Word: kerners
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What caused this reversal? The main impetus was violence. In 1966 and 1967, hundreds of riots exploded in cities across America, culminating in the violence following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968. The Kerner Commission, appointed to discover the roots of these riots, concluded that the government had to implement nothing less than extraordinary measures to improve the lot and quell the growing resentment of Blacks. The reported warned of "the feelings of desperation and anger which breed civil disorders...
There's a radiant moment in Tom Stoppard's Hapgood , which opened in revival last week at Manhattan's Lincoln Center, when Kerner, a Russian physicist and spy, celebrates the littleness of atoms. The public, he explains to the woman he loves, simply doesn't comprehend how minuscule the particles truly are. He tells her, "I could put an atom into your hand for every second since the world began, and you would have to squint to see the dot of atoms in your palm." Some men offer their beloved the moon. Kerner offers his a speck in her palm...
...sees furthest. Ever since he became internationally famous while still in his 20s for his philosophical farce Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Stoppard has been accused of excessive cleverness -- of having a big mind but a small heart. At bottom Hapgood insists that this division is artificial. As Kerner says, "Every atom is a cathedral...
...believes that Kerner is their agent; the English think he's a double agent working for them. He could be a triple or, as he says, "maybe & quintuple." Like many tales of espionage, Hapgood is an onion-like construction: the author peels back a layer of threats, uncertainties, possible betrayals only to reveal another. It's such an elaborate process, you can almost forget that what you wind up with is an onion: something savory and shapely but rather slight. Which is to say, Hapgood isn't quite Stoppard in highest flight. And which is also to say, even...
...uniformly able. Stockard Channing, as the self-denying British agent Elizabeth Hapgood, does all she can, with her crisp high-heeled pacing, to delimit the boundaries of her role, but there's something a little frustratingly soft -- in the text -- at her center. As played by David Strathairn, Kerner is more convincing as a scientist than as a squelched lover; there's something slightly too predictable -- too projectable, as Kerner the mathematician might say -- about his twitchings and jerkings when sentiment gets the better...