(++++) THE OLD AND THE NEW

Scenes from Isolation. By Cathy Guisewite. Andrews McMeel. $14.99.

How Not to Get into Heaven: Berkeley Mews Comics. By Ben Zaehringer. Andrews McMeel. $14.99.

     Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? The thought might arise from the picture of Electra on the cover of Cathy Guisewite’s Scenes from Isolation, but it really should relate to the picture of Cathy on the cover. And, for that matter, to Guisewite herself (since the cartoon Cathy was always Guisewite’s alter ego). The comic strip Cathy ended its 34-year run in 2010, but obviously the COVID-19 pandemic again put Guisewite in touch with her inner “aack” (hey, it put everybody in touch with inner “aacks”). The result is this little hardcover sort-of-gift book, “sort of” because you may have to spray, wipe, disinfect or otherwise decontaminate it, depending on what the advice of the day may be, before you can give it to anyone else, so you are probably better off just keeping it for yourself. In some ways, the book’s cover picture neatly encapsulates the whole thing: Cathy and Electra are in bed, covers pulled up all the way, with Cathy holding a sign saying “Is It Over Yet?” and Electra, who is looking at a cell phone that presumably is displaying a news feed, thinking the single word, “Nope.” Finding humor in a pandemic’s daily miseries, large and small, is quite a feat, and Guisewite has done so, thanks to her longstanding ability to have cartoon Cathy go into conniptions over every little thing and some not-so-little ones. It is the little miseries of decidedly not-so-little ruination of so many aspects of everyday life that are in the forefront of Scenes from Isolation. Each page here is a single panel with the words “Scenes from Isolation” at the bottom, with a heart to the left and right of the words – a hopeful heart, hopefully. One page, titled “Morning Meditation,” shows hyper-frazzled Cathy with wipes and antibacterial spray exclaiming, “When this is over I am never cleaning anything again!!” Another has her doing a “pandemic Google search” for “How to sue the perky woman in the ‘How to Cut Your Own Hair’ YouTube video.” Another shows her with a presumably now-empty container of mint chip ice cream, saying, “Every single thing takes longer except doing that which I will regret.” Then there is “A Covid Confession: I can type in all 23 digits of my credit card including expiration date and secret code from memory, but no longer know the phone number of any friends.” And there are occasional poems here, too, such as “A poem of Monday morning: Lots to fear,/ Much to dread,/ We all deserve medals/ for getting out of bed.” And there are some panels that perfectly encapsulate both the trials of the pandemic and the realities of being stuck at home: Cathy bemoans the reality that “every day I wear the same outfit, eat the same food, and whimper to go out,” while Electra, right next to her and with little hearts above her head, celebrates, “She’s becoming a dog!!” Well, yes, doggone it, that is how things feel, or felt for a while, or might feel tomorrow – and with precious little to smile or laugh about as the pandemic drags all of us through a second miserable year, an occasional dose of Scenes from Isolation may do us a lot more good than whatever medical or health prescription someone-or-other is promoting at any given time.

     There are other amusing ways of handling pandemic life, of course, such as pretending none of the daily depredations exists. Ben Zaehringer helps that approach along with How Not to Get into Heaven, a set of cartoons as up-to-date (that is, Internet-based) as Guisewite’s are old-fashioned (that is, originally in newspapers – remember newspapers?). Zaehringer’s book requires a lot of back-and-forth flipping: the table of contents explains exactly what each page is an example of “how not to” do something-or-other, but that explanation is missing from the pages themselves, so the way to read this is to look at the table of contents, see what page a phrase refers to, turn to that page, chuckle or laugh or groan as appropriate, turn back to the table of contents, and repeat ad infinitum. Or for 128 pages, anyway. So “How Not to Initiate Contact” shows scientists saying “no!” to Mars Rover, which has found an alien and is humping its lower appendage, as dogs often do. “How Not to Give Flowers” starts with “she loves me/she loves me not” and ends with all the flower petals gone, with just a stem available for giving. “How Not to Go to the Ball” has the fairy godmother transforming Cinderella’s rags into beautiful clothing – which Cindy promptly brings to a consignment shop. “How Not to Post a Warning” shows a sign saying “Danger – Quicksand” slowly sinking into (what else?) quicksand. “How Not to Serve Zombies” has two of the undead attacking the brains of a waiter, who is saying, “I suggest you pair with the Riesling.” And “How Not to Invent the Wheel” has the traditional caveman inventing a wheel that rolls away down a hill, so he cleverly makes his next one square. Replete with pop-culture and Disney-culture references, and filled with characters of all sorts (a robot that does homework poorly, a magician sucked into his hat, parents with a diaper spreadsheet, and several mixed-up Santa Clauses), How Not to Get into Heaven does not contain any page labeled “How Not to Find This Stuff Funny.” And that is probably just as well.

(++++) SHATTERING AND RE-FORMING

Kaleidoscope. By Brian Selznick. Scholastic. $19.99.

     Humans impose meaning. We see pictures in clouds, read the future in entrails, observe patterns in fire or water to visualize matters neither fiery nor watery – and, more to the point where Brian Selznick’s latest book is concerned, we see recognizable things in the patterns formed by the glass and lenses of a kaleidoscope. Selznick here guides what we see – and the “we” refers to readers of all ages, although the book is ostensibly for preteens and teenagers. But Selznick does not impose order on a universe of underlying chaos (he wrote the book during the COVID-19 pandemic and its enforced isolation and separation, and it shows). Instead, he offers fragmentary, fragmented stories or bits of stories (the line between complete tales and portions is never clear), and invites readers to put them together under his gentle guidance. Selznick explains some of this in an Author’s Note at the back of the book, but it is not necessary to read that note in order to be affected and enthralled by Kaleidoscope, and in some ways it is counterproductive: this is a book that works best when readers piece it together entirely on their own.

     Selznick’s method here is fairly easy to describe, but its effects transcend the methodology. There are 24 short-to-very-short stories with some recurring themes, images and names – but the connections among the stories are for readers to ferret out. Illustratively, the book is tied together by a series of kaleidoscopic images: first there is a drawing that looks like a black-and-white rendering of a multicolored kaleidoscopic scene, and then there is a more-realistic drawing of the object just seen kaleidoscopically (it helps, after looking at the more-realistic art, to go back to the kaleidoscopic version). After the art, there is a story connected in some way to whatever object has been shown – and at the end of the story (or story fragment: many of the tales do come across as pieces of a puzzle rather than self-contained narratives), a new kaleidoscope view shatters whatever image has just been explored and offers readers something else.

     Characterization is not a strong element here and indeed seems almost irrelevant. The nameless narrator, who has just turned 13 (as the first story says), is repeatedly involved with a character named James, who may be his soul mate or may be dead or may be his dead soul mate. There are no significant female characters – Selznick is gay, and wrote the book during a pandemic-enforced separation from his husband – but there is little of any gender at all here, with the narrator and James and the other characters being the stuff of fairy tales and legends rather than concrete, individuated beings. Themes and characters appear and reappear in flickering fashion. For instance, one story is narrated by a giant who becomes friendly with James, even though the boy is no bigger than the giant’s finger – giant and boy bond through books. The next story also involves a magical creature bonding with a boy through books, this story taking place on an island that was created after the death at seaside of a “heartbroken giant.” Is this the giant of the previous story, or a different one, or a fairy-tale trope, or some combination of giant-focused legends? Selznick leaves this, and much else, for readers to decipher and decide.

     In a real-world kaleidoscope, reflections and refractions change constantly, but the objects producing them are always the same: it is only how we see those objects, how we twist and turn the kaleidoscope, how we point it toward a light source or away from one, that makes the patterns look different to us. And so it is in Selznick’s book: the same items are there continually, if not continuously: islands and apples, trees and keys. And the broader themes recur constantly as well: friendship, grief, love, loss, death, heartbreak, all leavened by flickers of optimism that are as welcome as they are infrequent. Kaleidoscope offers a world of magic, but it is not benign magic – or malign, for that matter. It is the magic of what-could-be, the magical possibility that by twisting the kaleidoscope just so, we will find some sort of deeply meaningful, perhaps eternal meaning in what it displays. That is a false hope in kaleidoscopes and in Kaleidoscope, but it is not a reason to despair: since we humans, we readers, impose meanings on the random kaleidoscopic patterns, we can choose to create a more-positive experience out of negative events. We can refuse to let privation and loss, from a pandemic or other causes, lead us fully into despair. We can acknowledge heartbreak without permitting grief to overcome us. This is the overarching, underlying meaning of the multiple story threads that make up Kaleidoscope, a book that asks its intended young audience to think more deeply and carefully about life than did any of Selznick’s earlier, more-accessible works. Or, to be completely accurate, this is one overarching, underlying meaning of the elements that make up Kaleidoscope. Readers of the book can discover and/or impose their own alternative meanings – that is one of the magical things about books, and about being human.

(+++) REASONS TO VOCALIZE

Monteverdi: Madrigals and Arias. Concerto Italiano conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Naïve. $16.99.

Ghost Songs: Contemporary Music and Words from Ireland. Laetare Vocal Ensemble conducted by Róisín Blunnie. Métier. $18.99.

Dal Niente Portrait 2020-2021: Music by Igor Santos, Hilda Paredes, Tomás Gueglio, George Lewis, Melissa Vargas, and Andile Khumalo. Ensemble Dal Niente. New Focus Recordings. $16.99.

     Highly rarefied and performed with conviction for an audience that is guaranteed to be very small, whose members will be very appreciative of the way the discs cater to their very specialized tastes, these CDs use the human voice – sometimes alone, sometimes with instruments – to explore various emotional states and transport listeners to specific time periods and places. Rinaldo Alessandrini’s offering of music by Monteverdi bears the title “Daylight” and is intended as a companion to a prior release called “Night,” which dates to 2017. It is not necessary to know the earlier release to appreciate this one, but it does help, since the mixture of instrumental and vocal material here is not arranged chronologically or in any discernible manner except insofar as it reflects Alessandrini’s enjoyment of the music – and presumably that of his presumed audience. The material is excerpted from Monteverdi’s nine books of madrigals and also includes songs, opera arias and a couple of instrumental works. Some of the juxtapositions are inspired: women’s voices singing Sù, sù, sù pastorelli vezzosi from Madrigali Guerrieri et Amorosi are immediately followed by men’s singing Sù, sù, sù augelletti canori from the ninth book of madrigals. Most of the music, though, is arranged solely because Alessandrini wants it a certain way: this Naïve recording bears the subtitle “Stories of Songs, Dances and Loves,” and that alone shows how diverse the music is and how disconnected (except in Alessandrini’s mind) many of the pieces are from many others. A highly personal tribute to Monteverdi as well as a companion piece to the earlier Night CD, this disc is exceptionally well sung and played, with the usual attention that Alessandrini and Concerto Italiano give to all the nuances of period style and historically informed performance practices. The 20 selections on the disc span 60-plus years of Monteverdi’s long compositional life; in addition, Alessandrini includes a few items by Biagio Marini and Andrea Falconiero as linking material – this approach was customary in Monteverdi’s time. Thoroughly versed in authentic performance practice but quite indifferent to any sort of chronological or easily graspable arrangement of the material, Alessandrini has here assembled a CD that is wonderful to hear for those who love everything Monteverdian – but rather incoherent, musically speaking, for those who might prefer a presentation with a clearer and less intensely personal approach.

     Intended for listeners with a strong focus on and love of Ireland and its folk and fantasy tales, as well as its turbulent history, and including an unusual mixture of music with spoken-word-only sections, a new Métier CD called Ghost Songs is also performed with considerable skill and sensitivity. The Laetare Vocal Ensemble, a 36-voice Dublin-based chamber choir, has no problem whatsoever with the genre-mixing elements that are pervasive here, as in so many CDs with a contemporary focus. The disc offers a generous helping (80 minutes) of musical settings, poems, play excerpts and more – some sung by the choir, some read by the authors themselves (Marina Carr, Paula Meehan, Dairena Ní Chinnéide), some read in a suitably cultivated voice by a radio presenter (Carl Corcoran, who reads poetry by W.B. Yeats – by far the best-known contributor of words here – and Lola Ridge). As with the Alessandrini CD of Monteverdi’s music, this one has no obvious reason for its particular sequence: it is not chronological; material is not grouped in any discernible way; and there is no particular thematic unity beyond that generated by the Ghost Songs title and its straightforward, if not very informative, subtitle: “Contemporary Music and Words from Ireland.” There are in fact a couple of tracks here, the last two, called The Ghost Song, and there are other pairs with a similar focus, such as The Graves at Arbour Hill. In both these cases, Paula Meehan, who wrote the words, first delivers them; then there is a musical setting incorporating them. This is an approach taken elsewhere on the disc as well – for instance, with Yeats’ Down by the Salley Gardens. In all three of those cases, the musical settings are by Seán Doherty, who is quite sensitive to the verbiage and does a good job of setting the material for the vocal ensemble. Other composers heard here, including Síle Denvir, Rhona Clarke, and Michael Holohan, also appear to be steeped in Irish tale-telling traditions and accomplished at setting words appropriately. There is a wealth of material here – 35 tracks of it – but much of it is quite brief, a minute or less, and nothing lasts as much as seven minutes: there is one six-and-a-half-minute piece and one five-and-a-half-minute one, but the preponderance of material is in the minute-and-a-half range, making its points or doing its scene-painting (verbal or musical) in miniature and then giving way to something new and, most of the time, equally brief. This disc is an immersive experience in elements of contemporary Irish music and mostly contemporary Irish poetry and tale-telling, its sincerity and authenticity beyond reproach but its target audience a very narrowly defined and highly focused one.

     The location is an ocean away, but the ensemble size is similar for the ultra-modern music on a New Focus Recordings CD called Dal Niente Portrait 2020-2021. As the disc’s title indicates, the focus here is as much on the performers – the Chicago-based, 23-member Ensemble Dal Niente – as on the six works presented. Three of those include vocals and three are instrumental, that word defined rather loosely because the material tends to be aggressively modernistic, not only through electronic modification but also through extending performing techniques and instrumental sounds far beyond what listeners (other than those already firmly committed to the musical avant-garde) might expect to hear. The connective tissue of this CD is both geographical (as it is for the Laetare Vocal Ensemble’s disc) and anti-geographical: from its Chicago base, Ensemble Dal Niente created a series of virtual collaborative performances spanning three continents during the pandemic-forced closings and lockdowns of the 2020-2021 time period, reaching out virtually at a time when in-person music-making was simply not possible. Cleverness and creative response to an unprecedented-in-our-lifetime situation abound here, not only in the organization of the disc but also in the works themselves, whether or not they were created during the COVID-19 pandemic. The oldest piece on the CD, dating to 2004, is in some ways the most intriguing of all. It is Hilda Paredes’ harp concerto Demente Cuerda, whose title as written means “crazed string” but, if written de mente cuerda, would mean “of sound mind.” That is very neat word play (or almost-word play), and the work offers some attractive contrasts between the harp’s delicacy and the massed sound of the other instruments – although the interplay somewhat overstays its welcome by going on for 15 minutes. Another instrumental piece here is Igor Santos’ confined. speak. (titled using no capital letters and two periods – typical affectations for some contemporary composers). This piece does date to pandemic times (2020) and is intended to express confinement with musical means, ranging from mutes to limited pitch use. It does not, however, really sound very different from many other self-consciously modern instrumental works. George Lewis’ Merce and Baby (2012), however, does have some out-of-the-ordinary sounds. The title refers to choreographer/dancer Merce Cunningham and jazz drummer Baby Douds, and the piece is interesting not only for its easily anticipated forays into percussion but also for its less-expected willingness to lapse into lyricism for a while. The three vocal works on the CD are, on the whole, less interesting. Triste y madrigal (2021) by Tomás Gueglio has nothing to do with Monteverdi and everything to do with sound assemblage, containing some actual soprano passages, some voice clips from the 1940s, and instrumental material that ranges from murky to perky – a good reflection of the bizarrerie of pandemic-era life, but not a work that is particularly convincing to hear. The form, not the function, rules Melissa Vargas’ 2010 Es casi como el inicio…y comienza (the ellipsis is, yes, part of the title): a clock timer is used to pace broad instrumental passages that contrast with screechy vocals. And Andile Khumalo’s Beyond Her Mask (2021) tries to reflect not only pandemic times but also violence against women in Khumalo’s native South Africa, using a gratifyingly clear spoken text mixed with instrumental passages that do not really add much to the verbiage. This hit-or-miss assemblage of modernity in the time of COVID-19 will please fans of Ensemble Dal Niente, for whom it will appear to evoke emotional connection dal niente (out of nothing); but there is nothing here sufficiently engaging or convincing to reach out to listeners who are not already enthralled by the most-modern aspects of today’s music scene.

(++++) RELIABLY RELATABLE

Adventures in Aquaculture: The Twenty-Sixth “Sherman’s Lagoon” Collection. By Jim Toomey. Andrews McMeel. $14.99.

Phoebe and Her Unicorn 14: Unicorn Playlist. By Dana Simpson. Andrews McMeel. $11.99.

     Sometimes you just want characters to do more of what they have been doing all along. Given the dizzying speed with which things seem to change in the real world, it can be relaxing, even reassuring, to settle into the unreal world of comic strips and cartoons for a while and revisit characters whose new adventures bear a striking resemblance to their old ones – with enough variations to make the time spent with these comic collections worthwhile. For example, readers of Jim Toomey’s Sherman’s Lagoon know they can expect titular shark Sherman to be reasonably well-meaning (if perpetually hungry) and reasonably clueless about most things, while resident Kapupu Lagoon sea turtle Fillmore can be expected to be devoted to poetry (mostly his own), a failure with the opposite chelonian sex, and an occasional voice of reason in contrast to everyone else’s unreasonableness. The cover of Adventures in Aquaculture encapsulates those two contrasting personalities perfectly, showing Sherman reading one volume of a large pile of Sherman’s Lagoon collections – his version of culture – while Fillmore sits nearby reading his version, including 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, Captains Courageous, Two Years before the Mast, and something by Patrick O’Brian (author of Master and Commander and similar works). Readers who enter the pages of the book will soon discover the latest shenanigans of familiar characters such as hermit crab, lagoon mayor and professional huckster Hawthorne, who in one sequence has to get rid of a different flim-flam artist – a visiting American pocket shark selling snake oil (well, shark oil); hyper-lazy polar bear Thornton, who at one point develops a bald spot and has to endure lagoon residents’ comments and unhelpful assistance until it turns out he merely has a chocolate deficiency; undersea stone idol Kahuna, who is losing his magic powers until he sprouts arms and legs and goes on a trek to a magical inland waterfall for prestidigitation rejuvenation; and the usual cast of short-term characters, such as two piglet squid who may taste like bacon, a loud-mouthed remora named Party Pete, and a “wise seagull guru” named Barry who speaks entirely in clichés and movie quotes. Toomey always delves a bit into ecological matters as well, and occasionally has his characters provide commentaries on some aspect of popular culture – as when Megan, Sherman’s wife, becomes popular on YouTube and tells a nearby fish that since she is now a celebrity, “I’m guessing you want my views on politics.” Hmm. Definitely some social awareness there – but only in passing and in a lighthearted way, which is just how Sherman’s Lagoon delivers most of its character comedy.

     Aimed at younger readers, Dana Simpson’s Phoebe’s Unicorn series generally pays less attention to societal issues, but there are some signs in the latest collection, Unicorn Playlist, that Simpson wants to be sociopolitically correct. Notably, there is an amusing sequence in which Phoebe learns of a unicorn named “Infernus, the Unicorn of Death,” and is suitably worried until she actually meets Infernus, who turns out to be small and thoroughly adorable and who says “you can call me ‘Ferny’” – and then talks about being neither a boy nor a girl and wanting Phoebe to use the unicorn pronoun “neigh.” Phoebe goes out of her way to say, “Humans have non-binary people too,” to which Ferny replies, “So humans have caught up to unicorns! Good for you.” It is all rather forced and awkward and painstakingly “woke,” clearly intended to establish Simpson’s bona fides with certain groups; but thankfully it does not become a preoccupation of Unicorn Playlist, which otherwise travels in the same pleasant and amusing directions long established for the interactions between Phoebe and Marigold Heavenly Nostrils. Like Toomey, Simpson enjoys bringing in “bit player” characters from time to time – such as Marigold’s sister, Florence, who knows far more about their family tree than Marigold does. Some of the less-often-seen characters really enliven the stories, one example being the unicorn Lord Splendid Humility – whose horn is the only part he ever allows to be visible, even when he poses for a full-year calendar showing that horn poking out of all sorts of different places, month after month: a snowman, a cactus, a box, a leaf pile, and so on. At one point, Phoebe sees the horn in a bush and says, “Hey, LSH,” receiving the reply, “Thank you. Being abbreviated makes me feel humble.” Other unicorns, of course, are far from humble, which is the point – and much of the humor in Phoebe and Her Unicorn turns on Marigold’s self-involvement and the way it contrasts with Phoebe’s personality. Phoebe has her everyday, non-unicorn adventures here as well, such as needing to get store-bought Valentine’s Day cards for her class because her mother rejects her prototype handmade one, which was going to say, “I do not wish you any specific harm, but we both know I am being forced to give you this.” Phoebe also has her usual dealings with friend Max, “frenemy” Dakota, and her own father – a kind of hippie throwback who wears a shirt with the number 42 on it (think The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), talks about the multiverse, and plays “Magic Creature Trapper” obsessively on his cell phone. Phoebe’s parents’ and friends’ easy acceptance of Marigold and many other magical creatures is one part of the charm of the Phoebe and Her Unicorn series – in one sequence in the latest book, popularity-obsessed Dakota decides she is tired of being popular with goblins. Unicorn Playlist continues to show Simpson’s skill at creating an unreal (but almost-real) world that does not require forays into the cause-of-the-moment to be engaging, and is all the more pleasurable to the extent that it lets young readers escape for a little while from lives that, even for preteens, are far too often full of stress, demands for conformity, and insistence on adherence to others’ beliefs and behaviors.