Author: rakemag

In a typical “opposites attract” love story, the clash factor usually serves to fan the flames of torrid passion. They fight, they pine, they end up in bed. Repeat until one of them dies. Nothing is quite this simple in Anne Tyler’s reality. The Minneapolis-born author’s sixteenth novel, The Amateur Marriage, focuses on the Antons, a Baltimore couple whose unwavering disdain for each other plagues three generations with grievance and heartache. It’s early in WWII when their relationship begins, innocently enough, with the impulsive Pauline staggering into Michael’s family shop, injured from one of her crazy stunts. Cupid hits them with an electric case of love at first sight, followed by a shotgun marriage, three children, and thirty years of wedded misery. Tyler’s often bleak storylines are ameliorated by her Sahara-dry humor and detail. But the genuine sentiment between hubby and wife that seeps in throughout the story—followed by the fact that they just can’t make it work—might leave the average reader frustrated by Tyler’s uncharitable conceit that love doesn’t always conquer all.

What an impressive debut! Disaffected Civil War vet Kane drifts aimlessly into a job on an Arctic vessel called the Narthex, where he discovers that his crewmates are a collection of eccentrics, murderers, and freaks (the engineer even has three hands). The purpose of the voyage is obscure and mysterious, but it has something to do with the plans of creepy ship scientist Dr. Architeuthis, whom Jones names after the Latin for “giant squid.” That might all make the book sound rather silly, but it isn’t. Jones knows his era and setting well—he immersed himself in it as editor of Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World, a nonfiction account of the disastrous Scott expedition to the Antarctic. (See this month’s Letters to the Editor). Rope Eater is a Melvillean literary take on adventure fiction; it’s dreamlike, macabre, and tinged with ominous overtones of doom, like the voyages of Ernest Shackelford as narrated by Edgar Allan Poe.

It’s not a trend we favor, but there’s a notable tendency these days for authors to turn their swords on each other in the name publicizing themselves. It probably started with that insufferable Jonathan Franzen, whose open sneer at Oprah’s Book Club was largely directed at the authors she chose. Then there’s New Republic critic Dale Peck, who gave up writing his famously acidulous reviews coincidentally right around the time his own new book would have been coming out for critical appraisal. (Not that it gave him a free pass, but the timing was still irritating.) Tibor Fischer got into this act a couple of months ago with a devastatingly vicious attack on Martin Amis; Fischer basically admitted he’d have kept his poison in the inkwell if his own book weren’t about to ship soon. It’s not so much the negativity we mind, but that it’s being done as a PR exercise. It’s a shame, because it spoils our enjoyment of a book we’d otherwise enjoy in all our doe-eyed innocence—a comic novel about world travel in which the heroine never leaves her apartment.

Award-winning local author Benitez has found much inspiration in her dual Latin American and Midwestern heritage, and her books have a way of persuading you to cheer for both sides of the story. Her latest, Night of the Radishes, ought to please fans of her earlier, critically acclaimed novels, like The Weight of All Things. Spurred into a search for her long-lost brother whose whereabouts she knows only from postcards, outwardly happy mother and wife Annie comes to realize that her tragic childhood has left her with deep and unhealed wounds. Her search brings her to the Mexican city of Oaxaca (whose vegetable-inspired Christmas celebration gives the book its title and setting) and the arms of a kindly professor. Since we’re smack in the middle of the coldest, darkest moment of winter right now, it’s hard for us to imagine why someone might go to a nice tropical climate and then bother to come back, but the power of good literature is that it compels you to imagine worlds where such things are possible. Ruminator, 1648 Grand Ave., St. Paul, (651) 699-0587, www.ruminator.com; Barnes & Noble, Galleria, 3225 W. 69th St., Edina, (952) 920-0633, www.bn.com

The history of the 1804 Lewis and Clark expedition, which first revealed much of the interior of the continent to white Americans, has been covered quite thoroughly in recent years by both Ken Burns and Stephen Ambrose. Brian Hall takes a slightly different approach to the material in I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company with an intriguing blend of fiction and research-based history. The idea is to weave a more complete story than nonfiction allows by filling in gaps in the historical record with careful invention and educated guesses, and shifting perspective Rashomon-style between the four main people involved—the melancholic but brilliant Meriwether Lewis; his Boswell, William Clark; teenage Indian guide Sacagawea; and her French fur-trader husband. Hall’s prose experiments in the Sacagawea sections, intended to better represent her cultural way of thinking and language, are well-intentioned but not always successful. At times they are as opaque as the densest word-thickets of James Joyce. But on the whole this is the best of both worlds: Hall has a born novelist’s sense of character and a historian’s eye for the compelling fact.

A seventies doll made to look like Mrs. Beasley,
A Victorian soldier whose joints move quite easily,
Batman, The Matrix, and Lord of the Rings,
These are a few of our favorite things.
Wonders small and smaller are on display at the History Center in this exhibit detailing the social history, growing popularity, and production of those posable, often armed-and-dangerous toys called action figures. (Most little boys we know are especially adamant about that name; “dolls” just doesn’t cut it.) Alongside many of his own famous figurines, Minneapolis artist Steve Kiwis describes his studio and profession in a videotaped interview and gives a step-by-step explanation of his process. While it seems everyone from ’N Sync to our own former governor has been cast in their own Mini-Me likeness, the exhibit also gives a refreshing nod to a time when toys weren’t powered by AAA batteries (not included, of course) but by a child’s imagination. It features an 1895 bisque doll and a 1950s Tom Mix rocking horse from the society’s collection of over 3,500 toys and dolls. MN History Center, 345 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul, (651) 296-6126, www.mnhs.org

There was some surprise around town last week when the Minneapolis Fire Department said they’d already started selling advertising on city fire trucks. They’ll begin with hose covers promoting an unimpeachably responsible product: a smoking cessation program called Quit Plan. Still, thoughtful people were alarmed, and we were intrigued. When times are tough, our city leaders need to think creatively about funding liberal indulgences like putting out fires, right? We should be applauding Chief Rocco Forte for what may be the most creative funding solution ever applied in the public sector. So what’s the big whoop?

There are several big whoops. One is that we can’t escape the feeling that virtually everything is for sale, including our most necessary civil services. When Budweiser offers to buy the university a new swimming pool, with, you know, a custom tile job—what will our answer be?

Then too, we’re reminded of Lady Bird Johnson’s prescient campaign in the sixties to check billboard advertising. It resulted in the National Highway Beautification Act of 1965, which limited billboards to commercial and industrial zones as well as empowered states to decide how degraded they wished to be. (To this day, billboards are prohibited in Vermont. Oddly, no one complains.) Still, we fear hers was ultimately a futile effort lost to another century. The present one has so far been dominated by Reliant stadiums and Pepsi halftimes.

It probably doesn’t get said enough that this is a form of visual pollution. (Graffiti is illegal not because it assaults the eyes, but because it is advertising for which no one has paid.) We admit this for selfish reasons. When one becomes inured to advertising, it stops working, and ad-underwritten media (like, say, a nice little city magazine) begin to go away.

Besides, we actually like good advertisements, and we confess that an ad-free society wouldn’t be one we’d like very much—and not just because we’d be out of a job. One of the most depressing pilgrimages we ever made was to prelapsarian East Berlin. It took us days to realize that our vague feeling of desperation was being fed by something very specific: the complete absence of color, light, visual stimulation. On the other side of the wall, this was provided by good-old fashioned capitalist hucksterism—in a word, advertising.

Of course, there may be more serious reasons to worry about selling the hose covers to the highest bidders. We think the MFD is wise to take baby steps in these untested areas. Quit Plan offers an irresistible symmetry to the relationship: Most fatal fires in Minnesota are caused by reckless smoking. And even though the majority of calls to which the fire department responds are “medicals,” one could certainly make a case that the larger share of these, too, are health-related problems caused or complicated by smoking cigarettes. In other words, if this particular ad campaign works, our fire department will have less work to do, with more money in hand.
We should be so lucky.

A five-year labor of love by French writer/director Sylvain Chomet, Triplets is a pure visual delight that ought to appeal both to young children and the snootiest of the arthouse crowd. Chomet’s warped sense of humor and sheer inventiveness keeps the film percolating with comic energy, reminding us that there’s more going on in the world of animation than Finding Nemo. The storyline is uncomplicated, the more so for being nearly dialogue-free: A champion bicyclist is kidnapped by the Mafia right in the middle of the Tour de France, and his plucky grandmother sets off to rescue him. She finds allies in three eccentric, aged jazz singers (who, in flashback, are the centerpiece of the film’s bravura opening sequence, set in a 1920s speakeasy with guest appearances by the likes of Fred Astaire and Josephine Baker). Tiny Madame Souza, only three feet tall and club-footed, makes an endearingly indomitable heroine, almost mouselike compared to the giant squarepants shape of her mobster foes. But what’s most appealing about Triplets is its propulsive sense of rhythm and musicality, which often makes the action seem like some kind of outlandish Rube Goldberg device. Lagoon, 1320 Lagoon Ave., (612) 825-6006, www.landmarktheatres.com

Aki Kaurismäki comes from a land populated by emotionally reserved Nordic types and mosquito-breeding lakes, where it is cold and dark for six months out of the year. That would be Finland, though Fridley fits the bill. Specializing in low-budget movies that are smart, deadpan, and inspired equally by European art cinema and American rock and blues, Kaurismäki is Finland’s answer to Jim Jarmusch. This Walker retrospective covers fifteen of his features and short films made previous to 2002’s acclaimed Man Without a Past. You’ll most likely find us in line for one of his comedies, like the cult hit Leningrad Cowboys Go America or his droll second feature Calimari Union, an enjoyably plotless ramble about eighteen supercool guys in sunglasses, all named Frank except the one who isn’t. But Kaurismäki’s also got a powerful knack for humanist social realism, and some of his best work, like Ariel and Drifting Clouds, are about ordinary Finns trying to keep their dignity in an undignified world. Walker, 725 Vineland Pl., (612) 375-7622, www.walkerart.org

They don’t make them like Cary Grant any more. Sure, George Clooney’s got many of his good points—the good looks, the one-two combo of great comic timing and solid dramatic chops. But only the guy born Archibald Leach a century ago this month has so many classics to his credit that a three-week retrospective like this isn’t quite long enough to catch every essential film. As a comic actor, he had a doubletake that still ranks among the very best—check it out in the definitive version of that community-theater chestnut Arsenic and Old Lace, or his pairing with Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, a bomb in its initial release but now regarded as one of the finest of the screwball-comedy genre. Yet he was also an eminently capable romantic lead and noir hero, who teamed with Alfred Hitchcock on four of Hitch’s best thrillers. Three of those are playing in this series: North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief, and Suspicion. (In fact, Ian Fleming was so taken with Grant’s persona that he used him as a model for James Bond; Grant refused the role, forcing him to settle for some unknown Scottish guy instead.) Of the fourteen films shown here, the only one we’re not fond of is Gunga Din, a Kipling romp that hasn’t aged very well, so consider this a recommended baker’s dozen. Oak Street, 309 Oak St. S.E., (612) 331-3134, www.oakstreetcinema.org