6 — Friday, Janurary 10, 2020
Arts
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By Joe Deeney
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
01/10/20
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
01/10/20
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Friday, January 10, 2020
ACROSS
1 They may be
counted
6 “Masterpiece”
airer
9 Hideaway
13 Disinclined
14 One in the script
16 Tribal leader
18 Joint venture?
21 Neon tips?
22 “C’mon, play
along”
23 A toddler may be
put down for one
24 Curtails, with “in”
26 Of inferior quality
28 Joint venture?
31 Winter Olympics
event
32 Programming
pioneer Lovelace
33 Hustle
37 Combustion
residue
38 Like the object of
an “Aww!”
42 U.K. singer
Rita __
43 Food packaging
abbr.
45 Cause of
some royal
sleeplessness
46 Salt Lake City
team
47 Joint venture?
52 Coastal
evergreen
55 Character usually
seen in 41-Down
56 Nail
57 Pink drink
59 “Alexander and
the Terrible,
Horrible, No
Good, Very __
Day”: 2014 film
62 Joint venture?
65 Trauma pro
66 Timbuktu’s land
67 “Stronger” rapper
West
68 1975 Wimbledon
winner
69 Coddling, briefly
70 Place
DOWN
1 Plum used to
flavor spirits
2 Jazz band staple
3 Adheres to a
healthy diet
4 E. African land
5 It commonly
involves spiders
6 “I’d love that!”
7 Auction action
8 Last-second
online auction
participant
9 Moved out
10 Furry TV ET
11 Tony winner
Menzel
12 Summarize
15 Food recall cause
17 Auctioned
wheels
19 Fivesome
20 Tolkien brutes
25 Halloween __
27 “Reflection”
musician Brian
28 Map out
29 Subterfuge
30 It’s expected
34 As much as
possible
35 “Wonderfilled”
cookie
36 Coarse file
38 Not without
ramifications
39 “The Problem
with __”: 2017
documentary
about racial
stereotypes
40 Blissful
41 Pacific
weather
phenomenon
44 Iraq war issue,
briefly
46 Currency mkt.
money
48 Real hoot
49 “To recap ... ”
50 Boo
51 Smart set?
52 Cautious
53 Automaker
whose current
models end in X
54 “The Big Bang
Theory” crowd
58 “Actually ... ”
60 “Game of
Thrones” girl __
Stark
61 Turned green,
say
63 Japanese drama
64 Skin pic
FOR RENT
YOU'RE
DOING GREAT
AND WE
know you
can do it.
Don't give up!
POLITICS AND PROSE
BOOK REVIEW
Revisiting 2019’s darling:
Atwood’s ‘The Testaments’
three of the women it gives voice to are intricately
and permanently bonded to Offred, and this bond is a
central catalyst for the decisions they end up making.
So, I’m going to compare “The Testaments” to
“The Handmaid’s Tale.” I think I have to. And, as I
contemplate their differences, I’m more and more
aware of the inferiority of “The Testaments” in
nearly every respect. For one, its prose, in relation
to “The Handmaid’s Tale” at least, is unrefined
and often unconvincing. One narrator in particular
utters lines so unnatural, so cringeworthy I could
hardly stomach them (“I am fucking sorry, but we are
in a hot mess emergency here!”). At certain points it
reads like a young adult novel, which certainly isn’t
detrimental in and of itself but feels completely out
of place in the context of its predecessor.
Simply put, this kind of writing belongs nowhere
near a Booker Prize, and it certainly wouldn’t be in
the running for the award if it weren’t the brainchild
of Margaret Atwood. A more glaring and upsetting
criticism, though, and what may just be the book’s
fatal flaw, is the superficial and stereotypical
characterization of its narrators Atwood opts for.
All three narrators are two-dimensional, archetypal
embodiments of the cultures they come from, and
there simply aren’t enough pages in this plot-heavy
novel to flesh them out further. These women deserve
more. They each deserve a novel of their own.
I don’t want to sound like I despise this book.
I don’t in the slightest. “The Testaments” is an
addictive read with an uplifting (albeit slightly
unearned) resolution. I admire its ambition, its
aspiration to give voice to as many women as
possible. Most importantly, it doesn’t make me love
“The Handmaid’s Tale” any less. Ultimately, though,
if I do decide to return to Gilead, it won’t be by way of
“The Testaments.”
ELISE GODFRYD
Daily Arts Writer
In light of Margaret Atwood’s recent acceptance of
the 2019 Booker Prize and Goodreads Choice Awards
for Fiction with “The Testaments,” we are revisiting
one of our writer’s review of the highly acclaimed
novel.
***
As I read “The Testaments,” Margaret Atwood’s
latest Booker Prize-nominated novel, I was reminded
of a case study of Darwin’s finches I learned about in
an anthropology class I took last year. Throughout
the 1970s, biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant
observed the finch population of the Galápogos
Islands. As a result of a severe drought that radically
changed the food supply available to the finches,
natural selection worked to alter the makeup of
the population in response to the demands of this
new environment, resulting in the production of
a completely different species of bird. The Grants
disproved Darwin’s belief that evolution needed
hundreds or thousands of years to significantly
change a population — in some cases, it only needs a
few years to create astounding change.
When it comes to Atwood’s “The Testaments,”
it’s arguable that things line up with the Grants’s
story quite well — only the novel’s characters are
the finches, and Gilead is the drought. In “The
Testaments,” we learn that Gilead, the apocalyptic
and theocratic dystopia of Atwood’s modern classic
“The Handmaid’s Tale,” has continued its reign
of terror well after the events of the latter novel.
However, while “The Handmaid’s Tale” chronicled
the very first years of Gilead, readers of “The
Testaments” get to witness what has become of
this regime — how it has evolved in its cruelty and,
more poignantly, how the women who have grown
up inside it hardly even resemble the women who
lived before them just decades ago. The young girls
who have grown up inside Gilead might as well be a
different species — feminism is a foreign concept to
them, heinous crimes like murder and sexual assault
are everyday occurrences and they don’t even know
how to read.
Just as Darwin’s finches were products of a
drought that reshaped their environment, the
women of “The Testaments” are products of Gilead
and its culture of hate and shame and oppression.
The prospect of centuries upon centuries of human
advancement crumbling within just a few decades
is genuinely terrifying and truly fascinating to
read about, and Atwood’s talent for visualizing this
creatively is without a doubt the novel’s greatest
asset.
The haunting and frightening world of Gilead
introduced in “The Handmaid’s Tale” has made
its mark on our culture, spawning its own Emmy-
winning Hulu adaptation. There are many reasons
why “The Handmaid’s Tale” has had the cultural
impact it’s had — the parallels Atwood draws
between her fictional Gilead and our own society’s
internalized patriarchy are biting, deeply disturbing
and impossible to forget. Aside from any political
and social resonance the book might have, though,
“The Handmaid’s Tale” is simply a great work of
literature, a beautifully written and fully realized
account of one woman’s journey as she’s forced to go
through a living hell.
Given all of this, it’s clear that “The Testaments”
has a lot to live up to. You could say that the book
should be read as its own entity, independent from
its predecessor, but I don’t think this is what Atwood
wants from her readers at all — she refers back to
“The Handmaid’s Tale” constantly. And although
“The Testaments” is written from the perspective
of a different narrator (three narrators, in fact), all
‘Space Invaders’: a dream-
like look at Pinochet’s Chile
Writers have rarely shied away from historical
tragedies like genocide, war and oppressive
governments.The Orwells of the world have
dissected and shown the dangers of humanity’s
most destructive ideologies. Nona Fernandez takes
a different approach to writing about one such
ideology in her book, “Space Invaders.”
The novel follows the experience of a group of
school children at the height of the Pinochet regime
in Chile. Under Pinochet, the Chilean people faced
suppression of dissent, mass killings and violations
of human rights. What sets “Space Invaders” apart
from most other political fiction is its focus on
the lived experiences of the characters. There is
virtually no reflection on the abstracted political
conflicts of the time period; the novel only reflects
on their effects on the human beings involved.
While
the
unconventional
subject
matter
works to keep the reader interested, the similarly
unconventional structure is not as well executed.
The novel is told in the form of memories recalled
through the characters’ dreams. These former
classmates, now adults, try to piece together the
collective experience of their youth in hopes of
making sense of the horror they lived through. As a
result, the narrative is made up of disjointed images
of militant classroom routines, brutal violence and
their classmate Estrella, who has mysteriously
gone missing.
This explanation may seem a bit confusing,
but that’s because the structure is too. Basic plot
points were at times difficult to pin down due to
BOOK REVIEW
SEJJAD ALKHALBY
For The Daily
frequent jumps in the timeline. While the lack
of extensive character development for each
classmate is forgivable because of the novel’s
focus on the collective rather than any individual
experience, it does make it difficult to keep track of
the characters.
That said, the novel does have its bright spots. As
difficult as the structure is to follow, the dreamlike
recreation of the characters’ memories in individual
moments is beautifully rendered. The prose is clear
and full of emotion, placing the reader right in the
mind of a child facing unspeakable violence. It
captures the instances of abject horror uninhibited
by the rationalizations of an adult mind. A
child, having no understanding of the political
motivations of the regime, is not able to assimilate
these events to a narrative. The child then sees the
events for what they are: senseless violence. In the
same way that the events of a dream rarely make
sense and simply are what they are, the children’s
experiences don’t make sense to them, adding to
their emotional impact. By refusing to articulate
the ideology that motivates the actions of the
Pinochet regime, Fernandez can present the real
pain, fear and death that it caused with full force.
Considering the novel’s strengths, it’s difficult to
fault Fernandez for the disorienting structure. To
an extent, such ambiguity is necessary to capture
the states of mind of children who are so lost and
confused. Fernandez can certainly be commended
for her willingness to experiment, though one must
wonder if the story would be better told in the form
of poetry. Fernandez treads a fine line between
the poetic, dreamlike world she creates and the
maintenance of a clear narrative throughout — a
line which she falls just barely on the wrong side
of. Regardless, the book is engaging, thought-
provoking and worth the read.
“Space Invaders”
Nona Fernandez
Graywolf Press
Nov. 5, 2019
The Jonas Brothers play
their last show of 2019
Walking into the Imperial Ballroom at
The Atlantis, I was immediately struck by
the strange mix of spectators: drunk adults
stumbling to their seats, young children
looking confused and teenage girls excitingly
gasping every time they saw motion backstage.
After a successful year since their latest album
Happiness Begins and the conclusion of their
sold-out tour, the Jonas Brothers wrapped up
2019 by playing one last show at The Atlantis
Resort in the Bahamas.
Unlike arenas the band filled during their
tour, the resort’s ballroom accommodated only
a few hundred people and was filled with both
locals and tourists. The band offered special
seating for residents of the island, where one
could catch a glimpse of the brothers peeking
through the makeshift curtains, sending the
audience into a frenzy. Twenty-year old fans
sported their old Jonas Brothers merch and
waved signs with pictures of their younger
selves (specifically when the band last played
on the island back in 2009). In the main part
of the ballroom, the tourist section was an
array of young fans and older folks in search
of entertainment for the night, creating an odd
mix of dancing fans and confused spectators
who preferred to remain seated for most of the
show.
While the show was not an official stop on
the tour, the band incorporated a few elements
from their American performances and mainly
followed the tour’s set-list. They opened with
“Rollercoaster,” a song off their new album,
then immediately jumped into a throwback with
their 2006 hit “S.O.S.” Much of the first half
was dedicated to their newer music, including
“Cool” and “Only Human,” two fan favorites
off the new album. “I Believe” and “Hesitate,”
two love ballads off the new album, were also
sprinkled into the set. Also featured from the
new album was “Comeback,” the epitome of the
brothers’ reunion.
As they’ve done in previous shows, the
brothers took song requests from the audience,
showcasing throwback songs that haven’t
been heard live in years, and Nick and Joe
both showcased work from their solo careers
with “Jealous” and “Cake by the Ocean.”
Scanning the crowd, it was clear some of the
audience members have never heard the band’s
older music before as they remained seated
and politely tapped their feet to the beat of
some of the band’s most well-known songs
like “When You Look Me in the Eyes” and
“Lovebug.” Others, mainly women and young
girls below the age of thirty, were on their feet
for the entirety of the show, belting lyrics and
attempting to dance along in the cramped rows
of seats.
The band didn’t have much to say in between
songs except that they were glad to be playing
their last show of the year in the Bahamas.
The brothers offered a toast before speeding
through a medley of some of their older songs
including “Mandy,” “Paranoid” and “Play My
Music.” Kevin attempted to share a few words
in the middle of the show, but his broken
microphone left the audience confused, adding
to the awkwardness of the night. They finished
up the performance with three of their most
popular songs, starting with “Year 3000” before
breaking into “Burnin’ Up.” They came full
circle wrapping up 2019 with “Sucker,” a single
they released nearly a year ago and the impetus
for their reunion and newfound success.
While the brothers’ island performance
certainly
lacked
the
same
vigor
and
showmanship from their American shows,
the trio was still able to transport a crowd of
twenty-somethings back to their childhoods.
Perhaps this show felt different because the
band was not equipped with the fireworks
and light show from their tour, or maybe it
was simply because they were burnt out after
a long year. Regardless, witnessing the reunion
of the band that created the music I first fell in
love with thirteen years ago will always be an
experience filled with nostalgia, tears and lots
of dancing.
KAITLYN FOX
Daily Arts Writer
These women deserve more.
They each deserve a novel of
their own