Books by-the-month: January

T. S. Eliot was wrong when he said that "April is the cruelest month–" [he was wrong about a lot of things, like, ya know, his raging antisemitism, but, anyway, meh: a phenomenal poet] he’d clearly never experienced the nightmare that is returning to work, and the world-in-general, in January. In an election year. 

"Oh, what a long year this January has been!" I literally proclaimed yesterday. 

It's January 9th. 

Bleak times.

But with the festive season long gone, January can feel bleak and never-ending, not helped by the sidewalks lined with the corpses of Christmas trees, the days shorter and the darkness encroaching upon what feels like lunchtime, plus resolutions tugging away at your conscience? HARD PASS. So with the January blues in full swing, I offer a reprieve: an uplifting book.

I jest I jest. January is the birth month of too many of my close friends to count, including my husband. And who am I kidding I love winter coziness and any excuse for hyyge and all thing snuggling. Add a book to the picture of me + fireplace + snow outside + cup of hot something + Tatiana? Bliss. (Apologies for the wintery rant, southern hemisphere friends...)

 

In this new series Books by-the-month, I'm endeavoring to play the role of curator, assembling mini book collections across time and genre, according to themes endemic to the months on the good ol' Gregorian calendar. Holidays, yes. Seasons, sure. Themes the seasons inspire, why not? I also welcome any and all of your suggestions in the comments, friends!

 

And with that said, I give you January's mini list. Whether you’re looking to expand your mind, take up a New Year’s reading practice, or simply distract yourself from the chilly, soggy realities January has to offer, these books are sure to soothe you (at least mentally) for a day or two (plus the month or so those two days feel like... because, it's January).

 

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January Theme: "Fresh Starts" and "Self Improvement"

 

1. Build The Life You Want by Albert C Brooks and Oprah Winfrey

On the solar calendar, January is all about the New Year's resolutions, and boy oh boy does our culture love to offer every one of us a million offers to improve. Lose the weight! Quit smoking! Save more money! Finally start therapy! Kick your weird habit! Start a juice cleanse! Have better relationships, conversations, anger management, sleep! Stop being a total jerk! 

 

The list is endless. And so is the pressure.

So my choice for this January "self improvement" category is a book of science-backed, evergreen wisdom on improving your overall HAPPINESS. And the first lesson is all about how we as a culture don't fully understand our own happiness, and how doing so can make a huge impact on how we experience the world, connect with ourselves and others, and shape a reality that brings us more peace, contentment and joy. 

 

Because apparently you can get happier. And getting there will be the adventure of your lifetime. So sayeth Oprah and author, researcher, academic and lecturer on happiness at Harvard University Arthur C Brooks. 

 

"In Build the Life You Want, Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey invite you to begin a journey toward greater happiness no matter how challenging your circumstances. Drawing on cutting-edge science and their years of helping people translate ideas into action, they show you how to improve your life right now instead of waiting for the outside world to change.

With insight, compassion, and hope, Brooks and Winfrey reveal how the tools of emotional self-management can change your life―immediately. They recommend practical, research-based practices to build the four pillars of family, friendship, work, and faith. And along the way, they share hard-earned wisdom from their own lives and careers as well as the witness of regular people whose lives are joyful despite setbacks and hardship.

Equipped with the tools of emotional self-management and ready to build your four pillars, you can take control of your present and future rather than hoping and waiting for your circumstances to improve. Build the Life You Want is your blueprint for a better life."

I hope you are as moved by its practicality, compassion, and candor as I was. 

January Theme: Reverend Martin Luther King Junior Day

2. Several reads on Martin Luther King Junior to celebrate 

There are many ways to celebrate the life of the peerless speaker, activist, leader, man of G-d and visionary humanitarian, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. It is being suggested by sociologists that in the 2010s-20s we are living during the second Civil Rights Movement, and where better to look to understand our present and our future, than to examine the courage of our origins. 

 

We have the gift of listening to his recorded speeches, joining in festivities, reflecting with friends and family. But of course, my favorite way to do this is to read books. Books have the capacity to create atmosphere like none other, and here are some essential reads about the man who lived up to the name of ‘King’ — the leader of America's civil rights movement.

• "Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63" (1986),
• "Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-1965" (1998),
• "At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68" (2006)
• "The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement" (2013),

 All by Taylor Branch.

The first book in Branch's multi-volume King biography, "Parting the Waters," was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1987. The two following books were also highly praised and in 2013 he provided a single-volume overview. Totaling almost 3,000 pages, Branch's exhaustive biography provides a deep look into King's life and legacy.

In addition,
Here is a wonderful list of MLK celebration books from the always book-savvy LA Times.

January Theme: :: Deepest Winterrrrr ::

3. "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy

In 2011 I wrote books-by-the-season, and regaled you with many books for the wintry months. From the first magic of The Chronicles of Narnia to Italo Calvino's singular If on a winter's night a traveler, to the psychological thriller masterpiece that is Rebecca—I waxed on and on and stand by my choices!

Winter can make for an irresistible setting for a book (believe me I... wrote a book set... in Siberia. So). From the glass-like surface of a frozen lake to the frenetic power of a white-out squall, the dead of winter offers countless evocative and extreme conditions that conjure magic, channel psychological heartbreak and push characters to their absolute limits. But January offers the longest of nights and bitterest of cold, and thus makes perfect meteorological grist for atmosphere, making you clutch your mug of tea a little closer.

And who does any of this better? Than RUSSIAN LITERATURE. You heard me. If you are a London Still venteran you know I love allthingsRussian (just to be clear in 2025: all things arts and culture, and not politics for literally ... the last 100 years?) 

 

And while Bulgakov is my dearest love, there is no greater place to start, end, and linger along the streets of Moscow than in the heartbroken arms of Tolstoy's great heroine, Anna Karenina. 

 

[:: Sweeping orchestral swell! ::] 

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was serialized between 1875 and 1877, and first published in book form in 1878. Tolstoy considered it his first true novel— (note that War and Peace appeared in 1869! He must've felt very strongly!) Those two novels, of course, are considered among the two greatest novels not simply of Tolstoy's, not simply of Russian Literature, but two of the greatest novel and frankly, works of art, of all time.  William Faulkner famously answered, when asked to name the three best novels, "Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina."  And Anton Chekhov reputedly said, after visiting his hero: "When you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone."

 

Tolstoy wrote many other (truly wonderful) short stories, and works like The Death of Ivan Ilyich (my "gateway drug" to all Russian Literature— thank you Jean Gaede by Russian Lit teacher Junior year at Interlochen Arts Academy), The Kreutzer Sonata, and Hadji Murat are also held in high esteem. Tolstoy was also a profoundly influential thinker— a radical Christian, a vegetarian (nearly a vegan), a pacifist. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in both Literature and Peace multiple times, and it feels criminal that he never received either honor (to be fair, it was early days for the existence of the award.)

 

So thanks very much in part to my previously mentioned life-transforming Russian Literature class in high school (once again, thank you Jean Gaede), and additionally in part to a childhood best friend Arielle who married a gosh darn Russian Literature professor, I was hooked. I picked up a copy of Anna Karenina one frigid, lonely, heartbroken winter years ago, and, after owning it for less than a week, I was performing medical-grade triage on the collapsing spine of my copy. Unputdownable isn't the word. Because it far exceeds that.

With its sempiternal themes of envy, fidelity, ambition, success, power, pity, lust and the greater machinations of a "civilized" society, Anna Karenina is the perfect place to begin your Russian literary journey, for it will be an odyssey. 

 

Sure sure, I hear you moan, but what is the novel about? Well, it's roughly 350,000 words are "about" marriage and adultery, but also farming, and war, and religion (and philosophy in general), and about economics, and about the difference between life in Russia and life in Europe; and, in a large way, about how to live a life, and the time-worn question of destiny versus personal agency. It offers few answers. Just better and better questions.

The modernity of the characters is leave-you-breathless astonishing: how they all, from young Kitty, to the author's alter-ego Levin, strive for meaning; how they so often fail (as the cuckolded husband Karenin does when he confronts Anna's adultery) to put into words what they desperately yearn to express; how one society princess is "awfully, awfully bored" and laments the "same everlasting crowd doing the same everlasting things" (Tolstoy's princess is a literary antecedent of F Scott Fitzgerald's Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby: "What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon … and the day after that, and the next thirty years?")

Tolstoy observed that the way to begin a novel was to "plunge readers right into the middle of the action." This is borne out in Anna Karenina: the opening chapter plunges us into themes that will be explored fully later. We learn in the first paragraph that "everything had gone wrong in the Oblonsky household. The wife had found out about her husband's relationship with their former French governess and had announced that she could not go on living in the same house with him."


Part One's most enduring scene, however, is Anna's arrival where, just after she has exchanged eye contact with Vronsky (her fatal attraction), a guard is crushed by a train: "A bad omen," she says to her brother, tears streaming down her face. As readers, we know she is doomed. And we are hopelessly hooked.

A little note on translations, while we are here.

In translating literature from one language to another in general, it is important to convey not only the literal meaning of the story, but the culture, dialogue, thought flow, and essence of the characters being conveyed in a way that makes literal and emotional sense to the reader who experiences the world through the lens of another language.

Because Russia holds such an extra layer of foreign mystery to Westerners, cultural conveyance is of even more import.

Russians (and of course, subsequently, their language) are very direct in their everyday conversations. They say exactly what is needed, often coming across as harsh or rude to the smiley, overly polite English-speaking world that values socially manicured manners and friendlyness above all else. 

 

 

So who does this best? The contemporary husband and wife team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are considered by many scholars to be the gold standard of Russian Literature in English translation. Not only in the prose (which is *ga ga ga gorgeous*) but crucially, in the dialogue. Also crucial is the footnotes. Their footnotes explain EVERYTHING you could ever want to know about what you are reading in a comprehensive but concise way. 

[Two little] CONS:
The bummer about many of Penguin Classics editions (that Pevar and Volokhonsky publish with)? --
1. the font is so tiny you could totally get an ocular migraine.
2. The covers...? The American covers anyway are ...  not inspired. And the saying be hang, judging a book by its cover is fine be me because book covers matter.

Things I Miss: a List, Part 1

Jake. Gone too soon.

- Our beautiful ginger cat (who came to mom and I after Papa died), Jake. He was "The Man" of the family and an absolute sweetheart. Gone too soon at only 7. 


- Answering machines (and their answering machine messages)

    We had a particularly spectacular one in the 90s. I wrote the lyrics and sang it at the age of 10 or 11? Not sure. It was performed at 100-no-marking (obviously, some things never change) to a karaoke CASSETTE of the theme song from “The Addams Family. I then leisurely popped that masterpiece into our answering machine and used it as our answering machine message for OH, maybe nine years? Like, even when my Dad had cancer.
The lyrics went like this: 

    “You called us when we weren’t here
    but there is no need to fear 
    we’ll get right back to you, dear
    The Silber Family. 

    Oh 647-6759
    we’re sure to call you back on time
    and it won’t even cost a dime
    The Silber Family — WAIT FOR THE BEEP
        *snap snap*

    People used to hang up and call BACK to an encore. I vividly remember my Dad’s oncology nurses calling back and hearing nothing but their collective, explosive laughter. That was nice.
    It’s about as famous as I could ever feel at the time without being a creepy child actor. Because I was VOICEMAIL MESSAGE FAMOUS.


- Handshakes 

- Combing the shelves of Blockbuster and picking out videos to rent (and probably picking up some RedVines, let’s be real…)

Fetzer.

- Sometimes, my long hair 

- My friend, David Fetzer (and holding his hand which fit so perfectly in my own)

- Trick-or-treating

- Dad. Always.

- This particular version of myself:

Friends I Went to Summer Camp With: A List

CAMP.

Interlochen Arts Camp is located between two freshwater lakes in northern Michigan, and was the magical location of the majority of the lasting relationships I still cherish as an adult. 

Not everyone I met and be-friended is still in the arts, but most of them are kicking major butt, and all of them became the wonderful human beings they promised to become as children.

Summer arts camp is a funny thing—there you are, eleven years old an a total weirdo back home, and you get to spend 8 weeks with a handful of other weirdos just as passionate, talented, freakishly informed about a single art-form  as you are.

Three of those weirdos for me were:

THEN.

Alex Michaels, known today as Alexis Michelle of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9 fame. (SHE IS FEROCIOUS and go see her werk). Little baby Alex and I met the summer we were ten and eleven. He had braces. I had glasses.

The day we met, we were auditioning for the Intermediate summer operetta, and, had to audition in front of the entire group of fellow middle schoolers vying for a role. What I remember best was that Alex and I BOTH sang excerpts from Show Boat, geeked OUT over one another’s talent and a shared obsession with Rebecca Luker, and never looked back. He was my first “best gay” and I was his first “best gal.” (Incidentally, we were both cast in that operetta as the comedy sidekicks…)

Last month, we reunited on stage at 54 Below, singing together once again, celebrating 20 years of friendship that all began in the Northern woods.

NOW.

Then.

Santino Fontana was my first ever scene partner! We met the summer of 1999 in ADVANCED ACTING TECHNIQUE (faaancy), and what I recall above all else is that
     1. The scene was a John Patrick Shanley classic that I only now realize as probably mildly inappropriate for teenagers
     2. We were REALLY into it and dare I say it, kind of good, and
     3. We performed our scene n what, at the time, was a very advanced form of communication called THE INTERNET. That’s right, we performed our scene and got feedback VIA SATELLITE for, of all people, Matthew Broderick.

I followed Santino to college (even though I had to leave the program to grieve the loss of my Dad) and he’s been one of my friends and artistic allies ever since. We’ve been there through epic highs and lows throughout all of adolescence and life. From the

Santino is not only (to quote his wife Jessica) "a unicorn" of talent, to his family and friends, he is the absolute loyalest man I know—unflinchingly, with all of his heart. When we made our Carnegie Hall debuts together in 2013, it had been a roller-coaster couple of years for both of us, and what a triumph. We'd "practiced." And above all, it was pretty special to realize that we’ll always just be those kids from Advanced Acting Tech.

At our shared Carnegie Hall debuts in 2013

THEN. ...Holy Moly.

Michael Arden and I met the same summer, and he was also in that Advanced Acting Technique class (that class was… obviously… fairly promising…). We instantly bonded, singing together at every opportunity, joined at the hip as budding artists and humans. The inside-jokes are countless.

Michael and I met at camp, but our friendship deepened and was made permanent when we went to the yearlong academy— we literally did almost every show opposite one another (he was the Charlie Brown to my Lucy, the Georg to my Amalia, etc).

Michael and I have both been through our share of tough stuff early on in life, and our families became very close as we grew up. His grandfather, Jim, wrote me a letter he handed me at high-school graduation. This deeply feeling, but very quiet Texan wrote that seeing Michael and I together on stage were "the happiest moments of my life" and that "it is the dream of my life to see you together on Broadway someday."

Well.

I was there for Michael's Broadway debut, he was there for mine. And last year, when we were both in the same season on Broadway, I was one of his guests at the opening night of Spring Awakening, and he was one of mine at Fiddler on the Roof.

Jim's dream came true. If only he, his wife Pat, and my father could have been there to witness it. That said, they were. They are a part of everything Michael and I are, and do; and because they gave us the gift of Interlochen, they gave us the gift of one another.

For Michael is, without exception, the artist with whom I credit with forming my capacity early on. Like a chess or tennis player who had the world’s best opponent to make their skills all the sharper, acting opposite Michael constantly made me better, and I owe everything I am today to that start. 

2016, Opening Night of Fiddler: a shared Broadway Season. Dream come true.

Camp. Magical.

I've Been: August 2016

- Writing writing writing...

- Basking in short hair!

- Taking great joy in doing even the littlest of tasks with excellence

- Learning to totally rock Self Care:

• Allowing people to help and love me
• Sleeping (like an Olympic Sleep Gold medalist)
• Introvert-ing (like a pro)
• Journaling constantly
• Enjoying Paleo delights (like my homemade Paleo granola whuuuut)
• Detoxifying my home (welcome Himalayan salt lamps! 

- Still meeeeeelting in the NYC summer heat.

- More health rumbling. Oof.

- Having a blast singing "Oh My Mysterious Lady" with Tony Sheldon for the Transport Group's Peter Pan in Concert

- ...and connecting with some incredible friends

- The camaraderie of the dressing room, combined with the feeling of true belonging after all these years was very powerful. And true. It is possible to be true to yourself in this business and in this world. The Transport Group often reminds me of that.

- Returning to London. Again. Ah beloved home away from home.

- Witnessing my oldest and best friend, Tony-nominee Michael Arden get married.

• Reading Sonnet 116
• Dancing the night away
• The entire "congregation of heathens" wearing matching onesies
• ...and singing along with Darren Criss (as he plays 90s songs on guitar... in the forrest... everyone singing along...in the onesies...)
• Doing magical spells in the forest
• Reuniting with my oldest friends on earth
• Engaging in not one but three costume changes



Alexandras take EUROPE!

• Seeing glorious Bath 
• ...with old and new friends

- Deep talks with new friends in foreign cities. The kind you can only have whilst traveling. 

- International Alexandra Sister trip!

- Seeing my lady-pals in Showboat at the New London! I wept!

- ...then grabbing a proper catch-up and feast after the show.

- Writing lots and lots of postcards! It is so wonderful (and easy!) to send simple missives of love and thoughtfulness via good ol' snail mail.

The leading ladies of Showboat

- SEEING HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD IN THE WEST END AT THE PALACE THEATRE AND GASPING AND CLAPPING AND LAUGHING AND WEEPING.

- Going out with the cast of Harry Potter after the show. Fabulous and bizarre. Making some new pals! Reuniting with old ones! (Ah the theatre! The great democratizer of the arts!)

- Being met and flooded with the WEDDING PARTY!! And making a NIGHT of it. (A hostess said in total earnestness "Are you with the group of 'kind of famous' Americans...?" I was. And we were clearly on #BRAND).

My Anatevka Family forever

- Re-connecting with my original Anatevka family for the entire Sunday of August 21st. My heart filled with the kind of comfort and happiness you feel in the presence of family. Next year in the Holy Land...

- Trekking through the grounds of Alexandra Palace after lunch with Bev and Tomm and feeling more at peace than I have all year. True  friends are healing.

- Being bold and reaping the emotional and energetic rewards. Fortune favors the brave.

- Seeing my dearest Pineapple and friend Michael Bernardi fulfill his destiny as Tevye on The Broadway stage (not to mention actually SEE my own show!!)

- Weekending in Bucks County with my friend and Julliard voice teacher and dear friend Doc White.

SO. THAT HAPPENED.

- Planning for the future

- More reading!

• Books that Have Made History by Professor Rufus J Fears
• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
• The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz
• The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene
• The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
• Becoming a Great Essayist by Jennifer Cognard-Black
• Underground Airlines by Ben Winters
• The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition by Strunk & White

- Falling in love with Tzeitel all over again...

Ahhhh August...

Spring Reads: A List

After a long,
frigid,
blizzard-filled,
not-one-but-two-colds,
not-one-but-two-round-of-antibiotics,
snowmageddon
snowpocalypsed winter...
plus the eff-you,
thoroughly-unpredictable March climate notwithstanding...

SPRING IS FINALLY HERE.

[*Cue: Handel's Messiah "Hallelujah" chorus, and REVIVALIST-STYLE RELIEF HOWL*]

Spring is a time of fresh starts.
New beginnings, clean slates; when the last vestiges of grey sludge on the corner of February Lane and Desperation Boulevard melt away, and as the citizens sigh with relief (for they no longer have to consider 20ºF a sign that it's "getting warmer...") The farmer's market stands fill with flowers, the light lingers longer, the trees burst out with fresh green leaves, and one feels the need to clean the corners of their closet with a cotton swab...

It is time to start again. 
Renewal.
Rejuvenation.
There’s just something about this season that makes us ready to let go of the past.

So after you drag 75% of the clothing you don't wear anymore to the nearest donation center, why not crack open a brand new book? For spring is the perfect time to shake off your crikeykillmenow winter funk and try something brand spankin' new.

What better to read, during this season of renewal, than great books about the bittersweet joys of starting over? Here is a curation of ideal seasonal reading, all with lush spring settings and inspiring themes that make one feel refreshed and energized. Even when chilly breezes blow, spring never loses its sense of possibility...

So curl up on a blanket, and enjoy these in the park on a sunny spring day...

* * *

1. These are my rivers by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Springtime is all about poetry. And American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is 'one of our ageless radicals and truebards.' In his peerless 'Everyman's' voice, Ferlinghetti combines a Whitman-esque celebration of the natural world with a deep bow to a surrealist tradition, and in "These are my rivers" has gathered over four decades of poetry with the added bonus of more than fifty pages of new work.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and founder of City Lights Books, blazed his way onto the literary scene with the 1958 publication of A Coney Island of the Mind, marking him as one of the first and greatest "Beat" poets (though his more refined poetic sensibility showed just how different he was from what "Beat" eventually came to mean.) What followed were numerous collections such as Pictures of the Gone World, and Wild Dreams of a New Beginning among others, all expertly drawn from everyday life.

These are my rivers is a compendium of work from throughout his entire career, including 27 new poems, and reveals an ongoing interest in matters political and sexual from an ever-maturing point of view. Unlike poet Allen Ginsberg, whose 'Collected Poems' showed an artist struggling with decline and decay, Ferlinghetti seems to maintain his calm in the face of age; as well as a recognition of his connection with readers.

Even though it first appeared in Wild Dreams of a New Beginning, These are my rivers is where I first discovered what I consider to be Ferlinghetti's greatest poem "Deep Chess."


2. The Griffin & Sabine

 Trilogy by Nick Bantock

Sometimes, when one reads a book, the experience goes beyond engaging storytelling, believable characters or impressive prose.


Sometimes? Reading gets personal.


Sometimes, a book reaches up through the pages, and grips you by the throat, and says

“I know you... I am speaking to you...” 


And perhaps you would be a fool to listen to that voice. Perhaps a lot of things. But, as William Blake says, “The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.” So persist I did.



When I was 16, I was introduced to author and visual artist Nick Bantock's trilogy of books (Griffin and Sabine, Sabine's Notebook and The Golden Mean), and was instantaneously moved by it in a way I had never been moved by a book before. 



The book is a boundless feast for the senses—visually stunning, emotionally stirring, mixing a touch of mystery, philosophy, mythology and even a dash of science fiction, upon the pages containing (simultaneously immaculate and chaotic) "mail art" artwork, all used to tell a story. This homage to the old fashioned post, combined with its phantasmagoric love story, were all created by Bantock himself, the product of his romantic and mischievous mind.

Depressed London artist Griffin Moss receives a postcard one day out of the blue from an unknwon South Pacific Island. It simply states:

Griffin: It's good to get in touch with you at last. Could I have one of your fish postcards? I think you were right— the wine glass has more impact than the cup. —Sabine

But Griffin had never met a woman named Sabine. How did she know him? How did she know his artwork? Who is she?

Thus begins the strange and intriguing correspondence of Griffin and Sabine. Each letter they exchange is pulled directly from an envelope attached to the pages of the book, so the reader must engage in the delightful, forbidden sensation of reading someone else's mail. Come on: that's sexy stuff. 

I had never seen a book like it.
I had never seen a work of art like it. 

But my fascination went beyond that— I had to know what kind of a person had the capacity to create something like this. Something so stirring, and evocative and true.

For years I devoured every scrap of his work that I could get my hands on in an attempt to understand it, and truthfully, him, further.
I felt as though his books were speaking directly to me.  

I’m sure we’ve all felt something similar. 



Yet I had never even met him.

And then one day, I did meet Nick Bantock.

I was terrified, not because I felt intimidated, but because I was afraid I might be wrong about him. It is always crushing when an idol comes crashing down. So I was relieved to discover that I was exactly right. 
We have become very dear friends. 


Sometimes it truly is enough to know that people like him are real. 

They do exist.


3. Un abril encantado or, The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

A recipe for happiness: four women, one medieval Italian castle, plenty of wisteria, and solitude as needed.

The women at the center of The Enchanted April are alike only in their dissatisfaction with their everyday lives. They find each other—and the castle of their dreams—through a classified ad in a London newspaper one rainy February afternoon. The ladies expect a pleasant holiday, but they don’t anticipate that the month they spend in Portofino will reintroduce them to their true natures and reacquaint them with joy.

Now, if the same transformation can be worked on their husbands and lovers, the enchantment will be complete.

The book is stunningly penned, but a faithful and glorious film adaptation was made in 1991 that certainly deserves a viewing of its very own.


4. Howards End by EM Forster

I first read Howards End under the expert inspirational tutelage of “Lady” Judy Chu, my high school British Literature teacher of such remarkable influence. I read it in the spring, when every blossom and glittering dappled leaf seemed to beckon me to the country estate. It is the perfect time of year to this classic. My work, lovingly thumbed high school copy still sits upon my adult bookshelf—complete with my 17-year-old scrawl penning such comments as:

"Well: London sounds dreary."
"Note to self: sign every letter 'BURN THIS...'"

and my favorite:

"Oh! All of this LOVE!"

Like all of Forster’s early novels, Howards End concerns itself with Edwardian society. As a member of the upper-middle class, Forster had keen insight into its attitudes and social mores, which he expertly rendered in the novel. But it was his profoundly humanistic values and interest in personal relationships that made all his books truly universal.

The major themes of Howards End are articulations of such philosophies: connection between the inner and outer life, between people, the future of England, and class conflicts; and above all connection-connection between private and public life, connection between individuals-and how difficult it is to create and sustain these connections. Howards End has been called a parable; indeed, its symbolism reaches almost mythic proportions at various points in the novel.

But the magic lies in the novel’s remarkable heroine Margaret Schlegel—without question the literary heroine I first “recognized,” and prayed resided within my own soul. Margaret is a font of love, intellectualism, imagination, and idealism, and the shimmering inner life of her mind is all shared with affection by the (charmingly biased) Narrator (quite probably the voice of Forster himself).

But it is Margaret’s “battle cry” that makes Howards End a masterpiece of the heart.

“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”

4. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

This, one of literature's greatest "children's novels" is among the most stirring tales of family, belonging and the healing powers of nature in the English speaking language.

Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in Manchester, England in 1849. Her father's work as a silversmith and master of decorative arts kept the Hodgsons in relative affluence until his death in 1854. The consequent decline in the family's fortunes only worsened in the ensuing years, as all of Manchester found itself suffering a severe depression brought about by the American Civil War. The Hodgsons, facing poverty in England, immigrated to America in 1865. There, they traveled to a small town near Knoxville, Tennessee, in search of a moneyed American uncle who had promised to support them. That help never materialized, however, and the family was forced to take shelter in an abandoned log cabin.

The move from industrial Manchester to rural America greatly affected young Frances, who was then only fifteen. Though she had always been captivated by storytelling, it was only in America that Burnett began to seriously consider writing in order to supplement her family's meager income. The cover letter she sent with her first published story, which appeared in Godey's Lady's Book, described her goal most succinctly:

"My object is remuneration." 

She received it: thirty-five dollars, which was, in 1868, a nearly princely sum. She became the family's chief means of support, writing five or six stories a month at a time when it was exceedingly rare for a woman to have a career.

Burnett was one of the most commercially successful and widely-read authors of her day. Her book Little Lord Fauntleroy was possibly responsible for keeping a generation of boys wearing ruffles and mauve velvet knee breeches. Her other novels (including The Little Princess) were wildly successful, but none was more instantly beloved than The Secret Garden, which was heralded as a classic upon its publication in 1909.

In The Secret Garden, the events of Mary Lennox's early childhood mirror those of Burnett's own:

The Secret Garden opens by introducing us to Mary Lennox, a sickly, foul-tempered, unsightly little girl who loves no one and whom no one loves. At the outset of the story, she is living in India with her parents—a dashing army captain and his frivolous, beautiful wife—but is rarely permitted to see them. They have placed her under the constant care of a number of native servants, as they find her too hideous and tiresome to look after. Mary's circumstances are cast into complete upheaval when an outbreak of cholera devastates the Lennox household, leaving no one alive but herself…

Mary is sent to live in Yorkshire with her maternal uncle, Archibald Craven. Misselthwaite Manor is a sprawling old estate with over one hundred rooms, all of which have been shut up by Master Craven who has been in a state of inconsolable grief ever since the death of his wife ten years before the novel begins. Shortly after arriving at Misselthwaite, Mary hears about a secret garden (that belonged to the late Mistress) from her good-natured Yorkshire maidservant Martha. After her death, Archibald locked the garden door and buried the key beneath the earth. Mary becomes intensely curious about the secret garden, and determines to find it…

Both Mary and Burnett experienced the death of their parents followed by a reversal of fortune, as well as a great sense of dislocation upon being taken from the country of their birth to one utterly foreign to them...

The novel is not merely autobiographical; it was written while Burnett was also very much under the influence of the ideas of the New Thought, theosophy and Christian Science movements; and Burnett's idiosyncratic fusion of these philosophies held that the Christian god was a kind of unified mind or spirit, with whom any person might commune. This spirit was held to be present everywhere, and especially in nature. Proponents of the New Thought also extolled the power of positive thinking (the fervent contemplation of what one hopes will happen), and held it to be a form of communion with the divine spirit. One could ostensibly cure oneself of illness through this kind of magical thinking, or change the character of one's fortunes.

Such ideas had a profound influence upon the writing of The Secret Garden—particularly as the inspiration for what Colin and Mary call "Magic." It is, of course, also visible in Burnett's depiction of the landscape (as represented by the garden and the moor) as having healing or restorative properties.

This book was deeply woven into my childhood (as was the almost perfect award-winning musical penned in the early 90s by Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon)— for the message of a young girl who, through nature, tenacity, and the power of her thoughts alone could heal the sick. A message probably more profoundly affective than I realized at the time—this story spoke to the displaced little girl, whose greatest and most fervent wish, was to heal her father of illness...

"Come spirit, come charm, come days that are warm. 
Come magical spell, come help him get well..."

5.   As You Like It by William Shakespeare

If you are to visit any single piece of Shakespeare in the spring, one should look no further than a visit to the Forest of Arden—the setting of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and chosen home of the banished daughter (of an equally banished Duke), the utterly sublime Rosalind.

Arguably Shakespeare’s greatest heroine, Rosalind is the woman whom scholar, Yale professor and literary critic Harold Bloom describes as “the first real lover in all of modern literature.” Rosalind is strong, sensitive, wise, raunchy, romantic, witty, profound and petty. She is the first to make fun of love, and also the first to let herself be fully embraced by all its joy. But perhaps her greatest quality is her wise, accepting, trenchant, and at times almost peaceful self-awareness. As Bloom says "Rosalind is unique […] in Western drama, because it is so difficult to achieve a perspective upon her that she herself does not anticipate and share."

In the spring of 2001, I played Rosalind as a final farewell to Interlochen Arts Academy—the location of, without a doubt, the happiest and most influential days of my life thus far. I was also desperately in love— with the young man that would become The Love of my Youth. I spoke Rosalind’s words to him from the deepest corners of my heart. And he spoke Orlando’s back to me. This was love at its purest, at its most innocent and delicate. Laced with trees, and warming light, and Shakespeare’s most romantic words.

It was everything that one ever hopes, and dreams,
and should ever be so lucky to have
when you are seventeen
and truly in love for the first time
and it is Spring.


Happy reading.

     Happy Spring. 

Friends I Admire (and Why) - Part 4

Beverley Klein

- So mischievous, and fun, and smart, and sensitive all at once!
- Smart as a whip.
- She spells her name with a third "E." Classy.
- No matter where she lives, Bev always seems to have a comedic, omnipresent seemingly un-fixable leak in her bedroom. 
- She's a true "chum" (to use her extremely British, and accurately descriptive word). Nothing in the world can rip us to bits! Distance. Time. "Age difference." "The show being over." I feel as close (if not closer) to her today than I ever have, and more so all the time... So there. True chums.
- About a year or so after (brilliantly) playing Golde (my Hodel's mother) in the last West End revival of "Fiddler on the Roof," Bev and I walked into a hair salon so she might take a peak a few products. The owner of the salon looked at us for a minute or so then asked if we were mother and daughter. Beverley and I looked at one another and got quite verhklemt (as Golde and Hodel might say), both somewhat bashful about how touched we were to be considered related in real life. It was a sweet little moment.
- ...And it illustrated something I loved so deeply about her: Beverley is a strong woman—she was born in Post-War North London, she doesn't suffer fools, she speaks her mind, and doesn't like when a lot of fuss is made about nothing. But there is a tremendous difference between strength and imperviousness. Beverley is neither hard nor soft—she is neither and both. For Beverley Klein is also a woman of deep feeling, profound emotional intelligence, and warm, true connections to people, things and causes that matter; and that lovely sentimental side creeps up like a swelling inner ocean at only the most sophisticated of moments.
- She has the best and most beautiful

1. Smile
2. Mouth
3. Teeth
4. Sparkly eyes, and
5. full-throttle LAUGH

Ever.  

- I call her "Bluma." She calls me "Scmulie." It's our thing. We're "Blu and Schmu."
- Beverley is on that emergency list of people that if I suddenly decided to have some sort of "shotgun wedding" and I had to call 10 people and tell them where to show up...well, suffice it to say Bev would be on that list. And she'd not only show up. She'd show up early, in a cute outfit, and probably offer to sing "Always a Bridesmaid."
- This woman is talented beyond reckoning. I would go anywhere to witness her perform. Watching Beverley work has been some of the most valuable hours I've spent in the theatre. She taught me almost everything I know (but didn't quite learn "in my bones" as a youngster, if you will) about objectives, motivated action, getting inside the skin of a character, and honoring their story above your own ego, and perhaps best of all, searching your soul and asking what you specifically have to "say" about a character.

"Mikey" and I... age 17/18

Michael Arden

- I've known him through not one but two name changes.
- I love the way his brain works (in super-hyper-blinding-mind-boggling creative overdrive)
- I love the way he sees the world (with hope, humor, compassion and wonder)
- He is the most multi-talented human I have ever met in my life. (Who is smart, acts like a genius, sings like a God, writes prolifically, produces, directs, composes, plays piano AND is that good looking? I... just don't know...)
- He was my Prom date. In fact, I would wager we've been to more High School Proms together than  anyone else in history (aaaaand that would be 3).
- He was also on my arm at my Broadway debut. Full circle beauty right there.
- We were Georg and Amalia. Archibald and Lilly. Charlie Brown and Lucy. Tony and Maria. You get the idea...
- He was the sole voice singing at my father's funeral.
- He came to The Woman in White twice (even though, as he said "I already knew her 'secret'...")
- We have this thing we do where I quite enjoy putting my nose in his belly button for personal amusement.
- We also have this other thing we do where the presence of the other makes us obliged to eat ALL THE FOOD ON EARTH.
- He believes in me. And because I admire him so much, it helps me believe more fervently in myself (particularly on the days when it feels very hard to).
- No one—and I mean NO ONE ON EARTH—makes me laugh like Michael Arden.
- He's the friend that... WRITES YOU A PLAY when he's 18. In fact, writes you a play and then 11 years later writes a part for you in another play. 

...and at Broadway debut in 2011

- Michael and I met at summer camp in 1999—paired together in our advanced acting class (that incidentally also contained still-friend, colleague, and Tony-nominee Santino Fontana as well as "Chosen Sister" photographer extraordinaire Arielle Doneson) in a "content-less scene—" (where you use vague standard dialogue to apply any number of circumstances.) Well all I can say is that it was magic.
- I don't think either one of us had ever in our young lives met another person with whom we had felt such an intense creative affinity, and I will go so far as to say I have never quite found anything quite as intensely in sync as it ever again. Michael and I were the kind of partnership that required little to no discussion; a silent, utterly synchronicitic link that allowed us to flourish profoundly in our formative years. I have met so many incredible artists along my life's path—as I know he has as well—but there is something to be said for the person you first shared that spark with, the first person to explode your sense of what is possible, and in doing so, not merely create beautiful things together, but make you better at everything you ever attempt to create again. 


More friends I admire:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Friends I Admire (and Why) - Part 3

Frances Thorburn

• Just the most creative, deeply feeling, and beautiful soul I've ever met.
• Frances Thorburn has THE BEST LAUGH I've ever heard.
• She is self-proclaimed to be "delightfully bizare."
• She writes stunningly beautiful music and poetry. 
• When she is proud of you--you feel it in your cells.  
• Did you tune in for "Dum Dee Tweedle?" Well... she is the direct inspiration for Tweedle Dee. As in: ...I basically copied her voice. Her adorable self, with her Glaswegian brogue and signature enthusiasm for mischief. 
• One time, we discovered that strawberries look like tongues!
• She has endured, without question, the most senseless, profoundly difficult circumstances and still managed to soar. 
• She loves her food. Particularly blueberries! And "quiche for one!"
• Psssst.... Franny's a bit of a Scottish celebrity doncha know. Well... at least she is to me. What do I mean by that? When I was a still a student in Glasgow I attended the theatre all the time, and Frances Thorburn ALWAYS. MANAGED. to be in the cast. I am not exaggerating! That lassie was everywhere! "Frances Thorburn" became synonymous with "Scottish Theatre Actress." So when I saw her on the first day of rehearsals for Fiddler on the Roof, I freaked! I knew so much about her work. I tried to play it cool (but we all know how that goes for Al Silber...) Thus began the Tevye's Daughters' catchphrase: Frances Throburn: Scottish Celebrity.
• When Franny and I first met, we were both in the throws of a great deal of personal "shrapnel--" by which I mean, in recent years we had both dealt with extremities of human experience. We were both raw and quite tender. And even though we had a lot in common, we also handled and viewed life with a lot of outward differences. We both worked quite hard to overcome our natural social tendencies, cultural differences, as well as a strength-and-sensitivity balance to forge one of the most successful, fruitful and important friendships in our both of our lives. Franny is one of my best friends on earth. I have never felt far from her-- no matter how much time passes, no matter how far away we are geographically. She is truly a sister--and I am certain it was because of the efforts we made all those years ago.

Nick Westrate

• He is the Lenin to my Trotsky. (Meaning: we are partners in 'crime'-- prescribing to the same artistic philosophy, but we go about it in different ways. I wanna talk it all out and feel my feelings, and Nick likes to do all that plus blow up the building...)
• My true “teaching partner.”
• He is the friend who tells you the truth even when it may be hard to say and hear. 
• He is one of those friends you learn from all the time. Nick Westrate is the friend that 'makes me better.' 
• He supports the artistic endeavors of his friends at every level, in the most gracious manner possible. (He gives you that standing ovation [if you deserve it], and has applauded me both in the West End and waaaaaaaay downtown...)
• He took a bus to come to my father's funeral....so... 'Nuff said.
• He has a cat named Jane. Her full name is Queen Elizabeth Nancy Pelosi Pussy Jones. Jane for short... Of course.  
• Believes there is nothing a good dirty martini can't cure.
• He fights with all his soul for causes he believes in. Fights to the death.
• He is from Southwest Lower Michigan... which means he knows the 'Glove Love...' WORD.
• Without a doubt, the peer artist I probably revere and look up to more than any other.

Alley Scott

• ALWAYS 'there' (at both, say “the hospital” as well as at, you know: Carnegie Hall)
• World class snuggler. 
• We are Team AMS! We are both "Alexandras" with middle names beginning with M, and surnames beginning with S... thus, we are "Team AMS!" Our motto? GO TEAM! 
• She is THE BEST HIGH-FIVER I have ever seem in my life. She High Fives with more enthusiasm then a head-cheerleader on a caffeine trip. 
• Throws one helluva party. 
• Enjoys a Christmas Tree ornament collection (that is, for the record, mighty impressive.)
• She is 1/3 of "The Alexandra Sisters."
• One helluva cook. (Her philosophy is "Fat. Salt. Sugar. Done.") 
• In fact, she is that friend you call 24 hours before a party you are throwing for waaaay too many guests and emit your emergency cry for help of "MUSKRAT!" Then, instead of just talking you off a ledge? She offers to COOK ALL THE FOOD FOR YOU...  
• She is the most extraordinarily gifted visual artist.
• ...as well as insanely photogenic.
• She is that friend you can call upon to 

1. drive you to the airport at 6am on a Thursday
2. or last-minute read with you at an audition 
3. or pick up your mail from the hateful Queens post office 
4. or drink a bottle of tequila with... ya know--BECAUSE, 
5. or cry andcryandcryandcry and then laugh with, because if she has driven you to the airport at 6am on a Thursday there is nothing left to hold back.

• She is my emergency contact. That sh** is real.
• She is both left-handed AND a red-head... and you know how I feel about aaaaall of that...

More friends I admire:

Part 1
Part 2

JeremEy Tiger

He pulled up in the driveway.

It was the spring of 2000 and Jeremey was driving across the country— from Oregon back to Northern Michigan in his beat-up, late-80s, light blue Oldsmobile station wagon named Estelle--the engine grotty, the edges rusted.

He brought the car to a halt and jumped out with uncharacteristic elation, practically dancing as he swooped me up in his arms and kissed me, then theatrically kissed my mother’s hands and bear-hugged my father. He set the stage for his excitement, concealed within the back of the Olds.

     “Okay,” he said, “are you ready?”

Jeremey lacked practically all sentimentality in his everyday interactions with others. With his characteristicly harsh, judgmental armor, Jeremey prescribed to the life-theory of: It-hurts-too-much-to-laugh-and-I-am-too-old-to-cry-so-I-am-just-going-to-be-a-dick-to-everyone-until-I-feel-better. Today’s enthusiasm could have been the result of either genuine zing, an illegal stimulant trip, or a combination of both.

     “Ta-DA!” he said, opening the back door of the car with a flourish, revealing a giant, full-on child-sized stuffed white tiger…in a seat belt. He laughed out loud. I laughed too, we all did. As much for the brain-crushingly adorkable tiger (wearing, I should mention, a black leather spiked punk-rocker collar) safely secured into the back seat, as the equally gorgeous gesture. It was so out of character, and the moment so genuine. I don’t think I shall ever forget it.

Whenever I think of that memory my face grows a permanent half smile. One identical to the stitches expertly sewn onto the face of what we all came to call, Jeremey Tiger.

*

I never rebelled.
I was the squeaky-cleanest kid you had ever met, terrified that any trespass into the world of adolescence might only add further to the already crushing burdens of my parents. Not that either one of my parents were in any way terrifying, no. I was terrified of my own volition: a perfectionist almost crippled by the terror of error, for to disappoint (or, more crucially), to burden them would have been a weight too great to bear. I felt as though I was the only source of hope and joy and promise. And any mistake--even the tiniest of transgressions--was my contribution to not curing cancer.

I went to school.
I excelled in my extra-curricular activities.
I got straight As.
I over-achieved.
I was the hope, the future, the pleasure, the reason; the source of their focused strength.
And so I took it upon myself to provide my parents with every excessive joy and pride imaginable.
Not because I always wanted to exactly,
     but because I was terrified the entire world would collapse if I did not.

When I did socialize it was one-on-one, or in intensely G-rated settings. Safe. Hermetically sealed. I needed to be in control of everything to avoid making 'mistakes.' My parents wanted me to have as normal a childhood as possible, and so they kept me away from the bulk of the health difficulties.
Who could blame them?
But because of that, I spent a great deal of time alone.
There was no one to share the childhood, or the burdens with.

And so, to the companion of perfection—the only contribution I could truly offer to making Dad well again.

*

I arrived at the (full-time boarding) Interlochen Arts Academy in the fall of 1999, ready to continue on my path, when of a light switch went on.

As previously explained I was a “lifer,” and found myself returning to the Academy with big hopes for the year and big plans for the future.

But this Jeremey person: the strange, pierced, leather-jacket-wearing, punk-music listening, Antonin Artaud spouting, left-handed, red-headed, pseudo-intellectual guy named Jeremey (spelled with three “E’s, much to everyone’s curiosity and oft-time irritation) was rebellious, dangerous, über-damaged, and fiercely arrogant; plus, to a perfectionist ready to bust-the-f***-out: utterly irresistible.

Because in truth, Jeremey was just a sweet, rejected, floundering youth trying to find his way. Trying to find his way like all of us.
And though he was as strange and all-out-there as a Bruegel painting,
though he was ofttimes selfish,
     oh how I loved him as only a sixteen-year-old could!

Sure! He dyed his hair constantly (my favorite being “Number 44B for African American Women”).
Yep! He had a piercing in both ears (and eventually in his nipples)
Absolutely! He was more than a little manorexic, and  
Okay, he waxed on and on (and on) about how everyone on planet earth besides him was a philistine.

But he also held me like a cross between a boy, a man, and a desperate teenager, all of which he was. He wrote love letters, and poetry, and the best book inscriptions you have ever seen, and hell, it all came from a pain (and I mean: what assholish behavior doesn’t)-- a pain I think he probably--at least at the time--had only ever shared with me.

Growing up in Nowehere, Oregon is never easy, but in a Catholic family split apart by unnameable troubles which all led to his emancipation at the age of fourteen, well… no one expected Jeremey to even finish High School. But he found a mentor and an advocate in a local lawyer who made certain he was educated and taken care of at a place like Interlochen.


....I mean, all this said, my parents were still, understandably horrified.

I’m not about to brag about falling for the pseudo-intellectual-without-a-cause routine, but I’m willing to own it. Jeremey was my “motorcycle guy!” He was an assertion of my independence! Now that I was away from home full time,  I was free to explore, discover the boundaries with my own judgments and moral compass.

So after an initial flurry of someone-has-to-do-something-to-end-this-relationship-type phone calls back and forth to Interlochen, I think Mom and Dad resigned themselves to the fact that I would work it out on my own. That the world was not going to come crashing down if I dated a rebellious redhead with one-too-many Es in his name.

And oh how they tried.
I can’t even tell you how many patient, wonderful talks I overheard him having with my mother.
Or the vigorous banter he had with Dad. 
Or, how lovely the meal was that we all shared together after his graduation.
Or how (beyond all social mores and general parental reasoning) they allowed me to visit him over the summer in Oregon for a week. By myself.
Or how, at Thanksgiving, we all decided to have an early Christmas! And Mom remembered a story he had told about loving a 'Transformer' toy he'd lost from his childhood, tracked it down, and gave it to him.
Or, how Dad drove me all the way to Chicago to bring him home for Christmas, (and also where, in the car for the first time he tried to talk to me about sex and I turned into a Church lady while he locked me in the car and nearly crashed as he laughed and laughed at my discomfort. Awesome.)


So what happened?
As is everyone’s want Freshman year of college: Jeremey got out into the big bad world and learned more than he ever had, but still not enough to realize that he actually knew nothing.
It happens to us all.
But when you mix it with a preconceived proclivity to be holier-than-thou, with a dash of I-was-burned-as-a-youth entitlement? Well good ol’ Jeremey—already a little obsessed with himself— became more obsessed with himself, and he had to go.
No hard feelings but, you know, people were, like, dying.
Shame.

Still, though.
When I look back, all I see is what he gave me.
My first true love, a taste of rebellion, a box full of poetry, the best-ever book inscriptions in earnest, left-handed scrawl, and of course, a stuffed tiger I could never let go of as long as I love.

Jeremey gave my family a different kind of conflict to overcome,
     and the opportunity to understand one another even more deeply.
The Silbers believed in Jeremey, gave him a family to be a part of.

In the end, I think we all loved one another.
Very much.

for Prom: his nail polish matched my dress. That's love.