The Night Gardener, by The Fan Brothers (2016)

There are so many great picture books for children this Christmas season that it’s almost impossible to write about them all.  But there are a few standouts that demand particular attention, and we will try to bring them top-of-mind this week.  (The number of excellent prose novels recently released for Young Adult readers is equally impressive, and we will tell you about some of those before the New Year rings in, we promise!)

One of the most original and delightful books to cross our desk this season is The Night Gardener, by Terry Fan and Eric Fan.  These extremely talented brothers are Ontario-based writers and illustrators, and The Night Gardener is their best book to date.

The story tells of life on Grimloch Lane.  Life continues apace, without much interesting seeming to happen.  Young William notices, though, a mysterious gardener steal by one night, a gardener who transforms an ordinary tree into a magnificent topiary sculpture of an owl.  The neighborhood falls agape with wonder … and the mysterious gardener continues to ply his trade, leaving these amazing wood-and-leaf sculptures in his wake.

William, of course, promises to stay up one night and catch him in the act…

There is so much going on in The Night Gardener that adults will delight in unpacking the story as much as children.  The evocative illustrations for this book were rendered in graphite, and then digitally colored.  Fortunately, the Fan Brothers exercised as much restraint in the coloration process as they did with their drawings.

Grimloch Lane in the early pages of the book is a fairly gray, monochromatic place.  As the Night Gardener creates more and more topiary art, the pages slowly and subtly infuse with color, reaching a full, rich coloration at the end.  But this is never used to cheap effect; indeed, illustrations that take place in moonlight are just as mysterious and creamy as they are subdued. 

The drawings themselves have a great deal of charm; they are mindful, in their way, of the pen-and-ink work of Edward Gorey (1925-2000).  But where Gorey was macabre and mordant, the Fan Brothers are more mysterious and insinuating.  The brothers have a happy knack of composition, and the drawings are filled with witty details that catch the eye. 

Any attentive reader paging through the book will, again and again, return to the word ‘subtle.’  We are told very little about William, but there is a picture of his parents on his windowsill.  We never learn anything about them, and it was not until my second page-through that I noticed that the building he leaves at one point is an orphanage.  And our gardener seems to sculpt his animals based on whatever animals happen to be in the neighborhood.  And who are the mustached, hat-wearing twins in nearly every group drawing?  Could it be the Fan Brothers, themselves?

But just as interesting as the illustrations are, the story is even more compelling.  Are the Fan Brothers offering a parable on the affect that art has upon us, or a story of transferring intergenerational expertise?  Is it about the soul-crushing effects of ugly neighborhoods and urban blight, or about the restorative effects of engaging in the arts?  Is it a meditation on seasonal changes, or a commentary on created families?

This is a book with no easy answers, but many earned pleasures.  The Night Gardener is sure to intrigue both children and adults with its subtle drawings, evocative narrative, and hidden clues.  A gem!

Through the Looking Glass: Further Adventures and Misadventures in the Realm of Children’s Literature, by Selma G. Lanes (2004)

Last week, we looked at Selma G. Lanes (1929-2009) and her initial book of collected essays and reviews, Down the Rabbit Hole, published in 1972.  This book was a significant watershed in serious criticism of the genre, and Your Correspondent recommends it highly.  More than 30 years later, Lanes returned with another collection of essays and reviews, Through the Looking Glass: Further Adventures and Misadventures in the Realm of Children’s Literature.  Does the latter book measure up to the former?

Actually, Lanes’ follow-up is not only worthy of its predecessor in every way, but in many instances quite superior.  Featuring essays and reviews written between the early 70s and 90s, Lanes continues to show a keen critical acumen and love for the subject.  Her voice is one that is greatly missed.

As would be expected from one of the first critical champions of Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) , Lanes writes about both his mid-and-late career triumphs with real sensitivity.  She also tackles the enigma that was Edward Gorey (1925-2000), a unique talent in children’s publishing in particular, and the art world in general.  Anyone familiar with Gorey’s spidery pen-and-ink drawings has a ‘take’ on him, but it was Lanes who described it best for me with the phrase “arctic detachment.”  She also argues, cogently, that Gorey was not a children’s illustrator at all, but rather a sometimes visitor to this realm.  Gorey’s sense of humor, his flights of fancy and his worldview were too mordant, too bizarre and too bleak for children, and many of his best books (The Gilded Bat comes to mind) are children’s books in name only.  Lanes summarizes his peculiar charm nicely.

Also excellent is Lanes’ chapter on the latter life of Beatrix Potter, who, once she was married and living in the Lake District she so dearly loved, turned away from her fabulous children’s books with nary a second thought.  Oddly enough, it was American collectors and publishers who kept the cult of Potter alive, and it is largely through their efforts that she is remembered today.  Kudos to Lanes for this bit of insight.

Useful, too, is her look at the letters of fairy tale master Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) and American writer, editor and publisher Horace Elisha Scudder (1838-1902), of Boston, Massachusetts.  Scudder, in letter after letter over the course of many years, slavishly worked to get authorized editions of Andersen’s books in the US; he also sent the Great Man many of his own stories and books.  Scudder, it seems, barely registered as a human being to the Great Man, who was too involved, too remote and too icy a character to respond in any human way.  All of Andersen’s heart, it seems went into his work, with nothing leftover for the man himself.

Lanes writes perceptively on the drawings of Ernest H. Shepard (1879-1976), who brought A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh to graphic life, and was the ideal artist for Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows.  Shepard, it seems, understood whimsy (Milne) and English countryside philosophizing (Grahame), and was able to capture both with his pen.  Also valuable is Lanes’ chapter on New Yorker writer E. B. White (1899-1985), who also wrote the classics Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little.  Lanes argues that his brevity, style and honesty were all reflections of his inner self; a man who finely hones his talents and his emotions until they were worthy of a public airing.  White is a type much missed in the contemporary world.

But Lanes’ best chapter, as in the previous book, is on the evils of the culture of Political Correctness and how it neuters literature and emotion, and how poisonous it is in particular to children’s literature.  On one hand, Lanes bemoans an atmosphere that seeks to find intolerance when there is none.  She is against expurgated versions of Dr. Doolittle, The Five Chinese Brothers, and the illustrated Yankee Doodle because she believes that children (a) are smart enough to understand historical context and (b) read for insights on character and not to underscore racial prejudices.  On the other hand, she also (rightly) abhors books that exist for no other reason than to make certain groups of people feel better about themselves.  As Lanes wisely put it: Now propaganda is an entirely legitimate and worthwhile endeavor when undertaken in a life-enhancing cause.  But those of us who choose books for children should be both willing and able to recognize the difference between propaganda and literature.

There is a great deal more in Lanes’ book (including insight on Winsor McCay, historian Roger Sale, and an excellent essay on Harry Potter written shortly before her death), and all of it smart, wise and very, very human.  Through the Looking Glass is still in print, and can be found at Books of Wonder in New York and online.  If you are even remotely interested in the subject, get it.

Fêtes Vénitiennes, by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1718-19) at The Frick Collection

It is always a treat when one of New York’s major museums mounts a show that is scalable, smart and well-balanced, and that is what The Frick Collection in New York has done with its current Masterpieces From the Scottish National Gallery, on view through February 1, 2015.

The Frick has gathered 10 superb paintings from the collection, ranging from the Florentine Renaissance to 19^th Century society pictures.  It includes wonderful works by such masters as Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, El Greco and Velazquez.  It is a show not to be missed.

The Scottish National Gallery was founded in 1850 in Edinburgh, and is one of the finest museums in the world.  It has an extraordinary collection of paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings – and the question of what to show at a traveling exhibition must have been a mighty one.

However, this bite-size show rises to that challenge – there is not a piece in it that is not a masterpiece in its own right.  Those not in New York should rest easy – the show will also travel to the de Young, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. 

Between now and Thanksgiving I wanted to share my favorite pieces in the show in The Jade Sphinx.  We start with Fêtes Vénitiennes, painted by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), in 1718-19.

Watteau had a brief career, cut short by premature death, but his legacy has been long lasting and influential.  He veered away from the stuffy excesses of the prevalent Rococo style, and his use of color and movement was influential for decades after his death.

Watteau was deeply influenced by figures from commedia dell’arte while learning his craft in the workshop of Claude Gillot (1673-1722).  The actors from the commedia had been expelled from France for several years, but the costumes, masks and mummery were to loom large in his boyish imagination.

Watteau also created the genre of fêtes galantes, scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with a theatrical air. Some of his best known subjects were drawn from the world of Italian comedy and ballet. 

The picture on hand at the Frick is well within that tradition – and it is one before which I spent considerable time.  It is a picture that seems to generate feelings both celebratory and foreboding, as what is clearly a party also seems spooky and … uncanny.

The moody garden setting would not seem out-of-place in a pen-and-ink drawing by Edward Gorey, and the coloration seems both subtle and vibrant.

The figures, so clearly part of a costume party, add another note of the strange to the picture, where figures in fancy dress disport themselves in an atmosphere that is playfully erotic.

The air of erotic play is personified by the background statue that is blatantly sexualized, and by the two male figures on either side of the picture who gaze openly at the woman center-stage.  (I also like the blue-costumed figure in the back with a tricorn hat; an aesthete who looks on with a critical eye.)

There is also a private joke in the picture – the musette-playing fellow to the far right is Watteau himself, while the dancer in pantaloons and turban is Nicolas Vleughels, a Flemish painter, who was Watteau's friend and landlord.  The actual story of why they are represented in the painting has been lost to time.

Not easily seen in the reproduction here is the wonderful coloration – though painted in oil, it looks for all the world like pen and watercolor.  The dress of the central female figure is dazzling, and lightens up the whole picture, providing life and vitality to the proceedings.  The band of color that shimmers down her dress is almost the source of light in the piece, capturing, surely, the pearly rays of the moon.

This small picture (22x18) is a little master class in mood and tension through color and composition.  Be sure to see it.

Tomorrow:  Painting by Allan Ramsay!

Important Birthdays: Bela Lugosi

Though no one would seriously argue that Bela Lugosi (1882-1956) was one of the movies’ greatest actors, there is little room for debate that he was one of the screen’s most iconic. 

Perhaps there is something about cinema that is anathema to truly great acting – the medium is too broad, too large, too loud for subtlety.  But those who make the grand gesture or can fill the screen with personality or individuality often become icons.  That Bela Lugosi is recognized now, 130 years after his birth and 56 after his death, is a tribute to the innate genius he brought to the screen.

Lugosi’s legacy to motion pictures remain a handful of interesting performances, a generous number of truly bad B films, and a legend that has lost none of its potency.  Typecast as Dracula forever after his 1931 film appearance, actor and role merged for eternity when the actor requested that he be buried in his vampire costume.

To the popular imagination, Bela Lugosi is Dracula, despite the considerable difference between the actor and the character as described in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel.  Never before -- or since -- has an actor become so defined by a solitary part.  The identification was so great that for the rest of his life, the actor was billed as Bela "Dracula" Lugosi.  No other actor's face, voice, inflections or body language holds greater supremacy over the part than those of the Hungarian expatriate. 

Lugosi first played the role on Broadway.  When Dracula premiered in Broadway's Fulton Theater, neither the critics nor the audience realized that they were witnessing the creation of one of modern theater history's great signature roles.  Though Lugosi was generally praised for his work, the thought of a supernatural protagonist on the Broadway stage was a concept that took a while to settle in.  The passion that Lugosi brought to the part -- he so mesmerized actress Clara Bow at a performance of Dracula that it was the start of a stormy romance between the "It" girl and the undead Valentino -- along with his intensity, strange intonation and charisma, made Dracula acceptable to critics and audiences alike.

Many actors to later play the role found themselves hobbled by the long shadow of Lugosi.  When Martin Landau played Dracula in a revival of the Edward Gorey production of the play, he found that audiences would accept nothing but the Lugosi conception.  (And this, 10 years before Landau won the Academy Award in 1994 for playing Lugosi in Tim Burton's Ed Wood.)  Gary Oldman, a terrific actor who made his mark in challenging roles, frankly admitted that the voice he used in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) was "pure Lugosi."

Dracula distilled for children -- everything from Sesame Street’s Count to General Mills' breakfast cereal Count Chocula -- is simply Lugosi and water.  When George Hamilton played Dracula in Love At First Bite (1979) he portrayed him as a lovelorn Bela Lugosi, caught in a world that had forgotten romance.  Leslie Nielson in Dracula:  Dead and Loving It (1995) also closely studied Lugosi's delivery and mannerisms.  Even Adam Sandler's Dracula in the current Hotel Transylvania imitates Lugosi -- and even makes an on-camera joke about it.

As Dracula, Bela Lugosi has appeared on toys, games, model kits and magazine covers.  Any television or radio commercial employing Dracula also employs Lugosi, for it is the actor and not the part that other players adapt.  Posters, greeting cards, record albums, Halloween costumes, iron-on patches, candy boxes and bubble gum cards have all borne Lugosi' likeness.  Bela Lugosi's face adorned the cover of Bram Stoker's novel as early as 1947, when the Pocket Books edition featured a painting of Lugosi hovering over a sleeping victim.  His association with the novel continues to this day, and Lugosi's visage continues to appear on the covers of many editions of Dracula, including the inexpensive Barnes and Noble reprint sold nationally.

No actor to play the part after Bela Lugosi has achieved the same long-lasting impression or has penetrated as far into popular myth.  Lugosi's Dracula is the yardstick by which all other interpretations are measured, a standard which has not diminished despite the many fine performances that followed in Lugosi's wake.

Frank Langella at the Cornell Club

                          

Your correspondent had the great pleasure of listening to a question and answer session with legendary actor Frank Langella last Friday at New York’s Cornell Club.  The luncheon event, presented under the auspices of the Hudson Union Society, presented Langella in a discussion about his latest star turn in Terrance Rattigan’s (1911-1977) Man and Boy, and then opened the floor to questions.

Langella is one the Americans actors who has carved-out both formidable film and stage careers.  For over 30 years he has morphed from a handsome leading man to a distinguished character player; Broadway roles have included Noel’s Coward’s Gary Essidine (Present Laughter), Sir Thomas More (A Man For All Seasons), actor Junius Booth (the interesting and overlooked Booth by Austin Pendleton), and, of course, Dracula in the Edward Gorey production of Dracula.  (He played a vampire of another type recently in Frost/Nixon, rightly portraying the former president as a slightly rancid revenant.)

Langella’s film career has been more spotty.  Studios worked to make him a mainstream leading man (playing Dracula as a romantic idol, for instance, or in the wonderful Those Lips, Those Eyes), but Langella was never wholly successful as a traditional lead.  Langella’s persona is too epic, too dangerous, and too larger than life for conventional leads.  By temperament and by technique, he is ideally suited for such figures as Sherlock Holmes and Leonardo da Vinci, Prospero and Cyrano.

Langella has had a formidable handicap to his classical theater ambitions – he is an Italian-American born in New Jersey.  (I well recall one waggish New York Times reporter calling him, “Bayonne’s gift to classical theater,” which is both snobbish and stupid.)  Langella, born in 1938, joins a small, select group of North Americans – Christopher Plummer and Kevin Kline come to mind -- with capabilities at classical parts to rival their European counterparts. 

If you have the opportunity to see Langella in Man and Boy, do not miss it.  Rattigan’s 1963 drama about a monstrous captain of industry, and how he ruins the lives of both investors and his own son, could not be timelier as the temperature drops around our Occupy Wall Street heroes. 

Last Friday, Langella was an amusing interview.  He graciously answered questions about his turn as Dracula – though it’s quite clear that he is more than tired of it.  (“It took the industry 10 years to forget that I played Dracula; it took me 10 minutes.”)  He also revealed that he is a dedicated craftsman as well was a great artist – he believes in being on and delivering for audiences.  If you can’t ‘turn it on’ or ‘turn it off,’ you should not be an actor.  He also told of an actor who had played Hamlet and three months after the run, could still not let go of the role.  “Then you did it wrong,” Langella said.

Happily, he spoke at length about Cyrano, who has played three times on stage, and he is preparing to direct a production next year.  It’s Langella’s belief that there is more than a little Cyrano in every man.  “We are all blocked by something – we think we’re too fat or think we’re too ugly, or that our nose is too big – and because of that, we’re unworthy of the love of a beautiful woman,” he said.  “But what Cyrano missed is that he was loved for his soul, and if a person has a beautiful soul, he is always worthy of love.”

Langella spoke with a mix of nostalgia and amusement about his upbringing in a noisy Italian-American home.  (“If pots weren’t flying, I thought something was wrong.”)  He also spoke at length about his preference for stage work, and how proud his is that his has mainly been a theatrical career.

It is always alarming to see a great actor at his ease.  I had the impression that I was with an indulgent uncle rather Dracula, Cyrano and Prospero.  But that is Langella’s point – there is something grand and elemental in even the most quiet people.