Word: gurganus
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...Haiti needs a more genuine police force. Aristide, who in 1991 became Haiti's first democratically elected President, was eventually undone by his emasculation of the country's democratic institutions--especially its corrupt and threadbare cops, who defected to the rebels' side last month. Marine Colonel Mark Gurganus, a commander of international peacekeeping forces in Haiti, described Haiti's police last week as "devastated and demoralized." Philippe is a former police chief, and most of his rebels are ex-cops and ex-soldiers...
Even with more commercial works that play the regionals with one eye on the ultimate prize--Broadway--the audience participates in a more direct way. Last winter Ellen Burstyn played the title role in Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, a one-woman stage adaptation of Allan Gurganus' best-selling novel, which had its world premiere at San Diego's Old Globe Theater. She was still stumbling a bit (engagingly, catching herself with a casual "I mean ...") as she tried to master the demanding part, but audiences had the frisson of being present at the development of what may (when...
...Gurganus's prose, like his characterization, is dense and unconventional. The text is filled with deliciously authentic 1980s New York colloquialisms. In painstakingly describing the city, from Robert's green velvet suit and platform shoes to the gaudy decor of the hottest clubs, Gurganus demonstrates a superb sense of kitsch. Since he presents the narrative through the eyes of a displaced Southerner with an eye for rural detail, Gurganus is able to display his virtuosity in writing about nature, from the smell of soil in Central Park to the silver glitter of the Hudson River through the grimy windows...
...helpmeet, just when I'd gained six pounds, Farce, as it will when your happy-quota shades off into urban gray, intervened: all pinks, oranges, reds." Thus comedy begets tragedy: just as Art Spiegelman could best explain his family's Holocaust tragedy in comic book form, Gurganus makes the ultimate tragedy of Plays Well With Others farcical...
While it might seem appropriate for those who have not read the book to pigeon-hole it as the record of a cultural moment--a peek into the lives of artists with AIDS in '80s New York--Gurganus insists that the reader love the book for the humanness of its characters. "We have all been upstaged by the newsworthiness of our particular disaster," writes Gurganus/Hartley in one of the story's more pointed moments. In Plays Well With Others, however, Gurganus triumphs in crafting an emotionally and literarily memorable work...