6-Classifieds

BOOK REVIEW

6 — Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

By Robert Fisher
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
09/24/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

09/24/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Tuesday, September 24, 2019

ACROSS
1 Octopus octet
5 Read 
electronically
9 Stand in for
14 Painful joint 
inflammation
15 “What’ll ya __?”
16 Legendary 
crooner Mel
17 Prefix meaning 
“all”
18 From the start
19 Utter nonsense
20 Seeking an 
Olympic victory
23 Beach toy for a 
windy day
24 Information 
technology giant
25 “Norwegian 
Dances” 
composer
28 Road curves
30 More than a few
31 Come into view
33 Hosp. diagnostic 
procedure
36 Hardly ever
39 Jamaican music
40 “Big Little Lies” 
actress Meryl
41 Frenzied way 
to run
42 Smelting waste
43 Like good pie 
crusts
44 Field & __ 
Magazine
47 Beach toy
49 Zwieback, e.g.
55 Celebrate 
boisterously
56 Urge on
57 220-by-198-foot 
plot of land, e.g.
58 Farsi speaker
59 To be, in Tours
60 Not that
61 Animal skins
62 Auctioneer’s cry 
after the starts 
of 20-, 36- and 
49-Across
63 Enjoy some tub 
time

DOWN
1 Visibly awed
2 CBS Sports NFL 
analyst Tony
3 Tax-free govt. 
bond
4 Disapproving 
look
5 Elevator 
passage

6 Kayak-like boat
7 State 
unequivocally
8 Former House 
leader Gingrich
9 Conference-goer
10 Welsh herding 
dogs
11 Small music 
ensembles
12 In a plentiful way
13 Plants-to-be
21 Booking on a 
band’s tour
22 Stuck (on)
25 Scientifically 
engineered 
crops, e.g., 
briefly
26 __ and file
27 Ancient Cuzco 
dweller
28 Spanish 
newborns
29 Author __ 
Stanley Gardner
31 Bury
32 “Veronica __”: 
teen drama 
starring Kristen 
Bell
33 NYC cultural 
center
34 Chess piece 
involved in 
castling

35 Like many a 
stained shirt 
pocket
37 Tel Aviv residents
38 Ones habitually 
hanging out in 
retail complexes
42 A step above 
“meh”
43 White lie
44 Remove paint 
from
45 Shakespearean 
contraction

46 Primary 
competitor
47 Oyster gem
48 Tacked on
50 Brings to 
maturity
51 Zither-like 
Japanese 
instrument
52 Canyon feedback
53 Opera song for 
one
54 Newsroom 
station

As soon as I had turned the last page of Deborah 
Levy’s “The Man Who Saw Everything,” I set the 
book down and opened up my laptop: I had a lot 
of research ahead of me. It wasn’t to fill any gaps 
in my knowledge of the book’s historical, behind-
the-iron-curtain context, or to learn more about 
the Beatles’ photo shoot on Abbey Road, around 
which the book awkwardly pivots; it was in hopes 
of making any sense at all of the 200 pages I 
had just read. I needed to find out if there was a 
coherent storyline I somehow completely missed, 
if there were any real characters aside from the 
protagonist, what the themes were (if any) and so 
on.
Before I got much further, though, I had to 
pause and ask myself: Is this something I should 
have to do? Is the book that requires wholesale 
outsourcing of reading comprehension even worth 
trying to understand? I realized that if I was still 
in the dark after reading the thing cover to cover, 
perhaps I was always meant to be.
“The Man Who Saw Everything” is a 
chronically frustrating read. It is the experience 
of walking up to a storyteller whose confidence 
has drawn a crowd, but who is several paces into 
their story by the time you get there and unwilling 
to restart for you, so the best you can do is stick 
along for the ride — were this uncomfortable 
experience rendered in print and drawn out to 
span hundreds of pages. Here is the information 
you would encounter as you approach: The year is 
1988, and Saul Adler is a historian who specializes 
in the psychology of male tyrants. He has been 
granted the privilege of travel to East Berlin for 
his research, and for his host family’s daughter 
Luna, he and his photographer girlfriend Jennifer 
Moreau have planned an elaborate thank you: 
A recreation of the album art from Abbey Road 

for the Beatles fanatic Luna Müller is, lone Saul 
taking place of John, Paul, Goerge and Ringo. But 
Saul gets clipped by a car when he’s traversing the 
famous crosswalk, and it all quite lite spins out of 
control from that (early) point onward.
Granted, Levy did try to make the book that 
ensues about something. That “something” ranges 
from the art of photography to surveillance, to 
history, to memory, to masculinity, to sexuality, 
to family, to marriage, to parenthood — and while 
it is as tiring to compose that list as it likely is to 
read it, sadly, the book reads the same way. Worse 
yet, by encountering these subjects through the 
eyes of Levy’s unreliable, underdeveloped and 
almost unstoried narrator Saul Adler, the gulfs 
between these subjects are widened rather than 
creatively bridged. All the energy of the novel, 
which might have been directed toward Saul’s 
compellingly fraught relationships with his father 
and brother, or with the East German love of his 

life Walter Müller, is absorbed by Levy’s quest to 
figure out what the book’s about, sparing nothing 
for narrative momentum or climax.
I think this energy drain helps explain why, so 
often, Levy’s writing registers as lazy, as unmet 
potential. One of the strategies with which she 
tries to cohere her disparate themes is to repeat 
buzz words and sequences of dialogue. Rather 
than adding anything to the narrative, however, 
these have the effect of infantilizing the reader, 
like those not-so-subtle hints from your teacher 
that a pop quiz is in store, and that the topic will be 

the word they keep dramatically emphasizing. For 
instance, early on, Jennifer makes an observation 
about her photography that lingers on Saul’s mind: 
That a “spectre is inside every photograph she 
developed.” Rather than exploring that concept 
in subsequent pages, Moreau undermines her own 
attempt at exploring a thematic question, opting 
instead to apply the word “spectre” exasperatingly 
to everything else Saul contemplates, from his 
father’s death to the distinct scent of Jennifer’s 
perfume. It is as though Levy fears her readers’ 
inattention to the point where as long as we 
remember one word, she’d be content. 
I don’t universally condemn the novelist who 
creates and leaves gaps for their audience to fill. 
Often, those gaps enact a fruitful contract between 

writer and reader, promising that meaning can be 
co-created rather than in one party or the other’s 
death grip. But the novelist who doesn’t trust their 
readers enough to tell them anything beyond a 
meandering list of themes they want to touch on 
isn’t writing a novel at all; they’re publishing their 
idea journal and tricking their audience into doing 
all the work of finishing their thoughts. Deborah 
Levy is one such novelist, but she got away with 
it (and was rewarded for it: See this year’s Booker 
longlist).
What is the bare minimum you expect from 
your storytellers? Simply one coherent storyline? 
Or are you more picky, demanding character 
development or even thematic development of 
some sort? Would you ask for trust? I don’t think 
there’s anything wrong with claiming these 
values, or with requiring more from writers who 
don’t meet those standards. Ms. Levy, I expect 
more.

Did Deborah Levy just
publish her idea journal

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE

The novelist who doesn’t trust their readers enough 
to tell them anything beyond a meandering list of 
themes they want to touch on isn’t writing a novel at 
all; they’re publishing their idea journal and tricking 
their audience into doing all the work of finishing 
their thoughts.

A few weeks ago I slid into a sticky leather 
booth in Espresso Royale. It was almost 8 p.m., 
and my energy levels for the day were nearing 
critical condition, but I’d rallied for this one last 
meeting. Amidst a sea of subsequent smalltalk, 
I met someone who said he liked to dance. Salsa 
dance, specifically, but I went ahead and shared 
that I was a ballet dancer in hopes of forming a 
connection. 
I wanted to keep going and tell him that I’ve 
actually always wanted to learn salsa, but he cut 
me off. He raised his nose and told me that ballet 
was boring and stiff. That it was only for old 
people, that his chosen form of movement was 
far superior. 
Stunned, I laughed. I explained that I didn’t 
think I was old, but I definitely enjoyed ballet. 
Plus, I stretch enough not to be stiff. He shook 
his head. Salsa is romantic, he said. And then, 
through the ebb and flow of conversation, our 
group found a different subject. 
I don’t recount this story out of existential 
bitterness. The same way the Super Bowl will 
always garner critics, ballet will never resonate 
with everyone. However, my new acquaintance’s 
final comment — that salsa is romantic with the 
implication that ballet is not — stuck with me. 
When I came home that night and opened my 
computer, an unfinished video of the balcony pas 
de deux (a ballet couple’s dance) from Kenneth 
MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet” started to load 
in an open YouTube tab. The intimate music of 
Sergei Prokofiev’s score filled my living room, 
and I thought again about that comment. 
After all, what does it mean to make a 
movement romantic? 
Through a Google Search I found a different 
video, this one of a couple dancing salsa on the 
streets of Miami. Through the shaky hand of 
an iPhone camera, a man and a woman shared 
three minutes of casual happiness set to the 
background of a city completely oblivious to the 
dance’s occurrence. Cars passed and pedestrians 

wandered as the dancers’s fleet footwork 
dissolved into the street’s ongoing bustle. The 
haphazardness of it all created an intimacy that 
gave way to an idyllic romance. I could see what 
my acquaintance was talking about. 
I’d expect myself to struggle when comparing 
this to “Romeo and Juliet.” After all, the pas de 
deux clip I watched came from the Royal Ballet, 
one of the most elite companies in the world. 
Their theater, the Royal Opera House, literally 
has a box reserved for the Queen herself. With 
the exception of her, the live audience pays 
hundreds of dollars for their tickets and iPhone 
cameras are strictly prohibited. No aspect goes 
unplanned or unperfected, and yet when I watch 
the dance unfold my heart fills with the same 
sense of intimate spontaneity as the salsa street 
dancing from before. 
Romeo and Juliet are only 14, both suffering 
from an all-too-familiar sense of juvenile 
confusion. Neither of them know what they want 
and both of them live life with an underlying 
nervousness for upcoming adulthood. When 
they find each other, their young hearts shift to 
focus solely on one another. Through their love, 
they find a drive far more mature than their 
years. The pas de deux on Juliet’s balcony is a 
manifestation of that new focus. 
Within the performance, I feel those moments 
of desire alongside the young couple: Juliet’s 
beaming chest, Romeo’s outstretched hands, 
their luxurious makeout session and weightless, 
slow motion lifts and turns. 
It’s a spectacle of teenage melodrama and 
through its display the planning melts away. 
Suddenly, I see a casual meetup on the streets 
of Italy. It’s two people — two kids — intensely 
focused on enjoying each other while an entire 
city continues to pass by. 
I can’t help but wonder what my acquaintance 
would think if he peeled back the technique to 
see this side of ballet. Whether onstage at the 
Royal Opera House or on an unnamed sidewalk 
in Florida, I still find that intangible sense of 
effortlessness dictated through non-vocalized 
movement. They might both be romantic, but 
above all they’re both human.

Exploring old-fashioned
love through ballet & salsa

COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK

JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Arts Writer

BOOK REVIEW

SHEILA BURNETT

The Man Who Saw 
Everything

Deborah Levy

Bloomsbury Publishing

Oct. 15, 2019

DESIGN COURTESY OF EMMA CHANG

ZOE PHILLIPS
For The Daily

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