Golden Boy: Art vs. Commerce

Tony Shalhoub, Seth Numrich, Dagmara Dominczyk, and Michael Aronovin Golden Boy (Photo by Paul Kolnik)

 
When you read about the Group Theatre, the legendary company that introduced Stanislavskian acting to the American theatre in the 1930s, you can’t help wondering what their performances were really like. You can get some sense of this pioneering Method acting style when you watch John Garfield, the only one of the troupe who became a movie star, or Lee J. Cobb, who went on to play Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman on Broadway (and revisited the role years later on television) and the gangster Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront, or the few remnants Morris Carnovsky, the Group’s master actor, has left us of his work, in featured movie roles and TV appearances. But the first time I really got a feel for the Group Theatre style was when a PBS documentary about them included a clip I’d had no idea even existed: Luther Adler’s screen test from the mid-thirties, which replicated a scene that he and Phoebe Brand had played together on stage in Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing! (Adler and his sister Stella, the children of the celebrated Yiddish Theatre star Jacob Adler, were two of the Group’s leading actors; Brand, who married Carnovsky, came out of retirement to play Nanny in Vanya on 42nd Street.) The clip is maybe two minutes long, and you can’t even see Brand’s face, yet it’s a revelation. Certainly the acting is grounded by a rock-bound naturalism, but it’s more heightened than I’d imagined, more theatrical – in the best way. The scene is between Moe Axelrod and Hennie Berger, one-time lovers who are still desperate for each other but so resentful and defensive that they circle each other warily like nervous animals, every now and then reaching out a paw to swipe one another; and the two actors aren’t afraid to go for broke. You can hear the stage training in the broad vocal palette, in Brand’s free use of tremolo (a more old-fashioned choice than I would have guessed, but extremely effective here) to underscore her character’s woefulness and in the nobility in Adler’s stature and in the way he holds his face to the light.  (Among the Method actors of the next generation of Method actors, Ben Gazzara notably retained that quality.) You believe fully that you’re watching the characters, yet you don’t forget you’re watching actors. Perhaps no Method actor could make you forget that until Marlon Brando.

I thought of Adler’s screen test during Golden Boy, Bartlett Sher’s magnificent new Broadway production of the 1937 Odets play that was the Group’s biggest hit. (Adler played the title role, Carnovsky was his father, and Cobb, Garfield and Brand were all in the company, as well as the Hollywood actress Frances Farmer and two future directors, Elia Kazan and Martin Ritt.) Odets trained as an actor with the Group but early on he began to write plays for them; seven were produced during the Group’s decade-long existence (it finally collapsed in 1941), including Waiting for Lefty, Paradise Lost and of course Odets’s masterpiece, Awake and Sing! He was the closest they had to an official playwright-in-residence, and Golden Boy is his most personal play. Before he wrote it, and again afterwards, he spent time in Hollywood, where he knew his talents were being squandered, as Hollywood squandered the gifts of so many of the great east-coast writers in the thirties and forties, but which offered him a luxurious lifestyle that, like so many others, he found hard to resist. The battle between what you do for your soul and what you do to make a buck is at the heart of Golden Boy, in which Joe Bonaparte, the working-class son of Italian immigrants, a talented violinist, becomes a boxer, a choice that breaks his own heart as well as his father’s and imperils his soul.

The Monkees: The Revenge and Resurrection of Tin Pan Alley

There was a time when it was seen as cool, and definitely hip, to disparage The Monkees. Perceived by some as the Justin Biebers of their time, they were even called "The Pre-Fab Four," cheap imitations of The Beatles and defined as teeny-bopper fodder. Yet despite the crass commercial packaging and their faux A Hard Day's Night-style TV show, The Monkees (who early on had seasoned session men playing their instruments) were more than just a marketing executive's idea of a wet dream. They were used essentially as a volley shot, a cannon blast that reached back to the American Revolution and aimed towards a series of British Invasion bands, led by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Were they simply a fad? Maybe they were conceived that way. But The Monkees turned out to be the revenge and resurrection of Tin Pan Alley.

Tin Pan Alley

Tin Pan Alley was the name given to a publishing company located on West 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. From 1880 to 1953, this block became something of an epicenter for both songwriting and music publishing in America; and it provided the foundation for what became the standards in American song penned by composers like Rodgers and Hart, Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Frank Loesser and Yip Harburg. Composers and lyricists were hired on a permanent basis to provide an industry for popular music. For until the emergence of Tin Pan Alley, European operettas had been the predominant norm and influence on American songs.

Four Neglected Gems (#30-33): The Last Letter (2002), Like a Bride (1993), Shake Hands with the Devil (2007) & The Emperor's Club (2002)

Frederick Wiseman's The Last Letter

As we get into the winter and holiday season, there's no better time to gather indoors to catch up with movies we may have missed. In this case, Shlomo Schwartzberg suggests four films we may not even know.

- editors of Critics at Large.

The Last Letter (La dernière lettre) (2002) is the only fiction film by famed documentairan Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies, La Danse) is not really a stretch for the talented filmmaker since it feels just as authentic as anything he's ever done. First staged by Wiseman with France's acclaimed Comedie-Francaise, it has now been brought to the screen with all its devastating power intact.

Strong and Free: Three New Albums from Canadian Singer-Songwriters

Singer-Songwriter Jon Brooks (Photo by Kevin Kelly)

It’s not easy being a singer-songwriter these days.  Especially in Canada, where there are just so many of them.  How do you separate yourself from the crowd?  Is talent enough to make a difference?  Does the label you’re on count?  If I had the answer to these questions, I’d be a successful singer-songwriter myself, instead of being content with playing my tunes to my wife and sons in the basement, and writing about the rest of the gang.

On Saturday night, I attended one of Michael Wrycraft’s tribute shows at Hugh’s Room in Toronto. This one celebrated the songs of Tom Waits.  It was in fact Wrycraft’s seventh Tom Waits tribute!  Performers like Scott B & Gord Cumming, Melwood Cutlery, Annabelle Chvostek and Chris Cuddy with Don Rooke took up the challenge of forgoing their own songs for those of Mr. Waits.  It is always a surprise to hear the lovely and gentle melodies that exist below the rasp of Waits’ own voice, and Saturday night was no exception.  Beginning with the amazing powerhouse who is Ariana Gillis covering “Bad As Me” there was no turning back for anyone.  The York University orchestral pop ensemble Copycat proved their name by simulating Waitsian vocalizing over some extraordinary instrumentation, and Jon Brooks closed the show by prowling around the stage like a wolf playing his Taylor and howling at the moon.  It was a wonderful night. 

It also demonstrated how hard it must be to be a singer-songwriter these days. After all, Annabelle Chvostek has just released one of the best albums of the year, and here she was singing Tom Waits songs!  I’ve had Jon Brooks’ CD Delicate Cages (Borealis Records) on my desk for a few months wondering what to say about it.  

The Secrets of Subversion: Steely Dan's "Reelin' in the Years"

One night in the late Seventies, on their network television show, Donny and Marie Osmond decided to perform a nostalgic tribute to the glorious days of our youth. Decked out in spangles and bell-bottoms, the duo picked a contemporary pop standard they believed caught the mood of nostalgia. As they began, they traded lines of the song as if exchanging precious memories:

You're everlasting summer
You can see it fadin' fast
So you grab a piece of somethin'
That you think is gonna last
Well, you wouldn't know a diamond
If you held it in your hand
The things you think are precious
I can't understand.

Despite the bitter and acrimonious tone of the lyrics, the siblings' performance was upbeat and grossly energetic. They exchanged smiles, tossed individual lines to each other and reached out their hands as if eagerly anticipating their high school reunion. By the time they reached the chorus and were singing in harmony, their mood turned curiously exuberant:

Are you reelin' in the years
Stowin' away the time
Are you gatherin' up the tears
Have you had enough of mine?

An Abundance of Rewards: Brad Mehldau's Ode and Where Do You Start?

Brad Mehldau Trio

Brad Mehldau is probably the boldest and busiest musician in jazz today. This past year alone, he’s released a solo piano DVD, and two albums with his trio: Ode (Nonesuch, 2012) and Where Do You Start (Nonesuch, 2012). Support from the record company notwithstanding, certain questions can arise by such choices. Does Mehldau risk overexposure of his work? Does he have anything relevant to say? Or is he simply looking to cash in while the going is good? For me, it all depends on the work itself. I’ll let the marketers take care of their end. For Mehldau, the 42-year-old pianist and composer, it lies in his insatiable desire to express himself with frequency. So why not release two albums in the same year? Why wait if the moment strikes? And in jazz sometimes its best to strike while the proverbial muse inspires you.

When a Physical Book Becomes a Symbol: Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses

In February 1989, a fire-storm erupted over Salman Rushdie's 1988 novel The Satanic Verses. It had been building for weeks, but finally burst into full-blown crisis when Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Rushdie, meaning that any Muslim was compelled to kill Rushdie over the supposedly blasphemous novel. The fatwa did not just apply to Rushdie, though. Anybody who edited, published, translated or dealt with the publication of the novel in any way could also killed. People were murdered, including a few of Rushdie's translators. Rushdie went into hiding for years, moving a total of 56 times in the first few months alone.

Though Rushdie no longer lives in hiding, the fatwa has never been officially lifted. This past year, he published a memoir in novel form of his years in hiding, Joseph Anton. At the time, what got me mobilized, beyond my utter belief in freedom of speech (and yes, I defend the right of some offensive fool to say whatever they like just as much I defend my right to tear his or her arguments apart), was when bookstores in the US and UK, such as Barnes and Noble, began to fearfully remove the book from their sales racks. My reaction to that news was to head out to a bookstore in Toronto and immediately buy a copy. Since the chain stores now seemed too terrified to sell the book, I went down to Queen Street West to the (now-defunct) Edwards Bookstore. (I don't remember if Coles or WH Smith removed it from sale or not, but I wanted, in this case, to give my business to an independent bookseller.) They had new copies on sale, but before I took one up to cash I decided to check out their 'reduced' tables. Back in the day, Edwards Books was a treasure trove of great books on many subjects, but it was their bargain tables where I found so many wonderful ones I could regularly afford. As I glanced through the tables, my eye caught sight of two or three books without dust jackets, spines up. From a distance, there seemed to be pieces of white tape over the spines of these books. Out of curiosity, I looked closer. It wasn't tape, I realized, but white thread had been used to sew up damage on their spines. I got closer and looked at the title. I took an involuntary step back. They were all repaired copies of The Satanic Verses. I picked up the one that had the most elaborate work. The repair job was immaculate, like it had been done by a surgeon (they looked like stitches). Bisecting the word Verses (you can see an image further down the text). This white thread held together what looked like a scalpel-like cut right through the letter R of Verses. The others copies were repaired too, but none as intriguingly as this.

Chekhov Vaudeville

As its name suggests, Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a parody of Chekhov. It’s been a while since Durang has written one of these delirious literary/dramatic-literary burlesques; this one harks back to The Idiots Karamazov (which reimagines Dostoevsky’s Karamazov brothers as the Tyrone family from Long Day’s Journey into Night) and his one-act take-offs of The Glass Menagerie and Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind (titled, hilariously, A Sty in the Eye). Vanya and Sonia is messy and overextended and it seems to stall in the middle of the second act. But it’s a vaudeville, so its structural problems don’t matter all that much – especially when it has so many funny lines and Sigourney Weaver, Kristine Nielsen and David Hyde Pierce in the leads. Fitted out in a deluxe production staged by Nicholas Martin at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse space, it made me laugh louder than any other recent comedy.

Calculated Irony: Donald Fagen's Sunken Condos

The cover of Donald Fagen's fourth solo album, Sunken Condos (Reprise, 2012), features an illustration of a giant fish tank, only this time a glass condo glistens in the deep water like a typical castle. The CD jacket unfolds to reveal the interior of a condo unit just under the surface with the figure of a woman either about to succumb due to a lack of oxygen, or to become a mermaid. Her eyes are closed and her fetal-like position could also mean she’s about to be re-born. The ambiguity is not lost on me, but the cover, like most of Steely Dan’s records, are distinguished by their simple illustrations and colour schemes. (Covers as a tease to what the music might be about) For this album, the cover tries to satirize climate change to the extreme.

Six years after Morph the Cat, Fagen is clearly back. Despite the years between them, each record is a well-developed, thoughtful recording distinguished by the sound of Fagen’s smooth voice coupled with the most sophisticated arrangements in pop. Sunken Condos is no exception to the rule. But while this album may be outstanding in sound, the songs themselves fail to stand out. One could conclude that this is an album of songs that intentionally look inward. The evidence is found in the song, “Weather in My Head”:

In Fact, It’s a Gas: The Stones on Celluloid

“It’s about the time we were living in,” Mick Jagger contends offscreen in a new documentary, explaining why his band’s songs, stage persona and lifestyle spoke to the counterculture of the 1960s. But the time we’re living in now still seems linked to a Rolling Stones calendar, as the ensemble celebrates a half-century together. A contemporary tour begins in London on November 25 and 29, before hitting the U.S. in December. Crossfire Hurricane, which premiered on HBO this month, is a fascinating collection of archival footage periodically narrated by rock ‘n‘ rollers who’ve gone from anarchic youngsters to mischievous senior citizens before our very eyes and ears.

Jagger, the lead vocalist who remains an unparalleled master at shaking his skinny hips and pursing his bountiful lips during performances, notes in a long-ago television interview: “I can’t express myself in the right way when I’m satisfied.” Asked about the screaming teenagers who turned early Stones’ concerts into a contact sport – numerous snippets show them lunging at, tackling and toppling the musicians – he suggests “that shows dissatisfaction with something.” Quick cut to the propulsive “Paint It Black,” with various glimpses of boys fighting police outside Stones’ concerts around the globe.

Pastiche: Sam Mendes' Skyfall

My original intention was to look at the last 50 years of cinematic James Bonds, ending with the just-released Skyfall. I was planning to write about how each generation gets the Bond that suits the times. Sean Connery was the Bond for the men (and women) who'd fought in World War II. He was a man's man who fought the good fight, drank like a fish, smoked like a fiend, bedded a couple of “broads” and saved the world from diabolical evilness (i.e., Hitler). He was also the Bond for the first of the Baby Boomers who were born just after the war, so they would have been hormonal 16- or 17-year-old boys when Dr. No (1962) was released (they all drooled over Ursula Andress and her bikini). By the time Connery made his last original Bond in 1971, Diamonds Are Forever, he was the Bond for the end of the hippie era (the ideals destroyed, now usurped by scum such as slightly hippieish/psychopathic Mr. Wint (Bruce Glover) and Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith)).

I was going to talk about how Roger Moore's first Bond, Live and Let Die (1973), was an attempt to come to terms with blacksploitation films such as Shaft (1971). I watched it again recently, having loved it when I was 14. My God, is it terrible and borderline racist. The Me Decade was encapsulated with the rest of Moore's work, with its disco overtones and not-funny quips. The new-seriousness of Timothy Dalton failed because the screenwriters seemed to forget that Moore had retired. The less said about the Pierce Brosnan era the better. Daniel Craig, in Casino Royale (2006), was the first post 9/11 Bond working in a world filled with confusion and trust being constantly betrayed.

Neglected Gem #29: Judy Berlin (1999)

Edie Falco as Judy

In Judy Berlin, the exquisite film debut of writer-director Eric Mendelsohn, a Long Island town in early September, that magical, touching time of valedictories and new beginnings, is the setting for a Chekhovian tragicomedy of emotional revelations. The characters are all interconnected. Judy (Edie Falco) is putting in one last workday at one of those American heritage villages; at the end of it she’ll hop the local train into Manhattan and take a flight to Los Angeles, where she hopes to break into movies. Her mother Sue (Barbara Barrie), a strained, uncomfortable woman whose relationship to her daughter is tense and awkward, teaches at the local elementary school. Bob Dishy plays Art Gold, the principal, who is married to Alice (Madeline Kahn). They barely seem to make contact with each other; as he heads for the door, there’s anguish in his eyes – mourning for vanished feelings – when she coaxes him to join in a worn exchange that begins, “Who’s your best lady?” You can see the pain of all the living the Golds have shared; it feels as though they can hardly bear it any longer.

Oh What a Feeling: Crowbar at Hamilton's McIntyre Performing Arts Centre (Nov. 17. 2012)

Kelly Jay & Roly Greenway (composers of “Oh What a Feeling”)

As memorable as “Shoo-doot-n shooby-doo” or “Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom” and every bit as meaningful, “Ba-bada-baaa ba-bada-baaa!” is the war cry of Canadian rock’n’roll.  Or, it was for a generation of us, and recent events have shown just how important that simple chorus was.  Roly Greenway and Kelly Jay Fordham were inducted into the 2011 Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame for their classic one chord tune “Oh What a Feeling”.  And this weekend, their band Crowbar received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Hamilton Music Awards.  The award was presented at a long ceremony on Sunday night, but on Saturday night, Crowbar rocked the joint at Mohawk College’s McIntyre Performing Arts Centre.

Crowbar was the first band to benefit from Pierre Juneau’s new Canadian Content legislation (a law designating the implementation of 30% mandatory Canadian content by all radio stations) in 1970.  Because of this legislation, everyone in Canada could finally hear on the radio just how great our own music was. Their success, mixed with the fact that Margaret Trudeau was a fan, led to photo-ops with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.  They achieved huge success in Canada, but because people south of the border thought “Oh What a Feeling” was about some illicit substance or other, they received little airplay in the USA.  On Saturday night, they made enough noise to wake our neighbours from their slumber, and keep the rest of us dancing for another 40 years.

“We Interrupt This Commercial To Bring You Your Regularly Scheduled Program”

Corn flakes, sliced peaches, and Emilio Estevez in Repo Man

Reading Catharine Charlesworth’s recent review of Wreck-It Ralph on Critics at Large got me thinking about the remarkable way that brands and commercial products have so effectively permeated our lives – becoming so much a part of who we are, and the stories we tell about ourselves. For some, this may be a kind of tragedy, but I don’t really think it is. The degree to which popular culture and personal identity has become bound up in particular brands and products isn’t in itself something to mourn or something to embrace with any enthusiasm, but it is a reflection of our particular moment of modernity. Apple versus PC, Coke versus Pepsi, iPhone versus Android – these choices genuinely matter to many people, and running from it in the popular representations of our reality only serves to make those representations less, well, representative.

Catharine notes, rightly I think, that the integration of certain real video games into Wreck-It Ralph seems to genuinely add to the universe it portrays, and even gives real entertainment value to the viewers, who (like anyone) are always delighted to see themselves, and their interests, reflected back to them in the movies and television shows they watch. Of course, that isn’t the only reason why we are seeing more and more product placement (what is often more politely now called “brand integration”) in our TV shows and movies, but nonetheless it is worth pointing out that there are still better and worse ways of going about it.

Vestige of the '60s: The Last of the Haussmans

Helen McCrory, Julie Walters and Rory Kinnear in The Last of the Haussmans

The Last of the Haussmans, the second National Theatre production to be transmitted this season in the HD series NT Live, is the first play written by the actor Stephen Beresford, but you’d never guess because it’s bursting with confidence and it has a distinctive vision. Like the Lisa Cholodenko movies Laurel Canyon and The Kids Are All Right, it’s a high comedy that focuses on the repercussions of the sixties, but it doesn’t go soft (as Laurel Canyon did) or rigid (as The Kids Are All Right did); it’s a resolutely fair-minded satire that turns unexpectedly poignant. The great Julie Walters gives an exuberant, high-style performance as Judy, a hippie whose tireless quest for self-exploration led her to abandon her two children to be raised by her parents.  Now she’s in her sixties, they’re fortyish, and brother and sister are drawn to the house on the Devon Coast she inherited from her parents when she undergoes surgery for melanoma.  Libby (Helen McCrory), the elder sibling, has been raising her fifteen-year-old daughter Summer (Isabella Laughland) by herself – until Summer’s long-absent dad decides to re-enter her life and invites her to spend part of the summer with him and his new wife in France. Libby is on the rebound from her latest unsuccessful amour. Her brother Nick (Rory Kinnear) is a gay man in a perpetual state of heartbreak; he’s also a recovering junkie. Their relationship with their mother is sometimes strained, often ironic, and irresolvably complex. The other characters are Judy’s doctor, Peter (Matthew Marsh), who is cheating on his wife with Libby, and a laconic nineteen-year-old named Daniel (Taron Egerton) who arouses Peter’s paternal instincts, Nick’s libido and Summer’s teenage interest, but develops his own crush on Libby. However, the household revolves around Judy, who is just as free a spirit, just as outrageous and irrepressible and infuriating, as she must have been when she walked away from her children to join an ashram decades ago.

Bad Guy Affirmation: Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph

Ralph (John C. Reilly) and Fix-It Felix Jr (Jack McBrayer) in Wreck-It Ralph

Ah, the arcade: that glittering portal to dozens of impossible worlds, where adventure and heroism get prized above all. While the titles and technologies have changed since the 70s, some characters remain staples in these childhood haunts. Year after year, they get shot by the same spaceship, stomped by the same hedgehog, or tossed off the same buildings into the same puddle of mud. Being a hero every day might be great, but a villain? Despised by children everywhere, with no recognition for that work? I know I’d long for a change after a while.

Wreck-It Ralph opens as Litwak’s Arcade shuts down for the night, when its pixelated inhabitants come alive. This prompts the obvious parallel with Toy Story, and Pixar’s John Lasseter even served as an Executive Producer here. As in the earlier Disney film, these game characters have lives of their own when humans aren’t around, venturing from game to game during the night. How to link these game cabinets and their respective worlds together? Use their power cords as a subway system of course, complete with a Game Central Station. Too cheesy for you? We're just getting started!

Critic's Notes & Frames

I was rather late joining the Facebook revolution (which seems to have now been passed on to Twitter). There was nothing personal in my decision to resist. I welcome innovative technological changes providing we use our powers of discrimination in using them so that we become accountable rather than blind consumers. For me, however, I discovered that what worked best was creating a virtual salon, an ongoing soiree where all my 'friends' could be part of a never-ending discussion on a variety of subjects. Sometimes these items were created by me. At other times, I shared items posted by others. On occassion, it's a quick review of a movie, a song, or a book. It can also be a cartoon, a painting, or a photo with a short comment. Here is a sampling:

History as Soporific: Steven Spielberg's Lincoln

Daniel Day-Lewis stars in Lincoln

Steven Spielberg's new Lincoln movie isn't going to help any teachers convince their students that American history is actually exciting or interesting. In fact, the movie is so stupefyingly dull that it will remind you – if you've been unlucky enough to have lousy history teachers (I had a few good ones, fortunately, which is one reason I like history) – of those tiresome hours whiled away in the classroom just waiting for the bell to ring, and thus end your misery, while the teacher droned on. Luckily, with Lincoln, you have the option of leaving the cinema anytime you want to and without getting into trouble for vacating the premises. I suspect many audience members will feel like doing just that.

Instead of trying to capture the sprawling and tumultuous life of one of America's greatest Presidents, Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner, utilizing a relatively small part of Doris Kearn Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, concentrate on the last few months of Lincoln's life, in early 1865, when the just re-elected Commander-in-Chief (Daniel Day-Lewis) sets out to ensure that the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, will finally pass, a daunting task as a significant number of Democrats would have to be convinced to jump aboard the anti-slavery bandwagon. The film's focus is on his mission, as he and various minions cajole, threaten, beg and even bribe their opponents to switch sides and do what is morally right.

Granted, it can be rather difficult to capture the to and fro of political deal making, which can be dry material and make it seem interesting and compelling, though TV's The West Wing did do it on a weekly basis. And at least Lincoln isn't as tedious as Ken Loach's turgid 1995 film Land and Freedom, which was overly invested in the dull minutiae of communist political debates and wrangling. Nevertheless, Spielberg's would-be opus is still a remarkably static affair, certainly for him, and a film that, ultimately, undermines and lessens the gripping nature and lasting impact of Lincoln's stupendous feat.

Lost in Translation (Part Two): Bernard Malamud's The Natural

Yesterday I wrote about how some terrific novels sometimes get lost in their translation into film, in particular, E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime and the subsequent botched effort of Milos Forman's film adaptation. If Ragtime was a case of the wrong man hired for the wrong job, however, The Natural (1984) was an example of smart and talented people dropping the ball. Bernard Malamud's first novel was a canny parable written with true American gusto in which the author digs into the spirit of one of Ted Williams' famous declarations. Looking back on his storied career with the Boston Red Sox, the baseball great once remarked, "All I want out of life is that when I walk down the street folks will say, 'There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.'" Malamud asks the question: If you were the greatest ball player who ever lived, blessed with extraordinary athletic gifts, could you just as easily piss it all away?

Malamud's 1952 novel The Natural is a vivaciously entertaining story of a thirty-four-year-old rookie named Roy Hobbs who gets a second shot at becoming a baseball star – and then blows it. Fifteen years earlier, as a can't-miss-prospect, Hobbs is almost killed by Harriett Bird, a disturbed baseball groupie who seduces and shoots him. Years later, and recovered from his injuries, Hobbs gets a new contract and arrives at the dugout of New York Knights' manager Pop Fisher to join the team. Given Hobbs' age, Pop is initially reluctant to bring him on board. His corrupt partner, Judge Goodwill Banner, has also been dumping lousy players on him all year with the purpose of decimating the team; he figures if the team finishes last, Pop will give up and sell him his share of the franchise. Hobbs changes all that by leading the Knights to a league pennant. But he's also an unbridled hedonist. When he gets involved with Pop's niece, Memo, he's distracted from his quest to be the best, just as he was earlier by Harriett, once again betraying his natural gifts. He may be a natural, Malamud reminds us, but he's still human.

Lost in Translation (Part One): E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime

Ask anyone who loves to read books and they'll tell you that there is nothing worse than seeing a good book badly mangled on the screen. I'm not talking about the literary fetishists, either – the ones who want to see every little detail of the book translated faithfully. (Those folks are already predisposed to disparage movies as a lesser art. They're prepared to hate the adaptation because films, especially if they come from Hollywood, are already guaranteed to desecrate the source material.) Nevertheless, there are books that have indeed been ruined, if not rendered unrecognizable by filmmakers – those who appear either incapable of understanding the text, or are willfully misreading it.

E.L. Doctorow's 1975 novel Ragtime could well be a victim of both a misunderstanding and a willful misreading. Ragtime is a richly textured parable of American lore in which the author performs masterful tricks with the history we thought we knew. Some historical figures are disguised, others are merely alluded to, while a few others are used by name – popping up in the narrative in the most colourful way. In Ragtime, Doctorow captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the twentieth century and World War One. But rather than write a realistic account of the period, he creates a sumptuous pastiche, a flip-book chronicle that is, in many ways, already a movie. "[It was] an extravaganza about the cardboard cutouts in our minds – figures from the movies, newsreels, the popular press, dreams and history, all tossed together," wrote Pauline Kael in The New Yorker. "Doctorow played virtuoso games with this mixture – games that depended on the reader's having roughly the same store of imagery in his head that the author did." In calling the novel an "elegant gagster's book," Kael underlined how Doctorow cleverly portrayed American history as a confidence game that tested our ability to separate fact from fiction. As Voltaire once remarked, "History is a game we play with the dead."