the ideological strait-jacket of the movement by embracing the Golden Calf of pop music where his individuality could thrive), Phil Ochs found himself a world - and a cause - that gave him a personality (and a purpose) that he might otherwise have lacked. As the movie finally reveals, too, his devotion to the cause obviously hid his personal problems. And when the movement died, so did Phil Ochs.

Voices That Pine: The Civil Wars' Barton Hollow

The Civil Wars is a new duo featuring singer/guitarist John Paul White and singer/keyboardist, Joy Williams. He is from Alabama and she is from California and they debuted 2 years ago at a club called Eddie’s Attic in Atlanta, Georgia. Barton Hollow is their first full-length studio album and it’s a very impressive debut.

I was immediately charged by their sound, which is a delicate balance of Nashville country and Mississippi swamp. The song “Barton Hollow” talks about a “dead man walking” with no hope of forgiveness or redemption: “Won’t do me no good washing in the river/Can’t no preacher man save my soul.” The last line is not in the form of a question with its double-negative despondency. The vocal rather draws you in with great empathy; it’s a tribute to White and Williams’ sensitivity as singers. This is particularly true, as well, for the opening track, “20 Years,” where the character in the song asks for deliverance, even if it takes 20 years. It’s a thoughtful number and one that first appeared on their debut album Live at Eddie’s Attic in 2009.

Pop music has always had male-female duos such as Ian & Sylvia and the more recent Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, aka The Swell Season. The dynamic usually works when the sexual chemistry of the couple is heard in the music. For Williams and White, who are married, but not to each other, that chemistry is remarkably strong. On the song “Poison and Wine,” first heard on their EP in 2009, we feel every yearning note as Williams and White trade alternate lines in the verses. It’s a song about a couple connected at the hip (for better or worse) as they sing in unison, “Oh, I don’t love you/ But I always will.” I’ve never heard a song about the rawness of love quite like this one. The performance is at once intimate and painful.

Good News: Four Promising New Sitcoms of 2011

Click here for a look at the sitcoms of the September 2011 fall season.

While the 2010-2011 television season has given us some extraordinary new dramas, comedy lovers haven’t been as lucky. In 2009-2010, the US networks gave us a number of critical and popular successes, most notably Modern Family, Cougar Town, and Community. But this past fall, the only comedy standout has been NBC’s Outsourced. And Outsourced, despite doing consistently well in the ratings, has generated an almost unanimously poor critical reception – one which, in my opinion, is wholly undeserved. Considering the largely disappointing crop from the first half of the season, I awaited this new batch of sitcoms with a mixture of both eagerness and trepidation. Fortunately, it would seem that the networks were saving the best for last!  Below, I review some of the sitcoms that have debuted in 2011 that I believe are worth checking out: Bob’s Burgers (Fox), Traffic Light (Fox), Mr. Sunshine (ABC), and (for our Canadian readers) CBC’s new spy spoof, InSecurity.

Newfoundland's Finest: In Praise of The Republic of Doyle

Never has a show made a city look so lovely. One of the many pleasures of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's TV series The Republic of Doyle is that it has made the city of St. John's, Newfoundland look absolutely gorgeous. From Signal Hill to the multi-coloured downtown buildings to the charm of the harbour and landscape around it, St. John's looks ravishing. It makes you want to go visit it like now, right now.

But that's not the only attraction. Pretty pictures does not a TV show make. What is so appealing about The Republic of Doyle is its wonderful combination of comedy, action, mystery and heartache. Created by and starring native son, Allan Hawco (his co-creators are Malcolm MacRury and Perry Chafe), the show is, as Hawco freely admits, inspired by the classic James Garner series The Rockford Files. Jake Doyle (Hawco) is – along with his father, Malachy (Sean McGinley) – a private investigator working on whatever cases he can get in the small city of St. John's. Sometimes it's a missing person, sometimes it's a blackmail case, and occasionally it's a murder mystery. The plots, such as they are, are often very incidental to the relationships between Jake and a terrific cast of characters that surround him. What's more important here is his gentle bickering with Malachy, his often moving but so-far unconsummated relationship with police detective Leslie Bennett (the effortlessly beautiful and charming Krystin Pellerin – she's currently on stage in Toronto in Soulpepper Theatre Company's production of the musical The Fantasticks), his attempts to protect his young niece, Tinny Doyle (Marthe Bernard), or his constant rescuing of his screw-up older brother Christian (Jonathan Goad) from himself.

Talking Out of Turn #13: William Diehl (1982)

From 1981 to 1989, I was assistant producer and co-host of the radio show, On the Arts, at CJRT-FM in Toronto. With the late Tom Fulton, who was the show's prime host and producer, we did a half-hour interview program where we talked to artists from all fields. In 1994, after I had gone to CBC, I had an idea to collate an interview anthology from some of the more interesting discussions I'd had with guests from that period. Since they all took place during the eighties, I thought I could edit the collection into an oral history of the decade from some of its most outspoken participants. The book was assembled from interview transcripts and organized thematically. I titled it Talking Out of Turn: Revisiting the '80s. With financial help from the Canada Council, I shaped the individual pieces into a number of pertinent themes relevant to the decade. By the time I began to contact publishers, though, the industry was starting to change. At one time, editorial controlled marketing. Now the reverse was taking place. Acquisition editors, who once responded to an interesting idea for a book, were soon following marketing divisions concerned with whether the person doing it was hot enough to sell it.

Tom Fulton of On the Arts. 

For a few years, I flogged the proposal to various publishers but many were worried that there were too many people from different backgrounds (i.e. Margaret Atwood sitting alongside Oliver Stone). Another publisher curiously chose to reject it because, to them, it appeared to be a book about me promoting my interviews (as if I was trying to be a low-rent Larry King) rather than seeing it as a commentary on the decade through the eyes of the guests. All told, the book soon faded away and I turned to other projects. However, when recently uncovering the original proposal and sample interviews, I felt that maybe some of them could find a new life on Critics at Large.

Author William Diehl

The interview with author William Diehl (Sharky's Machine, Chameleon, Primal Fear), a writer who wrote luridly powerful pulp with a political tinge, became a fascinating exercise in self-examination. When I discovered that Diehl was a pacifist who once marched with Martin Luther King in the South during the demonstrations against segregation, I was compelled to find out how such a peaceful man reconciled his polar opposite. To both my surprise and satisfaction, he was more than happy to comply while providing a vivid examination (through his thriller Chameleon) of the growing political mercenary movements in the eighties that would ultimately lead to Waco and Oklahoma City. Diehl would die at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on November 24, 2006, of an aortic aneurysm. At the time of his death, he was working on his tenth novel.

Looking Within and Without: An Experimental Artist

The back of Wafaa Bilal’s head, for The 3rd I.

The tiny digital camera has been removed from the back of Wafaa Bilal’s skull.

Let’s allow that image sink in for a moment.

OK. The 44-year-old Iraqi, an assistant professor of art at New York University, is a creative provocateur. For an entire month in 2007, for example, visitors to his website were able to splatter him with a remote-controlled paint gun and watch as he tried to dodge the yellow-colored attacks while sequestered in a small room at a Chicago gallery. The piece was titled Domestic Tension. In the anti-Arab fervor still sweeping the country after 9/11, many strangers gleefully wielded this symbolic Internet weapon of personal destruction.

But Bilal’s latest project, called The 3rd I, surely ranks even higher on any pushing-the-cultural-envelope meter. At the end of 2010, he had a waterproof titanium plate inserted in his head. That made it possible to magnetically attach a camera that could transmit photos minute-by-minute to the notebook computer he carried at all times, a process the world could observe online. (On campus, he agreed to protect the privacy of students and faculty with a lens cap.) But, recently, his body began rejecting part of the apparatus, which caused constant suffering despite the steroids and antibiotics he took in hopes of solving the problem.

Philip Roth’s Nemesis: The Way We Live, Then and Now

Author Philip Roth.

Is Philip Roth’s America’s greatest living novelist? He's certainly one of them. Although there are other contenders for that title, including Richard Ford and Richard Price, without question, I'd argue that Roth is the U.S’s most significant writer. He has created an ambitious body of work that, as he enters his late 70s, seems determined to lay bare all the significant eddies and flows of American history in the years since his birth in 1933. His latest novel Nemesis (Penguin, 2010) continues in that incisive vein, revisiting a little remembered slice of American life: the devastating polio epidemics of the 1930s and 40s.

The fourth and final book in a series called Nemeses: Short Novels; Nemesis is, as indicated, a short novel (280 pages) but it's not a slight one. Having read only one of the other three books in that series, Indignation (2008), I can safely say that their themes are what occurs when bad things happen to good people. Roth, however, doesn’t examine that idea in a trite or obvious way but in such a manner that you’ll ponder the disturbing vicissitudes of fate and the supposed existence of a god who allows horrible events to happen to innocent people. That, at least, is the thinking of one Eugene Cantor, better known as Bucky, an athletic 23 year old, who in 1944 is a playground director in Newark, New Jersey (not coincidentally Roth’s birthplace, too).

Because of his weak eyesight, Bucky has been deemed ineligible for combat during World War Two, a state of affairs which troubles him deeply. He’s determined, though, to do right by his young charges, and teach them lessons in good health and fitness. That goal, however, is impacted when some of Newark’s young teenagers come down with polio, with two of them dying of the disease. (The disease is not always fatal, but it often cripples or maims those who get it.) A panicked Bucky now has to weigh his options; does he stay put in Newark out of responsibility and risk getting polio himself or listen to the increasingly desperate entreaties of his loving girlfriend, Marcia, and take up a post in a Jewish summer camp in rural Pennsylvania, far away from the disease that is laying waste to his city? His decision will play out in an unpredictably tragic manner.

Impressive Impressions: Ted Nash's Portrait in Seven Shades

Composing for jazz orchestra is not for the timid. You have to be original, accessible and most importantly, the music has to swing. The challenge of composing music based on the visual arts is even more intimidating. Duke Ellington was a master of writing and arranging for his orchestra and coming up with suites for people and places. One his most interesting was the Degas Suite written in 1968, based on the artist’s racetrack paintings. Ted Nash has now raised the bar one more time with his remarkable composition called Portrait in Seven Shades, a suite about 7 painters: Claude Monet, Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Marc Chagall and Jackson Pollock.

Imagining music for artists obviously wasn't intimidating for Ted Nash. "Many parallels can be drawn between the two forms of art,” he remarks. “Like painters, musicians talk of colors, layers and composition." On this recording, Nash was asked to compose a long-form piece for the Lincoln Center Orchestra led by Wynton Marsalis. The only requirement from Marsalis was that it should have a theme. Nash, who's been a member of the band for the past ten years, was ready for the challenge. "It didn't take me long to come up with a concept that would truly inspire me to write an hour-long piece of music...each movement would be dedicated to a different painter." The challenge was narrowing down the list to 7 and going from there. For Nash, the criterion was simple: select an artist over the past 100 years that reflected transformative changes in painting. The character of the artist was then reflected in the music.