Leopoldstadt

Leopoldstadt, Tom Stoppard play at the Huntington Theatre (which seems to be going by The Huntington these days in their programs, perhaps to avoid the whole theater/theatre issue). I like Tom Stoppard, and I knew this would be heavy (it's about a Jewish family in Vienna in the first half of the 20th century, so you know how that's going to go) but I wanted to see what Stoppard would do with it. It's a very personal work - he's trying to imagine some of his own heritage and come to terms with his own family history - and it was powerful in exactly the way you'd expect. (While also sometimes pretty funny in the leadup, as Stoppard does.)

We had an interesting conversation afterwards about Holocaust art, about which I have many mixed feelings - in wanting to see this play, knowing it would be emotional and I would cry about it, is that, like, atrocity tourism of real historical suffering; does Holocaust art get used for justification of the modern state of Israel feeling they have infinite license to do supervillain shit you would normally spend two hours watching Batman or James Bond thwart (yes, I am talking about the pager attacks on Lebanon, which is not the only bad thing the state of Israel has done but is a recent and particularly shocking one); given that in the US one of our two major parties has high-office candidates who have called themselves Nazis or who are calling for the forcible deportation of 20 million people, do we conclude that Holocaust art is a failure at convincing people that holocausts are bad and we don't want any or would this shit be even worse if we weren't constantly turning off at least some potential fascists from fascism with timely application of Number the Stars or Maus or Diary of Anne Frank or Devil's Arithmetic or Schindler's List or or or. Probably nobody goes to see something like Leopoldstadt unless they're already anti antisemitism? Probably they are not going to generalize to "displacing and persecuting groups of people is bad in general" unless they already think that? I don't know.

A Sorceress Comes To Call

A Sorceress Comes To Call, T Kingfisher, 2024 novel. A very tense and anxious book, which maybe I shouldn't have read on a tense and anxious day*, or maybe that was perfect. This is a typically Vernon fairytale (I won't say which one, although if you know fairytale references she tells you almost immediately) with things inside-out and backwards, and I think it's my favorite of those she's done in awhile. Like, I enjoyed both Nettle & Bone and Thornhedge, but didn't love either - Nettle & Bone I recall ending a little awkwardly, and Thornhedge had some murky motivation. This felt really tight and compelling (and utterly chilling, omg). Minor spoiler: ( Read more... )

*(I have new storm doors now and they're good and I don't even think we ended up with too many bugs in the house during the extended periods of doors standing wide open, AND the weird smell I was smelling from the boiler has been duly checked out and a part replaced, but *two* different people coming in and out and also having a Permanent Change made to the house was a *lot* and boy did my brain want to tell me we had to Stay On Guard and Had Also Probably Chosen Poorly.)