6 — Thursday, March 21, 2019
Arts
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By Ed Sessa
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
03/21/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

03/21/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Thursday, March 21, 2019

ACROSS
1 Mosque leaders
6 Teddy-bearlike 
Star Wars figure
10 What many icons 
open
14 Prime production
15 Vase-making 
dynasty
16 Legal plea, briefly
17 *Hazards for 
herpetologists
19 Ring calls
20 Falco of “The 
Sopranos”
21 Designer 
Schiaparelli
22 Classic mother-
and-son statue
23 Didn’t emulate 
Washington?
25 Programming 
language with a 
coffee icon
26 *Square-shaped 
ice cream treat
30 North-of-the-
border gas
33 Not sharp
34 What the fourth 
little piggy had
35 Erode
38 Bettor 
expectations
40 Brought up
41 Shuttlecock’s 
path
43 Dols. and cts.
44 *Novel narrated 
by a horse
48 Spelled-out 
strikeouts
49 Best Buy buys
54 Sacked out
56 Great Plains tribe
57 Eurasia’s __ 
Mountains
58 Groups of two
59 Breadcrumb 
coating brand ... 
or, as two words, 
what is found in 
the answers to 
starred clues
61 Poet St. Vincent 
Millay
62 Funny Fey
63 Meant to be
64 Road sign animal
65 Fragrant 
arrangement
66 Property claims

DOWN
1 “That’s enough, 
thanks”
2 Columbus’ 
world
3 Be of use to
4 Ready to be 
recorded
5 Use one’s eyes
6 Estevez of “The 
Breakfast Club”
7 Breaking point
8 Service status
9 Metric wts.
10 Treatment for 
17-Across
11 *Pry
12 Novelist’s starting 
point
13 Slugger Sammy
18 Tolling place
22 Karachi’s 
country: Abbr.
24 “Locked Up” 
rapper
25 Iwo __
27 Drop down
28 Lines in the sand, 
perhaps
29 Hi-__ image
30 First name in tea
31 *Doggie bag 
item

32 Host of the 
1950s’ “Your 
Show of Shows”
35 Drop off
36 Keep-on 
connection
37 Cal. neighbor
39 Sisterhood name 
in a 2002 film
42 Mideast tunics
45 “The Spanish 
Tragedy” 
dramatist

46 “I guess it’s fine”
47 Genealogy chart
50 Largest UAE city
51 Fuming
52 Like some casks
53 Downhill runners
54 Fingered
55 Art class subject
56 Birthplace of 
seven presidents
59 Oil additive 
brand
60 Org. with Vikings

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WEBSITE.

How many Italian words do 
you know?
If you’re like me, the total 
probably caps out at a stunning 
two: 
“ciao” 
and 
“rigatoni.” 
But you might know another 
without even thinking about it: 
“Consigliere.” It’s a term that we 
are so intimately familiar with, it 
appears in political and financial 
headlines with healthy regularity. 
Consigliere, of course, refers to 
the second highest position in an 
organization, a murky backroom 
advisor of sorts. And the reason 
we are all so familiar with the 
term is one film: “The Godfather.”
There 
are 
several 
more 
Godfatherisms, pieces of the 
film’s narrative language that we 
have naturally embedded into the 
American lexicon. These lingual 
appendages are a testament to the 
influence that “The Godfather” 
has 
on 
our 
vocabulary, 
as 
pervasive as they are persistent.
Among 
my 
favorite 
Godfatherisms is “going to the 
mattresses,” a tactic of mafia 
soldiers to prepare for factional 
wars by stuffing dozens of 
mattresses in a single apartment 
like a military base. The phrase 
now refers to a ramping up of 
political tensions, the pregnant 
stretch just before a cutthroat 
conflict. Inarguably though, the 
most iconic Godfatherism is the 
concept of Fredo. Fredo is the 
eldest, weakest and most naive of 
the sons of the Corleone family, 
but he lives on in the way we 
discuss any trio and its weakest 
link.
So much has been said about the 
sprawling epic of Vito Corleone 
and his mafia powerhouse that it 

would be pointless to heap more 
praise for Francis Ford Coppola’s 
masterpiece on the mountain of 
it that has accumulated over the 
past 47 years. Instead, much like 
I did for my first installment of 
this series with “The Departed,” 
I’ll be taking a thorough look at 
several characters in the film 
to decipher what they signify 
about culture and its intersection 
with organized crime. Beyond 
the Godfatherisms that have 
employed themselves in political 
and business dialogue, the key 
players in the film have become 
avatars for a shared yet conflicted 
sense of American identity.
While both “The Departed” 
and “The Godfather” anatomize 
organized 
crime 
in 
morally 
ambiguous ways, the relationship 
they have to each other regarding 
ethnicity 
is 
certainly 
worth 
considering. 
“The 
Departed” 
is 
primarily 
and 
proudly 
comprised of Irish characters, 
but in “The Godfather,” the few 
Irish characters stick out like 
sore thumbs among the Sicilians 
around them.
Among the most fascinating 
aspects of what “The Godfather” 
has to say about cultural shift 
manifests in Vito’s sons Michael 
and Sonny. The story subtly 
employs these two characters 
as vehicles to tell a far larger 
narrative about American values 
after World War II, and each time 
I return to the film, their arcs 
have a renewed weight.
There is something gravely 
profound 
about 
Michael’s 
transition from an adorned World 
War II veteran to the Don of the 
Corleone crime family. When 
he first greets his relatives after 
returning from the war during 
his sister Connie’s wedding, he 
is a shining, humble hero. His 

smile is bright, his military suit is 
decorated lavishly with medals, 
and his arrival is a delight 
within the ongoing celebration. 
Michael’s 
reception 
largely 
mirrors society’s adoration of the 
American war hero in the late 
‘40s.
The tragedy is that his turn 
to the criminal underworld is 
catalyzed by the simple act of 
protecting his father in a derelict 
hospital. After a corrupt Irish 
captain, 
McCluskey, 
strikes 
him across the face on the night 
of his father’s abandonment, 
Michael realizes — much like 
the post-war society did — that 
the institutions he had clung to 
and believed in were corrupt 
and unjust. This sudden loss of 
faith in the government that he 
had once fought for shakes his 
entire worldview and disposition. 
The film considers this idea in 
its very first scene, when Vito 
actually reprimands a friend, 
Amerigo Bonasera, for seeking 
justice in courts rather than the 
Corleone family. But McCluskey’s 
brutal hook across Michael’s jaw 
represents the violent realization 
of distrust in the government by 
the film’s initially pristine war 
hero.
Michael’s descent into a world 
of corruption mirrors a broader 
shift in proud American stories 
about cowboys and soldiers to 
a darker acceptance of crime 
and moral confusion. Naturally, 
this 
crumbling 
of 
moral 
superiority parallels the rise of 
counterculture in the ’60s, the 
uproar of political descent that 
rattled American discourse like 
nothing else had. 

Going undercover: ‘The 
Godfather’’s cultural hold 

ANISH TAMHANEY
Daily Arts Writer

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

FILM NOTEBOOK

BITCH (takes one to know one)

Lennon Stella

Capitol Records

SINGLE REVIEW: 
‘BITCH (TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE)’

It’s a loaded word, and 
lots of us have been called it 
— in good contexts and bad. 
Lennon Stella inverts, twists 
and wields it on expert levels 
with her new single “BITCH 
(takes one to know one).”
Along 
with 
her 
sister 
Maisy, Stella is one-half of 
the musical duo 
Lennon & Maisy, 
but 
the 
past 
couple of years 
have 
seen 
her 
refocusing on her 
own solo projects. 
Her 
newest 
single 
opens 
with a boyfriend 
jokingly 
calling 
his 
girlfriend 
the 
derogatory 
word, forcing her into a 
position of weakness: “You 
sent me down the river to 
see if I would float away.” 
But she doesn’t float away: 
She speaks the word aloud in 
the chorus and turns it on its 

heel, proclaiming, “It takes a 
bitch to know a bitch.”
It’s a masterful move to 
affirm your own position 
and put down your horrible 
boyfriend in the fell swoop of 
a single world, but that’s what 
Stella does. It’s a concept she 
returns to time and time 

again — most notably in the 
bridge lyric, “You should 
hear the way you talk to me.” 
She’s literally making him 
hear it. But “BITCH (takes 
one to know one)” is a head-
turning song even beyond its 

lyrical cleverness, boasting 
a catchy hook and a chorus 
that sounds jubilant, fun 
and just the right amount of 
gloating. It’s Ariana Grande-
style pop, too even-handed to 
be a rant, vocally melodic in a 
way that elevates Stella miles 
above the level of the man 
she’s addressing. 
She’s 
in 
touch 
with the betrayal 
and hurt that she 
feels, 
but 
also 
with 
her 
own 
authority 
and 
ability to dictate 
the relationship 
she’s 
in. 
The 
real triumph in 
the song is that 
these 
emotions 
all come through on equal 
levels, each one validated 
and accounted for.

— Laura Dzubay, Daily 
Arts Writer

CAPITOL RECORDS

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

“It sounds like hope is kind of a 
risk that you take?” I asked.
“That’s exactly what I said at 
the talk,” she answered. I was 
seated across from Detroit-based 
writer and teacher at the College 
for 
Creative 
Studies 
Dorene 
O’Brien, speaking with her about 
the themes of her latest release, a 
collection of fiction called “What 
It Might Feel Like to Hope.” She 
continued, “I think that a lot 
of us suppress hope to defray 
disappointment,” adding that “We 
have to accept that failure is going 
to be a common thing and not let it 
destroy any inkling of hope.”
If I had to describe O’Brien in 
three words, I’d borrow from one 
of the most stunning moments 
of “What It Might Feel Like to 
Hope.” In it, Jack and Braelynn, a 
couple approaching an impasse in 
their relationship, take a road trip 
to symbolically test whether they 
will make it. During a spontaneous 
stop at a candy factory, they gaze 
upon the conveyor belts of sweets 
below. A young boy who is also 
touring the factory unthinkingly 
reaches up and takes Jack’s hand, 
who is caught off guard by the 
“easy, unconscious grace” of the 
boy’s unquestioning expectation 
that his real parent would be there 
to catch his hand. Having had 
the pleasure of both reading and 
meeting O’Brien, I’ve witnessed 
her own easy, unconscious grace, 
penning stories that hum with 
a delicate hope and emitting a 
gentle aura that corroborates her 
work.
Honoring the influence of 
other writers on her current 
work, O’Brien mentioned Andrea 
Barrett, 
explaining, 
“(Barrett) 
introduced me to the idea of 
quietly educating people in my 
writing. My favorite stories are 
the ones where I learn something 
I didn’t expect to learn.”
O’Brien sees something more, 
however, in the task of the writer, 
something that resides in her 
rich, lively dialogue and her 
ability to channel distinct voices. 
I delighted at this prioritization of 
character’s voices in every story, 
and when I asked O’Brien about it, 
she relayed an anecdote: “Every 

creative writing workshop I teach, 
the first day of class, I ask students 
if they hear voices in their head, 
and I joke that half of them raise 
their hands, and the other half 
drops the class.” Then, answering 
her own question, O’Brien added, 
“Most of my stories start with my 
characters talking to me. I think 
of someone and they start talking 
… It’s my job,” she continued, “to 
write these stories and channel 
the voices that come through 
me.” When she said that, I could 
not help but think of Arundhati 
Roy’s meditation on the duties of 
a storyteller: “Writers imagine 
that they cull stories from the 
world. I’m beginning to believe 
that vanity makes them think so. 
That it’s actually the other way 
around. Stories cull writers from 
the world … They commission us. 
They insist on being told.”
As O’Brien indicates in the 
anecdote above, teaching is also 
part of her professional endeavors. 
And I could tell she’s a teacher 
from the way she would answer 
my questions, from the way 
she would take them seriously, 
answer them methodically and 
even thank me for them. “I love 
talking to people about this,” she 
told me, “hearing the things that 
you’re saying. You may think I 
know all these things, and I don’t 
… You’re giving me a lot of insights 
that I didn’t consciously set out to 
do.”
In her stories, too, she invests 
in mutual learning in the form of 
intergenerational 
relationships, 
harvesting them as sites of growth 
for both generations involved. 
“We don’t live in generational 
bubbles. I think it’s so important 
that generations feed off one 
another — they learn from one 
another,” she began. “I’ve been 
writing for more than 30 years, 
and I’m still learning. I’m still 
growing. I think it’s a long, long 
apprenticeship. Any writer who 
says, ‘… I’m a full-blown writer,’ 
I think that’s a little arrogant 
because it’s an evolving practice … 
How can you say I’m a writer and 
I learned everything I’ve got to 
learn if the field is just constantly 
evolving?”
More than anything, it is 
impossible 
not 
to 
see 
how 
carefully O’Brien regards her 
position as a writer, how she 

does not take any of her power or 
talent for granted. In fact, while 
speaking with O’Brien, I finally 
got the chance to ask a question 
that nags me every time an author 
kills off a character in what seems 
like vain and what feels like 
emotional manipulation of the 
reader.
I asked for her thoughts on 
what a writer, for lack of a better 
word, owes not only their readers 
but also their characters. In 
response, she discussed at length 
one of the stories in the collection 
called “turn of the wind,” in 
which the main character, an 
aging 
crystallographer, 
tries 
to make connections and do 
meaningful work as Alzheimer’s 
seizes his memories. O’Brien 
discussed her difficulties with 
honoring that character: “Where 
I did him a great disservice was, 
he had Alzheimer’s, so … very 
conveniently, when I needed him 
to forget something, he would just 
forget. But then, when I needed 
him to be lucid, he would be lucid. 
And I realized that he is just a 
prop in my plot,” she admitted. 
O’Brien then relayed how she 
redressed this treatment of her 
character: “I had to do a lot of 
research on Alzheimer’s. That’s 
what he deserved. That’s what 
my character deserved. And that’s 
what my readers deserved as well. 
Because I’m the one saying I want 
to quietly educate readers, and 
I’m misleading them.”
In this instance and virtually 
every other one that gave O’Brien 
the chance to speak about her 
characters, she spoke about them 
as though they are her neighbors, 
her old friends. People that trust 
her, and people whose trust she 
would not dare squander. She 
treated me in a similar, heartening 
way: Like I’m a real person who 
wants to talk to her and not just 
a journalist with a recording 
device. I have a hunch she regards 
her students in the same way: Like 
they are real people in the desks 
before her with valuable stories to 
learn to tell.
In her writing but in our 
conversation, too, Dorene O’Brien 
quietly educated me on what it 
means to be a writer and on what 
it means to cull stories from the 
world. It was a privilege to have 
culled hers, here.

Writer Doreen O’Brien’s 
‘easy, unconscious grace’

JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Arts Writer

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

