14 書香人物 P E R S O N A L I T Y & B O O K S SUNDAY, AUGUST 3, 2008 • TAIPEI TIMES

[ HARDCOVER: UK ] SUNDAY PROFILE The long evening wanes Time may well show that Preeta Estelle Parsons’ Samarasan’s novel ‘Evening is the Whole Day’ is nothing less than modern Malaysia’s ‘Middlemarch’

By BRADLEY WINTERTON Contributing Reporter To read this extraordinary new is a workout debut novel is to learn, or learn role again, what excellence in any of the arts really means. There’s absolutely no stelle Parsons tears up the stair- Estelle didn’t have the luxury of the “After meeting Deanna backstage doubt that Evening is the case in the haunted dollhouse of rehearsal process that the original cast after I signed on, I called my agent and Whole Day is a masterly book, Ea set in the Broadway produc- had. Most of her rehearsals for three asked, ‘Listen, am I a lamb being led almost certainly the greatest tion of August: Osage County with the weeks was blocking with the under- to the slaughter?’” Parsons recalled. work of fiction ever to come nimbleness of an Olympian. For the studies. She was just sort of thrown “Deanna seemed to think that doing out of modern Malaysia. It’s next several months, this 80-year-old onstage.” eight shows a week was nearly comprehensive, detailed, Oscar-winning actress will inhabit the Being in shape took on a new impossible.” psychologically insightful and, physically demanding role of Violet meaning for Parsons after she But after more than a month in by the end, deeply tragic. When, Weston, the drug-ravaged matriarch of won a supporting-actress Oscar the role, Parsons says she’s up for the in the final scene, you see the August, Tracy Letts’ Tony Award-win- in 1968 for Bonnie and Clyde, challenge. assembled Indian-Malaysian ning play. playing Clyde’s sister-in-law. “Estelle doesn’t even consider family standing at the airport Her stamina may be a tribute to a “I started doing a lot of this role daunting,” Morton said. waving goodbye to their eldest lifetime of simple physical fitness for The actress, who plays hiking after Bonnie and “She considers it fun. She’s daughter as she flies off to the Parsons, who will turn 81 in November Clyde because I just always amazed that people US and Columbia University, while finishing her six-month contract. the venom-spewing had to run away,” say that she should be what you are seeing is a She lifts weights and swims, she said, Violet Weston in she said. “It’s exhausted.” loveless, broken, compromised and has hiked the backwoods of her very hard when Parsons doesn’t family marooned in a country EVENING IS THE WHOLE DAY native New England for most of her life. ‘August: Osage County,’ you’re in a want to dwell beset with ingrained rivalries by Preeta Samarasan She hasn’t smoked in many years and is a sprightly old soul movie that big. on the physical and institutionalized injustices. rarely drinks. She almost never eats You become demands of the Yet the long journey to that 339 pages red meat, save for the occasional lamb notorious, and role, however, final hopelessness has been Fourth Estate chop. She started practicing yoga about By DAVID BELCHER people often and shrugs off a riveting, and often very 30 years ago. She is the antithesis of NY Times News Service, NEW YORK bothered me in the notion that entertaining, read. Violet, whose self-destructive rampage public.” it is a feat for an Appa Rajasekharan is the is set up and duly arrested. gives August: Osage County its squirm- psyche because every one of those This led octogenarian. grandson of a Tamil-speaking “The jury and judge are ing core. scenes is one that I don’t want to her to the “I don’t like to Indian who migrated to Penang on someone’s secret payroll,” “Here I am, Miss Healthy, fit Swedish have in my own life,” Parsons said. Appalachian feel like a freak,” in 1899. By the 1980s Appa thinks Appa as he opens the flicka playing this drug addict,” she said “Violet doesn’t want to sit down and be Mountain Club, she said. “I don’t has become a rich lawyer, case for prosecution. “They last week, wearing workout clothes in interrogated. Every scene is something an outdoors group. want people coming despite Malaysia’s positive agreed on Shamsuddin’s guilt her apartment on the Upper West Side. she really doesn’t want to have, except “Those people I hiked to the show just to discrimination in favor of before today, before the trial “But this play is very physical. It’s closer when she’s drugged out, and then she with hardly ever knew see what an 80- Malays over all other races began, before Shamsuddin to Restoration comedy or French farce, seems to be comfortable.” who I was,” she said. year-old looks like (essentially the Chinese and was dangled by his feet before so you have to go out and really deliver For Parsons, being comfortable “Maybe they didn’t go onstage. Isn’t that what the Indians). He unexpectedly them, a rabbit out of some the goods at every performance.” means being active. In addition to her to the movies. It was just actresses do? They just marries an unimaginative girl, unseen magician’s hat.” But he As Violet, a mother who tosses back weight lifting and swimming (she swims a completely different keep on working.” Amma, from next door and, proceeds regardless, and the painkillers as if they were Flintstones for 30 minutes twice a week), she goes orientation.” despite an almost non-existent boy is convicted and executed. vitamins, Parsons spends 90 minutes of on 30-minute bike rides on two other She and her husband, sex-life, they manage to The details here are the 3-hour-and-20-minute play onstage days. She takes a break from exercise the lawyer Peter Zimroth, produce three children. Appa’s important. There’s nothing in and goes up or down the three-story on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when have been fitness enthu- mother also lives with them, as this book as simple-minded set for a total of 352 steps during each she has two performances. At her siasts for years now. This does an impoverished servant- as privileged Malays, rich performance. At a time that most summer home upstate, she also rides commitment is part of a girl Chellam. Chinese and victimized actresses her age would be happy to her bike or hikes or swims on Mondays, lifelong routine handed Skeletons in the cupboard Indians. Injustice is everywhere spend 15 minutes on Broadway in a her day off. She played tennis for years down from her self-pro- are the stock in trade of the prevalent, the author is couple of wheel-Grandma-out-for-a-song and still cross-country skis. And she claimed “Swedish peasant” bourgeois family novel, and implying, and the sickness numbers, Parsons is tackling one of the does yoga in her dressing room and at roots. It has also led to a here the trauma focuses on the that perhaps she sees as at the most shrewish, complex mothers to home whenever she gets a few minutes. balance of city and country circumstances in which the heart of the country is simply terrorize a Broadway stage in decades “I’ve always been a fit person,” living. grandmother dies, seemingly replicated in miniature in the — part Mary Tyrone, part Momma Rose. Parsons said. “I’ve been acting all my “The outdoor activity is great slipping and hitting her head one family she chooses to focus on. “She is certainly giving a life, and I’ve always felt you should be fun, and it’s such a change from hot morning in the bathroom. And this even-handedness performance to remember,” Charles in shape. I’m used to devoting my whole urban life,” she said. “But listen, Amma, Chellam and two of the and avoidance of stereotype Isherwood recently wrote in the New life to the work and what it requires.” I’m a theater person. I’m not going children are all in the vicinity, applies to the characters as York Times, “one that may prove to be That lifelong devotion to perform- to give up my life to go sit in the and Preeta Samarasan plays well. Amma, for instance, isn’t a crowning moment in an illustrious ing has rubbed off on her co-star Amy woods.” the detective novel whodunit some victim of class prejudice career.” Morton, who plays Barbara, the daugh- When her fellow Steppenwolf game with great aplomb. but a genuinely unpleasant Taking on this role would be a ter who takes on Violet. “Estelle has alumnae Laurie Metcalf and Rondi This, however, is merely the woman, albeit possibly challenge at any age, considering that so much stamina and so much energy, Reed (who also won a Tony for obligatory plot at the center of as a result of her abused the 68-year-old Deanna Dunagan, and she has stayed working and never August: Osage County) suggested the a novel that is in every way far upbringing and loveless who won a Tony Award in June for retired,” Morton said. “She’s quite the role of Violet to her over lunch one fuller, far more complex, and far marriage. Saints and sinners, originating the role, cited exhaustion opposite of Violet, but let’s hope every- day, Parsons said she hesitated but more sophisticated. in other words, are far from in her decision to leave the production. one is the opposite of that character.” was thrilled with the idea of returning The book’s title comes Preeta Samarasan’s way of Parsons must navigate two sets of stairs Morton, who has portrayed Barbara to Broadway. from a work of classic Tamil seeing things. This is both a (the stage depicts the Weston family’s since August: Osage County had its literature, the Kuruntokai profound, and a profoundly sprawling Oklahoma house), smoke premiere at the Steppenwolf Theater Top left: From left, Robert Foxworth, Molly Regan, — “evening is the whole day disturbing, novel. cigarettes, argue with pretty much Company in Chicago last summer and is Sally Murphy and Estelle Parsons in August: Osage for those without their lovers.” The book proceeds in everyone onstage, dance to an Eric onstage longer than any other character, County at the Music Box Theater in New York. Parsons, And lovelessness pervades this a strange fashion, moving Clapton song and verbally eviscerate understands a thing or two about how the 80-year-old Oscar-winning actress, is the antithesis book — between Appa and backwards in time more often 10 other characters in a family dinner grueling the play can be to perform. of Violet Weston, the drug-ravaged matriarch whose Amma, between Amma and than it moves forwards. But, scene. “I don’t know that I’ll be able to self-destructive rampage gives August its core. her daughters (she especially surprisingly, nothing in the way “I think it’s had an effect on my do this play at 80,” Morton said. “And photo: NY times news service despises the intelligent one of readability is lost by this. who goes off to study in the And there are some stunning US), between the children chapters that are, in several themselves, among the other cases, mini-masterpieces in rich wives who mock Amma’s their own right. [ SOFTCOVER: U S ] lowly origins and current One of these is the chapter unhappy state, between describing Kuala Lumpur’s Malaysia’s different races, and, anti-Chinese 1969 race riots, most of all, between the rich during which Amma gives birth Of greedy brokers and lying borrowers and the poor. to her first child. Another, even This is a huge novel, thrilling finer, is the study of Amma’s where necessary, but in reality lonely domestic existence, one ‘Confessions of a Subprime Lender’ gives an insider’s view of the shady dealings that led to the US housing crisis with much bigger fish to fry. It’s of the finest studies of married reminiscent of William Faulkner desperation I’ve ever read, by Susan Antilla a role in turning mortgage lemons Had your car repossessed? for lowering standards, his own (Absalom, Absalom perhaps), matched only by George Eliot’s Bloomberg into securitized lemonade. Bitner describes a case where “confessions” fall short of Louis de Berniere’s Captain portrayal of Gwendolen Harleth In 2000, long before the phrase Bitner was the president and a collection agency reports the confessing, barring a mea culpa Corelli’s Mandolin and Monique in Daniel Deronda. “subprime mess” replaced “shock co-founder of a Dallas-based repo to only one of three credit in the book’s last two pages. Truong’s The Book of Salt, all It’s easy to start wondering and awe” as the most overused subprime mortgage company agencies. An unscrupulous In 2005, for example, Bitner magnificent achievements in how much there is of personal headline of the decade, mortgage called Kellner Mortgage broker could make the collection was forced to repurchase a loan their very different ways. But reminiscence in a novel of wholesaler Richard Bitner thought Investments. In Confessions, he disappear by filing just the from an investor to whom he’d there’s another great writer this kind. Is Preeta Samarasan that somebody at one lending provides a good education in the reports from the two other sold a mortgage. The borrowers who repeatedly came to mind in some way the talented company had a screw loose. varieties of swine who fed at the bureaus, turning a losing loan were a South Carolina couple as I read this wide-ranging and daughter who makes it away The company, Associates housing trough. application into a winner. who had a credit score in the deeply felt book, and that was to Columbia? (She herself First Capital Corp of Irving, There was, for example, the Bitner pulls no punches in 500s (out of a possible 850) and George Eliot. Time may well studied creative writing at the Texas, was extending mortgages big-shot mortgage broker Bitner recounting how Wall Street firms US$250 left in their checking show that Evening is the Whole University of Michigan). If so, with only 5 percent down to dined with in Cleveland, only to — and the ratings companies they account after the closing. They Day is nothing less than modern she’s admirably self-effacing, struggling borrowers — and was learn that the guy had done “a hired to value mortgage securities never made a single payment. Malaysia’s Middlemarch. because the girl in question paying Bitner and other lenders few years in the Federal pen.” — took advantage of the dysfunc- Bitner goes back to review the This is a big claim, but isn’t short of skeletons in her fees of 600 basis points to use Another broker, Angelo, brought tional mortgage world. files, searching for what he may there are many aspects of the own cupboard either. the product, compared with the Bitner a client named Rock The days when banks ran have done wrong. novel that support it. Firstly, This book’s central prevailing maximum of about 500 whom he’d met at a strip club. the whole mortgage process are “Then it hit me,” he writes. the social range is substantial. virtues are sympathy and basis points, he says. Rock was an ex-con trying to gone, he writes. Today, a broker “We did nothing wrong. Our In addition, the racial mix of understanding, combined with “We thought someone in their buy his girlfriend’s house to help originates the loan, a lender funds underwriter approved the deal, the country is unforgettably a tough-minded refusal to trading department had spiked her free up some cash. Though it, a financial institution packages we funded it, and the investor etched in, most importantly deny cruel truths. Yet it still the water cooler,” Bitner writes the deal closed, it turned out that Confessions of a Subprime it into securities, and investors purchased it from us because it in the trial in which Appa acts manages to be witty, inventive in Confessions of a Subprime Angelo worked with Rock only Lender: An Insider’s Tale of buy the securities. fit their guidelines.” as prosecutor of a poor Malay and high-spirited, tossing Lender. The party at the cooler because he was trying to score Greed, Fraud and Ignorance The upshot: Investment firms And there you have it: In this youth, Shamsuddin, for the brand names and popular was just beginning. with Rock’s girlfriend. When and ratings companies have business, the players wrote the rape and murder of a Chinese songs into its rich evocation Today, the US housing market she rebuffed him, he threatened By Richard Bitner become “the unofficial regulators rules and no one asked whether girl. The crime was in reality of provincial life in Malaysia’s is in shambles and financial to kill her. (Rock, by the way, 186 pages of the subprime industry.” That the rules made sense. Including committed by the girl’s uncle, Ipoh. It succeeds superbly, markets worldwide are cratering stopped paying the mortgage.) makes them most to blame for Bitner. Wiley who’d been extorting money and must surely be one of in response to mortgage excesses If you’re wondering how the housing crisis, he argues. As for that South Carolina from her father on behalf of a the finest novels published in that implicated all the players deals like these get done, Bitner What about the destruction couple, Bitner got them to sign gangland boss, but Shamsuddin English anywhere this year. in the industry, from fibbing provides tips in a chapter on the customer’s history? Rogues wrought by mortgage whole- the deed back to him — after borrowers and fudging appraisers “the art of creative financing.” simply omit all but the first page salers like Bitner? While he’s agreeing he wouldn’t report it to to ratings companies that played Too many bounced checks in of the checking account. generous in criticizing others the credit agencies.

TT-970803-P14-IB.indd 1 2008/8/3 上午 12:52:46