Rahab

Rahab is a biblical prostitute with a heart of gold; Rahab is an agonizingly flaky novel by Waldo Frank. A contemporary review refers to the book's style as futurist, a term dropped later in favor of modernist. Published in 1922, the book shares a birthdate with The Waste Land and Ulysses but was destined never to achieve their importance. Irregularly punctuated, free-flowing, and mystical, Rahab aggressively makes the case for a new literary form. Frank's version of modernism was, however, stillborn. Isaac Bashevis Singer puts it aptly in his introduction to the 1967 reissue of Knut Hamsun's Hunger: "Writers who are truly original do not set out to fabricate new forms of expression. ... They attain their originality through extraordinary sincerity."

A View From the Bridge

I saw this play several years ago in New York with Anthony LaPaglia in the lead and Allison Janney as the wife. Looking through the Web, I am surprised that this was as long ago as 1997-98, and also that Brittany Murphy played the role of the young niece. I remember the performances of LaPaglia and Janney, in particular, as powerful and intense, which only added to my disappointment at the current Broadway production starring Liev Schreiber. While his performance is merely flaccid, Scarlett Johansson is positively inert. There is nowhere to hide on the stage, and this woman simply can't act. Jessica Hecht as the wife puts on an over-the-top accent and is wooden at best. The production is a wheezing, amateurish thing.

Barabbas

Par Lagerkvist's Barabbas speaks to the modern world from the Jerusalem of the Nazarene. Barabbas's central problem, "I want to believe," is only ambiguously resolved, but around him he sees a pure, devotional, ecstatic Christianity that the centuries would partly betray. Austere and dignified, Barabbas is written in the style of the Age of Faith but for the Age of Doubt.

The Borzoi 1925

This record of Alfred A. Knopf's first 10 years as a publisher includes essays by and about his writers, with a bibliography of Borzoi titles. It is a snapshot from which most of the faces, 85 years later, have faded. A few still stand out (Mencken, Mann, Lawrence, Gibran, Cather) but there are many more whose books are, deservedly or not, obscure. I bought a copy of Ladislas Reymont's four-volume The Peasants based on the essay here, and will keep watch for other authors and titles, like Louis Golding (Day of Atonement), Nicholas Bessaraboff (Tertium Organum), David Garrett (Lady Into Fox), Brett Young (The Dark Tower), Thomas Beer (Sandoval), plus anything by the superlatively named and, to judge by the photograph, beautiful Storm Jameson.

Brooklyn's Finest

This film proves that Antoine Fuqua's Training Day was no fluke. To take just one scene: A character is killed on the street at night and the camera fixes on his head against the pavement. Then the shot tilts, the focus blurs, and a pair of car headlights in the distance grow larger as music comes up -- the whole effect is mesmerizing. Fuqua places religious artifacts everywhere, maybe in one place too many, in fact, but the point is that there are things going on which require the viewer's attention, and which repay that attention. There are several scenes of suspense and excitement comparable to Hitchcock's work.

Quiet Flows the Don

The River Don is a silent witness, coming into view now and then throughout this epic film, usually in the background, observing love, stupidity, cruelty, selfishness, bravery, and death. This tale of a Cossack village in the years surrounding the 1917 Revolution is a big-hearted feat of filmmaking, beautifully photographed.

Legs

This is the first of William Kennedy's Albany books, the story of Jack "Legs" Diamond as told by his lawyer. The dialogue and characterizations are piquant, and give appetite for the rest of the cycle centered in Kennedy's own little postage stamp of native soil. Gangsters were both loathed and loved in this era, but Kennedy creates a Legs of shades and textures who is no mere symbol.