I’m tempted to say that it was standing room only at bestselling Irish author Colm Tóibín’s Thursday night reading – part of U-M’s Zell Visiting Writers Series – at UMMA’s Helmut Stern Auditorium.

But that seems not quite accurate, since many attendees who didn’t arrive in time to grab one of the venue’s 185 seats instead settled themselves on the floor of both side aisles, as well as the back wall.

Yes, the place was packed, but those who carved out a space for themselves got to hear Tóibín read from his novels Brooklyn and Nora Webster while also offering additional commentary and information.

While reading sections from Brooklyn – the basis for a film that earned three major Oscar nominations (including best picture) in 2016 – Tóibín noted, “One of the interesting things is that, the earliest recordings we have of Irish traditional music mainly come from America. The best players, best fiddlers, best singers, best accordion players all came from the West of Ireland, which of course is the poorest part of the country. There were no recording studios, so they went to New York or Chicago, and people rented them recording studios by the hour.”

Many of these Irish musicians would work as manual laborers, too, so they often had a foot in two different worlds. Tóibín cited Joe Heaney specifically, calling him the greatest singer of his generation in Ireland.

“There’s a photo of him in a pub in Dublin, where tradition music is played,” said Tóibín. “There were these Americans from New York who were visiting Dublin and saw the photograph on the wall of this pub, and they said, ‘That’s our doorman, Joe!’ Yeah, that’s our singer, Joe.”

Regarding Nora Webster, Tóibín talked about how he’d abandoned it to work on Brooklyn, and why he struggled with it so.

“Part of the problem was, so much of the book Nora Webster comes from memory, and that memory … has no shape until you shape it,” said Tóibín. “And therefore, [I was always trying to think, ‘What’s this thing or that thing that happened? Would it be interesting in a book, or just interesting to me, for reasons of my own? What should I leave out? What should I put in? What scene will work dramatically, and what won’t? It took much longer than writing a novel … where you imagine somebody else, some other life, some set of rules and specific experiences that I hadn’t witnessed.”

One other problem was that the atmosphere of the novel felt more like the 50s than the 60s, so he finally stumbled upon a subtle but time-specific way to root Nora Webster in its appropriate era.

“Some year around this time, I think ’67 or ’68 or ’69, hair dye arrived in town,” said Tóibín. “And you’d call to a friend’s house, and his mother would come to the door, and it was like autumn had come to the door. Her hair would have gone copper color. … And every woman in the town, to a one, fell to this. it was an amazing episode, really.”

Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music.

Referencing the New Testament parable, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep * by Joanna Cannon is set during the scorching summer of 1976 when 10 year-olds Grace and Tilly take it upon themselves to look for their neighbor, friendly Mrs. Creasy who disappears without a trace.

As the girls go door to door in search of clues (and God), the neighborhood starts to give up its secrets. "In a masterfully constructed plot, Grace—who sniffs out the lies told by her adult neighbors—learns a lesson about loyalty and true friendship, as secrets born of shame are gradually revealed. This understated, somewhat quirky debut novel is remarkable for its structure, characterizations, pitch-perfect prose, touches of humor, and humanity. Cannon, a psychiatrist, is an author to watch." -Booklist

Will appeal to fans of the Flavia de Luce series by Alan C. Bradley.

The House Between Tides by Sarah Maine, is an atmospheric psychological mystery set on Muirlan Island in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, where Londoner Hetty Deveraux hopes to turn Muirlan House, inherited from a distant relative, into a luxury inn. The shocking discovery of the century-old remains of a murder victim plunges her into an investigation of Theo Blake, the acclaimed painter and his troubled marriage to Beatrice who vanished from the island in 1910.

"Maine skillfully balances a Daphne du Maurier atmosphere with a Barbara Vine–like psychological mystery as she guides the reader back and forth on these storylines... The setting emerges as the strongest personality in this compelling story, evoking passion in the characters as fierce as the storms which always lurk on the horizon." -Kirkus Reviews

I Let You Go * * by Clare Mackintosh, "a twisty, psychological thriller with an astonishing intensity” ~ (U.K) Daily Mail opens with the hit-and-run death of 5 year-old Jacob on a rainy afternoon in Bristol. Shortly afterward, Jacob's mother disappears.

Wrecked with guilt, sculptor Jenna Gray relocates to the isolated Welsh village of Penfach. Back in Bristol, Det. Insp. Ray Stevens and detective constable, Kate Evans are frustrated with the lack of results in their investigations but push on despite official orders. Their persistent efforts eventually pay off.

"Mackintosh, a former police detective and journalist, weaves a complex tale out of seemingly straightforward circumstances." -Publishers Weekly.

"But her real skill is in the way she incorporates jaw-dropping, yet plausible, plot twists into the already complex story-line." -Kirkus Reviews.

A new author to watch for fans of Tana French, Paula Hawkins, S.J. Watson and A.S.A. Harrison. I particularly enjoyed the audio format, beautifully read by Nicola Barber and Steven Crossley.

* = starred review
* * = 2 starred reviews

There’s a reason that Nora Chipaumire’s “Portrait of Myself as My Father” earned a spot in University Musical Society’s Renegade series, which highlights cutting edge artists (and works) that take risks.

“Portrait,” an avant-garde dance work conceived, costumed, lit, choreographed, directed and performed (along with Pape Ibrahima Ndiaye, also known as Kaolack, and Shamar Watt) by Chipaumire, is now being presented at Detroit’s Downtown Boxing Gym.

And once audience members enter the performance space – a boxing ring, bordered by red, white, and blue ropes, and surrounded by bleachers on four sides – they immediately confront bright halogen lights, a loud, electronic soundscape, and Chipaumire herself, talking into a boxing microphone that dangles from the building’s rafters.

If you think this doesn’t give you the chance to feel comfortable and settled, you’re right. You won’t. And your heightened alertness will likely be sustained throughout the hour-plus show.

For “Portrait” is all about overwhelming your senses (Philip White’s music ranges from distorted electronica and white noise to pulsing hiphop and drumming, and the room is shrouded in complete darkness, save for the portable halogen worklights, which sometimes shine directly in your line of vision); subverting conventions (like any kind of linear narrative); and collapsing areas of difference, whether it’s time – combining ritualistic African dances with ultra-modern, avant garde movements – or gender. Indeed, Chipaumire, a woman, acts as our guide to black manhood and masculinity while wearing football shoulder pads, a sheer black bra, and low-slung black pants, with a mostly-shaved head.

Ndiaye, meanwhile, is dressed in little more than a pair of red shorts, and he’s the primary subject of Chipaumire’s exploration, charismatically acting out her instructions and observations. Often, her questions slowly build upon each other: “How do you become a man? How do you become a black man? How do you become an African black man?” And both Ndiaye and Chipaumire are connected by cloth tethers that stretch far beyond the boxing ring, as well as to each other, simultaneously suggesting a familial umbilical cord and enslavement.

Tall, lanky Watt acts as more of a one-man stage crew, audience wrangler, and circus ringleader, dressed in a black tailcoat and red track pants, but he plays a larger role within the show as it progresses. During one segment, he wowed the crowd by repeatedly leaping over the boxing rings ropes and onto the floor.

Chipaumire deconstructs black African manhood by breaking it down into gestures, which is to say, specific ways of moving through the world. She states early on that “This is a manifesto about the black African,” and in her artist’s statement in the program, she talks about how personal the piece is. For the piece is inspired by Chipaumire’s experience: she last saw her father when she was five, and he died in 1980. She has since tried to learn more about him, and fill in some of the blanks, but in the end, she can never know him, and she imagines him in a boxing ring, doing battle not only with the forces of the larger world, but within himself.

This leads to an arresting final moment in the show, wherein Chipaumire is seen in the darkness carrying Ndiaye on her back, and Watt asks, “What is this about?” Chipaumire answers that it is about her father, whose carcass she carries with her. It’s a powerful image, and it achieves a fierce intimacy. But I must confess that before this scene, I struggled mightily to fit the show’s pieces together in any kind of cohesive, emotionally impactful way. I’d committed so much energy trying to unlock the show’s mysteries that it ultimately eluded me.

Even so, there are clearly some intriguing, complex ideas driving “Portrait.” Even as Watt repeatedly yells “Champion!” and leads the crowd in applauding Ndiaye, as he goes through the paces of Chipaumire’s sharp demands, you can’t escape the reminder of how often we watch black male bodies perform athletic feats for our pleasure and public consumption.

So some of these thought-provoking, disquieting moments definitely land, but mostly, this “Portrait” inevitably seems blurred.

Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music.

Portrait of My Father continues Saturday, November 19 at 8:00 pm and Sunday, November 20 at 2:00 pm at the Downtown Boxing Gym in Detroit, 6445 E. Vernor Hwy. Tickets are available here or through the ticket office by calling 734-764-2538. For more information, visit http://ums.org/performance/portrait-of-myself-as-my-father/.

On one level the musical A Man of No Importance is a lovely celebration of community theater and those whose lives become brighter in its spotlight, but in a deeper sense it’s the story of one lonely man’s struggle to find himself and shed light on who he really is.

The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Drama finds the perfect tone for each of these themes in a production that is beautifully performed, capturing the nuances that give this musical its special power.

The musical with book by Terrence McNally, music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens is based on a 1994 movie starring Albert Finney and like the film, the musical is set in Dublin, Ireland, circa 1964. It’s a time of change, with musical and cultural influences shaking things up in the British Isles and soon in the world at large. But time moves a bit more slowly in Ireland, where people hold firm to their long held beliefs.

Alfie Byrne works by day as a bus conductor, but his real passion is directing plays. He relies on his friends and neighbors and the folks on the bus to be his star players. He has won some local renown for his production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest at St. Imelda’s church hall, but now he wants to stage Wilde’s considerably more controversial Salome.

The flamboyant and sensitive Wilde is Alfie’s hero and a clue to what really bothers Alfie, a homosexual deep in the closet with a growing attraction to his young, golden-haired mate, the bus driver Robbie.

Alfie lives with his loving, dedicated, conservative, nagging sister Lily, who worries about Alfie’s lack of female companionship and about her own sacrifice of happiness to care for her “odd” brother.

All of this could be heavy going, but A Man of No Importance is a funny, sweet and lively portrayal of the love of theater, life in the city and the value of friendship.

Director Vincent J. Cardinal is able to delicately balance the joyous with the morose and make it work. The musical numbers are not big show stoppers but they are well crafted to the needs of the show and are a pleasant mix of up-tempo and gentle. Cardinal and choreographer Aline Mayagoitia give stylish movement even to the rhythm of a bus ride and to a night out in working man’s Dublin. The band under music director Catherine A. Walker gives solid support with a score that uses Irish folk music and instrumentation as measured grace notes.

At the productions center is Barrett Riggins as Alfie Byrne. Riggins gives him a dreamy, distant quality but also shows the warm friendly man who, without realizing it, is a magnet to his friends who find meaning and purpose in the theater he loves. Riggins has the right mix of charm and sadness to make an audience smile and cry and his growing sense of who and what he is develops slowly and delicately. He has several standout musical moments, especially “Man in the Mirror” and the beautiful “Love Who You Love.”

Emilie Kouatchou is a charming, shy and yet strong presence as the girl on the bus who Alfie charms into playing his idealized Salome. She, too, harbors a secret and her performance intelligently foreshadows what is to come. Kouatchou has a fine voice and several good songs especially on the “The Burden of Life” and “Tell Me Why.”

Kat Ward is tough, unrelenting and yet warm and comforting as Alfie’s sister Lily. She won’t stand for any of these modern ideas and Ward plays this side of Lily with fierce determination but matches it with a touching concern for what she sees as her “wayward” brother. She also has a soft spot for the local butcher, and Alfie’s most talented actor, Mr. Carney.

Elliott Styles is excellent as Mr. Carney. He gives strong voice to the theater loving song “Going Up,” a modern take on “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” Mr. Carney loves theater and Alfie’s sister but he is horrified by Wilde’s Salome. In an interesting bit of casting, Styles also plays Alfie’s dream image of Oscar Wilde in all his flamboyant glory.

Robbie, the object of Alfie’s affection, is played with boyish charm by Ben Walker, who leads the cast through a rollicking night out on "The Streets of Dublin" but also shows a sensitive side when he realizes what is happening with his friend.

BJ Myers plays Baldy, another poor soul brought to life by Alfie’s theater. He is a widower who tells Alfie something about love in the bittersweet "The Cuddles Mary Gave." Myers has a fine voice with a unique and effective phrasing.

The play is certainly not sympathetic to the official Catholic church teachings but it makes a clear separation between that and those on the parish level. Sam Hamashima plays a sympathetic, friendly Father Kenny as a sort of balance to the play’s criticism.

The set by Anton Volovsek makes great use of the Miller Theater’s small space in his recreation of a church hall, with a simple stage, a floor that probably doubles as a basketball court, a Sacred Heart of Jesus painting on a wall and heavy sidedoors that provide access points. Spare props fill in for dining rooms and street scenes.

The entire ensemble is excellent, everyone is into their parts completely. Alfie himself couldn’t have dreamed of a better or more dedicated company for his Salome or for a play that shows just how important one man can be to a community.

Hugh Gallagher has written theater and film reviews over a 40-year newspaper career and was most recently managing editor of the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers in suburban Detroit.

A Man of No Importance continues 8 pm Friday, Nov. 18, and Saturday, Nov. 19, and 2 pm Saturday, Nov. 19, and Sunday, Nov. 20, at the Arthur Miller Theatre on the North Campus of the University of Michigan. For ticket information, call (734) 764-2538 or visit online at http://tickets.music.umich.edu.

“All Americans have something lonely about them. I don't know what the reason might be, except maybe that they're all descended from immigrants.” -Ryū Murakami

Two of the most anticipated debuts this fall take readers deep into the lives of immigrant families.

The Wangs vs. the World * by Jade Chang follows an Chinese-American family as it tumbles from riches to rags. Charles Wang landed in LA as a young man penniless but managed to make a fortune in cosmetics. Now in his fifties, a series of rash business choices and the 2008 financial crisis bankrupted him. Homeless (his Bel-Air mansion foreclosed) and unable to pay tuition for his younger kids, he packs up what he could in the 1950 baby-blue Mercedes that used to belong to his dead first wife, rounds up the kids and a disgruntled second wife Barbra and heads for upstate New York - to daughter Saina's renovated farmhouse.

Unbeknownst to his family, Charles has no intention of settling in the middle of nowhere. His plans is to deposit his family on Saina, and heads to China to reclaim his ancestral lands (and his dignity), lost in the communist takeover. "It turns out that the Wangs can’t function without the trappings of their now-lost lavish lifestyle, a situation that gives the road trip a decidedly wacky bent and infuses the novel with humor. " -Booklist

With each bump on the road, the Wangs might eventually come to see what matters when you think you've lost it all; and what it means to be a family.

Ann Arbor author and a O. Henry Prize winner Derek Palacio's debut The Mortifications * is praised by Peter Ho Davies as "(a) revelatory tale of Cuba and America, of faith and family, of the spirit and the flesh,... a debut remarkable for its wise and scrupulous insight into the human heart. Palacio feelingly reminds us that all immigrants are also exiles, wounded with loss, striving to make a home even as they yearn for the one they’ve left behind.”

During the 1980 traumatic Mariel Boatlift, Soledad Encarnación took twins Isabel and Ulises and fled to the US, leaving behind husband/father Uxbal, a committed revolutionary, for the promise of a better life. Settling in Hartford, Connecticut, far from the Miami Cuban immigrant community, they began a process of growth and transformation.

While Soledad establishes herself as a court stenographer and finds romance with Henri Willems, a Dutch horticulturalist eager to cultivate Cuban tobacco; Isabel, spiritually hungry and desperate for higher purpose, becomes a nun and works with the dying; Ulises, bookish and awkwardly tall, like his father, finds an aptitude working the soil. When Soladad is stricken with breast cancer, she asks Ulises to find Isabel who has disappeared, thus setting the stage of their homecoming where Uxbal awaits.

"Palacio’s writing is deceptively simple and startlingly original, and his characters, raw, almost mythic in scope, hang on long after the last page....Searching, heartbreaking, and achingly beautiful, the novel is as intimate as it is sweeping." -Kirkus Reviews

* = starred review

When Patti Smith emailed Pointless Brewery & Theatre Co-founder Tori Tomalia last year to find out if she could collaborate with the venue to hold HERsay there, she expected Tomalia to be skeptical, or at least questioning. But Tomalia was gung-ho for the event right away and the evening of storytelling, comedy, improvisation, theater, and visual art show’n’tell—all created and performed by women—debuted this past Thursday evening for a sold out crowd. Smith was inspired to create HERsay when she heard the story of a former SNL cast member who claimed “women can’t be funny.” She felt that women could most certainly be funny, and wanted to provide an opportunity for women to be heard with the HERsay event, which she now hopes will become an annual celebration of women and the art that they create. This year, half of the proceeds from ticket sales were donated to Planned Parenthood.

HERsay featured twenty different women performers with a range of ages, backgrounds and experience. The best part of the event was the diversity of performances and the emotional ups and downs that each performer created with their work. Jenn McKee delighted the crowd by reading excerpts from her middle school diary, in which she “got in touch with her early nihilism.”

Patricia Wheeler, local coordinator of the Ann Arbor and Detroit Moth StorySLAMs, followed McKee with a heartbreaking story of her fiancè’s suicide that left much of the audience in tears.

Artist Debra Golden displayed her gorgeous paintings of a single street in northeast Detroit, near Martin Park. The houses on the street ranged from multimillion dollar mansions (some now in disrepair) to a tiny 900-square-foot ranch at the end of the block. As Golden shared her memories of Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s, many audience members nodded along, shouting out memories of their own, of roller coasters on Boblo Island and of the Lodge slicing neighborhoods in half.

Later in the evening, Jean Leverich performed a riveting piece about a woman dying of cancer who tries marijuana for the first time in an attempt to ease her pain. She’s delighted by the experience, and Leverich’s stunning depiction of the joy and sorrow that the woman experiences was heart-wrenching.

This writer also particularly enjoyed performance poet Callie McKee, who performed two of her pieces for the HERsay audience. Her witty turns of phrase and animated stage presence were captivating. Her first piece, about preparation, left the audience smiling with the final message that there are some things we simply can’t be prepared for, no matter how hard we try. Her second—and very timely—piece dealt with a “distinctive lack of Hillary,” in the days after the election. Omnipresent in the news in recent months as she ran for president, McKee talked about her surprise after the election when she woke up and Clinton was virtually gone.

A multitude of other storytellers, comics, and artists performed at HERsay, coming together to create a warm, welcoming and positive environment for both the audience and the performers themselves. Pointless Brewery, which opened earlier this year, offered an intimate, friendly venue for the show, the only drawback being its small size—tickets sold out quickly. If the success of Thursday’s show is any indicator, Smith’s dream of HERsay becoming an annual event will surely come to fruition, perhaps on an even grander scale next year.

Elizabeth Pearce is a Library Technician at the Ann Arbor District Library who is much too mortified to revisit her own middle school diary.

One of the first things that bestselling author Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Eating Animals) mentioned in his talk at Ann Arbor’s Rackham Auditorium on Friday night was that he’d always rather engage in conversation than do a straight-up reading.

The reasons why became evident soon after the evening’s host, author/U-M professor Doug Trevor, invited audience members – from the crowd of about 550 – to approach one of two microphones to ask Safran Foer a question. When the second fan at the mic said that his favorite author, Jonathan Franzen (The Corrections, Freedom), once claimed that the reader was his best friend, Safran Foer’s wit kicked into high gear.

“Now I’m jealous of Jonathan Franzen,” said Safran Foer. “Did you have to say that? … Couldn’t you just ask, ‘What’s your relationship with your reader?’ And his first name is Jonathan, too, which just made it that much worse.”

After Safran Foer asked for the fan’s first name (Justin), he said, “My favorite reader’s first name is also Justin.” When Justin responded by saying, “I greatly respect you, too, as a writer,” Safran Foer quipped, “Respect is for losers.”

Digressions weren’t likely to throw off Safran Foer’s readers, of course, who have come to appreciate the author’s sometimes funny, always insightful literary side-trips.

Though Safran Foer’s latest novel, Here I Am, focuses on a marriage in decay, a family in crisis, and an earthquake in the Middle East, it primarily draws its title from the biblical story of Abraham. For when Abraham called upon by God to make an unbearable sacrifice, he simply replies, “Here I am.”

Safran Foer - whose visit was sponsored by Literati Bookstore, and who was dressed casually in a gray plaid button down shirt and camel brown pants on Friday night - spoke at length about not feeling a need to focus on momentum and plot when writing novels. “Why is the plot so important?” said Safran Foer. “TV takes care of plot these days. Books don’t have a burden to entertain people. Books have a different burden, which is really hard to articulate, even though it’s so unmistakable when it happens. I think it has something to do with … the feeling of being known. If you really love a book, or really moved by a book, transported and changed by a book, the physicality of it disappears, and the characters and plot disappears, and language disappears, and you’re just left with this feeling of being known. … When I write, I want my books to be forceful expressions of my sensibility.”

Safran Foer’s work is often called “cerebral” and “ambitious,” but during Friday night’s talk, he insisted, “I don’t think unless I’m either writing or in conversation with somebody. I do not. I’m always curious, if other people are really different, or if they just haven’t thought of it that way before. I don’t have an active interior monologue. I don’t walk down the street by myself thinking things other than, ’It’s unseasonably cold,’ or, ‘I feel like Chinese food,’ or whatever. I do not have thoughts. They don’t self-generate. They’re always responsive. So that’s why I love conversations, and that’s why I love writing, because writing creates a context for thought.”

A father of two young boys, Safran Foer made non-literary headlines in recent years when he and author Nicole Krauss (The History of Love) separated and divorced; when an email correspondence between him and actress Natalie Portman – the only person who actually appeared in the story’s sexy accompanying photographs – was published in the New York Times’ T Magazine; and because he’s been dating actress Michelle Williams. But Friday evening’s talk focused solely on Safran Foer’s work and his newest book, which nonetheless deals with the challenge inherent in sustaining a marriage over time.

“People who are married and entertain the notion of divorce get divorced,” said Safran Foer. “Even if they don’t legally or technically get divorced, to entertain the notion is to break something, because marriage is the absence of divorce. That’s what it is. … Some people choose to do it, and that is what it means to get divorced. Some people will not allow that to be a choice. And that’s what makes it a marriage.”

Finally, Safran Foer talked about how changes in his life and perspective feed into his sense of his work.

“I always feel like I hear a little voice saying, ‘This is the last thing you’re ever going to write,’” said Safran Foer. “Not in the sense that I’m going to die, and not in the sense that I won’t write another book, but in very straightforward sense that, the person writing this book will not write another book. And proof of that is when I look at my old books. I did not write those books. Obviously I have more in common with the person that did than anybody else, but they are not reflections of my sensibility. They’re reflections of the sensibility of the person I used to be.”

Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music.

Edward Gorey: lover of cats, ballet, Victorian/Edwardian era aesthetics, fur coats, pen-and-ink drawings, the color black and bats. Becoming a fan of Gorey has come in/out of fashion many times over the years, but since his death in 2000 he has only grown in the public consciousness. If you don’t know Edward Gorey’s work you surely know of the legions of other artists who were inspired by his work. From Tim Burton to Lemony Snicket, and goth culture to steampunk Gorey’s influence is felt far and wide. And from Neil Gaiman to Emily the Strange, and Lenore all things, dark, atmospheric and vaguely historical likely started with a love of Edward Gorey. Gorey’s black and white aesthetic lends itself to tattoo work, and often seeing a Gorey inspired tattoo will be for some their first glimpse into his macabre and hypnotizing world view. Many people also discover Gorey from the many New Yorker covers he did, as well as the animated credits for PBS's Mystery!

Unsettled: The Work of Edward Gorey @ the Cranbrook Art Museum, in Bloomfield Hills, MI opened September 18, 2016 and will be on display through March 12, 2017. The show is a perfect primer for entering the pen-and-ink world of Gorey’s illustrations. Gorey was a prolific illustrator who started working in the 1950’s for Doubleday publishers in NYC as their in house illustrator. It was here he honed his craft and illustrated classics like Dracula by Bram Stoker, The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, and Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot. Later, he became known for illustrating most of children’s author, John Bellairs’s books, starting in the 1970s and continuing in the 90s.

The exhibit is a collection on loan to the museum from a local collector and it serves as an excellent overview and entree to the work of Edward Gorey. Newbies and devoted fans will both enjoy the variety of work on display and the opportunity to ponder and look closely at his detailed drawings. The size of the works and his simple yet complex use of black pen and ink begs to be more closely inspected.

The majority of what is on display are the wide variety of books that Gorey illustrated for others as well as his own works such as: The Curious Sofa, The Beastly Baby The Sopping Thursday, and his most well known book The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Knowing that most of his original illustrations were the size that they were published makes his meticulous detail even more impressive.

The original prints, posters and ephemera are also a thrill to see. From the large framed poster print of the 1977 Broadway revival production of Dracula that he designed the sets for to the 3D replica of the stage set, that allows you to do your own version of the play, it’s a wonderful sampling. A bean bag filled Gorey bat with red rhinestone eyes, The Fantod Pack - Gorey’s version of a Tarot card as well as a few rare stuffed cats and pigs were also on display. The impossibly miniature and rare books on display are a joy to see - smaller than 2 inches in diameter with full, detailed illustrations.

Gorey’s humor is dark, clever and at times make you feel uncomfortable, but you may also find yourself smirking with knowing glee at the black humor and the dangerous places he fearlessly takes his audience.

Unsettled: The Work of Edward Gorey is on display through March 12, 2017. Museum admission is $10 for adults and the exhibit is included in this fee. More information about the exhibit and the museum can be found here.

Former foreign correspondent Scott Savitt, who’s called Ann Arbor home for a little over a year now, is celebrating the release of his new book Crashing the Party: An American Reporter in China with local appearances on Tuesday, November 1 at 7 pm at Nicola’s Books, and on Tuesday, November 29 at 7 pm at Literati Bookstore.

The book starts with Savitt’s harrowing account of spending 30 days on a hunger strike in a Chinese prison; and it later explains how the tragic death of his high school girlfriend set him on the path to spending years of his life in China. But the last section he needed to write to complete the manuscript – about Tiananmen Square, where Chinese political protesters were confronted by tanks and military force in 1989 – may have demanded the most courage.

“I had never revisited that, even in all the years since it happened,” said Savitt. “You have to move on somehow. And speaking as a journalist, the story continued. People were arrested, people went into exile – you had to keep covering the story. … So I wrote that section last. My publisher got to a point where he said, ‘Maybe you just can’t do it,’ and I said, ‘No, I can.’ So I finally cranked it out one sleepless night, and then the next morning, I read it to [U-M faculty member Dr. Rebecca Liu], and I started sobbing uncontrollably. It just made me realize how repressed that emotion was. It was still there. I don’t like calling things ‘syndromes’ but post-trauma – that’s real, and I still have it for sure. … It was something people are not built to see.”

But Savitt’s unique journey began when he was a freshman at Duke University. One Sunday night, he spoke by phone with his girlfriend, a high school senior, and 12 hours later, after suddenly becoming ill, she lay comatose in Yale University Hospital. She died one week later.

Shortly thereafter, Savitt was back on campus, leading a wilderness survival training program (Outward Bound), when he heard about Duke’s new student exchange program with China. The requirements were rigorous and included taking an intensive Chinese language course five days a week for one school year.

“I feel pretty certain that, if not for that untimely death, I wouldn’t have done something like that,” said Savitt. “I could have shown you China on a map, but otherwise, I didn’t have that mindset at all. I just felt like, ‘I want to get out of here.’”

So Savitt left for China in 1983. First, he was a student, but he then began working as a journalist – first for Asiaweek Magazine, then The Los Angeles Times, and United Press International. At age 25, he become the youngest accredited foreign correspondent in China.

“I’d never really thought about being a journalist for my career,” said Savitt. “ … But at that time, in China, there were very few ways you could stay there when you weren’t a student. You had to get a job visa. You could teach English, and I did that, too. But getting a job in the foreign news bureau was the best job you could get, and it would utilize my Chinese language skills and my writing ability. … It was really easy to sell articles then.”

After witnessing, and reporting on, the events surrounding Tiananmen Square in 1989, Savitt founded his own independent, English language newspaper in China, called Beijing Scene – which eventually led to his 30 day imprisonment in a small dark cell, in solitary confinement, and then deportation.

“The compliment I usually get from all sides [about the book] is that I’ve really tried to be fair about China, because having those experiences – it would be easy to become embittered,” said Savitt. “But I’m not. By the time those events happened, I was ready to leave, anyway.”

But Savitt’s sustained residence in China, fulfilling a number of different roles, lends him a far more comprehensive view of this huge, complicated country than is normally available to journalists.

“We rely on (journalists) to tell us what’s happening in places, but in many cases, they don’t exactly know,” said Savitt. “It’s not that easy. If I’d never started a business, there would be stuff about China I just wouldn’t know. … There are very few Americans or journalists who’ve seen the inside of a prison cell, or seen how business gets done – which involves paying bribes for pretty much everything.”

Given Savitt’s deep knowledge of, and vast experience with, China, you might wonder what we, and our political leaders, get wrong about the country.

“What I get the most is, ‘Oh, I thought China was going to pass us like we’re standing still – that China is the future, and we’re the past,’” said Savitt. “I would disabuse people of that notion. China’s used to highlighting our own shortcomings, but it’s never going to pass us on per capita income. … The general consensus is that China will grow old before it grows rich. In many areas, it’s still a third world country. Yes, the cities people have visited are modern, because they leapfrogged other parts of the country. But many places never had landline phones to begin with, so they went from no phone to cell phones, which saves a lot on infrastructure. … But the main thing I always say to people is, if they’re the future, how come thousands of Chinese people line up every day to move here, and no one is lining up to move there? Nobody who’s not from China stays there permanently. And when people are making a decision about where to raise children, the vast majority of people would rather be here.”

Jenn McKee is a former staff arts reporter for The Ann Arbor News, where she primarily covered theater and film events, and also wrote general features and occasional articles on books and music.

Scott Savitt discusses his book at two local appearances: Tuesday, November 1 at 7 pm at Nicola’s Books, and on Tuesday, November 29 at 7 pm at Literati Bookstore.

One of the things I love most about the arts is the way they can be beautifully connected. On Sunday, October 23, the arts of music and photography combined when artist Catie Newell's exhibition Overnight at the University of Michigan Museum of Art inspired a University of Michigan Chamber Choir performance at the museum. The performance was themed around the concepts of darkness and light, in honor of Newell's work.

The award-winning conductor, Dr. Jerry Blackstone, opened the concert by encouraging the audience to review the exhibit after the performance. Blackstone also presented the listeners with the arrangement of the concert: the theme of darkness to be set in the first half of the performance, with light theme being presented afterwards.

This was a sensational concert. The vocalists were some of the most talented musicians I’ve heard. With each vocalist standing beside a vocalist with a different voice part, the whole choir was beautifully balanced. In every song, you could hear the gorgeous melodies each section could be proud of. In some pieces, the harmonies were so tight that the sound was like how I’d imagine water running would sound as it splits from one stream into many – effortlessly smooth. I could have believed in magic that night the way Dr. Blackstone used his hands, like a magician conjuring sonic enchantment out of thin air.

The musical selections were overwhelmingly beautiful. From pieces totally new to the ones more familiar, each song was a joy to the ear. The Rachmaninoff “Bogoroditse Devo (Ave Maria)" is one I’ve sung before, but this performance of the piece still knocked me off my feet. If you consider yourself a music lover and have never heard it, get thee to YouTube. A new piece I heard that night was “Ev’ry night, when the sun goes down” arranged by Gwenyth Walker. With the soulful tenor solo and the gorgeous choral sections, I had to close my eyes and focus all my senses on those heartwarming sounds. I attended the concert with someone totally new to choir concerts, and even he had chills during that piece.

I heard other favorites, like Brahms’ “Der Abend” and the “O nata Lux” from Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna, but overall my favorite had to be “Northern Lights” by Eriks Esenvalds. As hand-chimes came to the stage along with wine-glasses filled with water, Dr. Blackstone introduced this piece as an expression of first seeing the lights from the perspective of a ship crew, previously bunkered down under the docks in darkness. Throughout the piece, the choir mimics the lights with their shimmering and smooth tones as the notes rise and fall. I could also hear the urgency in the captain’s voice when the choir sings “Come above,” the part of the story just before the crew rises to see the night’s spectacle. During the part of the song when the crew finally climbs up into the night from below, the choir bursts into the poetic line that Dr. Blackstone prepared us for before beginning: “the sky was aflame.” From then to the end, the chimes and water glasses are played to create a tinkling, ringing sensation that sends your thoughts to the shine of those lights. The whole piece was incredible – it melted my heart.

Not only was the music stunning - the atmosphere was equally appealing. A long time choir geek myself, I’ve sung in plenty unique places, but setting the performance in the lobby of UMMA was a spectacular experience. The space gave the effect of a European cathedral, with the glass above, the pillars all around, the resonation of the room, even with the choir beginning along the balconied edge of the second floor (just as if they were singing in a cathedral’s choir loft). Seriously, I could not have asked for a better way to end the weekend.

Liz Grapentine is a desk clerk at AADL. A graduate from Oakland University with a major in Music Education and a minor in English, Liz enjoys all the arts in every form. Liz is also a true Ann Arbor townie and a proud patron of the library since 1995.