Everyone's a Critic

More than twenty years ago, I met a new neighbor while we mowed our back yards. We were amused to learn that we both were editors (not a common occupation, even in Ann Arbor). I'd recently taken over the Ann Arbor Observer, while Nina Gelman ran the Washtenaw Jewish News.

Though Gelman has long since moved on--she married and moved to California--I've read the WJN ever since. And recently they've published two extraordinary stories. The December-January issue features an article by former Ann Arbor News staffer Art Aisner about the anti-Israel protests outside Beth Israel congregation on Washtenaw. Many publications, including the Observer, have written about the handful of people who picket the synagogue's Saturday services, but no one has done it as well as Aisner. Working with WJN editor Suzie Ayer, he's produced a compelling picture of the protesters, their motives, and the Jewish community's response. Smart, thorough, and fair, it's journalism at its best.

Some WJN readers felt Aisner was too fair. In the February issue, retired anthropology prof Steve Pastner riposted with a scholarly expose of the picketers' connections to groups advocating Israel's destruction. (The names of two protesters are misspelled in photo captions, but that's no reflection on Pastner--they're right in the text). The real eye-opener, though, was an op-ed piece by Laurel Federbush. "The few and the just" is a first-hand account of life inside the tiny cadre of protesters, as seen by a former member.

Federbush recalls how she joined the protests; her deepening involvement--"I digested the idea that the Zionists controlled the world, a tight-knit, elite cabal"; and her decision to break with what she now considers "a cult of sorts." But to her credit, this time, she's determined to resist polemics. "The few and the just" scrupulously maps the rugged landscape where emotion and politics meet. Candid and unsparing, it's an illuminating Ann Arbor memoir.

Labels: Art Aisner, Laurel Federbush, Suzie Ayer, synagogue protests, Washtenaw Jewish News

In mid-February, forty people were waiting their turn to check out a 60-year-old novel from the Ann Arbor District Library. Of course it's not just any novel--it's the high school classic Catcher in the Rye.

The recent death of reclusive author J.D. Salinger has caused a resurgence of interest in the man and his best-known book. "It's been flying off the shelf," says a Borders clerk, estimating that that since the author's death on January 28, the Liberty Street store has been selling between 30 and 40 copies a week, compared to 1 to 5 copies previously. Adds the clerk, " I read it when I was a senior. Loved it!"

An author's popularity often surges after death. Following the suicide of novelist David Foster Wallace, "People were asking about [his book Infinite Jest] for weeks, " says a staffer at Dawn Treader. But Salinger's death hit especially hard because so many young readers empathized with its angst-ridden teen hero, Holden Caulfield. who wonders around late 1940s Manhattan fulminating at "phonies."

"Compared to a lot of classics we teach, that's one book [teenagers] connect to," says Huron High English teacher Bob Fox. Judith DeWoskin of Community High says her students still find Holden as endearing as ever: "In a class of thirty students, I'll get twenty-six who respond to his voice and four who say he's a whiner and should shut up." Increasingly sophisticated about mental health, today's young readers debte whether Holden was bi-polar (DeWoskin has brought in shrinks to contribute to that discussion).

In this post-Salinger era, anyone treasuring a first edition of Catcher could unload it for up to $15,000, says Jay Platt of West Side Book Shop. Wistfully, he recalls that he sold one about twenty years ago--when the price was just $75.

Labels: J.D. Salinger Ann Arbor District Library Borders Books

The recent death in the Netherlands of Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank and preserved the diary that stirred the conscience of the world, was especially significant to Ann Arborite Irene Butter--a retired U-M professor, Dutch Holocaust survivor, and one of the last people to see Anne Frank alive

Butter met Gies in 1994 when she came to Ann Arbor to receive the University of Michigan's Raoul Wallenberg Award. News of Gies's death "reminded me how fortunate we were to have such a treasure in our presence," recalls Butter. Butter cherishes photographs of herself with Gies, along with a faded, Dutch first edition of the diary--autographed by Miep.

Butter had known Anne Frank by sight when both were growing up in Amsterdam. Later, imprisoned in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Butter accompanied Anne's friend, Hannelli Pick-Goslar ("Lies" in the diary), as Pick-Goslar tossed a bag of clothes to the young diarist over a barbed wire fence. "Anne was bald and covered only with a blanket," Butter recalls. "That was the last I saw of her."

Butter helped establish the Wallenberg medal, which honors individuals who risk their lives to help others. It is named for 1935 U-M grad Raoul Wallenberg, rescuer of Hungarian Jews. Gies, Otto Frank's former office manager, was one of a small group of employees who hid and fed the Franks in their office building for two years. When Gies spoke at the awards ceremony, Butter recalls, the auditorium was packed, including students no older than Anne was when she wrote the diary. Enthralled, they listened and asked questions ("Would Anne have married Peter?").

Gies "came to my house for dinner," during her Ann Arbor visit, recalls Butter, and the two women talked in Dutch. Although they didn't stay in touch, Butter had heard from people close to Gies that she was failing--she was 100 when she died.

Gies always insisted she was just an "ordinary person, no hero," Butter recalls. But she also "felt she had a message only she could tell," says Butter. "Many parents raise their children to believe that if you behave, nothing bad will happen to you. But the Jews were good people, and looked what happened to them."

Butter, whose father perished in the camps, and who herself gives talks about her experiences, does not consider Gies "ordinary." "She could never have considered not doing it [helping to hide the Franks]," says Butter. Such a clarity of moral vision, Butter speculates, characterizes people like Gies "who care so much about other human beings that they took the risks and made the sacrifices."

Labels: Miep Gies Irene Butter Wallenberg Medal

Quite a few bands from New Orleans come through Michigan on tour, and if the Subdudes have gotten lost in the shuffle for you, be advised that they don't sound like any of the others. Their starting point was probably the 1970s New Orleans R&B of Allen Toussaint, but they don't even sound much like him. Their sound is stripped down, more acoustic than not, awesomely funky -- and often all about the songs. They're extended, complex constructions, some of which turn into little portraits of New Orleans life. But the basic rhythmic appeal is never lost, and that's due to the drumming of Steve Amedee --mostly just tambourine and kick drum -- and the acoustic guitar of Tommy Malone, which shows that no amplification is necessary to penetrate the layers of New Orleans groove.

And if that's not enough of an endorsement . . . Governor Granholm was at the 'Dudes Ark show on December 14. She stayed for the whole thing, encores and all, and was clearly transfixed.

--James M. Manheim

Many if not most blues lovers in southeastern Michigan have a John Lee Hooker story to tell, but last month at the Ark the veteran South Carolina folk singer and guitarist Jack Williams had one that was new to most of us.

The role of the Southern university towns in the musical revolutions of the third quarter of the twentieth century is insufficiently appreciated. Williams got his start in Athens, Georgia, playing fraternity houses and backing the blues musicians who were booked in to perform there. (The recollections of Ike Turner pertaining to this scene are also valuable.) One night Hooker came through and took the stage amid the beer and the booze. "The fraternity boys and sorority girls realized that someone was staring at them," Williams recalled, "and that those eyes had seen things they couldn't even imagine." The crowd fell silent.

"And at that moment," said Williams, "I realized I'd never be a blues singer."

-- James M. Manheim

The Travelin' McCourys and the Lee Boys
The Ark, October 18

The Travelin' McCourys consist of two sons of the legendary bluegrass singer Del McCoury, along with several other veteran bluegrass musicians. The Lee Boys are one of the African American "sacred steel" bands from Florida that have achieved national fame over the last few years with a high-powered brand of gospel that has a pedal steel guitar at the center. A few months ago the Ark announced that these two groups would take the stage together. The pedal steel comes from country music, and the McCourys have brought songs by the likes of Robert Cray to bluegrass music. Still, you may have wondered how this would work -- the two traditions are vastly separated, and not only by race. Bluegrass is an acoustic music, essentially quiet and contemplative even at its fastest, while the Lee Boys pursue an ecstatic end that, like many other forms of African-American music, involves breaking down the divide between performers and audience.

It worked very well indeed -- the Ark crowd on October 18 was on its feet several times -- and it's worth considering, in view of the fact that nothing remotely like this has ever been tried, exactly how it was done. The Travelin' McCourys played a set, and then the Lee Boys began another, playing several numbers. During the final vamp of the last one, the McCoury band reentered the stage and the collaboration began.

First of all, this collaboration was at bottom Lee Boys music. Their big drum sound and bass guitar were never silent, although they did settle back to s simple two-four beat on a couple of numbers. But the moves made in order to create room for the bluegrass musicians (who played their usual instruments, although Ron McCoury switched from an acoustic to an electric mandolin) were quite detailed. One key player on the bluegrass side was fiddler Jason Carter, whose long jazz-like solos were capable of cutting through the Lee Boys' sound on their own. The other bluegrass instruments were paired in duets with Roosevelt Collier's pedal steel. Finally, when the Lee Boys cut loose at full volume, they were matched by the McCoury musicians singing in harmony.

The full group did spiritual-type numbers that have been absorbed into bluegrass, like "Walkin' in Jerusalem," along with black gospel pieces built, Andrae Crouch-style, over multiple vamps and a repeated text like "Celebrate your life!" The harmony vocals stood up to the sweeping momentum of the gospel sounds as the Lee Boys urged Travelin' McCourys on with shouts of "C'mon, bluegrass!" The musicians called the end result "sacredgrass." Give them -- and the Ark -- credit for genuine experimentation.

-- James M. Manheim

I still can't get over it sometimes--Performance Network is a real Equity theatre. Founded in the early 1980s, it lived on table scraps in that little black hole over on Washington for years and now it's a polished, regional repertory theatre. It's like watching a ragged ghetto kid graduate from Princeton.

I sometimes miss those old, edgy days, though, when you'd walk out in the parking lot for a smoke at intermission and hear people hissing "What the hell is this about?"

The Fireside Festival of New Works, four nights of staged readings of new plays at the Performance Network, brings back a little of that nervous, raw energy. The plays are in what you'd call late-workshop stage--not entirely jelled. With no sets, and only minimal props and blocking, the actors work with scripts in hand. Equity regulations limit rehearsal time for staged readings to eight hours per play, and while the actors don't have the lines memorized, this is a good reminder of the remarkable bundle of skills professional actors possess. With only eight hours of work, they bring fully realized characters to the stage and use the scripts unobtrusively, only for prompting.

There's an optional second part to these evenings. In the talkback afterward, the struggles the playwrights have gone through trying to press the final flaws out of their scripts are teased out by the audience.

The first night, Joseph Zettelmaier's "Night Blooming" threaded Native American mysticism through a three-generation chain of strong women in the Southwest, exploring mother-daughter bonds and the ebb and flow of love and loss. It was a weeper all right. "Night Blooming"'s problem wasn't that it was unfinished. It was almost too finished--one of the audience early in the talkback nailed the problem, questioning whether the technical descriptions of medical procedures tipped it into "Movie of the Week" predictability.

The second night of the Fireside Festival was "Victoriana" by Jason Sebacher, a fantastically audacious and, in the first act, nearly perfect piece of absurdism. Think "The Aristocrats" as told by Ionesco. Once in the first act, and again in the second, "Victoriana" stopped my heart with the delicious sensation of "I can't believe I'm watching this on a stage." In the talkback, a woman in the audience began "I'm a trained sexologist..." and there wasn't anyone in the room who didn't want to hear how she was going to finish that sentence.

The Fireside Festival continues tonight (September 29) with "Thorstein the Staff-Struck: A Tale from the Icelandic Sagas," by Russ Schwartz, and September 30, "The War Since Eve," by Kim Carney. Pay what you can--suggested ticket price $10.

Labels: Performance Network Theatre Ann Arbor Fireside Festival