NEW BOOKS

The Passenger Box Set: The Passenger, Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy Knopf, $56

The Passenger

1980, Pass Christian, Mississippi: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western, a salvage diver, zips the jacket of his wet suit and plunges from the boat deck into darkness. His dive light illuminates the sunken jet, nine bodies still buckled in their seats, hair floating, eyes devoid of speculation. Missing from the crash site are the pilot’s flight bag, the plane’s black box, and the tenth passenger. But how? A collateral witness to machinations that can only bring him harm, Western is shadowed in body and spirit—by men with badges; by the ghost of his father, inventor of the bomb that melted glass and flesh in Hiroshima; and by his sister, the love and ruin of his soul.

Stella Maris

1972, Black River Falls, Wisconsin: Alicia Western is twenty years old when she arrives at a psychiatric facility with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag. A doctoral candidate in mathematics at the University of Chicago, Alicia has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and she does not want to talk about her brother, Bobby. Instead, she contemplates the nature of madness, the human insistence on one common experience of the world; she surveys the intersection of physics and philosophy; and she introduces her cohorts, her chimeras, the hallucinations that only she can see. All the while, she grieves for Bobby, not quite dead, not quite hers.

Tom Clancy Red Winter (A Jack Ryan Novel) by Marc Cameron G.P. Putnam’s Sons, $29.95 1985. A top secret F117 aircraft crashes into the Nevada desert. The Nighthawk is the most advanced fighting machine in the world and the Soviets will do anything to get its secrets. In East Berlin, a mysterious figure contacts the CIA offering invaluable details of his government’s espionage plans in return for asylum.

It’s an offer they can’t pass up…if it’s genuine, but the risks are too great to blindly stumble into a deal. With the East German secret police closing in, someone will have to go to behind the Berlin Wall to investigate the potential defector. It’s a job Deputy Director James Greer can only trust to one man—Jack Ryan.

And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham Random House, $40

Lincoln tends to be seen as the greatest American president—a remote icon—or as a politician driven more by calculation than by conviction. This illuminating new portrait gives us a very human Lincoln—an imperfect man whose moral antislavery commitment, essential to the story of justice in America, began as he grew up in an antislavery Baptist community; who insisted that slavery was a moral evil; and who sought, as he put it, to do right as God gave him to see the right.

This book tells the story of Lincoln from his birth on the Kentucky frontier in 1809 to his leadership during the Civil War to his tragic assassination in 1865: his rise, his self-education, his loves, his bouts of depression, his political failures, his deepening faith, and his persistent conviction that slavery must end.

The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 by Peter Baker, Susan Glasser Doubleday, $32

“Well-paced and engagingly written...the most comprehensive and detailed account of the Trump presidency yet published.” —The Washington Post The inside story of the four years when Donald Trump went to war with Washington, from the chaotic beginning to the violent finale, told by revered journalists Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker—an ambitious and lasting history of the full Trump presidency that also contains dozens of exclusive scoops and stories from behind the scenes in the White House, from the absurd to the deadly serious. Fresh Pasta at Home: 10 Doughs, 20 Shapes, 100+ Recipes, with or without a Machine by America’s Test Kitchen America’s Test Kitchen, $29.99 Whether you use a hand-crank machine, electric machine, extruder, or rolling pin and elbow grease, you can make incredible pasta from scratch using ATK’s rigorously tested techniques. More than a dozen doughs: Pasta doughs made with eggs, semolina, whole grains, vegetables, and even gluten-free flours are proportioned for perfect results whether you’re using a machine or not.

Strand pasta: Spaghetti al Limone; Tagliatelle with Artichokes and Parmesan; Bucatini al Fuoco

Hand-shaped pasta: Orecchiette with Broccoli Rabe and Sausage; Fileja with ‘Nduja Tomato Sauce; Gnocchi with Fontina Sauce. And more.

Demon Copperhead: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver Harper, $32.50

Set in the mountains of Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through it all, he reckons with his own invisibility in a culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damage to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. n

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60 and should not sound as pre-pubescent boyish as Ween still does 40 years into its creation. But, hey, everybody needs money and should earn as much from doing what they do best for as long as they can.

Nothing marks a great Christmas season better than the big dramatic films that open only in theaters that come just in time for Oscar voting. And what spells seasonal holiday viewing more than a tale of decadent sex and cocaine use in the Hollywood of the 1920s with Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie (Babylon, opening Dec 23), dystopian existential crisis after a chemical crises from a mind-bent Don DeLillo novel starring Adam Driver (White Noise, opens Dec 2), Brendan Fraser and Darren Aronofsky’s heart-wrenching film about a 600-pound shut-in (The Whale, opening Dec 9), and Women Talking and its story of trauma and recovery with Frances McDormand and Judith Ivey. Noisemakers start tooting.

Do you like spoken word poetry? Me neither. Still, if you are going to check it out, Instagram-based, Canadian-Indian scribe Rupi Kaur has a flair for fanciful language, what with iconic books such as Milk and Honey and The Sun and Her Flowers. The Kimmel Cultural Campus will host Kaur live, on December 8 at its Miller Theatre space.

If you find deep, millennial foodies as annoying as I, you will truly get a headache from the Martha Stewart/Rachael Ray of the 21st Century, self-taught home chef Deb Perelman. Along with being the creator of smittenkitchen.com blog for those who like to eat and cook food without complicated methods, Perelman penned a bestselling

Adam Driver in White Noise.

26 ICON | DECEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM Smitten Kitchen Cookbook and will appear at Philly’s Free Library’s

Deb Perelman and daughter.

main branch December 6 to further irritate fine diners and trained chefs with tales of ordinary madness from her new Smitten Kitchen Keepers: New Classics for Your Forever Files.

Charles Dickens’ socially commentating holiday rhetoric is overplayed and overwrought during this time of year. Some are great, like when Philly’s Tony Lawton acts out the entire script himself, and some are dreadful and corny and buried in amber. Luckily, author Katie Leaman has come to the funny, punny rescue by twisting the words of Dickens into a tight, contemporary humorous package wrapped in a goofy bright bow with the Peter Pryor-directed A Christmas Carol Comedy at Hedgerow Theatre, onstage in Media, PA until December 24 A Christmas Carol Comedy with two of Philly’s best actors playing all its parts. The Greater Tuna-ization of the holidays start here.

And by the way, The Nutcracker. No. Just no. n

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Margot Robbie in Babylon.

with the premiere of The Jazz Singer (1927) and they suddenly aren’t. The rise-and-fall narrative, and several of the more tense sequences, are lifted wholesale from Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (itself a carbon copy of better films past). And as in his overrated musical La La Land, Chazelle’s larger aim is to offer up a facile love-of-the-movies argument that comes off more propagandistic (for a rose-tinted idea of Hollywood and its output that has long since dissipated) than it does sincere. [R] HH

Guillermo de Toro’s Pinocchio (Dirs. Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson). Starring: Gregory Mann, Ewan McGregor, Ron Perlman. This year’s second attempt at retelling the classic wooden-boy-longing-to-be-human fable — after Robert Zemeckis’ not uninteresting, yet highly uneven effort for Disney — is, aside from some visually compelling stop-motion animation, a repository of bad ideas. Cowriter and director Guillermo del Toro updates the Carlo Collodi perennial to WWII Italy, at the height of Benito Mussolini’s fascist government. (Il Duce even makes an ill-advised comic cameo.) Grieving the loss of his son in an air bombing, drunken woodcutter Geppetto (David Bradley) builds the title character (Gregory Mann) as a companion who is soon brought to life by a Blue Fairy-esque wood sprite (Tilda Swinton), one of two emissaries from the world of the dead. He embarks on a series of dark adventures with the semi-wizened Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor) as his conscientious comrade. The whole production smugly riffs on our familiarity with the tale; for one example, re-setting the Pleasure Island sequence at a fascist youth training camp (children turned into asses of a different sort). It’s all in jaw-dropping bad taste, and that’s not even considering the horrendous songs (oh yes, it’s a musical!) that recall Don Bluth’s horrendous Rock-a-Doodle in their tunelessly inept brevity. [PG] H

The Whale (Dir. Darren Aronofsky). Starring: Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau. The much-missed Brendan Fraser and a game supporting cast give their all to Darren Aronofsky’s film adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s stage play about a morbidly obese man, Charlie (Fraser), with a remorse-laden death wish. Yet as is often the case with Aronofsky productions, this is more a spectacle to gawk at than a story to be moved by. Fraser is buried under tons of practical and digital prosthetics and photographed in such a way that he comes off, despite the actor’s considerable efforts, as a pitiable monster. Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink plays the vituperative teen daughter who Charlie is trying to reach, and Hong Chau (the best performer of the bunch) finds some actual resonant humanity in her role as Charlie’s devoted caretaker. There are feints in the tale toward a larger spiritual significance (also an Aronofsky staple) though — as shown by the protagonist’s obsession with Melville’s Moby Dick, for one — in the most melodramatically hamfisted and narratively on-the-nose sorts of ways. [R] H1/2 n

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an operatic chandelier. K.D. Lang soars higher while listening in a box resembling a Spanish-galleon bow. I’m very fond of the State, which this season will host The Book of Mormon and Jay Leno. I saw films there when it was spookily dilapidated; wrote newspaper stories about its extensive renovation; reviewed everyone from Aretha Franklin to Ellen DeGeneres. My favorite experience was singing sea chanties in the deserted balcony with my father, whose strict Mennonite minister

dad forbade him from entering a den of sinful entertainment to play tag with Satan. (453 Northampton St., Easton; 610-252-3132; statetheatre.org)

Housenick Park is a unique union of nature and human nature. The 91-acre property was the estate/farm/laboratory of Archibald Johnston (1864-1948), a Bethlehem Steel executive who served as the first mayor of Bethlehem’s united north and south sides. He and his wife Estelle commissioned a splendid 22-room Georgian Revival mansion on a bluff over the wild Monocacy Creek, which Archie tamed with stone embankments and a concrete ford for washing cars. A charitable group, The Friends of Johnston, have created a magnetic conservation area from land donated by Janet Johnston Housenick, Archie’s greatgranddaughter. The partially restored “big house” leads to a tennis court turned jungle, a new bird blind by a marsh, and a concrete bridge splintered like bones. Another trail passes lime kilns, a spring, a pump house and railroad tracks for freight trains. A new macadam path winding through a panoramic prairie completes a soul-satisfying pilgrimage through a soulful reclaimed ruin. (3811 Christian Spring Rd., Bethlehem; archieproject.org; thefriendsofjohnston.com).

The Joint has an out-of-joint location. The coffee/tea house almost hides in a corridor under an apartment co-op, reachable only by two

alleys and an alley-like street. For 13 years I’ve been guiding newcomers to a compact, cozy place with a funky neon sign, cool chalkboard walls, and a hip, new-age hippie vibe. Six robust blends are made by Homestead Coffee Roasters, headquartered in a general store in a former barn along the Delaware Canal tow path in Upper Black Eddy. Specialties include a brew aged 30 days in bourbon barrels and a carmelized café con leche inspired by the Puerto Rican grandmother of owner Tito Negron. Flavors range from lavender syrup to jitter-calming C.B.D. oil. Drinks are made and chocolate-raspberry croissants served by the super-efficient, super-friendly Cynthia, Juliet and Tod, who works next door in Electric Cheetah Tattoos. They’re just as welcoming to our four-legged companions, handing out treats like they’re running a doggy daycare center. (Sun Inn Courtyard, 77 W. Broad St., Bethlehem; 610-419-9237; thejointcoffee.com)

Slinkies slinking down steps like steel caterpillars. Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots knocking off blocks. Knob-twisting Picassos Etch-aSketching. These indelible toys highlight “Let’s Play!,” a delightfully playful survey of four centuries of domestic recreation. One room holds an army of “Star Wars” figurines, which launched the first boom in movie merchandising. Another room chronicles the 1918 Bethlehem Steel Baseball League, where Babe Ruth, Shoeless Joe Jackson and other major leaguers dodged the draft by working and playing for a crucial military industry. Shelves inside a glassed-in storage area are lined with miniature cast-iron vehicles and miniature Santas evolving, or devolving, into eggs. Interpretive placards offer lively trivia (the phrase “action figure” was designed to attract doll-hating boys) and livelier controversies (Cabbage Patch Dolls chewed plastic food and non-plastic fingers). (Through Jan. 31, Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts, 427 North New St., Bethlehem; 610-868-6868; historicbethlehem.org) n

The Wizards of Winter

28 ICON | DECEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM The Joint

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Barry Lyndon (1975)

ground as an attempt at some kind of atonement, is one of Tarkovsky’s most visually and thematically resonant setpieces, as profound a vision of destruction and rebirth as any artist has gifted us. (Streaming on Filmatique.)

Barry Lyndon (1975, Stanley Kubrick, United Kingdom/United States) Stanley Kubrick adapts William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel about the rise and fall of the eponymous Irish rogue (Ryan O’Neal) in 18th-century England. From the start, the milieu is as alien-seeming as anything in the director’s own 2001: A Space Odyssey, a slow-burn symphony of constricting period garments, eerily low-level lighting (cinematographer John Alcott pioneered several techniques to shoot scenes with only flickering candles), and hypnotically stilted line readings. Emotion is kept consistently at bay as Barry ascends the social ladder, eventually marrying well above his station and becoming a despotic tyrant before his ruination commences. Only near the end of the three-hour-film — when Barry is challenged to an epochal duel by his disgruntled adopted son Lord Bullingdon (Leon Vitali), and his tormented wife Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) shows of flicker of feeling in a climactic close-up for the ages — does the glassy spell cast by Kubrick’s classic finally, and spectacularly, shatter.(Streaming on HBOMax.)

Survival of the Dead (2009, George A. Romero, United States/Canada) In what would prove to be horror movie maestro George A. Romero’s final feature, the writerdirector transposes a tried-and-true zombie tale (his specialty) onto a Western template. The third in an unofficial modern trilogy that also includes Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead, Survival of the Dead follows the soldier antiheroes of the prior entry as they cross paths with a group of survivalists not only warring with the undead but with each other. It’s the Hatfields vs. the McCoys (here the O’Flynns and the Muldoons)…with zombies. The flesh-rending gore, as always, is prevalent, but so is Romero’s pointed sense of humor, here turned toward internecine conflicts that never die, even when the people fighting these useless wars do. Romero’s endearing affection for the genres he’s min-

ing to his own ends show up in visuals as disparate as a cowboy zombie riding a horse and a corker of a final image (a great closer to Romero’s career) in which two of the undead have a pointless gun duel in front of the rising moon. (Streaming on MUBI.) n

Survival of the Dead.

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